Stephen Walt on the Follies of the Foreign Policy Elite

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Transcript:

June 23, 2019

STEPHEN WALT: I think many of the people I'm criticizing genuinely believe that the policies they have favored were good for the United States and good for the world. I think they're wrong, and I think the record shows that. But it's not like they got up in the morning and said, “What can I do to really mess up some part of the world today?”

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MARK HANNAH: My name is Mark Hannah, and I'm your host for None of the Above, a podcast from the Eurasia Group Foundation. I'm speaking today with Steve Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School, about why insiders aren't always the best source of what's going on on the inside. He is admittedly an insider, and I am delighted to have him here. Steve just wrote a book, The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy. Lots of good intentions, much hell. Thank you, Steve, for joining us.

WALT: It's a pleasure to be with you.

HANNAH: So what do you mean by the foreign policy elite? Who are you talking about here?

WALT: I'm talking about what Ben Rhodes, Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser, sometimes referred to as “the blob.” We're talking about the formal institutions of government, but we're also talking about the think tank world and parts of the media. And lastly, academics like me. It's that group of people who are basically shaping foreign policy in the United States.

HANNAH: You attribute the decline of U.S. primacy in large part to the foreign policy elite. Can you talk about the connection there?

WALT: Yeah, the foreign policy elite, both Republicans and Democrats, has been committed to a strategy that I and some others have called “liberal hegemony.” This idea that the United States was the indispensable power that was going to use this remarkable position, this unipolar moment, to spread the American system as far as it possibly could.

HANNAH: So you don't mean liberal like left-leaning or progressive?

WALT: Not at all. Liberal, as in the traditional liberal values of democracy, markets, human rights, rule of law—things like that. Hegemony, though, because this is all going to be done under the umbrella of American power and with the active use of American power to shove other countries in that direction and in some cases to overthrow governments and force them to become democracies.

HANNAH: So most people listening will say, well, these things are good things—democratic values, individual freedom. Why is promoting democracy around the world not necessarily a good thing?

WALT: It is a good thing if it worked.

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WALT: In some cases, when we talk about regime change, it encourages countries like North Korea to go out and get nuclear weapons. It encourages countries like Iran to at least think about getting nuclear weapons. So this idea that these are wonderful values, and others are going to be quick to embrace them turns out not to be true. The second issue is globalization, opening up markets to investment and trade everywhere. And that's a good thing. But it was clearly done far more rapidly and without a whole lot of regard for the consequences, both here in the United States and in some other countries. And one of the reasons we got the financial crisis in 2008 and it had such large effects was that we had made the global economy so intertwined and so sensitive to a financial panic.

HANNAH: Are you basically giving cover here for the policies or the politics of Donald Trump?

WALT: I certainly hope not, because I think Trump has been a disaster as president in both foreign and domestic policy. What's interesting, of course, is that what he's actually done in foreign policy is not that different from what his predecessors did. In his own way, Trump faced the same problem that I think Barack Obama faced. Barack Obama clearly had a different view of what America's relationship with the world should be than the Bush administration. And I think even different from what the elite really wanted. But when he became president, of course, he had to staff an administration, and he didn't have 300 people who agreed with him on foreign policy. The Democratic Party's foreign policy elite was very hawkish, very interventionist, committed to this idea of liberal hegemony. And he had to fill his administration with people like that. Trump had the same problem, only worse. He didn't have an establishment to work with. He didn't want to work with all the Republicans who'd opposed him. So he begins his administration by hiring a bunch of real oddballs. And when they start screwing things up, he has to start bringing in people who are more conventional. And you end up getting foreign policy that's not that different from his predecessors.

HANNAH: I want to take our listeners back to the summer of 2002, and you and a couple of your colleagues penned a letter that was published in the opinion page of The New York Times under the headline, “War with Iraq is not in the U.S. National Interest.” So we all know what happens next. The Bush administration took heed of your warning, decided this was a foolish decision, and withdrew—no.

WALT: And we just turned the ship of state on a dime.

HANNAH: Exactly. Exactly. Where would we be today had we not invaded Iraq?

WALT: We would be in much better shape, obviously. I mean, first of all, the war's going to end up costing the United States somewhere between four and six trillion dollars. And I can think of lots of interesting ways that money could be used other than Iraq. Secondly, the United States would have maintained some of the illusion of American invincibility we had. Third, of course, you wouldn't have had the creation of ISIS, which is a direct outgrowth of the invasion of Iraq as well. And you would not have, I think, Iran in quite the position of influence it's now in in the Middle East. The great irony is the same people who wanted us to invade Iraq, of course, want us to confront Iran, and in the case of Mike Pompeo, he’s in favor of regime change. They're now trying to get us to solve a problem they helped create.

HANNAH: And do you think people like Mike Pompeo, who you just mentioned, have learned from their mistakes? I mean, do you think these are teachable people who are finding ways to come up with remedies for mistakes that were made?

WALT: Sadly, no. There's a chapter in the book about accountability, which has two parts. One is whether individuals are held personally accountable, whether people can keep getting reappointed no matter how often they screw up. But there's also the problem of whether the general foreign policy establishment learns the right lessons from past mistakes.

HANNAH: Why do you think we are so bad at ending wars? What is the main problem here?

WALT: There's many layers to this, but the central problem is these wars don't in fact affect the American people in any sort of direct way that they can feel and appreciate. I mean, first of all, we have the all-volunteer force now. Just imagine if we still had a draft, what the situation would be like on college campuses today. Second, we pay for these wars by basically borrowing the money and running deficits. We never ask the American people to pay more taxes, so they don't feel this war has cost anything. My grandchildren will end up paying for a bunch of these, and that sustains this as well. And finally, I think we've gone to great lengths to try and keep these wars on page seventeen of the newspaper, not as headlines. Whenever they show up on page one, it's usually because something bad has happened, and public support drops. One final part is you have to keep casualties low. And we therefore adopt extreme measures to protect our troops, which is a good thing. But we also rely very heavily on air power, on drones, on things that don't put Americans at risk. And the problem is those turned out to be tactics that don't lead to success. At the end of the day, these wars will end. The United States will come home, and those societies will be dealing with the consequences of what we've done there. And there's a wonderful book by John Tirman, who teaches at MIT, called The Deaths of Others. It basically looks at American history and says, “You know, in all of our wars, we've cared a lot about the Americans who were dying. We've generally not cared very much about the other people who were dying.” I don't think Americans are unique in that regard. But I think greater knowledge of the suffering we have imparted might not have all that much effect on us.

HANNAH: And why do you think that is—I’m literally playing devil's advocate here—why do you think that's a bad thing?

WALT: Well, first of all, there is this humanitarian issue. We should care about the humanitarian consequences to other societies when a very powerful country like the United States gets deeply involved in their politics, particularly using violence, using force. We should care about the consequences of economic sanctions when we slap them on another country. And it doesn't affect the regime at all, but it affects the ordinary people. So we should care about that. I think for moral reasons. But secondly, we should care about it for strategic reasons. When the United States damages another country, it's not like the people in that country forget about it. Osama bin Laden made it very clear that he was coming after the United States in reaction to things he regarded as tragedies inflicted upon the Muslim world by the United States and others.

Interlude featuring archival audio

WALT: When we do something that harms others, somewhere, that can come back to haunt us later. And if we don't know about it, we'll think it's unprovoked aggression. We'll think these terrorists are coming after us for no reason or because they hate our values because they're fundamentally anti-American. And it's simply not the case.

HANNAH: So there's kind of an irony built in here somewhere, right? We go in trying to promote liberalism and freedom and opportunity and all these kinds of things we as Americans enjoy. But what we're really bringing is death and destruction and grievance and resentment and recrimination and future threats to American national security.

WALT: Basically. Right. I mean, the strategy we've been following for the past twenty-five years is a highly revisionist strategy. We should know from our history and from the history of democracy in the west that creating a democracy takes decades, if not centuries. And it's a contentious process. There are winners and losers. The losers will often take up arms to resist what's going on. So to believe that the rest of the world just couldn't wait to become like America, and all we had to do is nudge them a little bit, and they would embrace all of these values we were generously giving them was just completely delusional on our part.

HANNAH: So, Steve, what do you think are the sources of that insularity or groupthink?

WALT: Bill Clinton once told George Stephanopoulos when Stephanopoulos was his press secretary that Americans are basically isolationists. I think, in fact, there's good evidence that they do not formally want an isolationist foreign policy. Americans consistently reject the idea of Fortress America and disengaging from the world. But I think what Clinton was capturing was that America has always had enormous innate security because of our geographic location. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are still a great source of protection. We have no enemies nearby. And Americans fundamentally intuit that. That basically, you know, what happens in distant parts of the world is not going to change your life in Kansas City very much. But it means you have to work very hard to get Americans to take on big international missions. You have to inflate threats. You have to pretend enemies are much more powerful than they really are, that global trends are working against you. You also have to convince them solving those problems is going to be relatively easy, relatively cheap to do. I think it's really striking that the last four U.S. presidents from Clinton through Trump all ran for president, promising to do less in foreign policy. They just don't give them the policy they promised.

Interlude featuring archival audio

WALT: The 2020 election will not be determined primarily by foreign policy. Most elections aren't. But there's going to be an interesting discussion in this campaign about where the United States is in the world and where it should be, partly because of trends that are happening with millennials coming into political maturity. And their views on foreign policy are very different than, say, that of their parents. And I think, oddly enough, Trump's own rhetoric has created a space for a wider discussion of exactly what we should be doing in the world and what we should stop doing.

HANNAH: This gets to a bigger question. What are the goals of American foreign policy right now?

WALT: That's a great question. I'm not sure we know. You know, I tend to think there are three core issues with foreign policy. One, U.S. foreign policy is supposed to make the country more secure, safer. It should contribute to American prosperity. So Americans live better lives. And to the extent we can, we should, in fact, promote a set of values we think are important, including things like human rights. And then how we go about doing that is what we tend to argue about. At the same time, I'm very critical of the sort of groupthink that characterizes much of the foreign policy discussion in Washington. There really is a social life to this, that for people who are ambitious, who want to get ahead in the foreign policy world, staying within the lines is very important. Success in this world is based almost entirely on your reputation. There's no exam you have to take in order to practice foreign policy. You just have to convince other people in the foreign policy elite that you're smart, knowledgeable, loyal, hardworking, et cetera. And as long as you can maintain that reputation, you can go far. But that means don't say anything too controversial and don't go outside the prevailing consensus.

HANNAH: People aren't getting disbarred for giving bad policy advice.

WALT: That's right. As long as you stay within the consensus. Now, if you go outside the consensus, then suddenly you lose opportunities. Suddenly the phone doesn't ring. So in a sense, despite the good intentions of many of this group, there is a remarkable amount of uncritical consensus of many of the recurring themes of American foreign policy. And it's why you see such similarities between Democrats and Republicans in the conduct of American foreign affairs.

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WALT: I am, I think a slightly dissident member of the foreign policy elite. And people, you know, raised this. Aren't you one of them? I think I am. I am something of an oddball within that world. And I think it's one of the reasons that opportunities to serve in Washington never came my way. I would have liked to do that. The fact that I wrote a very controversial book on the Israel lobby a few years ago was a step, again, outside the consensus. That was one of those taboo subjects you weren't supposed to get close to, and certainly not in the way we did.

HANNAH: Had you decided at that point before you wrote The Israel Lobby that, I'm not going to serve in government, so therefore I have the freedom to take on this topic?

WALT: I certainly knew that was the likely consequence.

HANNAH: And have you put yourself forward for any government jobs or have you tried—

WALT: Yes. It's usually not like a website where you send your resume in, but I think it was understood that I would have been interested in that. But once the lobby book was published—

HANNAH: Which administration?

WALT: Oh, the Obama administration would have been the place. But I also knew after the reception of our book that was extremely unlikely. Bordering on impossible.

HANNAH: Yeah. Like you said, Obama ran on a sort of platform of restraint. What was your impression of the Obama legacy on foreign policy?

WALT: I think Obama had many very good instincts on a variety of subjects, but he was unable to deliver on all of them, in part because he faced pretty stiff resistance from the establishment, including people inside his own administration. So he wants to get us out of the Middle East and pivot towards Asia. He's unable to do that. Once ISIS emerges from the wreckage of Iraq, he has to go back in and do that. I've always been reminded, in Obama's case, of one of the Godfather movies where Michael Corleone says, “You know what? Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” And he's trying to make the Corleone family legit, and he can't quite do it. And that was always my view of what Obama faced as well, for a variety of different reasons. We tried to get peace in the Middle East. I was unable to make any real progress there on the Israeli-Palestinian front, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it was in foreign policy terms, by and large, an unsuccessful presidency.

HANNAH: Are you afraid this book might get read as a case against expertise? Part of that wave of, sort of, let's crowdsource foreign policy. Let's stop listening to these egghead academics?

WALT: I think the Trump administration may serve as a corrective against that tendency. It's a very good question. I don't think so. I mean, at the end of the book when I am suggesting remedies, I basically say all we need is a new foreign policy elite. But that doesn't mean an ignorant foreign policy elite. It's one that has tried to learn the lessons of the past twenty-five years. It really does understand more about how international politics really works. I think, for example, we're going to face some very difficult challenges in Asia. And in order to navigate those challenges, you're going to need people who really understand Asia, who know the languages, who know the histories, know the cultures, and talk in a knowledgeable and sensitive way with their interlocutors there. That's not something in which you just walk out on the street and grab somebody and send them off. You need people with real training and real expertise. And if I were the philosopher king, I would be devoting enormous efforts to rebuilding the State Department, making it better funded, better trained, and substantially larger, in fact, so that working things out diplomatically becomes our first instinct, and military force becomes our last resort.

I think Asia is a perfect illustration of the incompetence of the Trump administration. There are two things I think they correctly recognize. They recognize China was in fact, not going to be just a responsible stakeholder the way we used to hope, but was, in fact, a strategic rival. Secondly, I think the fact that he was open to diplomacy with North Korea—somewhat belatedly after a tweet war with Kim Jong-un—but the fact he was willing to then pursue diplomacy was also a good instinct. Having said that, the way in which they've pursued both of these things has been incompetent. So if you were really worried about China leaving the Trans-Pacific Partnership on your third day as president, that was a catastrophic mistake, because that was a way of bringing more pressure to bear on China to reform some of its own economic practices. And secondly, his approach to North Korea was that he's willing to negotiate, but he gave Kim Jong-un a free gift, a meeting with a U.S. president, and got nothing for it because he thought he could do it all on the basis of his alleged world-class deal-making ability. And the result, of course, has been nothing except to raise real doubts in a number of Asian capitals about whether Americans know what they're doing. And I fear that one key aspect of Trump's handling of diplomacy is it really isn't about foreign policy success. It's about whether he can get a good TV audience. This is what he learned from reality TV. He's very good at keeping attention riveted on him. And a summit with Kim Jong-un is a great way of doing it, even if it doesn't produce any actual foreign policy achievements.

HANNAH: You kind of wonder why at this point, right? If the goal of getting all this attention and getting these ratings was to help boost his profile so he could run for president, he's already president. I mean, you could now use that power for more constructive ends.

WALT: If you are a narcissist, as I believe our president is, there is no better position in the world than being the U.S. president, because there is even more attention focused on you than on Lady Gaga. So if somebody like Trump, whether he expected to win or whether it was all just a publicity stunt, the fact that he did become president is now something he's not going to relinquish because, man, he loves the spotlight.

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HANNAH: I want to spend the last few minutes talking about a more positive outlook for American foreign policy. You've written about offshore balancing as a kind of alternative to the current way in which we overextend America's military. Can you talk about what that looks like practically?

WALT: Offshore balancing is a grand strategy. That really was the core of American strategy for most of our history, right up until about 1993. When we were weak in the nineteeth century, we stayed out of trouble, concentrated on building power. When we became a great power around 1900, the principal object of the United States, apart from trading with the rest of the world, was to make sure no other country dominated Europe or Asia the way the United States had come to dominate the Western Hemisphere. It's why we fought World War I. That's why we fought World War II. And that's why we waged the Cold War, as we did, to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding into Europe or possibly dominating Asia. Offshore balancing today would focus primarily on China. We'd try to maintain a balancing coalition to keep China from dominating Asia and gaining a position where it might be able to then project power around the world the way we do. That also means the United States can gradually withdraw from Europe. Europe is stable, democratic, wealthy, and doesn't need American protection any longer. We should declare a job well done and turn European security back over to the Europeans. And finally, we should be getting out of the Middle East and staying out of the nation-building business while retaining the capacity to go there in the unlikely event that a challenge to the balance of power, primarily in the Persian Gulf, emerges.

HANNAH: And would that restore U.S. primacy?

WALT: It would help. I think it would also restore much of America's image around the world because we wouldn't be beating up on other countries all the time. The best way to promote American values, at least in my view, is to provide a good example. So if the American economy is doing well, if American infrastructure is gleaming again, if the American political system is actually functioning well, other countries will look at that and say, “You know, we'd like something kind of like that in our country.” Who would look at the American political system today and say, “Oh, that's a great model for how to get things done in a fair, equitable, honest fashion?” So I think much more attention to fixing things at home is actually the better way to promote American values abroad.

HANNAH: Thank you, Steve, for joining us. The name of Steve Walt’s book is The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy. If you liked what you heard here on None of the Above. Feel free to subscribe.

Visit us on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, and noneoftheabovepodcast.org, and thank you for listening.

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