The Godfather Doctrine: A Foreign Policy Parable by Hulsman John C. & Mitchell A. Wess

Author:Hulsman, John C. & Mitchell, A. Wess [Hulsman, John C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781400829859
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2009-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Realist

The strategy that ultimately saves the Corleone family from the Sollozzo threat and equips it for coping with multipolarity does not come from either of the brothers who dominate family war councils at the beginning of the movie, but from Michael, the youngest and least experienced of the Don’s sons. Unlike Tom, whose labors as family lawyer have produced an exaggerated devotion to negotiation, and Sonny, whose position as untested heir apparent has produced a zeal for utilizing the family arsenal, Michael has no formulaic fixation on a particular policy instrument. Instead, his overriding goal is to protect the family’s interests and save it from impending ruin by any and all means necessary. In today’s foreign policy terminology, Michael is a realist.

Viewing the world through untinted lenses, he sees that the age of dominance the family enjoyed for so long under his father is ending. Alone among the three brothers, Michael senses that a shift is under way on the streets toward a more diffuse power arrangement, in which multiple power centers will jockey for position and influence. To survive and succeed in this new environment, Michael knows the family will have to adapt; the policy instruments it relied on before will have to be recalibrated. Unlike Tom, whose grand strategic vision centers on the concept of restoration, and Sonny, whose strategy is about retribution, Michael sees the time has come for wholesale strategic retrenchment. Three characteristics of his strategy allow it to succeed where the others fail, and could provide a blueprint for reinventing U.S. foreign policy today.

First, Michael relinquishes the mechanistic, one-trick-pony policy approaches of his brothers in favor of a “toolbox” in which soft and hard power are used in flexible combinations and as circumstances dictate. Like realists today, he knows that the family must cut the coat of its foreign policy according to the cloth of its material power base. While at various times he sides with Tom (favoring negotiation) or Sonny (favoring force), Michael understands their positions to be about tactics, and not about ultimate strategy, which for him is solely to ensure the survival and prosperity of the family. Thus he is able to use Sonny’s “buttonmen” to knock out those competitors he cannot co-opt, while negotiating with the rest as Tom would like. This blending of sticks and carrots ensures that Michael is ultimately a more effective diplomat than Tom and a more successful warrior than Sonny: when he enters negotiations, it is always in the wake of a fresh battlefield victory and therefore from a position of strength; when he embarks on a new military campaign, it is always in pursuit of a specific goal that can be consolidated afterwards diplomatically.

Applied to America’s current predicament with Iran, Michael’s strategy would call for a carefully timed mixture of both carrots and sticks to dissuade Iran’s leadership from producing nuclear weapons. Carrots would include foreign investment, American diplomatic recognition, fora to discuss and address outstanding U.S.-Iran issues, and a nonintervention pledge from the United States.

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