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3 DISPATCHES FROM
AMERICA The 'X' dreams of Washington's
wonks By Leon Hadar
WASHINGTON - You've got to love
Washington's foreign-policy wonks, always ready
for the next battle between the pundits with
either a profound Kissingerian piece of thought to
catch the eye of the op-ed page editor
("Multipolarism can only be sustained through a
hegemonic-led concert of great powers") or a
catchy news-bite to fill a few seconds on Cable
News ("Is this the long-awaited 'tipping point' in
Iraq?").
And they insist that to
pontificate about the latest Mideast crisis
on
this television show or to sound off on the new
trade accord in that think-tank briefing is not
really a "job", the kind they would have held (for
sure!) in a big-time Wall Street law firm or in a
prestigious Ivy League university - if they just
wanted to get rich and famous.
But they
didn't. And here they are in the capital of the
world's only remaining superpower, and to quote
the motto of a local television station, "We Care
About You" - "you" being the nation, the world,
humanity. (As a full disclosure, let me
acknowledge that I am a Washington-based
foreign-policy wonk who actually authored the
above in-parentheses words of wisdom.)
If
he belongs to the realist school, the
foreign-policy wonk (not many wonkettes operate in
what is basically a man's world) would claim that
his only ambition (well, "mission" sounds better)
is to advance the US national interest or national
security. Contemporary "realists" look up for
inspiration to the wise men, the lawyers, bankers
and diplomats who drew up the outline of
containment policy of dealing with the Communist
Bloc during the administration of president Harry
Truman.
They include such certified "Wise
Men" as Dean Acheson, Charles E Bohlen, W Averell
Harriman, Robert A Lovett, John J McCloy and
George F Kennan, who became the exemplars of the
US foreign-policy establishment: pragmatic and
non-dogmatic hardcore realists who set the
standard for the realpolitik-type policies pursued
by their successors: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, George Shultz, James Baker.
An
"idealist" would swear that he wants (among many
other things) to end world hunger and promote
human rights here, there and everywhere. He or she
is probably daydreaming about time-traveling to
the presidencies of John F Kennedy or Jimmy Carter
and launching another Peace Corps and Alliance for
Progress (and forgetting that the intervention in
Vietnam and in Afghanistan had been the
brainchildren of officials in the administration
of respectively JFK and Carter).
But
whether he is a realist or an idealist, all
foreign-policy wonks share the same fantasy: that
he would give birth to the Next Big Thing in US
foreign policy, the Great Strategy for the
post-post-Cold War and, by extension, post-Iraq
era.
That would lead to a date with the
next president in the White House where our wonk
would be asked to turn his idea into policy, being
instantly transformed into a statesman, the first
Dr K of the 21st century, on his way to do
"shuttle diplomacy" in the Middle East. The
inspiration for this wet dream is one of the Wise
Men, George Kennan, who in July 1947 issue of
Foreign Affairs, under the pseudonym "X",
published an article that outlined the policy of
containment toward the Soviet Union, which would
remain in place for the duration of the Cold War.
Then there was the case of Jeane
Kirkpatrick, who in an article "Dictatorships and
double standards", published in Commentary in
November 1979, made a distinction between
"authoritarian" right-wing regimes (which
Washington should embrace) and the communist
"dictatorships" (which Washington should fight).
The article came to the attention of presidential
candidate Ronald Reagan, for whom she became a
foreign-policy adviser and, after his election to
the presidency, ambassador to the United Nations.
As the neo-cons - the wonks who became
statesmen during the presidency of George W Bush -
are being shown the way out of Washington ("You'll
never do foreign policy in this town") and while
their fantasies have been relegated to the
narrative of the cartoonish movie 300,
ambitious wonks are hoping to deliver a conceptual
framework that will replace "unilateralism",
"preemption", "freedom agenda" and "assertive
internationalism" with something, well, different.
But meanwhile, they'll have to spend their
time in the "green room" waiting for another
shouting match on the cable news shows of Bill
O'Reilly or Chris Mathews and on "advising"
(perhaps even a few minutes of "face time" with)
"Barack" or "Hillary" or "Rudy" or "Chuck".
Just imagine all the personal sacrifice,
all the sweat and tears, by our foreign-policy
wonks (and conclude this segment with president
Kennedy's "Don't ask what your country can do for
you" or Winston Churchill's "Never ... was so much
owed by so many to so few").
Yep. The
check is not in the mail. I won't love you in the
morning. There is no Santa Claus. And
foreign-policy wonks care about you. Right? Wrong!
Believe it or not, foreign-policy wonks are just
as ambitious, as greedy - seekers of power, fame
and fortune - as the rest of the "players" in
Washington. In this Age of Empire, the New Rome -
the regime changer, the exporter of "freedom", the
importer of foreign currency (hey, someone has to
pay for all of this) - is attracting every corrupt
autocrat in the "Stans", every "freedom fighter" -
from Chalabi and Makiya to Maliki and Pahlavi - in
the Broader Middle East, every producer of "color
revolution" in the former Communist Bloc, every
oil profiteer and every
non-governmental-organization do-gooder, as they
each plead for more dollars, more marines, more
business deals, more democracy promotion.
So is it surprising that US foreign-policy
wonks are also converging on Washington to gain
their financial and power share of the expanding
imperial prize and join the winners in the White
House and on Capitol Hill, in the Pentagon, the
State Department, Treasury and the alphabet soup
of government agencies from AID to NED? And let's
not forget the moneyed influence peddlers on K
Street with its polished law firms, lobbyist
groups, and public relations agencies. Rent
Seekers of America and the World Unite in
Washington.
Indeed, apply a bit of
evolutionary psychology and mix it with a slice of
public choice theory and some good old realism aka
cynicism, and you'll be able to deconstruct the
lives of US foreign-policy wonks. Consider
Washington and its "foreign-policy community" as
an environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA),
where the evolved human psychological mechanisms
are adapted to policy reproduction.
These
mechanisms include those of growth (PhD from good
school and networking with the well-connected
"inside the Beltway"); development (attachment to
a "sugar daddy" such as powerful congressman or a
wealthy think-tank); differentiation ("Anything
you can say, I can say better"); maintenance
(remember Woody Allen: "Eighty percent of success
is showing up"); mating (with a winner, eg
president), parenting (a policy);
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