Hypocrisy and Cynicism in World Politics

Or, on applying Harry Frankfurt to international relations.

Photo by Alina Sofia on Unsplash

It would be safe to say that the war in Gaza has highlighted some U.S. hypocrisy in its foreign policy. It is worth asking, however, whether hypocrisy is worse than what the other great powers in the international system are broadcasting.

But let’s start with the hypocrisy! There are lots of observers out there who like to point out that the United States proclaims itself to be pro-democracy — unless there is a pivotal autocratic state that needs wooing. Other observers like to point out that the U.S. proclaims itself to be pro-free enterprise — unless we are talking about importing sugar, steel, aluminum, automobiles, et cetera, from other countries.

The war in Gaza has highlighted perhaps the deepest hypocrisy going in American foreign policy. The strongest U.S. argument in favor of rallying global support for Ukraine’s side after Russia’s February 2022 invasion was not democracy vs. autocracy, but Russia vs. the norm of territorial annexation by force. Russia did not just invade Ukraine; they claim that significant parcels of Ukrainian territory are now Russian territory despite Russia signing multiple treaties and agreements recognizing Ukrainian sovereignty.

If there is anything most countries in the Global South should care about, it is the norm of territorial sovereignty. To put it gently, some of these states have borders that do not perfectly align with their nation. If countries can simply redraw borders through the use of superior force, an awful lot of these states would find an awful lot of their territory gobbled up.

Refusing to recognize the forcible change of borders due to interstate violence is how the sovereign state system has expanded from, say, the original 51 member states of the United Nations in 1945 to the current 193 member states. The U.S. is correct to push back on any violation of that norm.

And yet…. twice in the last five years the United States has been willing to tolerate the violation of that norm from an ally. In both instances the United States acted alone, and in both instances it involved Israel. As Peter Beinart explained in the Guardian back in 2022:

In 2019, the Trump administration made the United States the only foreign country to recognize Israel’s sovereignty of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 War. Tel Aviv University Law Professor Eliav Lieblich noted that the decision – which contradicted a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution supported by the US itself – constituted a “significant departure from the bedrock legal prohibition of unilateral annexation.” Yale Law School’s Oona Hathaway called the move “outrageous and potentially destabilizing to the postwar international order.” The Russian government called it an “indication of the contempt that Washington shows for the norms of international law.”

After Trump’s move, Illinois Senator Richard Durbin asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to explain the legal difference between Israel’s annexation of the Golan and Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, which had led the US to impose sanctions. Pompeo replied that “there’s international law doctrine on this very point. We don’t have time to begin to go through it today. But [I’m] happy to have a team go over and walk you through that.” When journalists followed up, the State Department cited no international law doctrine at all. To the contrary, a department spokeswoman declared, nonsensically, that “The US policy continues to be that no country can change the borders of another by force.”

Then, in 2020, the Trump administration followed up by making the United States the only foreign country to recognize Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara, a territory Morocco invaded in 1975 after the territory’s Spanish colonial rulers withdrew. Former Secretary of State James Baker III called the decision an “astounding retreat from the principles of international law.” Once again, the United States contradicted Security Council resolutions it had supported itself. Once again, Russia blasted the US for transgressing a “universally recognized international legal” principle.

Since taking office, the Biden administration has reversed neither of these Trump decisions.

So yeah, the United States has undercut its strongest legal and normative claim to rally support behind Ukraine. Washington is acting hypocritically.

Does this sabotage America’s standing in the world? A decade ago, Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore warned in Foreign Affairs that the Snowden revelations would have a corrosive effect on “hypocritical power”:

The deeper threat that leakers such as Manning and Snowden pose is more subtle than a direct assault on U.S. national security: they undermine Washington’s ability to act hypocritically and get away with it. Their danger lies not in the new information that they reveal but in the documented confirmation they provide of what the United States is actually doing and why. When these deeds turn out to clash with the government’s public rhetoric, as they so often do, it becomes harder for U.S. allies to overlook Washington’s covert behavior and easier for U.S. adversaries to justify their own. 

Few U.S. officials think of their ability to act hypocritically as a key strategic resource. Indeed, one of the reasons American hypocrisy is so effective is that it stems from sincerity: most U.S. politicians do not recognize just how two-faced their country is. Yet as the United States finds itself less able to deny the gaps between its actions and its words, it will face increasingly difficult choices—and may ultimately be compelled to start practicing what it preaches. (emphasis added)

The war in Gaza has made it harder for U.S. analysts, policymakers and politicians to maintain their sincerity.¹ And it has made it far, far easier for elites and citizens in other countries to highlight U.S. hypocrisy. Daniel Hamilton and Angela Stent recently made this point in Foreign Affairs after talking to key actors in seven pivotal countries about why their countries refused to take a position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:²

Our interlocutors made clear that publics in their countries were receptive to Russian narratives blaming the West for the war, a reflection of the persuasive power of Russian disinformation….

The Russian narrative about the conflict’s “real aggressors” taps into a widespread resentment of the United States and anger at how the war in Ukraine and U.S.-Chinese rivalry have diverted attention and resources from urgent global concerns about climate, debt, energy, food, and health. The United States takes “an ‘outreach when I need you’ approach” across Africa, Asia, and South America, its “erratic” policies leaving gaps for China and Russia to exploit, a Brazilian policymaker noted. An Indonesian commentator added that “the West treats Indonesia as a pawn in an international game with China and Russia, not as a sovereign country and equal partner.” As a result, “Many of the West’s political problems with Indonesia are self-created,” the commentator added. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar bluntly told his European counterparts in June 2022 that they must “grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”

In other words, in this particular instance Russian and Chinese propaganda about U.S. hypocrisy in foreign affairs has the advantage of containing some truth value.

To get back to Farrell and Finnemore’s argument, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World believes that in retrospect they exaggerated the deleterious effects of Snowden and Manning’s revelations on U.S. hypocritical power. This is for several reasons. The first is that gosh-darn American sincerity Farrell and Finnemore referenced. U.S. officials sometimes pull this off through ignorance, but sometimes it is through a narrative that the U.S. learns from its mistakes. Politicians can acknowledge past errors and argue that the U.S. will do better in the future. The U.S. public can express disapproval of episodes of U.S. hypocrisy, and that disapproval can register overseas.

The second and related reason is that there are worse things in world politics than hypocrisy.