The Hell of Good Intentions

by Stephen M. Walt

  Disillusioned by the Iraq War and the general direction of U.S. Middle East policy, the Leveretts soon became forceful advocates for a fundamentally different U.S. approach to Iran. In addition to making frequent media appearances and starting a website that dealt extensively with events in Iran, in 2013 they published a provocative book entitled Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic.96

  Going to Tehran recommended that the United States abandon the goal of regime change and make a sustained effort to reach out to Iran. It challenged the prevailing U.S. belief that Iran’s government had scant popular support and that tighter economic sanctions would compel it to give up its entire nuclear research program. Most controversial of all, their analysis of public opinion polls and voting results led them to conclude that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad had won the disputed Iranian presidential election of 2009, and that the anti-Ahmedinejad Green Movement that emerged in the wake of the election did not have majority support.

  The Leveretts did not deny that there were irregularities in the election or that many Iranians opposed the clerical regime, and they described the suppression of the Greens (in which roughly a hundred people died) as involving “criminal acts” by the regime in which opponents were “physically abused” or in some cases deliberately murdered. Yet they insisted that the election results were consistent with a wide array of preelection polls and that Ahmedinejad would still have won had no fraud occurred—albeit by a smaller margin.

  As one might expect, the Leveretts’ departure from Washington orthodoxy provoked a furious response. Critics denounced them as apologists for Tehran, accused them of being in its pay, and portrayed the pair as callously indifferent to the fate of the protesters who were killed or arrested in the postelection demonstrations. Yet the backlash against the Leveretts occurred not because they had made repeated analytic or predictive errors; they became pariahs because they had challenged the consensus view that the Islamic Republic was deeply unpopular at home and therefore vulnerable to U.S. pressure.

  In 2010, for example, an otherwise critical profile of the pair in The New Republic conceded that “it’s not obvious that [the Leveretts’] analysis is wrong,” and another critic, Daniel Drezner of the Fletcher School, later acknowledged that they had correctly anticipated that the Green Movement would not succeed.97 The Leveretts also argued that Iran would never agree to dismantle its entire nuclear enrichment capability—and it didn’t—and their insistence that the regime was not on the brink of collapse despite increasingly strict sanctions has been borne out as well. They correctly questioned whether the outcome of Iran’s 2013 election was preordained and suggested that the eventual victor—Hassan Rouhani—had a real chance, even though other prominent experts had downplayed his prospects.98

  The point is not that the Leveretts are always right or that their critics are always wrong.99 Rather, it is that they are now marginal figures even though their record as analysts is no worse than that of their critics, and in some cases better, largely because they had the temerity to challenge the pervasive demonization of Iran’s government. The Leveretts’ own combativeness may have alienated potential allies and contributed to their outsider status as well, though they are hardly the only people in Washington with sharp elbows.100 Meanwhile, those who have remained within the familiar anti-Iran consensus are viewed as reliable authorities despite repeated analytical errors, and they still enjoy prominent positions at mainstream foreign policy organizations and remain eligible for government service should the political winds blow their way.

  A world that took accountability seriously—instead of preferring people who were simply loyal and adept at staying “within the lines”—would look for people who had the courage of their convictions, were willing to challenge authority when appropriate, and had expressed views that were subsequently vindicated by events. In such a world, a reluctant dissident such as Matthew Hoh might have had a rather different career. A former Marine Corps captain and State Department official who had served two tours in Iraq, Hoh first attracted public notice when he resigned his position as the senior civilian authority in Afghanistan’s Zabul province in 2009, having become convinced that the U.S. effort there could not succeed. In his words: “I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan … my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.” His superiors viewed Hoh as a talented and dedicated officer and tried to persuade him to stay on, but he held firm to his decision and eventually landed a short-term post as staff director at the New America Foundation’s Afghanistan Study Group, which favored a rapid U.S. disengagement from the war.

  Subsequent events have shown that Hoh’s skepticism about U.S. prospects in Afghanistan was correct. The Council on Foreign Relations highlighted his resignation letter as an “essential document” about the Afghan War, and Hoh received the Nation Institute’s Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling in 2010. But instead of being rewarded for his foresight and political courage, he found the “Washington national security and foreign policy establishment” effectively closed to him—“no matter how right he was.”101 Beset by lingering post-traumatic stress disorder and other problems from his combat experience, Hoh ended up unemployed for several years. Meanwhile, those who had promoted and defended the unsuccessful Afghan “surge”—thereby prolonging the war to little purpose—received prestigious posts in government, think tanks, the private sector, and academia.

  In some ways, Hoh’s case parallels that of other recent dissenters and whistle-blowers, including Jesselyn Radack, Peter Van Buren, Thomas Drake, John Kyriakou, and, most famous of all, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. But unlike Snowden or Manning, whose actions broke the law, Hoh’s only “error” was having the courage to go public with his doubts about U.S. strategy.102

  These (and other) examples raise a fundamental question: If the people who repeatedly get important foreign policy issues wrong face little or no penalty for their mistakes while those who get the same issues right are largely excluded from positions of responsibility and power, how can Americans expect to do better in the future?

  CONCLUSION

  To be clear, U.S. foreign policy would not become foolproof if a few editors and pundits were replaced, if more generals were relieved for poor performance, or if advisors whose advice had proved faulty were denied additional opportunities to fail. Foreign policy is a complicated and uncertain activity, and no one who wrestles with world affairs ever gets everything right.

  Moreover, the desire to hold people accountable could be taken too far. We do not want to oust government officials at the first sign of trouble or fire a reporter because he or she gets some elements of a complicated story wrong. No one is infallible, and people often learn from their mistakes and get better over time. Moreover, if we want to encourage public officials to innovate, to take intelligent chances, and to consider outside-the-box initiatives, we need to accept that sometimes they are going to fail. Instead of ostracizing people at the first mistake, a better course would be to identify the ideas, individuals, or policies that led to trouble and acknowledge the mistakes openly. But when blunders occur repeatedly and the people who make them cannot or will not admit it, we should look to someone else to do the job.

  Unfortunately, the present system does not encourage systematic learning, and it does not hold people to account even when mistakes recur with depressing frequency. As discussed in chapter 2, a permissive condition for the absence of accountability is America’s fortuitous combination of power and security, insulating the country from policy mistakes and allowing follies to go uncorrected.

  But perhaps the greatest barrier to genuine accountability is the self-interest of the foreign policy establishment itself. Its members are reluctant to judge one another harshly and are ready to forgive mistakes lest they be judged themselves. Even when prominent insiders break the law, they have little trouble getting
prominent friends and former associates to organize campaigns for acquittal or clemency.103

  “To get along, go along” is an old political adage, and it goes a long way to explain why the foreign policy establishment tolerates both honest mistakes and less innocent acts of misconduct. Strict accountability would jeopardize friendships—especially in a town as inbred as Washington, D.C.—and going public with criticisms or blowing the whistle on serious abuses carries a high price in a world where loyalty counts for more than competence or integrity. Provided they don’t buck the consensus, challenge taboos, or throw too many elbows, established members of the foreign policy community can be confident of remaining on the inside no matter how they perform.

  The neophyte senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) offered us a revealing look at this phenomenon in her 2014 book A Fighting Chance. Newly elected and preparing to head to Washington, she asked her Harvard colleague Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary with a lengthy Washington résumé, for advice on how to be effective. As she recounts: “He teed it up this way: I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People—powerful people—listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.”104

  Until Trump. A wealthy New York real estate developer and reality show host who inherited a fortune is hardly a genuine outsider, but Trump’s campaign, transition period, and early months in office showed scant respect for established figures in either political party and displayed particular contempt for the foreign policy establishment and many of its core beliefs. Trump’s skepticism was understandable, perhaps, even if his own ideas seemed ill-informed and his own character deeply worrisome.

  But a critical question remained unanswered: Could an impulsive, Twitter-wielding president and a group of untested advisors make a clean break with liberal hegemony? Would they be able to overcome the reflexive opposition of the foreign policy community, or would it eventually contain and co-opt them? If Trump tried to challenge the foreign policy Blob, would he be able to put a better strategy in place or just make things worse? The next chapter describes what Trump did and how he fared.

  Spoiler alert: the results are not pretty.

  6.  HOW NOT TO FIX U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

  HAD HILLARY CLINTON become president in January 2017, the central elements of U.S. foreign policy would have remained firmly in place. Clinton would have embraced America’s self-proclaimed role as the world’s “indispensable” power, continued “rebalancing” U.S. strategic attention toward Asia, been quick to counter a more assertive Russia, and remained fully committed to NATO. Relations with America’s traditional Middle Eastern clients would have continued unaltered, and Clinton would have undoubtedly sought to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran while opposing Tehran’s regional activities. She would have staffed her administration with experienced liberal internationalists and carefully vetted newcomers who shared her mainstream views. Clinton might have taken a harder line on some issues—such as the civil war in Syria—than Barack Obama had, but her overall approach to foreign policy would have been consistent with the previous quarter century of American conduct abroad. Under Hillary Clinton, liberal hegemony would have remained intact and unquestioned, despite its many shortcomings.

  But Donald Trump became president instead, in part because he had campaigned against the failed grand strategy that Clinton was defending and had promised to take on the establishment that Clinton personified. And enough Americans agreed with his broad-brush indictment of past failures to power him to victory in the electoral college and into the Oval Office.

  As president, Trump had a golden opportunity to place U.S. foreign policy on a sounder footing. As shown in chapter 3, there is a persistent gap between the foreign policy community’s views on foreign policy and the views of most Americans. The general public rejects isolationism, but it favors a more restrained grand strategy than most members of the foreign policy community do. In theory, Trump could have built on that base of support, sought out members of the foreign policy community who recognized that the pursuit of liberal hegemony had gone astray, and worked with America’s partners to bring U.S. interests and commitments into better balance without destabilizing key regions. On some issues—such as international trade—Trump could have pressed for the judicious updating of existing institutions and trade arrangements, at the same time preserving an open economic order and defending America’s central position within it. Properly implemented, a carefully managed shift to a more realistic grand strategy would have kept the United States secure and prosperous while freeing up the resources needed to address pressing domestic priorities.

  It was not to be. Having promised to “shake the rust off American foreign policy,” Trump’s presidency began with a flurry of unconventional moves that reinforced the skepticism of the foreign policy establishment and united key elements of it against him even more strongly. Global realities and resistance from the foreign policy “Blob” began to rein Trump in, and the opportunity for a positive shift in strategy was lost. A year later, many of the policies Trump inherited were still in place and key elements of liberal hegemony were intact. In the war between Trump and tradition, tradition won most of the initial battles.1

  Which is not to say that Trump had no impact. Modern presidents enjoy considerable latitude in the conduct of foreign policy, and what they say and how they say it—whether in person or on Twitter—can be as important as what they do. These powers allowed Trump to have a significant effect on U.S. foreign policy and on America’s standing in the world, despite the opposition he faced.

  Unfortunately, Trump’s impact has been almost entirely negative. The United States is still pursuing a misguided grand strategy, but the captain of the ship of state is an ill-informed and incompetent skipper lacking accurate charts, an able crew, or a clear destination. The United States is still overcommitted around the world, with its military forces fighting active insurgencies in many countries. It continues to spend far more on national security than any other country does, despite recurring fiscal problems and compelling domestic needs. Long the linchpin of the global economy, its commitment to an open trading order is in serious doubt. Meanwhile, Trump’s erratic, combative, self-indulgent, and decidedly unpresidential behavior has alarmed key allies and created inviting opportunities for America’s rivals. Instead of orchestrating a well-designed move away from liberal hegemony and toward a more sensible strategy, Trump has abandoned hard-won positions of influence for no discernible gains and has cast doubt on whether the United States can be relied upon to carry out a successful foreign policy. Instead of “making America great again,” Trump has accelerated its decline.

  As president, Trump ended up embracing the worst features of liberal hegemony—overreliance on military force, disinterest in diplomacy, and a tendency toward unilateralism—while turning his back on its positive aspirations, such as support for human rights and the preservation of an open, rules-based world economy. When combined with his ignorance, chaotic management style, and impulsive decision-making, the result was a steady erosion in America’s global position.

  WHAT TRUMP PROMISED

  In his Inaugural Address, Trump stuck to the core themes of his campaign. “From this day forward,” he pledged, “it’s going to be only America First.” No longer would the United States underwrite the security of its allies in Europe or Asia; from now on “the countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.”2

  As described in the introduction to this book, Trump had gone even further during the 2016 campaign, at one point calling NATO “obsolete” and condemning longtime allies such as Saudi Arabia for supporting terrorism and various other sins.3 On his watch, he promised, the Uni
ted States would “get out of the nation-building business,” convince Mexico to pay for a wall along the border, and take a tougher line against “radical Islamic extremism.” Trump had said that he would withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), label China a currency manipulator, and prevent it and other trading partners from “stealing” American jobs. Trump vowed to abandon the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change and leave the agreement halting Iran’s nuclear program, which he called the “worst deal ever.” He pledged to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and he spoke of a desire to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—calling it “the ultimate deal.” Trump also held out hope for an improved relationship with Russia and China and repeatedly expressed his admiration for Russian president Vladimir Putin, calling him a “strong leader” and telling supporters, “We’re going to have a great relationship with Putin and Russia.”4

  Viewed as a whole, Trump’s initial approach to foreign policy revealed a highly nationalistic, zero-sum worldview, where the United States would pursue its own interests with little or no regard for others. Some of his pronouncements also reflected a nostalgic vision of America as a predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, and Judeo-Christian culture that faced a growing threat from foreign influences, immigrants, and especially Islam.5 Such instincts may explain Trump’s apparent affinity for such xenophobic nationalists as Putin, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, and Marine Le Pen in France and his disdain for defenders of multicultural tolerance, including many politicians in the European Union.6

  Thus, Trump’s arrival seemed to herald a sharp break with the bipartisan consensus behind liberal hegemony. The United States would no longer use its power to spread democracy or promote liberal values and would distance itself from the multilateral institutions it had helped create, nurture, and expand in the past. Instead of trying to strengthen and expand a rules-based international order, the United States would be out for itself alone. Henceforth, relations with other states would be judged solely by whether the United States benefited from them as much or more than others did.7 As Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017, in a speech that repeatedly stressed the importance of national sovereignty, “I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries will always, and should always, put your countries first.”8