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At Large
Accidental Tourists
Foreign affairs is not for amateurs.
Richard Nixon, not known for his sense of humor, used to joke that he was an “expert” on Vietnam because he had visited it nineteen times. He would then admit most of these sojourns were refueling stops on the way to somewhere else. Staff would laugh and agree the boss was truly expert on the region. Hillary Clinton has developed the same sort of foreign policy credentials, but without the humor.
Yes, it’s true that she has been to many conferences and had many meetings with foreign dignitaries, but as far as actually having worked or studied in distant areas of the world, her experience is non-existent. Her husband learned all about the U.K. during his year at Oxford — through a cloud of pot smoke and pints of beer. Somewhere along the line this made him supposedly well versed in Anglo-Saxon culture — at least enough to satisfy Tony Blair.
The point of all this is to note that many — most — of the people in Congress and at the White House have little or no real field experience in foreign affairs. Spending one’s career at a desk in the DC area, whether it’s Langley, or Foggy Bottom, or any of the other appropriate sites, does not qualify as field experience. A tour in a comfortable European capital does not qualify as field experience. What does qualify is fifteen or twenty years at various posts around the world even if it’s regionally specialized. Chris Stevens had this type of background.
At one point during the Carter days, Stansfield Turner, the newly appointed Director of the CIA, stated that he preferred to fire all operations personnel over 55 years of age because they learned everything they knew from their experiences during WWII and the Cold War through 1976. This he held was out-of-date knowledge and experience. They should all go, he said, and so they did. When the special assistant in charge of this house cleaning was finished, he, too, was retired. In spite of later efforts to rebuild, the Agency never completely recovered its institutional memory or agent relationships.
The reality is that the institutional memory and international contacts, as well as definitive intellect, of both the government agencies and Congress that uniquely qualified Washington as a world power center now for the most part have been diminished. All the old guys and gals sit around grumbling in their retirement — many not even yet old enough to be eligible for Social Security. Except for the regular appearances on TV of a few select retired military brass or opportunistic “Intel” types, the past brain power is squandered in consultancies at the think tanks and defense industries, both of whom are interested only in selling something to the USG.
Of course there is the usual disposal of highly qualified senior and even middle-ranking personnel who do not fit the political profile of the moment. This is done not merely by firing the top-ranking job holders, but also by shunting others of lesser rank into far less important posts irrelevant to their experience. The Defense Department is famous for this device. When Nixon and Reagan came into office, the personnel picture changed as radically as it did under Carter or Clinton. So, for those complaining about the Obama White House, there has been plenty of precedent.
Undoubtedly there is a useful aspect to all this winnowing out process. There are definite advantages to be gained by discarding the “old wood.” The problem, however, is in the balance between new fresh ideas and vigor and accumulated knowledge and experience. In the field of foreign affairs there is always a need for both, but knowledge and experience in Washington’s bureaucracy and legislative politics does not relate equally to far more hard-earned overseas diplomatic and intelligence activity. In the same manner, years in academia do not equate with the pressure-filled environment of intelligence analysis.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is a smart, well-educated veteran of the Washington wars — of all sorts. She has traveled nearly one million miles and visited 112 countries in four years. Unfortunately such roaming about does not equate to accomplishment. Depending on one’s personal and political viewpoint, Hillary Clinton has been either a great Secretary of State or an indefatigable tourist. The latter seems much more defensible.
Chuck Hagel’s background includes two Purple Hearts and a proven ability years ago to hump a sixty-pound pack along Vietnamese trails with people shooting at him. That gives him a basic understanding of war — but not of the intricacies of political/military coordination on an international scale. He’ll be learning on the job about working with American allies and those who aren’t. John Kerry has his own unique set of credentials. He’s quite qualified to play golf and tennis with Abdullah of Jordan, though he should definitely not get into a judo contest with the little king and certainly not Vladimir Putin.
The bottom line is that a great portion of the talent base for the United States’ international affairs lies fallow. So what’s new? Where’s John Quincy Adams when you need him?
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
About the Author
George H. Wittman writes a weekly column on international affairs for The American Spectator online. He was the founding chairman of the National Institute for Public Policy.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 1.31.13 @ 8:43AM
Mr. Wittman wanders around in this article a bit, but I am uncertain that he makes a strong point. Foreign affairs can be dangerous for amateurs (agree), but they are dangerous for professionals, too (as he notes, Chris Stevens was a professional with a great deal of field experience, the last part of it fatal). Hegel's field experience as a sergeant in Viet Nam has value, but does not necessarily equip him to serve as Defense Secretary (true-but both Napoleon and Hitler earned corporal rank before they went on to bigger and worse things; does Hegel's extra stripe make him more or less disposed for a bad outcome?).
Sorry, George, on the play by play for this article, I am torn between calling your effort at the plate as a swing and a miss and a check swing strike.
JP| 1.31.13 @ 8:56AM
It's been Ameteur Hour at State since James Baker left Foggy Bottom in the early 1990s.
Bandido| 1.31.13 @ 9:03AM
Wittman is much too easy on H. Clinton. She is a poseur of the first magnitude, a huckster, and a nonentity in every area she has ever dabbled in. Her career in the Senate, won only with her last name, produced nothing. As Sec of State, she has produced nothing. She has no foreign policy credentials, no area of expertise, and no ideas on world affairs other than thoughtless leftist boilerplate. Obama called her the best Sec of State ever. Kissinger? Shultz? Marshall? Dulles? Seward? Lansing? She outshines them all for Obama. Truly we are living in the end times.
Hardcard| 1.31.13 @ 9:43AM
May I add that she is a perfect and dedicated toadie for g.soros (the turd behind the curtin). I see she has dumped those eyeglasses, see can see clearly now and not in need of sympathy, sometimes if you drink too much you bang your head.
cicero| 1.31.13 @ 9:50AM
As one approaching old age, it has become apparent to me that age brings something more than just aching knees, and less elasticity in the muscles. It can also bring a certain amount of reflection on the past, as well as patience towards the future - wisdom, if you will. In this country, we reward our beaurocratic middle class with high priced pasturage as soon as they approach the age when they should be figuring it all out. This not only deprives us of the wisdom necessary to navigate our way in a dangerous world, it also breaks the treasury. They draw pensions for almost as long as they were paid for doing whatever it was they were doing.
You can't have a reasonalby professional diplomatic corps when they retire before they become more than place timers.
Mike W| 1.31.13 @ 11:35AM
Certainly the writer is not saying that Foreign Policy professionals were in charge with George W. Bush. Surely his partisan bias is not that extreme. Bush 2's administration was the classic gang that couldn't shoot straight.
Bandido| 1.31.13 @ 11:48AM
Colin Powell and Condi Rice are titans of thought in comparison to HR Clinton. Contra Obama, she is the worst Secretary of State in history. The worst ever prior to her, men like Bryan or Root, are leagues above her as far as thinking, writing, and authoring policy. She is illiterate in foreign affairs. And much else as well.
Cloudbuster | 1.31.13 @ 9:09PM
Worse than Madeline "Dances With Dictators" Albright? Possibly.
Jim Adcox| 1.31.13 @ 11:39AM
Hillary Clinton is indeed more humorless than Richard Nixon, and twice as crooked.
JimH| 1.31.13 @ 12:51PM
One of my favorite TV programs was Yes Minister. This was a British comedy which had some underlying seriousness at times. The series was about a political appointee minister (sort of like a cabinet post) who is educated weekly by a permanent civil servant, Sir Humphrey as to how things in government really work. I’m just glad no one has tried to make an American version.
Cloudbuster | 1.31.13 @ 9:08PM
I'm not sure I agree with Wittman's point. I think it's much more important for someone in foreign policy to understand America's interest, than that of the foreign nation. Foreign nations will be perfectly willing to assert their own interests.
Spending a huge chunk of your adult life as an ex-pat doesn't necessarily hone your understanding of U.S. interests in the world.
The problem with our foreign policy elite isn't that they don't understand foreign nations, it's that they don't represent (or understand?) the best interests of our own nation. Our state department is overrun with globalists. We could use a few more America-firsters there, as provincial as that may seem.
Bandido| 2.1.13 @ 8:30AM
The biggest problem is that they don't understand history or geopolitics, ours or anyone else's. How can they understand the contemporary world when they have no inkling of how it got this way? They have rotten educations, are self-centered and essentially uninterested in humanity's evolution. Ideology, which holds them in thrall, is the enemy of clear thinking. Hence, a Clinton, an Albright, a Kerry, a Hagel.
Bob K| 1.31.13 @ 10:39PM
An excellent, brief, but accurate history of how America has approached Foreign Policy since the Vietnam era Mr. Wittman!
It is worthy of more analysis in another publication and I encourage you to consider it.
George F. Kennans are long gone from the American Foreign Service and the people who have been running it for the last 50 years would not have known what to do with one anyway.
mike 3/505| 1.31.13 @ 11:13PM
Mr Wittman...as a combat veteran and former senior military leader...please allow me to fix one of your sentences...
That gives him a basic understanding of combat at the tactical level — but not of war, which involves the intricacies of political/military coordination on an international scale.
mike 3/505| 1.31.13 @ 11:15PM
The above was not meant as a criticism, but to properly enhance your point. Humping a ruck thru the jungle is important to get the viewpoint of a grunt...but I also would like my senior leaders to understand the big picture.