Dealing in a Nasty World

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HERE'S MY TAKE

Since Tuesday evening’s announcement of a tentative trade deal between Canada and the United States that would stop the imposition of a new round of significant tariffs scheduled to take effect on Wednesday, August 19, there has been lots of commentary and analysis. It’s mostly meaningless, given that negotiators are still hammering out the fine details of the agreements, the full facts aren't public, and assessing this deal will vary by sector and region, with any overall evaluation inevitably taking time to sort through.

Listening to some of the back and forth of this week’s punditry, I found myself comparing this Canadian moment to the angst of Hamlet.

To deal or not to deal—that is the question in a nasty world. Whether to trust the covenants of allies, or to conclude with Hobbes that beneath every friendship lies the old calculation of fear, interest, and power.

That question—whether a deal rests on durable institutions or on the shifting sands of a personal relationship between leaders—is, I'd argue, the real story behind this week's trade news, and behind a separate story out of the Korean peninsula this week too. Relationships between leaders can grease the wheels of diplomacy. But when relationships replace institutions rather than support them, an agreement becomes only as durable as the goodwill between the people who signed it.

It was President Trump who, over the past seventeen months, has repeatedly invoked “Canadian nastiness” as a barrier to an agreement. The most recent was in an August 5 speech to a business audience, in which Trump described Canada as “nasty.” “People think Canada—they’re nasty people. I love the people but they’re nasty. Nasty leadership.”

I don’t want to read too much into the rhetoric—not every line is carefully scripted with philosophical intent. Caricaturing his opponents, whether in politics or across a negotiating table, is part of President Trump’s style. Still, the repeated use of “nasty” evokes a famous line from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, written in 1651, a required reading in any quality introduction to political science. Hobbes argues that without some sort of coercive force (typically the state), human nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Nastiness, in Hobbes’ world, is part of the natural condition that occurs when we can only rely on other individuals (who inevitably have self-interests different from ours and hence abandon us) and points to the need for high authority. Much of what Hobbes points to is institutional power that is essential to an ordered life, but he also grapples with the higher moral authority that comes with such institutional powers.

I doubt Trump has read Hobbes, nor am I suggesting that current events provide a perfect case study for the validity of Hobbes' observations now almost four centuries ago. However, the metaphor does provide insight into our times and how nations arrive at international deals these days. And how a deal comes together has significant consequences for what it means—regardless of what the fine print of the final text might say—and how long it might last.

An unrelated but very current international news story might help illustrate the point.

On August 16, President Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the joint US–South Korean military exercises that had just commenced. His stated reasoning is striking. He called the exercises an “inappropriate and hostile” signal toward North Korea, described North Korea as “unthreatening and respectful,” and emphasized his “very good relationship” with Kim Jong Un. He simultaneously pointed out that South Korea had declined his request to assist the United States over Iran. Quite apart from the somewhat surprising decision and the potential global security implications, what was striking was how Trump’s language reduced treaties between nations from institutional commitments to personal relationships between leaders.

Now of course, relationships between leaders matter and leaders can accomplish much more on an international front—whether the conversations are about trade, security, or any other global topic—than when leaders dislike each other. But there is a difference between effective relationships serving as a lubricant to allow the institutional machinery of government to run smoothly and a view of relationships that replaces the institutions of government.

Which brings us back to Hobbes’s insights. Nasty is part of the way he describes the state of nature—a condition in which everyone must ultimately provide for their own security. No one can safely rely on promises, goodwill, and cooperation when no common power can ensure that others will reciprocate.

Early in Leviathan, Hobbes commends a particular kind of political wisdom: “Read thy self.” He warns against the confidence that we can simply “read” particular people from their actions, since the same behaviour can arise from very different passions and purposes. Hobbes was hardly an institutionalist in the modern sense—the seventeenth-century context was very different from ours—but applying his insights points to the value of institutions precisely because they make political order less dependent on one leader’s ability to read another correctly in the moment.

In the case of the Koreas, President Trump is redefining adversary and ally through a short-term lens, stripping history and institutions down to present-day feelings and relationships. Time will tell as to how durable the new trade deal with Canada is, but his willingness to redefine previous deals based on the whims of the moment reflects a similar move.

President Trump prides himself (and perhaps with some justification) on being able to read people well and has a track record of securing deals with individuals. Some of these would seem unlikely partners. But leadership requires us to read not just individuals but humankind.

My own theory of social change makes room for the role of significant leaders—good and bad—but I am convinced that it is the intersection of institutional change in different spheres that creates change that lasts. Only time will tell us the extent to which whatever significance the changes this week’s international news takes on will have, but I am quite convinced that, given how leaders arrive at these agreements, it will not be that long before new circumstances will challenge their stability and negotiators will have to hammer out new agreements to take their place.

WHAT I’M READING

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