The moderator introduced the speaker as the “scourge of the
neoncons.” A kind invitation to lunch at Washington’s Metropolitan
Club offered the opportunity to hear this scourge, Jonathan Clarke,
a former career British diplomat and, along with Stefan Halper,
co-author of The Silence of the Rational Center: Why American
Foreign Policy Is Failing.
The dust jacket to his new book bears endorsements from Alfred
Regnery, publisher of The American Spectator, and John
Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy and member of the 9/11
Commission, among others.
Regnery wrote, “The case for a return of expertise to
international affairs has never been made so cogently.”
Clarke is not at all pleased with the damage wrought by
ideology, particularly neoconservatism, on the conduct of foreign
policy. He believes that various and sundry “Big Ideas” have
trumped competence and sheer expertise since World War II, most
notably in the cases of Vietnam and the war in Iraq.
He finds it striking that America has had two back-to-back
generations which have perpetrated failed foreign and military
ventures. He believes that both Iraq and Vietnam were grounded in
millenarian assumptions. Rather than focus on the persona of
President George W. Bush, he prefers to focus on the “systematic
failing” that is “built into the system” of American foreign and
military policy-making.
Clarke is concerned that both the left and the right are
contemplating further military interventions in Darfur and Iran. He
sees the possibility of an alliance between both ends of the
political spectrum promoting a bellicose approach to China’s rise
as a world power.
Clarke describes the “format” of American foreign policy as
derived from three influences: a historic sense of American
Exceptionalism; the vast superiority or preeminence of U.S.
military power unprecedented in the history of the world,
accompanied by a growing “sense of power”; and a frenetic 24/7 news
cycle with a penchant for immediate, adversarial programming on
media outlets such as cable news.
As to the Big Ideas which can overwhelm rational, deliberative
processes, Clarke cites such examples as Manifest Destiny, the
Domino Theory, the Axis of Evil and Freedom on the March. These
concepts are hard for Americans to resist, making it very difficult
for robust debate to take place, intimidating even the most vaunted
think tanks in Washington.
Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, top officials in Bush I
and the Carter administrations, respectively, were the only members
of the Washington establishment to have remained immune to the Big
Ideas in vogue in 2003.
CLARKE EMPHASIZED THE “extraordinary accuracy” of American
military, “smart bombs” and the like, as creating a mindset on both
the left and right which looks to the deployment of armed force “in
a painless way.” He cites the famous taunt of former Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright hurled at Colin Powell while he was
serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “What’s the point
of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we
can’t use it.”
Except for the matter of the Chinese embassy, the bombing of
downtown Belgrade in 1999 was a virtuoso display of stand-off
weapons which contributed to a “new aesthetic of war.” The
deployment of military force to deal with international crises has
now become for many not a question “of whether but only where to
use U.S. military force.”
Policy-makers now believe these new technological marvels allow
them to avoid running afoul the Just War Doctrine, given the ability to
discriminate between civilian and military targets with precision.
Hence, almost every instance of “collateral damage” is viewed as
“genuinely accidental.”
Clarke claims today’s media renders serious debate or extended,
nuanced discussion almost impossible given the demands of the
24-hour news cycle and the polemical nature of so many news
programs.
Clarke and Halper quote conservative economist Bruce Bartlett
who, after begging off a cable show because he did not want to be
the “knee-jerk Bush supporter,” noted that “the debate format
creates the illusion that there is always a simple answer to every
complex problem and encourages average television viewers to assume
that those of us in the Washington policymaking community are all
idiots totally beholden to our party, without a lick of common
sense or integrity.”
Clarke did not explain how the media’s impact on policy is any
more deleterious than during the ascendancy of the three network
news establishments with their monochromatic liberalism during the
Vietnam era. Foreign policy failures seem to have occurred under
both dispensations.
Clarke and Halper view the cause and solution of America’s
current problems reside in the collapse and restoration of the
“rational center,” a term which does not quite capture the strength
of their argument grounded in experience and expertise.
Clarke defined the rational center as comprising “experts who
know the issues.” These experts, people like Clarke presumably (he
is now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International
Affairs), staff the major think tanks and government agencies
— career professionals, scholars, analysts. They usually have
experience on the ground. Their expertise is as deep as it is
narrow.
These experts of the radical center have experience and learning
that “have turned most into pragmatists, distrustful of ideology
and mindful of long-term interests and enduring issues.”
Clarke believes the rational center, Washington think tanks in
particular, have failed America. They should have been in the
forefront of the debate prior to the war in Iraq. Of course, the
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a major node of neoconservative thinking and
advocacy, was a full-throated advocate for the war in Iraq and the
broader democratization project into which it morphed.
AEI notwithstanding Clarke criticizes the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS), an institution of realist thought, and the
Brookings
Institution, a bastion of liberal intellectual policy, for not
vetting or articulating the fundamental issues during the ramping
up to war. Brookings “never said clearly that the war was a bad
idea.” Even the libertarian Cato Institute “drew in its horns,” at least in the
beginning, due to tremendous political pressure.
It is essential in a democracy that these organizations “air the
full range of issues” on a matter as important as going to war. In
their absence from the debate, they create a vacuum that is filled
by extreme voices such as that of Noam Chomsky.
Clarke sees the rise of China, “a classic rivalry” for the U.S.,
as a test of the rational center to seek a peaceful resolution and
insure that it be “adjusted” satisfactorily. It will test the
relative strengths of expertise versus “sloganeering.”
WHETHER ONE SUPPORTED OR OPPOSED the Iraq war, the incompetence of
the venture actually launched has been nothing short of remarkable.
Of all the books and articles written on this subject, James
Fallows’s “Blind Into
Baghdad” (The Atlantic, January-February 2004) was one
of the earliest and most penetrating accounts of how the upper
echelons of the administration, most notably the Department of
Defense, willfully ignored a vast amount of expert planning for
post-war occupation and reconstruction. Thus was the narrow but
deep expertise of Clarke’s rational center belittled and
ignored.
The failing of many liberal political appointees is the
uncritical acceptance of guidance offered by career civil servants.
A failing of many conservative political appointees is the
uncritical rejection of such advice and expertise for fear of
“going native.” So Clarke is surely correct that independent
centers of thought and policy development — think tanks — need to
exhibit fortitude and courage through honest, forthright engagement
with policy-makers when rumors of war are in the air. His analysis
aligns with Tocqueville’s in that such “voluntary associations” of
experts and intellectuals should provide a counterweight to
government-approved thinking in the marketplace of ideas whether it
be proffered by the left or right.
Jonathan Clarke’s intelligent and provocative argument raises
questions as to the relative importance of prudence and fortitude
or bravery. For instance, Virginia Senator and decorated combat
veteran Jim Webb had the guts to oppose the war in Iraq long before
the wise men in the think tanks spoke up. To assume that
intellectuals or experts will muster the courage of a Jim Webb is,
to quote another Englishman, the triumph of hope over experience.
The hive of Washington think tanks may be the last place one would
look for that kind of independence of spirit.
History is contingent, and no single factor contributes to human
success or failure. Experts, be they in think tanks or anywhere
else, are part of a very large cast playing on the great stage of
national life. Yet, an individual can make a difference if he has
both prudence and fortitude. The former must guide the latter, but
both are necessary if one hopes to turn the tide of human
events.
