The Hell of Good Intentions

by Stephen M. Walt

  ACADEMIA

  Although some university-based scholars have little interest in policy issues or other real-world concerns, many political scientists, lawyers, historians, economists, and other scholars write books and articles about foreign policy and contribute in other ways to public discourse on these topics. University-based scholars also educate and train many of the people who end up working in government, media, and the think tank world, and some of them serve in government themselves, including at very senior levels. As one would expect, the faculty ranks at most schools of public policy or international affairs are filled with people who have combined scholarly careers with periods of public service, and many of these individuals remain engaged in a variety of policy-related activities after leaving office.25

  SOURCES OF SUPPORT

  Nor can we exclude the private groups and individuals who provide financial support for many of these activities. Relevant actors here include philanthropies that support research or advocacy in international affairs, such as the Ford, MacArthur, Smith Richardson, Stanton, Scaife, Rockefeller, Koch, and Hewlett foundations, and the many similar but smaller philanthropies that help support groups working on foreign policy issues. Private individuals with an interest in foreign policy can donate to political action committees, universities, think tanks, or lobbies, sometimes in impressive amounts, in order to advance their particular foreign policy objectives. The financier George Soros helped fund the New America Foundation and the Center for American Progress, and the Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban has given millions of dollars to the Democratic Party and provided the initial funding for the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies and other neoconservative organizations have received generous funding from the gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson and the hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace began with a bequest from the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, and the Council on Foreign Relations has received generous support from many private individuals throughout its long history.

  Corporations with a clear interest in foreign and national security policy are active here as well, and think tanks such as AEI, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, and the Center for a New American Security all rely heavily on contributions from defense contractors and other major corporations. More worrisome still, in recent years a number of prominent think tanks have become partly dependent on donations from foreign governments, raising serious questions about their objectivity.26

  Universities are equally reliant on donor support, of course, some of it clearly motivated by a donor’s interest in foreign policy. In 2006, for example, the neoconservative financier Roger Hertog funded grand strategy programs at several prominent U.S. universities; these were patterned after an existing program at Yale and intended to promote a more hawkish perspective on college campuses.27 Similarly, the Charles Koch Institute has recently begun funding research and training programs on international security at MIT, Tufts, Harvard, Texas A&M, and Notre Dame.28 And in 2016 the Pearson Family Foundation pledged a whopping $100 million to endow a center for the study of global conflict at the University of Chicago (a gift it subsequently regretted and has sued to reverse).29

  What does this broad picture of the foreign policy community reveal? To paraphrase Karl Marx, top government officials make foreign policy, but they do not make it entirely as they please. They draw upon expertise from the think tank world and from academia, and they are often constrained by bureaucratic opposition, public skepticism, media scrutiny, and the interplay of interest groups within society. Even presidents do not operate with complete freedom, as the decisions they make are constrained by the broad consensus within the foreign policy community and by the choices presented to them by their subordinates. As Michael Glennon notes, “true top-down decisions that order fundamental policy shifts are rare … When it comes to national security, the President is less decider than presider.”30 To understand the recurring tendencies of U.S. foreign policy, therefore, we need to consider the characteristics of this broad community in greater depth.

  LIFE IN THE “BLOB”

  A SENSE OF COMMUNITY

  Partisan differences notwithstanding, a key feature of the “foreign policy community” is that it is a community, especially at the highest levels. Many of its leading members know one another and participate in overlapping activities and organizations. The boundaries between many of these organizations are permeable, and prominent figures within this community often work for several different organizations over the course of a career, sometimes simultaneously.

  For example, a typical foreign policy career path might begin on Wall Street or in academia, proceed to a period of government service, and then move to a think tank or even into journalism.31 An equally plausible trajectory might start with government service, then migrate to academia, a think tank, or the private sector before returning to government at some later stage.32 Alternatively, a different individual might rise to prominence in the private sector, academia, or journalism and then parlay that reputation into a government career or use the wealth acquired through business activity to fund a research or lobbying organization that advanced his or her political views. Some individuals wear several hats at once: teaching at a university, serving as a nonresident fellow at an inside-the-Beltway think tank, and doing private consulting for government agencies, individual officials, or for-profit corporations.33

  The foreign policy community is also highly networked, with leading members connected by personal associations and by their participation in overlapping groups and activities. Senior figures often know one another personally and know other prominent figures by reputation, and many inhabit overlapping professional and social groups. There are also prominent “power couples,” such as the journalists Peter Baker (The New York Times) and Susan Glasser (Foreign Policy, Politico, and The New Yorker); the CNAS cofounder and former assistant secretary of state Kurt Campbell and former undersecretary of the treasury Lael Brainerd; or former assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and neoconservative pundit Robert Kagan.

  As a classic example of an elite foreign policy network, consider the Aspen Strategy Group (ASG). Its stated mission is “to provide a bipartisan forum to explore the preeminent foreign policy challenges the United States faces.” One of its flagship events is a four-day summer workshop, but it also organizes task forces and other meetings and publishes occasional briefings and reports on issues of interest. Participants are a “who’s who” of foreign policy luminaries, including such former government officials as Madeleine Albright, Brent Scowcroft, Nicholas Burns, Thomas Donilon, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and Robert Zoellick; journalists like CNN’s Fareed Zakaria or The Wall Street Journal’s Carla Robbins; think tank presidents like Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations, former Carnegie Endowment president Jessica Mathews, former Brookings head Strobe Talbott; and academics (who may also be former officials) such as Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins, Mitchell Reiss (formerly of the College of William and Mary), and Philip Zelikow of the University of Virginia. ASG members serve in many other capacities as well: Talbott, Scowcroft, and the Clinton-era national security advisor Sandy Berger all served on the Global Board of Advisors of the Council on Foreign Relations, while Albright and Zakaria have served on CFR’s board of directors. Cohen is a member of the American Enterprise Institute’s Council of Academic Advisors, and Slaughter is the former dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs and current president of the New America Foundation.

  The neoconservative movement provides another example of a mutually supportive network of well-connected insiders. Over the past three decades, neoconservatives such as Richard Perle, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Danielle Pletka, Eric Edelman, Elliott Abrams, William Kristol, and James Woolsey (among many others) have populated a dizzying collection of centers, think tanks, lobbies, consulting groups, and letterhead organizations such as
the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Hudson Institute, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), United Against Nuclear Iran, the Middle East Forum, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), and several others while working or writing for publications like The Weekly Standard and, in some cases, for mainstream foreign policy organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.34

  Connections of this kind are invaluable for individuals seeking to rise (or remain) within the foreign policy community, for there is no single, clear, and established route to power inside the U.S. political system. Unlike the professions of law, medicine, or accounting, there are no required courses of study that must be completed before one can practice foreign policy and there is no procedure for professional certification. Prominent members of this community may have advanced degrees in political science, history, international affairs, or public policy, but such training is not a prerequisite for entry or advancement. Sandy Berger was a U.S. national security advisor to Bill Clinton, and Thomas Donilon held the same post under Barack Obama: both were lawyers with little or no formal training in international affairs, yet each eventually took on major responsibilities in this area.35 Similarly, Barack Obama’s chief foreign policy speechwriter, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, was an aspiring novelist with B.A. degrees in English and political science from Rice and an M.A. in Creative Writing from NYU, but he had no advanced training in foreign policy, national security, diplomacy, or international economics. Donald Trump’s first choice as secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, spent his entire professional career at Exxon, and had never served in government before his appointment in 2017.

  The point is not that these (or other) officials were unqualified; it is that the path to a prominent position in the foreign policy community is highly contingent and has no formal prerequisites. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other professionals must devote years to formal study and pass a rigorous certifying exam, but aspiring foreign policy gurus need only establish a close relationship with a successful politician or acquire a solid reputation among established figures within some part of the existing community.36 For instance, former national security advisor Donilon worked for several Democratic Party stalwarts and at the same law firm as Secretary of State Warren Christopher (whom he served as chief of staff), and his counterpart Sandy Berger had been a personal friend of Bill Clinton’s since the 1972 McGovern campaign.

  Given the recurring need to bring new blood into the establishment, a number of foreign policy institutions have created fellowships and internships designed to identify, recruit, socialize, and advance the careers of young people eager for a career in this world. The Council on Foreign Relations reserves five-year “term memberships” for candidates under thirty-five, and its International Affairs Fellowships place academics and other professionals in government positions for a year at no cost to the U.S. taxpayer. Similarly, the Center for a New American Security has its “Next Generation National Security Fellowship,” whose recipients participate in a leadership development program, a monthly dinner series, and private discussions where they can “engage with those who have led before them, developing a deeper understanding of U.S. national security interests and policies.”37 Another variant is the annual fellowships awarded by the Truman National Security Project, which is self-described as “a highly competitive leadership development program for exceptional individuals who show promise to become our country’s future global affairs leaders.”38

  In this sense, today’s foreign policy community operates much as the old “Eastern Establishment” did, insofar as new entrants are recruited, groomed, and promoted based on judgments made by established figures. But there is an important difference. Until sometime in the 1950s, top foreign policy leaders usually had successful careers outside government and did not depend on working on foreign policy for their livelihoods. Men such as Paul Nitze, McGeorge Bundy, James Forrestal, John McCloy, Averell Harriman, Dean Acheson, Robert Lovett, John Foster Dulles, and the like were successful lawyers, bankers, academics, or businessmen whose work in the private sector or in academia had made them financially secure before they entered public service. “Old boy” networks and organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations helped recruit and prepare them for positions of leadership in foreign policy, even if they had not established a visible public presence beforehand.

  By contrast, the modern foreign policy professional has to survive inside the foreign policy community itself. Although a few individuals may alternate between foreign policy work and wholly separate activities (such as working for a law firm or an investment bank on matters unrelated to foreign affairs), today’s foreign policy experts tend to move between different sectors without changing professions: they do “foreign policy” no matter where they happen to be working. Thus, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power first rose to prominence as a journalist focusing on human rights issues, taught courses on that subject for a number of years at Harvard, then joined Barack Obama’s Senate staff and presidential campaign, was subsequently appointed a White House aide in 2009, and became ambassador in 2013 before returning to Harvard in 2017. Her roles changed, but she was “doing foreign policy” the entire time. When officials leave government, they rarely leave the field; thus, when former Brookings Institution fellow Ivo Daalder stepped down as U.S. ambassador to the European Union, he was soon chosen to be the new president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Similarly, former undersecretary of defense Douglas Feith left the Bush administration in 2005 and became a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where he continues to work on foreign policy issues today.

  The nature of the foreign policy job market encourages entrepreneurship and assiduous self-promotion, as acquiring a reputation for being smart, creative, and knowledgeable about some key aspect of foreign policy is the path to professional advancement. As Janine Wedel suggests, professional success in this world “depends not just on quick study, but on connecting and forging networks, on conferences and cross-pollination among politics, business, and media.”39 Ambitious foreign policy professionals rise by writing articles, op-eds, policy briefs, task force reports, and books that attract favorable attention, by cultivating connections to influential insiders, by impressing superiors with their dedication and effectiveness, and by convincing politicians that they are reliable and, above all, loyal.

  Moreover, the days when a public servant such as George Marshall would decline opportunities to profit from public service are long gone. Today, a successful career in Washington—and sometimes even a badly tarnished one—can pave the way to a lucrative career in the private sector, provided one does not stray outside the “respectable” consensus. It has become a common practice for top officials to form or join consulting groups or lobbying organizations (e.g., Kissinger Associates, the Chertoff Group, the Scowcroft Group, the Albright Stonebridge Group, the Cohen Group, Barbour Griffith & Rogers, etc.) in order to profit from contacts made and knowledge acquired while in public service. As the journalist Mark Leibovich observes in his acerbic but entertaining portrait of Washington, This Town, “everyone is now, in effect, a special interest, a free agent, performing any number of services, in any number of settings.”40

  The career of the former U.S. ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, offers a revealing but hardly unique example of the ways that members of the foreign policy community can shape perceptions and policy no matter where they are operating. A former Foreign Service officer and protégé of Henry Kissinger’s, Blackwill taught for a number of years at the Harvard Kennedy School and was one of the “Vulcans” who advised George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential campaign.41 As Bush’s ambassador to India, Blackwill helped orchestrate an expanding U.S.-Indian security partnership and backed the controversial U.S.-India
Civil Nuclear Agreement completed in 2008. He later served on Bush’s National Security Council, where he worked on Iraq and tried to secure Ayad Allawi’s appointment as interim prime minister. After leaving government, Blackwill became president of the lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, where he continued to press for the policies he had backed while in government (including closer ties with India and Allawi’s candidacy in Iraq).42 He was subsequently appointed Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and he continues to write, speak, and advise prominent politicians on different aspects of foreign affairs. A lifelong Republican and staunch internationalist, Blackwill was also an early and vocal opponent of Donald Trump, helping to organize the open letters by former GOP officials that judged Trump unfit for office during the 2016 campaign.

  Blackwill’s example illustrates how prominent members of the foreign policy community can exercise influence regardless of where they are employed, in good part because they are experienced, well-connected, and respected by people in power. But as discussed at greater length in chapter 4, this environment also creates powerful incentives for conformity. Because professional success depends first and foremost on one’s reputation, those who wish to rise to power and wield continued influence must take pains to remain within the acceptable range of opinion. As the Financial Times’ Washington correspondent Edward Luce observes, “Today’s climate makes it hard for a contrarian to advance in government. It is better to be wrong in good company than right and alone.”43 This pressure to conform also helps explain why Washington think tanks with ostensibly different political orientations sometimes sponsor joint events: the goal is to attract as large an audience as possible, and the range of disagreement is often less than one might suppose.44