The Necessity of Balance in Foreign Policy
In recent months, the necessity of a balanced foreign policy has become an important topic of discussion in some political circles. This debate has intensified, particularly due to accusations of joint cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia in the Ukraine war, China’s and Russia’s alignment with Gulf Arabs on territorial integrity, and the audacity of certain countries towards Iran. Therefore, it is appropriate to examine the dimensions of this issue more closely.
The reality is that for some diplomatic officials, the concept of balanced foreign policy is ambiguous, and they sometimes equate it solely with establishing peaceful relations with the U.S. and the West. However, balanced foreign policy, especially for a country with Iran’s unique geographical and political characteristics, encompasses broad, deep, and complex concepts and meanings that have not received sufficient attention from diplomatic practitioners. It is evident that ambiguity in this matter cannot aid in devising strategies aligned with reality in foreign policy.
Fundamentally, balance is an undeniable principle in international relations, which pertains to various aspects of foreign relations and the driving forces of changes in the international environment, shaping interests within it. First and foremost, it should be noted that foreign policy is an indivisible whole. The policy of international developments and relations consists of components and entities, where the condition for success in formulating a balanced foreign policy is having a balanced and equitable view of all its constituent elements.
This is a governing principle and empirical law in foreign relations within the international environment. Disregarding this principle is merely an illusion and inevitably results in missed opportunities and the loss of national assets in geopolitical competitions with outsiders.
Developments in the last three decades on the international level indicate that not only has the world moved past a unipolar era and entered into multipolar relations, but also new political, economic, and military alliances have emerged, creating a new balance between small and medium powers on one hand, and large and global powers on the other. Large and emerging powers have ventured beyond their traditional and peripheral domains, seeking new areas in the world and expanding their spheres of influence more broadly.
In a multipolar world and a state of power distribution, countries have discovered new economic, political, and cultural capacities, thereby creating a new balance in politics and international relations. For example, Europe, by establishing transatlantic ties with South America, the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, Asia, and Central Asia within comprehensive organizations, has shaped new capacities in international relations. India, through innovative actions with Gulf countries, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, has created a new set of economic domains, accelerating the power distribution.
This country, focusing on the scientific and digital capabilities of the United States, has implemented various plans, including ICET, and utilizes these new capabilities and capacities for development. Turkey has established organized relations with African and Arab countries and recently in the Ukraine issue across various fields. Russia has practiced new forms of power in the Mediterranean and, based on a multipolar order, utilizes existing opportunities in the Gulf region and other parts of the world.
Gulf countries have unprecedentedly formed economic ties and new connections with China, sharing their economic capacities with the major eastern power while maintaining strategic relations with the West and the U.S. The southern Gulf countries, emerging from previous bipolar and unipolar orders, have strengthened the principle of shared interests and economic interdependence, forming new coalitions and transnational economic power, thus expanding their regional influence and positioning themselves in the global power circuit, experiencing new roles and presence in the United Nations and the General Assembly.
China, by leveraging the economic and commercial capacities of the U.S. and Europe and offering productive plans for shared interests with Africa, Asia, and Latin America, has taken significant steps to create effective competition with the United States. Recently, this country, within collective alliances with Gulf countries, seeks to enter the traditional influence domain of the U.S. and strengthen its competition with this country.
The U.S., the UK, and Australia, in tight competition with Europe, have designed and implemented the new AUKUS pact against the expansion of China’s influence. These and other prominent examples indicate the emergence of new relations at the regional and global levels, with the most significant manifestation being the emergence of a new balance in the world based on multipolar relations and the distribution of power and comprehensive capacities.
The first and most important pivotal point in the new developments is that in this multipolar world, all countries use the element of positive balance between various and even opposing phenomena and factions of power to preserve their interests, thereby expanding their spheres of influence and utilizing new capacities on both international and regional levels. No country is found in the new and multipolar relations arena that confines itself to a specific pole and political space, thereby missing out on the new capacities released by the multipolar system while also achieving its foreign policy goals.
The prerequisite and condition for political survival in a multipolar system is the ability to create positive balance and political attraction in all directions as an unbreakable strategy. On the other hand, the success of the positive balance strategy requires strengthening the historical, cultural, economic, military, and political advantages of the country, allowing it to possess a high degree of deterrence power to create balance with other players. Otherwise, not only will positive balance not be established, but conditions will move towards submission to the demands of outsiders. Of course, this strategy, as mentioned, should aim to preserve the country’s national interests based on balance in interests on one hand and maintaining sovereignty and territorial integrity and achieving the fundamental principles of a nation on the other.
Positive balance in a multipolar world is by no means contrary to having strategic relations with allies. Strategic relations with certain countries can, in turn, strengthen positive balance and make it more effective. However, it should be noted that strategic relations with countries or groups of countries have their own legal, political, and economic definitions and characteristics that require specific conditions to access.
For example, Iran, in its current state, has not been able to establish strategic relations with any country or group of countries, even its close neighbors, as it should. This is because Iran’s current situation and foreign policy orientation on one hand, and the lack of harmony in the foreign policies of surrounding countries with Iran and their shared interests with Iran’s rivals and enemies, do not currently allow for such relations.
Therefore, not only is it necessary to further strengthen the positive balance strategy in foreign policy, but ways must also be sought to compensate for the lack of strategic relations with countries. The most effective approach in this situation is to focus on identifying power components and arenas of power production in the world, which should be achieved by moving beyond static calculations and paying attention to the dynamics of international developments.
On the other hand, and from a historical perspective, strategic loneliness can naturally be one of Iran’s major challenges in international relations. This loneliness has created difficult and complex conditions for Iran and incurred costs. Experience has shown that the way to confront challenges and threats arising from strategic loneliness is to establish a balanced foreign policy. Unfortunately, due to the stereotypical nature of the intellectual environment in the country’s diplomacy, ambiguous and sometimes incorrect perceptions about balanced foreign policy have formed, resulting in fallacy and error in the decision-making process.
Some believe that balanced foreign policy exclusively means reviving relations with the U.S. and the West, while this is not the case. The driving forces and components of power in the international environment are currently multifaceted, complex, and diverse. Therefore, the scope of the balanced foreign policy discussion extends far beyond the necessity of establishing relations with the Western world. In the current international system, there are numerous opportunities for national growth and development, the condition for benefiting from which is creating balance in exploiting the arenas of power production.
In other words, the first step towards establishing balance in international relations, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is the need to assess the existing order as a great opportunity. It is evident that viewing the existing order opportunistically does not mean the absence of threats in this order. However, addressing threats in the international environment is itself subject to variables that, when considered, make achieving goals easier. In this discussion, an attempt is made to outline the indicators of balanced foreign policy based on the multifaceted nature of power components and diverse arenas of power production. However, it is appropriate to first mention some principles and influential elements in achieving balanced foreign policy.
1. The Principle of Indivisibility
As noted at the beginning of the article, the various aspects and elements in international relations, and by extension foreign policy, form an indivisible whole. International relations consist of different and diverse components and dimensions, where the first condition in pursuing balanced foreign policy is having a balanced view of all components and understanding the importance of their role in this whole.
The first aspect of the principle of indivisibility is the internal connection and mutual influence of political concepts and phenomena in international relations. The driving forces inherently in power, influence, security, deterrence, development, benefit, and balance continuously have reciprocal effects on each other. Influence in the realm of global goods and common needs in the international environment is synonymous with development, and development is an inseparable part of power and is closely related to security. All these concepts and elements individually and collectively produce deterrence to protect interests and counter threats.
An important point in the principle of indivisibility is that lagging in the area of development quickly reflects in the area of security and manifests as geopolitical threats. For example, the extensive growth and development on the Arab shores of the Persian Gulf and, conversely, the backwardness of the Iranian shores of this body of water signify the growth of geopolitical threats against Iran.
Essentially, foreign policy has missions in three areas: security, development, and values. Without a doubt, a country’s diplomacy is successful if it has a balanced view of all the missions of foreign policy. Regarding Iran’s foreign policy, it must be said that just as the mission to ensure the security of the country and its citizens and to advance values is important, achieving development is also an inseparable part of foreign relations and a necessary condition for achieving foreign policy objectives.
Development in a country’s foreign relations is not just a national and governmental commitment to improve the country’s economic and social status and the welfare of its citizens. The mission for development is not a matter of necessity or a tactical choice, but a requirement and one of the definitive and powerful tools in conducting geopolitical competition with outsiders to safeguard national interests.
The second aspect of this principle of indivisibility is international developments. The behaviors of actors in the international environment are formed in a causation relationship. The notion of isolated actions in the existing international system is certainly naive. The components in this system are so intertwined that it is never possible to calculate developments, decisions, behaviors, and political actions in the world, both in process and in outcome, without dependency, connection, and mutual influence on each other.
In other words, although the scope of international relations is complex and includes different and conflicting interests between countries and geographical regions, interstate and global interactions and relations occur in a single, indivisible environment. The movements of countries and political alliances have internal dependencies and connections and certainly influence each other both in process and outcome.
Therefore, in the existing global order, bilateral relations cannot be separated from multilateral regional relations and regional organizations. Similarly, bilateral and regional relations cannot be separated from international relations and developments in international organizations. All these relations, in terms of effects and consequences, exist in an indivisible global network.
Indivisibility in international relations, especially the indivisibility of threats, occurs both in level and depth, and both directions ultimately converge at a single point. Indivisibility of threats at the level indicates a situation where governments, in the course of geopolitical competition and in response to the development of a rival, horizontally direct threats towards their rival outside their borders using all foreign policy, defense, economic, and security tools at appropriate times and places.
Indivisibility of threats in depth refers to developments where international actors carry out threats within the borders, within populations, and inside rival countries. Efforts by enemies to create negative perceptions and national humiliation and ultimately to disintegrate rival countries are examples of this type of threat vertically.
The important point is that all these developments, whether in level or depth, occur in a causation relationship and in an interconnected network. For example, it is not possible to imagine political behavior in an incident in the West without affecting the East or vice versa. In other words, if country A takes action on a front in the north against its rival or enemy, it should expect similar or different actions from country B against itself in the south, both in level and in depth.
The important point is that if country A assumes its action is isolated or is not prepared for confrontation in the south with country B and its rival, it will certainly lose in regional and international political, defense, security, economic, and cultural interactions. This means that the acting country in point A must necessarily be prepared to confront its rival or enemy in point B in political, defense, and security domains.
Conversely, the acting country in point A must know that not de-escalating in this point, especially in the absence of readiness for a comprehensive response to threats from the rival in point B, will certainly endanger achieving national development goals and even its own existence.
In other words, the country in question must make this calculation before taking any action: Is the confrontation and strike against the enemy in point A commensurate with its deterrence power to prevent the enemy from creating balance in point B? Because if the confrontation with the enemy is not proportionate to its deterrence power, the country in question will certainly suffer serious and strategic damage in both points according to the principle of indivisibility. Now it is appropriate to refer to the components of deterrence power. Undoubtedly, military might in terms of forces and equipment is one of the most important components of deterrence.
However, this is not exclusive and limited to the military component, and certainly other elements such as the country’s international standing, political coalition power with other countries, economic power, media influence, and external public and cultural diplomacy, as well as internal cohesion and consensus, play a decisive role in deterrence power. Therefore, it is reiterated that confrontation in one point without possessing deterrence power in another point is synonymous with increasing weakness and continuous erosion of national interests.
What is currently observed in the general region of the Caucasus, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and some neighboring countries, including Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as from the behaviors of Russia, India, and other actors, is just one example of the reflection of the aforementioned principles. Therefore, the first result of paying attention to the principle of indivisibility in the international environment is the necessity of formulating intelligent and balanced diplomacy through analysis and calculation of international and regional political events and movements within the broader circle of the global network and all-encompassing interconnected elements with mutual influence in this environment.
Intelligent diplomacy, in the process of diplomatic movements, sees all influencing elements and components and reciprocal interactions in one global, international, and regional frame. Therefore, with this comprehensive view, unilateralism and partialism in international relations are deadly poisons that destroy national interests.
2. The Power of Guarantee and Regulation
Cross-border presence and influence and efforts to create the desired order or security arrangements and the limits and boundaries of the international political horizon at the regional and global levels must be commensurate with the level of regulatory power and the ability to guarantee cross-border presence and influence as the foundation for its continuous preservation. Otherwise, defensive and security achievements will also be lost in a predictable period. For example, after World War II, the U.S. established the international order it desired in the surrounding region of Europe and even Asia.
The U.S., to maintain its desired order in Europe, as the guarantor of order, implemented the Marshall Plan with its economic power, and in Japan, it acted similarly for such an arrangement. Russia, after the Soviet Union, also on a smaller scale, maintained some of the major countries and its sphere of influence during the Soviet era with its power as the guarantor of the new order under the name of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in its surrounding environment.
In recent years, Iran, Russia, and Turkey have signed agreements in the field of security arrangements in some areas in Syria as guarantors of these arrangements and have protected their desired order as determining powers in the field. France, in the years following the independence of African countries, also tried to establish its desired order in some areas of the African continent and pursued its interests using its comprehensive power as the protector and guarantor of order.
These and numerous other examples show that countries that take steps to create regional and global order or engage in cross-border presence and influence must necessarily possess the necessary power as a guarantor and regulator in military, economic, and cultural domains and create the necessary structures in future processes to safeguard and protect their cross-border presence and influence and the desired order, ultimately preserving the results and achievements and their short-term and long-term interests.
It is evident that if a country cannot create a real balance between its power as a guarantor and regulatory player on one hand and the scope of its cross-border presence and influence and international political horizon on the other, it will undoubtedly incur significant costs in the long run and may endanger its achievements and expose itself to numerous threats.
3. The Principle of Comprehensive Deterrence
The principle of deterrence in its comprehensive concept and the deterrent power of countries are elements that can determine the degree of success of countries in achieving their foreign policy objectives. In other words, the quality and scope of activities and the radius of influence and cross-border presence in foreign and defense policy must necessarily be commensurate with the comprehensive deterrent power of the country in question. This means that countries, in determining strategic confrontation points and external confrontation with their rivals and enemies, and in designing their interests and cross-border plans, must pay attention to their level of deterrent power. The greater the deterrent power, the greater the ability to create balance and equilibrium in cross-border relations and, consequently, preserve national interests in foreign policy.
A country that takes action to create a secure and reliable economic belt and to preserve its interests by engaging in cross-border presence and influence or establishing the desired order around itself must possess the necessary deterrent power in defense, economic, political, and cultural domains to neutralize the activities or attacks of the enemy in the aforementioned fields and be able to disable their advancing machinery with its deterrent power in the surrounding environment.
For example, one aspect of comprehensive deterrent power is the sharing and interweaving of economic and political interests, convergence, and alignment of economic tendencies in the surrounding environment and with influential economic powers. This sharing of interests must be so strong and extensive that a rival or enemy in the geopolitical arena cannot easily and without cost implement its fragile plans. A country’s security doctrine and political plans must be designed in such a way that they can be supported by deterrent power; otherwise, the implementation of political plans and security arrangements will fail and impose significant and sometimes irreparable costs on them.
4. The Principle of Fluidity of Interests and the Necessity of Establishing Balance and Equilibrium Among Them
Principles and interests are two different concepts. Principles are fixed, but interests are fluid. Interests are shapeless; the shape and content of interests are determined by political arrangements and developments on the ground. For example, the shape and content of interests during the dominance of ISIS and terrorism in Iraq and Syria differ from the post-ISIS era. During ISIS, the interest was in fighting ISIS and military mechanisms and strategies, but in the post-ISIS era, the interest lies in presence and influence in reconstruction processes, expanding political connections with rivals in this process, and economic strategies.
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for some European countries like Germany, expanding relations, especially economic relations with Russia and the Nord Stream gas contract, was considered beneficial. However, after Russia’s attack, the interest shifted, and many contracts, especially Nord Stream, were sidelined. For some countries, joining NATO was not seen as beneficial, but after the war, joining NATO became beneficial.
Saudi Arabia’s interest during the absolute hegemony of the U.S. and the bipolar era was to be in Washington’s satellite orbit. However, after transformations in the international order and the emergence of emerging countries and the powerful rise of China in global geopolitics and U.S. security transformations in the region and changes in the political arrangement of the world, new interests were defined in the framework of foreign policy that are completely different from previous eras. Even Putin, in different political periods over the past 25 years, has designed and implemented different and even diverse interests in relation to the Western world.
Therefore, an efficient government in the realm of foreign policy necessarily pursues the fluidity of interests as a practical and customary principle. Therefore, the principle of fluidity of interests necessitates that foreign policy in different eras identifies real interests and achieves them with tools compatible with changes. In the second stage, the duty of foreign policy and practical diplomacy is to establish balance and equilibrium in multiple areas of security, economy, and values. Diplomacy in various situations must calculate the average and outcome of the desired interests.
In other words, if in foreign policy, one or more interests are consistently prioritized over other interests, national goals will not be achieved, and it may even damage the country’s economy, culture, and development. For example, the main countries of the European Union and mainly European countries have defined multiple interests in their foreign and defense policy, such as preserving and strengthening international human rights, promoting democracy, economic interests, military presence, and safeguarding security arrangements, maintaining and expanding bilateral and multilateral relations, strengthening geopolitical presence in the region and the world, and combating terrorism.
On the other hand, statements, declarations, documents, and analyses from some of them indicate that they are not willing to sacrifice one interest for another if it harms the overall principle of national interests, except in special and exceptional circumstances. For instance, the Netherlands, which is among the most famous in the world for adhering to international human rights, is not willing to forgo its national economic interests and strategic relations with countries for the sake of safeguarding human rights, which in their beliefs is akin to divine revelation.
In other words, the Netherlands does not want to defend transnational human rights at the expense of undermining its other strategic interests at the international level. Of course, it should be noted that each country designs its interests and various aspects and manifestations based on its fundamental principles. Nonetheless, a cornerstone of success in foreign policy, in general, is the necessity of creating balance and equilibrium between different national interests in the implementation of political plans.