The Hell of Good Intentions

by Stephen M. Walt

  “THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT”

  The lessons drawn from past experience may also be discarded when policymakers believe that new knowledge, a new technology, or a clever new strategy will allow them to succeed where their predecessors failed. As Ken Rogoff and Carmine Reinhart showed in their prizewinning book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, economists and financial professionals have repeatedly (and wrongly) concluded that they had devised new and foolproof ways to prevent financial panics, only to be surprised when the next one occurred.6

  In much the same way, Vietnam taught a generation of U.S. leaders to be wary of counterinsurgency campaigns, but the lesson was forgotten as time passed and new technologies and doctrines made their way into the armed forces. The Vietnam experience had inspired the so-called Powell Doctrine, which prescribed that the United States intervene only when vital interests were at stake, rely on overwhelming force, and identify a clear exit strategy in advance.7 Yet after routing the Taliban in 2001, top U.S. officials convinced themselves that a combination of special operations troops, precision-guided munitions, and high-tech information management would enable the United States to overthrow enemy governments quickly and cheaply, avoiding lengthy occupations. The caution that informed the Powell Doctrine was cast aside, leading to new quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  Those unhappy experiences guided Barack Obama’s more cautious approach to military intervention and his decision to rely on airpower and drones rather than ground troops in most instances. Yet the lesson of these earlier debacles was beginning to fade by 2014, as proponents of a more muscular foreign policy began insisting that the real problem was not the original decision to invade, but rather the decision to withdraw before total victory had been achieved.8 Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) told an interviewer, “It was not a mistake to go into Iraq,” and Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) declared, “At the end of the day, I blame President Obama for the mess in Iraq and Syria, not President Bush.” In addition to masking culpability for the earlier blunder, such comments are intended to convince elites and the public to support more operations of this kind, and, if necessary, for longer.9 To the extent that these efforts to rewrite history succeed, earlier lessons will be forgotten and the same mistakes will be repeated.

  IF YOU’RE STRONG, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SMART

  A wealthy country like the United States has an array of well-funded universities, think tanks, and intelligence agencies to analyze global issues and figure out how to deal with them. These same assets should also help the country learn from experience and correct policies that aren’t working. But because the United States is already powerful and secure, mistakes are rarely fatal and the need to learn is not as great as it would be if America’s position were more precarious.

  The tendency to cling to questionable ideas or failed practices will be particularly strong when some set of policy initiatives is inextricably linked to America’s core values and identity. Consider the stubbornness with which U.S. leaders pursue democracy promotion, despite its discouraging track record. History shows that building stable and secure democracies is a long, contentious process, and foreign military intervention is usually the wrong way to do it.10 As discussed in chapters 1 and 2, U.S. efforts to export democracy, or do nation-building more generally, have failed far more often than they have succeeded. Nonetheless, a deep attachment to the ideals of liberty and democracy make it hard for U.S. leaders to accept that other societies cannot be remade in America’s image.

  When a large-scale upheaval like the Arab Spring occurs, therefore, U.S. leaders are quick to see it as a new opportunity to spread America’s creed. “Our national religion is democracy,” noted the Syria expert Joshua Landis in 2017, “when in doubt we revert to our democracy talking points … It is a matter of faith.”11 Even when U.S. leaders recognize that they cannot create “some sort of Central Asian Valhalla,” as former secretary of defense Robert Gates put it in 2009, they find it nearly impossible to stop trying.

  CUI BONO?: BAD IDEAS DO NOT INVENT THEMSELVES

  Lastly, bad ideas persist when powerful interests have an incentive to keep them alive. Although open debate is supposed to weed out dubious notions and allow facts and logic to guide the policy process, self-interested actors who are deeply committed to a particular agenda can interrupt this evaluative process. As Upton Sinclair once quipped, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

  The ability of self-interested individuals and groups to interfere in the policy process appears to be getting worse, in good part because of the growing number of think tanks and “research” organizations linked to special interests. Their raison d’être is not the pursuit of truth or the accumulation of new knowledge, but rather the marketing of policies favored by their sponsors. And as discussed at greater length below, these institutions can also make it harder to hold public officials fully accountable for major policy blunders.

  For example, the disastrous war in Iraq should have discredited and sidelined the neoconservatives who conceived and sold it, as the war showed that most, if not all, of their assumptions about politics were deeply flawed. Once out of office, however, most of them returned to well-funded Washington sinecures and continued to promote the same highly militarized version of liberal hegemony they had implemented while in government. When key members of the foreign policy elite are insulated from their own errors and hardly anyone is held accountable for mistakes, learning from past failures becomes nearly impossible.

  In some cases, in fact, influential groups or individuals can intervene to silence or suppress views with which they disagree. In 2017, for example, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum sponsored a careful scholarly study of the Obama administration’s handling of the Syrian civil war, which questioned whether greater U.S. involvement could have significantly reduced violence there. The 193-page report had no political agenda and was carefully done, but well-placed individuals who had previously called for the United States to intervene were outraged by the study’s findings and convinced the museum’s directors to withdraw it.12

  Even in a liberal democracy, therefore, there is no guarantee that unsuccessful policies will be properly assessed and the ideas that informed them permanently discredited. Not surprisingly, the same principle applies to the people who devise and defend them.

  FAILING UPWARD

  U.S. foreign policy would work better if the political system rewarded success and penalized failure. Ideally, people who performed well would gain greater authority and influence and those who did poorly would remain on the margins. But this straightforward management principle does not operate very consistently in the realm of politics, including foreign policy. Instead of holding officials to account and weeding out poor performers, the system often displays a remarkable indifference to accountability.

  TOO BIG TO FALL?

  Aversion to accountability begins at the top, where malfeasance at the highest levels of government is routinely excused. After the 9/11 attacks, for example, the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress reluctantly agreed to appoint an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the incident and make recommendations. But it was clear from the start that leading politicians did not really want a serious inquiry: the commission’s initial budget was a paltry $3 million (later increased to $14 million), and Bush administration officials repeatedly stonewalled the commission’s investigations.13

  Moreover, although one of the commission’s key tasks was exploring possible errors by the Clinton and Bush administrations, the cochairs, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, chose the historian Philip Zelikow as executive director, despite his long association with then–national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, his role on Bush’s transition team, and his under-the-radar involvement with the administration itself.14

  The commission eventually produced a riveting account of the 9/11 plot, but it declined to pass judgm
ent on any U.S. officials. It was the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor and more than twenty-eight hundred people had died, yet apparently no one in the U.S. government was guilty of even so much as a lapse in judgment. As Evan Thomas of Newsweek later commented, “Not wanting to point fingers and name names … the 9/11 Commission shied away from holding anyone personally accountable” and “ended up blaming structural flaws for the government’s failure to protect the nation.” The historian Ernest May, who helped write the commission’s report and defended its efforts, later acknowledged that responsibility was assigned solely to institutions (such as the FBI or CIA), described the report as “too balanced,” and admitted that “individuals, especially the two presidents and their intimate advisors, received even more indulgent treatment.”15

  A similar whitewashing occurred following the revelations that U.S. soldiers abused and tortured Iraqi prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib prison. Top civilian officials were directly responsible for the migration of “enhanced interrogation” techniques from the detention facility at Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, as well as for the lax conditions that prevailed at the latter facility. Yet even though “the lawlessness and cruelty on the ground in Iraq clearly stemmed from the policies at the top of the Bush administration,”16 a series of internal reports—by Major General Antonio Taguba, by the U.S. Army’s Office of the Inspector General, and by a team of former officials appointed by Rumsfeld and headed by former secretary of defense James Schlesinger—assigned blame entirely to local commanders or enlisted personnel.17

  In particular, the army inspector general’s report blamed the abuses on “unauthorized actions undertaken by a few individuals,” a conclusion the New York Times editorial board termed a “300-page whitewash.”18 The Schlesinger Report referred briefly to “institutional and personal responsibility at higher levels” but exonerated all the top civilians. In fact, one member of the panel, the retired air force general Charles Horner, explicitly cautioned against assigning blame for the abuses, saying, “Any attempt by the press to say so-and-so is guilty and should resign or things of this nature, they have an inhibiting effect upon this department finding the correct way to do things in the future.”19 And at the press conference releasing the report, Schlesinger—a longtime Washington insider—openly stated that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation “would be a boon to all of America’s enemies.”20 In the end, a handful of enlisted personnel were convicted of minor offenses, one army general received a reprimand and was retired at lower rank, and none of the civilian officials overseeing their activities were sanctioned at all. As analysts at Human Rights Watch later concluded, these reports “shied away from the logical conclusion that high-level military and civilian officials should be investigated for their role in the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.”21 Instead, the officials whose careers suffered were those who tried to bring these facts to light. In particular, Major General Taguba was falsely accused of leaking his report, shunned by many of his army colleagues, and subsequently ordered to retire sooner than he had intended.22

  The Obama administration’s decision not to investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials accused of violating U.S. domestic laws regarding torture and committing war crimes fits this pattern as well. Despite considerable evidence that President Bush and Vice President Cheney authorized torture, the Justice Department declined to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether they or other top officials had violated U.S. or international law.23

  President Obama justified this decision by saying “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward,” and the political costs of such an investigation might well have outweighed the gains.24 Nonetheless, his decision to defer the day of reckoning for perpetrators of torture makes future recurrences more likely and casts doubt on America’s professed commitment to defend human rights and the rule of law.25

  At this late date, pointing out that U.S. officials were never held accountable for serious violations of U.S. and international law is not exactly a revelation. The more important point is that such occurrences are part of a larger pattern.

  THE NINE LIVES OF NEOCONSERVATISM

  When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, the unchallenged world record holders for “second chances” and “failing upward” are America’s neoconservatives. Beginning in the mid-1990s, this influential network of hard-line pundits, journalists, think tank analysts, and government officials developed, purveyed, and promoted an expansive vision of American power as a positive force in world affairs. They conceived and sold the idea of invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein and insisted that this bold move would enable the United States to transform much of the Middle East into a sea of pro-American democracies.

  What has become of the brilliant strategists who led the nation into such a disastrous debacle? None of their rosy visions have come to pass, and if holding people to account were a guiding principle inside the foreign policy community, these individuals would now be marginal figures commanding roughly the same influence that Charles Lindbergh enjoyed after making naïve and somewhat sympathetic statements about Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.

  That’s not quite what happened to the neocons. Consider the fate of William Kristol, for instance, who argued tirelessly for the Iraq War in his capacity as editor of the Weekly Standard and as cofounder of the Project for the New American Century. Despite a remarkable record of inaccurate forecasts and questionable political advice (including the notion that Sarah Palin would be an ideal running mate for John McCain in 2008), Kristol is still editor of the Weekly Standard and has been at various times a columnist for The Washington Post and The New York Times and a regular contributor to Fox News and ABC’s This Week.26

  Similarly, although Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz misjudged both the costs and the consequences of invading Iraq and helped bungle the post-invasion occupation, President Bush subsequently nominated him to serve as president of the World Bank in 2005. His tenure at the bank was no more successful, and he resigned two years later amid accusations of ethical lapses.27 Wolfowitz decamped to a sinecure at the American Enterprise Institute and was appointed chair of the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board during Bush’s last year as president.

  The checkered career of Elliott Abrams is if anything more disturbing for those who believe that officials should be accountable and advancement should be based on merit. Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in the 1980s, after giving false testimony about the infamous Iran-Contra affair. He received a pardon from President George H. W. Bush in December 1992, and his earlier misconduct did not stop George W. Bush from appointing him to a senior position on the National Security Council, focusing on the Middle East.28

  Then, after failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, Abrams helped foment an abortive armed coup in Gaza by Mohammed Dahlan, a member of the rival Palestinian faction Fatah. This harebrained ploy backfired completely: Hamas soon learned of the scheme and struck first, easily routing Dahlan’s forces and expelling Fatah from Gaza. Instead of crippling Hamas, Abrams’s machinations left it in full control of the area.29

  Despite this dubious résumé, Abrams subsequently landed a plum job as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where his questionable conduct continued. In 2013 he tried to derail the appointment of the decorated Vietnam veteran and former senator Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense by declaring that Hagel had “some kind of problem with Jews.” This baseless smear led the CFR president Richard Haass to publicly distance the council from Abrams’s action, but Haass took no other steps to reprimand him.30 Yet, apparently, the only thing that stopped the neophyte secretary of state Rex Tillerson from appointing Abrams as deputy secretary of state in 2017 was President Donald Trump’s irritation at some critical comments Abrams had voiced during the 2016 campaign.31

  In an open society, neoconservatives and other propone
nts of liberal hegemony should be as free as anyone else to express their views on contemporary policy issues. But exercising that freedom doesn’t require the rest of society to pay attention, especially not to individuals who have made repeated and costly blunders. Yet neoconservatives continue to advise prominent politicians and occupy influential positions at the commanding heights of American media, including the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. This continued prominence is even more remarkable given that hardly any of them have been willing to acknowledge past errors or reconsider the worldview that produced so many mistakes.32

  MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESSORS: A REVOLVING DOOR

  Accountability has been equally absent from U.S. stewardship of the long Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” Ending the long and bitter conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would be good for the United States, for Israel, and for the Palestinians, but the two-state solution Washington has long favored is now moribund despite repeated and time-consuming efforts by Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Yet presidents from both parties continued to appoint the same familiar faces to key positions and got the same dismal results each time.

  During the first Bush administration, for example, Secretary of State James Baker’s primary advisors on Israel-Palestine issues were Dennis Ross, Aaron David Miller, and Daniel Kurtzer. Baker and his team did convene the 1991 Geneva Peace Conference—a positive step that laid the groundwork for future negotiations—but they failed to halt Israeli settlement construction or begin direct talks for a formal peace deal. Together with Martin Indyk and Robert Malley, these same individuals formed the heart of the Clinton administration’s Middle East team and were responsible for the fruitless effort to achieve a final status agreement between 1993 and 2000.