Interrogating Our “Norms” with Professor Tanisha Fazal

Like a lot of people, my value system comes from my family background, not only from having good parents who taught me the difference between right and wrong and who especially valued education, but maybe more specifically in my case it has to do with the fact that I am someone of mixed heritage; my mother is Puerto Rican, my father was from Bangladesh, and I grew up—I am assuming, Kevin, that you are in the Carnegie Council offices in New York—not too far from where you are sitting, on Long Island in actually a very Jewish community, so I had a Christian mother, a Muslim father, and most of my friends were Jewish.

I was exposed to a fair amount of bigotry as a pretty young child from these various communities that I was interacting with, so a fair amount of Islamophobia, definitely anti-Semitism, and anti-Christian attitudes. Encountering that kind of rhetoric even as a young child was pretty unsupportable to me. It was not something that made any sense to me because buying into that meant rejecting one or both of my parents and most of my friends. This led me pretty early to value the importance of tolerance and diversity, including intellectual diversity.

The other thing I would mention is that because my parents came from parts of the world that are poorer—part of what you might call the Global South, especially my father coming from Bangladesh, which was a country we would visit as a family when I was quite young—I was exposed to those kinds of perspectives, and this idea of seeing the world not necessarily from the perch of being an American but from the perspective of countries that were weaker and poorer than the United States and the people in those countries has informed not only the way I live my life but also my scholarship and definitely my teaching.

KEVIN MALONEY: That is incredibly interesting. Thank you for being so honest and forthright in sharing that.

It is interesting from an ethics and morality perspective. People try to overcomplicate it, but you just talked about the fact—it’s the toddler test, right? You knew what was happening was deeply wrong, even if you were too young to understand the context of why people were treating you that way. I think that is crystallizing.

I have a toddler that I am raising right now, and working at Carnegie Council and thinking about these issues day-in and day-out, the thick area of geopolitics, and then I come home and talk to my wife or I am explaining to my son what I am working on, and it gets obvious quick, so it is interesting that you framed it that way.

TANISHA FAZAL: There is a lot of interesting research about how people have an innate sense of fairness and justice, and I think kids oftentimes have a pretty good handle on that.

KEVIN MALONEY: It speaks to the uniqueness of the American experience for so many people. There is this situation on the one hand that this country allowed for this family to exist and thrive—you have gone on and received this amazing degree, you write for Foreign Affairs, and you are in advisory capacities—but at the same time it was a very difficult and in many ways a racist and traumatic experience growing up in the United States.

How do you square that circle? I am not saying you necessarily need to or even can, but I think it would be interesting for our listeners for you to reflect on and maybe think deeply about that.

TANISHA FAZAL: We are getting pretty personal here. There is no place that is perfect, so I think about what I can change and where I can make a difference. There are certain people whose minds I just know I am not going to be able to change, but there are other people who are more receptive or maybe want to learn, and that is how I square that circle.

KEVIN MALONEY: I think about this a lot in terms of my professional job and personally. I am also part of a mixed-race family; my wife is Indian and my son is mixed-race. It goes to this concept that I keep coming back to at Carnegie Council of good faith. I do believe that the majority of people want to engage in good faith but are so locked away by tribalism or locked away geographically and cannot access other parts of the world, or this disinformation and misinformation environment is closing them off more and more. The more you can travel the more you can engage in other people’s living rooms and understand from a universal perspective that a lot of it is very much the same if you are approaching it from a good-faith perspective. That has been my take on it from a personal perspective and also from working at the Council.

TANISHA FAZAL: That is a great point, especially the point that you raise about the ecology of the environment that we all inhabit these days with social media. Another way I would put it is this sense of, “Do we give people the benefit of the doubt or not?”

The way social media works now—and this is just me talking; I am not an expert in social media—I just feel like there is so much of social media that is like we’re all in our bubbles and our bubbles become these rage machines. I think it is not necessary good for our mental health. It is not good for my mental health.

It also sets the default away from giving people the benefit of the doubt. I do think there are people, and maybe this isn’t fair, to whom I would not give the benefit of the doubt right now, but there are a lot of other people, people I don’t know, people in my daily life, who I should be giving the benefit of the doubt, and we should be more generous to the extent that we can and feel comfortable doing so in our daily lives.

KEVIN MALONEY: Let’s pivot to geopolitics, which is your area of expertise. It is what you focus on in your career, and you have written some excellent pieces over the last 18 months looking from a very high level at this normative environment right now. I think at Carnegie Council we are interested in terms of some of these higher-level theoretical questions and how they interact with norms, but we are more interested in the kinds of norms and the influence those norms have on politics and practice. Again, this is what we are focused on, so I want to talk about this specifically.

I want to ask you a question about this intersection between norms and ethics. From my perspective both of these concepts allude to this idea of “oughtness” or “ought to what” in terms of behavior. From a normative and applied ethics perspective, perhaps we can start with your thoughts on my claim of oughtness regarding the cross-section between these two areas.

TANISHA FAZAL: I tend to think about norms in the canonical sense that Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink defined way back in the late 1990s as “standards of appropriate behavior” to which actors of a given identity subscribe. When I am teaching about norms to my undergraduates in particular I often use the example of me as a professor in front of the classroom. I don’t think there is anything in the faculty handbook that is particularly specific about what I am supposed to wear or not supposed to wear, but it would be a norm violation for me to show up in my gym clothes. That would be a weird thing. That would not meet a “standard of appropriate behavior” for me as a professor, an actor with a given identity.

Norms have this sense of oughtness, but I am not sure that I would necessarily—there might be some daylight between you and me here about the extent to which that accords with ethics. Let me add a little bit to that. The reason I say that is because there are a lot of norms that we think of as “good” norms, but in reality there have been plenty of “bad” norms too. It was a norm that Black men should not date white women in this country for a long time; it was a norm that European countries should “civilize” countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia for a long time; plunder in war was a norm. For those reasons I would say that norms do have this quality of oughtness, but it does not necessarily mean ethics, at least in the way I think you mean ethics.

KEVIN MALONEY: That is a very fair point you make. It also showcases my generational thinking in terms of myself growing up a majority of the time in the 1990s. I have this view of the international system that was formed in the 1990s from an American perspective. There have been previous moments of shakeup where that view was significantly changed; think about 9/11. I think it is another kinetic moment we are going through in terms of shaking up that international system. Thanks for pushing me on that normative front. It is a helpful framing and a slight reframing.

TANISHA FAZAL: I agree. The “normative system” that you grew up with is definitely eroding right now.

KEVIN MALONEY: That is a perfect bridge to what I want to talk about next. In your piece for Foreign Affairs last year you started off with this quote: “For those who believe that might should not make right, the world today seems to offer little hope.” You followed that up with a new piece a few weeks ago, in which you talk about the norm around sovereignty, the protection of sovereignty, and this idea of conquest coming back into fashion. I want to take a step back and get your thoughts on this might-versus-right moment that we find ourselves in, and then maybe we can dig into it a little bit more with specific examples or case studies.

TANISHA FAZAL: It is interesting that you frame this in terms of a moment, which to be fair I think I do too in these pieces you’re referencing, which are to a large extent in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

I want to make two points to kick us off here. One is that there is conquest and then there is conquest. Both of these pieces are about a norm against conquest and more specifically about a norm against territorial conquest, which I see as the hard core of a lot of the “liberal international order”—which I say also in scare quotes, like “Holy Roman Empire.”

Going back to the point I made earlier about thinking about the world not just from a U.S. perspective, one of the issues is that I think a lot of people in countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East look at what the United States did in Iraq, for example, in 2003 as a form of conquest. I am not necessarily disagreeing with that, but it is different from territorial conquest.

I make this point to underline that there is both continuity and change. There is continuity in the sense that for a lot of people in the world, especially people who come from parts of the world where they feel like they have less power, the might-makes-right thing has always been true, to their disadvantage, whereas what we are seeing now is might making right in parts of the world that have been more powerful, like in Europe with respect to the set of norms that the United States has tried to champion historically since the end of World War II.

You have this continuity, and a lot of hypocrisy, frankly, in the way the existing norms operate, but also a change with respect to this one particular norm, the norm against territorial conquest, which I see as the center of a lot of norms. The system cannot operate effectively without that norm because then you don’t know whether a state is going to continue to exist, for example. For the second part, I would time it to 2022 or maybe 2014 with the invasion of Crimea, but the other part of that I think has been sort of consistent.

KEVIN MALONEY: In the piece you say that this norm has never been followed to the letter of the law but has been followed broadly as a norm. I also think it is important as you wrote that there are degrees of might. There is territorial conquest for a foreign policy goal but the end goal is not to stay there and annex it forever. These are the things I think are important in terms of bifurcating or dissecting from an ethics perspective embedded within international relations. There does not seem to be a lot of appetite for these types of nuanced discussions.

For example, a few years ago I was actually sitting in the United Nations with our president, Joel Rosenthal. We were there as the vote happened in terms of condemning Russia for the invasion. India and South Africa abstained, and there was outrage and condemnation, but basically the same thing happened 12 months later in the reverse around Gaza, so it was interesting to see that there is still value in the norms from either side, but they are choosing to support the norms based on different events. It is interesting to see where it will go. I don’t know what your opinion is on what the next phase of this is.

TANISHA FAZAL: I do think we are observing an erosion at least of the norm against territorial conquest. You referenced these votes in the United Nations, and if you track them over time with respect to Ukraine you start to see that support for Ukraine has been slipping. This also tracks with public opinion globally, and that is concerning.

I don’t know what if anything replaces it, but for sure the United States, which as I said earlier has been a historic champion of this norm, at least the Trump administration no longer seems to support Ukraine to the extent that the Biden administration did and also is not forgoing the possibility of using force itself to acquire territory.

In combination these things suggest that there is an erosion of the norm. I would not say it is dead just yet, but it is not looking good.

KEVIN MALONEY: You talk about this “death by a thousand cuts.” I was having an interview with another individual on this podcast, and we were talking about that from a U.S. political perspective around institutions, that the needle just keeps on moving, and you have these flashpoints like January 6, Gaza, or Ukraine. Looking ahead, not even talking about the specific norm itself, the geopolitical environment is moving and degrading so fast, even during the first 60 to 90 days of this presidency. Nobody has a crystal ball, but just in reading the weather report what are we in for in your opinion in the coming months and years?

TANISHA FAZAL: I think there is going to be a lot of instability. That is because to the extent that there has been stability, at least in certain parts of the world—and we must acknowledge that there are plenty of parts of the world that have not enjoyed the kind of stability that the United States has, and there are plenty of people in the United States who have also not enjoyed the kind of stability that others in the United States have—but there will be increased instability and this is to a large extent due to the fact that U.S. credibility is undermined right now.

In some ways this goes back to your question about might versus right. There is one theory of power that is a brute-force theory—“People will do what we want because we are powerful”—but when you think about the longer term, having agreements with other countries and setting up systems that actually work and are more efficient than just renegotiating everything on an ad hoc basis, you need to have credibility in order for that to be effective, and that is something that is being eroded.

Frankly even if in the next presidential election a Democrat wins, I still think lasting damage has been done to U.S. credibility, and the United States has been the leader of the system that we have had, the one that you grew up with in the 1990s and also before, so I think it is going to be a pretty unstable system for quite some time.

There are other forces contributing to that instability. There is the rise of artificial intelligence and climate change as well. All of these things together I think are going to lead to a pretty unstable system.

KEVIN MALONEY: At the Council we try to examine the post-World War II order through the lens of “ethical realism.” What does that mean? It means that of course this international system was constructed in a way to benefit the United States underpinned by what many would call “realist” considerations and resulting hybrid institutions between liberalism and realism.

What I find particularly interesting in looking at this period is the interplay between these clearly realist calculations and the values of the liberal democracy that produced them, so this interplay between values and interests—the name of this podcast—and the norms and institutions that were produced by that interplay following the war.

Bridging to this moment I thought the news surrounding the leaked Signal text exchange between U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth and other members of the Trump administration laid bare a stark pivot away from this values-and-interests equation. In the messages we literally saw the word “extraction” used when talking about European allies. There was no argument that we should help Europe because they are democratic states or historically have been our partners; they were clearly talking about a quid pro quo: “We need to extract something if we’re going to do this.”

I have been thinking about this a lot. Even if in a limited capacity values were a kind of glue for the previous international system, if that is gone and fully replaced by transaction and extraction only, where does that leave us? What does this mean long term for the international system?

TANISHA FAZAL: It’s not a smart policy for the United States because this more transactional extractionist approach does not help at all with U.S. credibility, and you need credibility in order to do all sorts of things.

Going back to what you said about the way in which the Council views the liberal international order—we all want to think about the liberal international order with not just a grain but sometimes a shaker of salt—was founded on this idea that the United States was going to lead the system, and leadership requires foresight, sacrifice, and courage, and if the United States isn’t willing to take that mantle of leadership, then one possibility is that another country or group of countries will replace the United States.

That would not be a straight-up substitution—we are not talking about a basketball game or something like that; I shouldn’t go down that path because sports metaphors are not my forte—but a different kind of system. One of the things I have been thinking about and have done a little writing on is this term “international community.” This is a term we use all the time, and I am not sure anybody really knows what it means. In certain quarters the international community means some version of the West in the context of the liberal international order. Xi Jinping a few years back started shopping around a new term, something like, “a shared community for all mankind.”

KEVIN MALONEY: Can I insert that I always appreciate the Chinese Communist Party’s branding as a very literal branding on anything they put together.

TANISHA FAZAL: The point I am making is that this is pushback against the Western version of the term “international community.” While I think China has been somewhat reticent to take on certain leadership mantles, they may be softly exploring an alternative here.

KEVIN MALONEY: It is interesting that you mention this concept of “international community.” There is a great report from 2014 written by Tod Lindberg, and it is published by the Council on Foreign Relations that questions this concept of “international community” and its very existence. Recently we have seen leaders call upon this so-called “community” when it is politically advantageous and shun it when embracing such a community might go against their interests. For example, this has been in the forefront of the news about responses to Gaza versus Ukraine and vice versa by certain states.

TANISHA FAZAL: Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, used to refer to it as the “so-called ‘international community.’”

KEVIN MALONEY: A very cheeky insult.

TANISHA FAZAL: At the same time, lots of people in difficult circumstances around the world are asking the international community for help and using exactly those terms. It is very loaded.

KEVIN MALONEY: Yes, very loaded. The language of soft power and the broad strokes around institutions rarely align with the reality of the institutions or the communities themselves, but they are convenient vehicles for politicians, so they will continue to be used, I guess.

I want to pivot and end the conversation focused on a more positive discussion. We see the degradation of some norms, we see the international system being challenged, and we see leadership positions potentially switching out.

Again, back to this idea of good faith, for people who want to engage in good faith and want to put their energy someplace, what are the pathways for people who want to be responsible international community members? Where would you tell your students to spend their time or study? Are there other positive pathways that you see in the future here?

TANISHA FAZAL: First of all, let me say I love the idea of ending on a positive note. It is what I try to do also.

There definitely are pathways moving forward. I have been doing some research recently on climate change, so I will use that as a lens because it is this looming issue right now. This is just one way of answering this question, but when I think about the future and climate change there is this climate catastrophe scenario, but there also is a more optimistic scenario on the other side of things, for example, full decarbonization.

More people than you would think living in the United States have bought into the importance of decarbonization. That to me is a sign of optimism.

I feel a continent like Africa—I always want to avoid the whole “Africa is a country” thing—has an interesting set of questions to look at when we think about demographics because much of the industrialized world, including the United States, has serious demographic issues with aging populations, but Africa is a very young and vibrant continent. It has plenty of problems, but I think that demographic shift may foretell something, and I hope we will see some interesting leadership from there.

We often think about the United States, Russia, and China as the great powers, but we shouldn’t forget Europe. On one hand there has definitely been an upswing in the political power of right-leaning parties in Europe; on the other hand, there are plenty of people in Europe who are much more committed to the liberal international order, to some of those principles and values—for self-interested reasons, to be sure; they are right next to Ukraine and Russia—but they have definitely doubled down when it comes to climate.

Finally, I think there is a lot going on at the local level again when it comes to climate in terms of cities and subnational units, like states in the United States or provinces in a country like Canada. We think about foreign policy as being the exclusive province of states, but increasingly these subnational actors are starting to engage in their own foreign policies to deal with these wicked problems. I think that is a very good avenue for people to direct their energies and efforts.

KEVIN MALONEY: Tanisha, that is a great positive point to end on. I completely agree regarding the energy and importance of subnational actors right now. It is critical to not only view geopolitics through this ivory tower institution lens or the lenses of theory and –isms that we touched on earlier. This is a helpful framing and a positive point to end on, and I want to thank you so much for joining us on Values & Interests today. We hope to have you back in the future.

TANISHA FAZAL: Sounds good.