Elastic Relations: Looking to both Sides of the Atlantic in the 2020 US Presidential Election Year
本文引入社会学中的“制度弹性”概念，分析跨大西洋关系如何通过普遍信任和扩散互惠应对危机，并以2020年美国大选前后特朗普政府对北约的压力为例，说明弹性如何防止关系断裂。
Regardless of how we define the so-called liberal order, its global reach and actor-composition (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Hofmann, 2020), most if not all pundits and scholars alike agree that the transatlantic relationship lies at the heart of this order (Ikenberry, 2000). At the core of the transatlantic relationship is a security commitment tying the US to the European continent and vice versa. This commitment is not only encapsulated in an international treaty, the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949, but also in a formal intergovernmental organization (IGO), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Some even argue that the liberal order has never extended much beyond the transatlantic relationship, as US alliance-building in Europe has greatly differed from alliance-building in the Middle East and East Asia (Staniland, 2018). Although the US, Canada, and European countries have formalized their security relationships and opened up communication channels – not only across capitals, but also through regular (daily) meetings in NATO – crises and cooperation are both common to the relationship (Hofmann and Yeo, 2015). Strong disagreements over military interventions, such as in Vietnam or Iraq, or whether and where to station nuclear missiles, were stress tests. The Trump administration's policy towards NATO was the most recent reminder that political cohesion is not a given among allies. In President Trump, many saw a challenge or even danger to the transatlantic relationship (Barnes and Cooper, 2019). In the run-up to the 2020 presidential elections in the US, the transatlantic relationship was under enormous pressure. The Trump administration flexed its political muscles to demonstrate its ‘America First’ approach towards Europe. Many in Europe feared that a second Trump administration could mean the end of NATO. How do formalized interstate relations accommodate grave political tensions? In other words, what holds the core of the liberal order together despite many crises? By introducing a concept recently used in sociology, namely institutional elasticity, I argue that the transatlantic relationship is able to withstand many crises because it is elastic. Its elasticity does not absorb political shocks, but helps restore the relationship after major crises. I argue that in international institutions, two properties, which can mutually reinforce or weaken each other, are essential to understanding elasticity: generalized trust and diffuse reciprocity. The Trump administration's threat to withdraw from NATO (reduced trust) and its transactional approach (no diffuse reciprocity) severely stretched and deformed the transatlantic relationship. Especially the run-up to the 2020 US presidential elections provided Trump with a platform to accentuate his ‘America First’ agenda. However, the relationship has not been overstretched to the breaking point. Instead, other trust-inducing actors (for example the US Congress) pulled in the other direction by insisting on shared values and experiences (diffuse reciprocity). Trump's electoral loss has reduced the pressure on the transatlantic relationship as not only the US Congress but also President Biden have reemphasized trust and diffuse reciprocity. However, the transatlantic relationship is not perfectly elastic; that is, it does not return to its original state intact but remains marked by the deformations caused by prior experiences (Fioretos, 2017). The Trump presidency made its mark on the transatlantic relationship by making European allies aware that the elastic can break. This argument focuses on factors endogenous to institutions to better grasp the social fabric that sustains them (Henke, 2019). This is not to say that exogenous factors such as geopolitical changes and tensions (for example the rise of China and Russia's assertiveness) do not also impact an institution's elasticity. Rather, the argument here suggests that exogenous and endogenous pressures on an institutional relationship both test the trust and diffuse reciprocity relationships that sustain institutions. Introducing elasticity to the study of transatlantic relations and institutionalized interstate relations more generally provides us with a better understanding that institutional change is not always unidirectional or enduring. Through the lens of elasticity, we can theoretically and conceptually grasp under what conditions certain changes may revert back to a state resembling the previous status quo, while other changes are here to stay. Nothing about interstate relations is inevitable or immutable. Relations between states can exist and change in form, frequency, and size (for example formal, informal, regular, occasional, equal, asymmetric). A focus on formalized intergovernmental relations reveals that many are stable for an extended period of time, but IGOs can also die (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, 2020) or resemble zombies (Gray, 2018). They can go through extended periods of crisis (Kreuder-Sonnen, 2019; Haftel et al., 2020) or become more robust over time (Gocaj and Meunier, 2013). In addition, individual governments can change their appreciation for interstate relations over time (Hofmann, 2013). This has implications for where countries invest their time, expertise, and resources. In the following section, I will briefly explore what a focus on elasticity helps us understand about institutional relationships by discussing some key theoretical questions: What enables IGOs to stay together in crises and major shocks? What brings elasticity about and how can it be sustained? What makes elastic relations break apart slowly? What makes them break apart abruptly? What enables IGOs to hold together while experiencing crises and major shocks? I introduce the concept of institutional elasticity to better understand this phenomenon. While elasticity has been employed (anecdotally by some) in management, sociology, and economics (Watanabe et al., 2004; Hijzen and Swaim, 2010; Awasthi et al., 2020; Knoblach and Stöckl, 2020), few have applied it to institutionalized interstate relations (Hofmann and Mérand, 2012). Elasticity is commonly understood as ‘the tendency of a body to return to its original shape after stretching, stress, or compression’ (Hofmann and Mérand, 2012). Through the lens of elasticity, a researcher can draw attention to changes that occur in the properties of relationships, as well as to whether some of these changes are not durable but can instead bounce back. Hofmann and Mérand (2012) have looked at strong versus weak institutional elasticity to determine what kind of changes are possible in intergovernmental settings. However, they did not pay much attention to elasticity over time. When looking across time, Awasthi et al. (2020) assume that institutional relations revert back to their initial state. This malleability is just one side of the coin, however. No rubber band continues to exist forever; it can become brittle and, with each small stretch, the danger of it breaking increases. Or it can overextend under too much pressure and rip. What brings elasticity about and how can it be sustained? Elastic interstate relations have at least two properties: they are based on generalized trust (Rathbun, 2011) and on at least some degree of diffuse reciprocity (Keohane, 1986). Both of these properties stress social aspects of institutionalized relationships, a glue that can keep counterparts in conversation with one another even in times of major shocks and crises. ‘Generalized trust must be moralistic, based not on an assessment of others' interests but on their character and honesty … It helps sustain cooperation when the exchange of benefits is not consistent or frequent over time’ (Rathbun, 2011, p. 3). Generalized trust enables reliance on others and political concessions – as does diffuse reciprocity. Diffuse reciprocity means ‘to contribute one's share, or behave well toward others, not because of ensuing rewards from specific actors, but in the interests of continuing satisfactory overall results for the group of which one is a part’ (Keohane, 1986, p. 20). These properties set the parameters for political contestation and non-detrimental disagreements regardless of individual state characteristics and preferences (Hofmann and Yeo, 2015). Diplomatic embeddedness (Henke, 2019) facilitates mutual trust and diffuse reciprocity. The more diplomatic ties actors have with one another, the more likely it is that at least some counterparts can communicate trust and diffuse reciprocity to one another. However, the communication between political leaders remains essential. Security communities, for example, are elastic, while alliances are not necessarily so. This is not to say that institutionalized relationships are perfectly elastic – that is, that they automatically return to their original shape after the pressure is removed. Instead, shared experiences and memories can have lasting effects (Hofmann and Mérand, 2020); hence, some changes or at least fears are likely to stay. What makes elastic relations break apart slowly or abruptly? If actors start questioning generalized trust and/or diffuse reciprocity, they stress the institutionalized relationship and test its elasticity. Every stretch leaves its mark and, over time, the rubber band can become brittle and break. In relationships of any kind, strong disagreements can be overcome but not necessarily forgotten. They can leave partners in a state of worry and fear that the stretch, stress or compression could occur again. And during the stretch, stress or compression period, some policy decisions might have been decided that are not easy to revert (Fioretos, 2017). As such, repeated crises and political shocks can lead to the hollowing out of international relations, with IGOs becoming zombies (Gray, 2018) or dying altogether. And if we overextend a rubber band, it can rip. When looking at interstate relations, unreasonable demands paired with too much pressure on the relationship can break it apart. These demands depart from the confines of broad political consensus and instead move into the realm of overt antagonism. One example of this could be Brexit (see Usherwood, 2021, in this issue). NATO was stretched to its limits in 2020. Political tensions and frustrations on both sides of the Atlantic abounded. Trump was frustrated with European reluctance to invest more in their own security despite their increased pledges at the NATO Wales Summit during the Obama administration, as well as with certain countries' (like Germany) relations with Russia. European governments understood Trump's political style and policies as threatening the principle of diffuse reciprocity; unilateral US policy decisions further diminished trust among political elites. In the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election, the Trump administration introduced a series of unilateral policy decisions that challenged and threatened European allies with withdrawal of support under the banner of ‘America First’. European allies reacted to some of Trump's challenges with a reinvigorated discourse on ‘strategic autonomy’ or new European Union (EU) military capacity initiatives but, overall, they waited for the result of the US elections. Throughout Trump's presidency, NATO was sidelined in his ‘America First’ foreign and security policy approach. Like previous administrations before him, Trump was frustrated with European reliance on the US security umbrella. However, he translated this frustration into a political approach that differed from his predecessors. Interactions with NATO and NATO allies became primarily transactional, elevating the decade-old burden-sharing debate to the most pressing issue at hand (Becker, 2019). Prioritizing the transactional approach meant ignoring the principle of diffuse reciprocity and generalized trust between allies. The signals coming out of the White House were arguably more mixed in Trump's first years in office. The Trump administration might have been oscillating between two positions. Some emphasized that ‘President Donald Trump shook the foundations of NATO more than any of his predecessors’ (Pothier and Vershbow, 2017, p. 1). Trump's ‘America First’ led many to question whether the US president would be willing to defend allies if they called for help (Borger, 2019), which hurt the credibility of NATO's Art. V mutual defense clause and reduced trust in the US commitment to NATO. Others argued that ‘Trump has kept much of American foreign policy within familiar boundaries’ (Sperling and Webber, 2019, p. 513) and ‘personnel choices have signaled a lack of intent to overhaul foreign policy’ (Sperling and Webber, 2019, p. 514). In his last year in office and in the run-up to the November elections, Trump's ‘America First’ approach became more aggressive towards NATO and individual NATO allies, as well as towards the confidence-building treaties that surround the transatlantic relationship. Trump not only stretched the transatlantic relationship but also started overextending it. One New York Times headline from 3 September 2020 reads ‘Allies and Former U.S. Officials Fear Trump Could Seek NATO Exit in a Second Term’; in the article, its author recounts ‘Recent accounts by former senior national security officials in the Trump administration have … len[t] credence to a scenario in which Mr. Trump, emboldened by re-election and potentially surrounded by an inexperienced second-term national security team, could finally move to undermine – or even end – the United States' NATO membership’ (Crowley, 2020). Some of these accounts stemmed from Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton. Not only did Trump feel emboldened; in the many reconfigurations of his national foreign, security and defense policy staff, he also reconfigured his cabinet and advisors so that in 2020 most advisors and cabinet members were no longer ‘seasoned officials with a strong loyalty to the alliance and the trans-Atlantic relationship … Their successors are not thought to be acting as strong checks on Mr. Trump's instincts’ (Crowley, 2020). This intentional diplomatic dis-embedding was yet another signal to European counterparts that a transactional approach was guiding this US administration. As for Open Skies, many have pointed out that European NATO states' capacity to track Russian military movements in the region would be diminished. The four multinational NATO battalion groups deployed to the Baltics and Poland as part of NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence would also suffer should they not be able to mobilize quickly in case of a Russian military incursion. This erosion of information-sharing and confidence-building exposes the vulnerabilities in NATO and, in turn, benefits Russia's strategic interests (McGee, 2020). In July 2020, Trump announced his decision to remove around 10,000 US soldiers from Germany, a decision at least partly motivated as a punishment for Germany not paying enough for its own security and defense (Williams, 2020). Nearly of these were back to the US, while the were to and move that through (McGee, 2020). many NATO US military in Germany are to the (Williams, 2020). example, they US and its European support US and a of US military This is not to say that all European allies were of Trump's Instead, are some allies such as President are the Trump administration to their own while the cohesion of (McGee, 2020). 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