The Princeton Project on National Security
The good people at the Princeton Project on National Security have done us a service by tackling some of the very tough issues in foreign affairs that guide both scholars and practitioners of the art of foreign affairs. But like all such grand sweeping proposals, this one too has flaws, some of which the critics and authors have already addressed. I want to offer some praise, and also point to three problems that limit the PPNS’s appeal.
The report makes four key claims. First, the advisors and authors discovered that our complicated times do not permit a single-focus strategy in the mold of George Kennan’s containment framework. Instead, they found a confluence of multiple challenges and opportunities that must shape the design and conduct of foreign policy in the 21st century.
But a foreign policy does need a moral and rhetorical basis, and the one that emerges in their report is the importance of the rule of law (notably, not ‘democracy’), and liberty. They entitle their report “Forging a World of Liberty Under Law”. This is an advance over the simple-minded promotion of ‘democracy’ that others have touted as the salvation of American foreign policy.
Third, grasping a basic truth of our networked, interconnected world, they argue convincingly that a major challenge is not only to fix the structure and performance of any single institution like the UN, but also to create new ways for policy makers to link and leverage the multitude of national and international institutions in order to advance the national interest.
The report’s greatest contribution though is to give us useful criteria by which we can judge the quality of a new foreign policy framework for America. With the presidential elections looming ahead, we are seeing a steady stream of proposed approaches. But how do we compare and evaluate them? Without consistent, carefully-selected criteria to evaluate alternative foreign policy proposals, it is difficult to conduct a rational debate – why should the Princeton project be better than Brookings’ or the Republican party’s? According to the PPNS, a good foreign policy needs to be multidimensional, integrated, interest-based, based on hope not fear, concerned with domestic capacities and relevant to the information age. This list doesn’t do justice to the narrative provided in the report, but this section of the report is especially well-worth reading.
However, the way the report handles three other issues is quite problematic. If they had been addressed in the report, it would have made the document stronger as both an intellectual statement and as guide to practical politics and policy. Stated differently, if in subsequent written iterations flowing from the Project they are directly addressed, then the cause of a powerful, effective and integrated national security strategy will be advanced.
First, the report suffers from an unseemly amount of self-confidence. Intellectual and political modesty is not much evident in these pages. The tone conveys the sense that “We got all the smartest guys in a room here in Princeton, New Jersey, and now we really understand the world quite well, thank you.” This may reflect the motivating ambition to be the new authoritative bi-partisan statement along the lines of Kennan’s long telegram. It also reflects certain tendencies in the academic field of international relations to go after “Grand Theory”, with the U.S. (and a few pieces of Europe) at the core. In the main report we don’t hear many voices of dissent or doubt, despite the underwhelming performance of American intellectuals of the right, left or center in adequately capturing current dynamics of American power in a rapidly changing world. We don’t hear voices very far beyond Princeton.
A second flaw is the limited and somewhat naïve treatment of global equity and inequality. The authors don’t go into sufficient depth on how these critical conditions operate to create and sustain today’s global pyramid, and don’t examine their likely implications for U.S. national security, whether for terrorism, regional wars or global trade. How America should conceive of its relationship to the 3 or 4 billion people in the world living in dire conditions is given short shrift. The report describes some elements of global inequalities in a standard north-south context, but fails to delve more deeply into how theses gaps are being generated by globalization and their impacts on U.S. interests and the global system more broadly. The treatment of emerging markets and developing countries as a whole is pretty bland
Third, the political basis of the report seems firmly planted in the air. Given the tumultuous debates underway in this country, the authors are far too comfortable ignoring domestic political and economic dynamics trends inside the U.S. To whom is the document supposed to appeal? They set to one side America’s growing economic inequality, huge uncertainties about health and education and divisive partisanship, all affected significantly by our policies toward trade, national security and our transition toward a knowledge economy in a globalizing world.
Some of us on this blog have wrestled with the concept of what a progressive foreign policy should look like. How would a proposed foreign policy framework actually affect the lives of ordinary hard working Americans? What’s in it for them? It is essential but not sufficient to tell Americans that the UN will work better under this or that approach. Who really cares? They need to be told about the other many intersection points where domestic concerns and conditions are affected by foreign policy and national security concerns, and vice versa. But like too many Grand Visions, the Princeton report is silent on the home front. Since it is quite vocal on the need for explicit criteria to evaluate national security policy, why not add another – a good Grand Vision shall ‘advance the domestic conditions of the American middle classes’.
The relative inattention to these matters is curious because apparently the PPNS authors did take this show on the road, holding a bunch of briefings and meetings around the country. For that, they should be congratulated. One suspects that the reactions to the Princeton report are just as interesting as the report itself. The authors should consider publishing a more populist version of the report, complete with a record of the conversations and the criticisms that it engendered. Continuing the conversation is well worth the effort as we head into the presidential election season. It will be an even better national conversation if the project leaders embrace a little more modesty and listen aggressively, if they seriously consider matters of equity, and if they reflect on the domestic welfare implications of their foreign affairs proposals.
These are remarkably clear-headed and well-organized comments Ernest. Nicely done.
I realize that there will always be some frustration from the side of the less powerful toward those who are in positions of power and influence, and constitute various elites. This is especially the case during a time when our elites are responsible for monumental failures, and yet cling to their sense of privilege and to traditional ideas. Perhaps that resentment and anger has something to do with some of the hostile reactions to the Priceton Project report. But I do think we need to call attantion to what appear to me to be some decidedly undemocratic habits of thought and behavior that reign in the foreign policy intellectual establishment of both parties.
There is an almost medieval admiration for sage and oracular "wise men and women", and a penchant for grand statements, portentous phrases, august councils, and a lofty elevated tone. And foreign policy professionals and intellectuals often seem to take it for granted that those policies should be set by a consensus among the college of foreign policy "cardinals", and then communicated to the rest of us by Washington through mystical smoke signals and pronouncements from on high, rather than developed from the grass roots.
The Princeton Project report reads more like a papal encyclical than a work of analysis. And it tends to underscore in my mind the sense that foreign policy intellectuals have a hard time "getting real", and incline toward ivory tower aloofness and abstraction. There is a corresponding aversion to concrete, specific proposals for dealing with practical problems. Even at the theoretical "strategic" level where the authors feel most comfortable, there is no effort to lay down a comprehensive and scientifically well-informed assessment of the current state of the globe economically, militarily, technologically and socially - other than nods toward the usual "globalization" and "information age" pap. Since understanding - in some detail - of the context in which our actions take place, and where we stand in our passage through history, is necessary for intelligent action, I would think that there would be more effort to take comprehensive and detailed stock of the global scene before moving on to strategic recommendations.
American foreign policy thinking seems to me to be captivated by a permanent wartime ethos that is a holdover from the Second World War and its aftermath in the Cold War. This is reflected in frequent calls that foreign policy needs to be "de-politicized", that "politics should end at the waters edge" and that in foreign policy we must strive for a lasting non-partisan a consensus. These are the attitudes of people who view themselves as a people at war, with a pressing, urgent need to "band together". The Princeton Project seems to aim nostalgically at this imagined non-partisan consensus among the sage and learned, and at the romantic foreign policy lore of "X letters" and other epoch-making manifestos. But why, in a democratic society, should we expect or want our foreign policy to be de-politicized? Why shouldn't we accept it as a matter of course that Americans to starkly different preferences in foreign policy, just as they do in domestic policy, and are going to continue fight out those differences in the political realm?
And rather than developing a foreign policy in high-level councils of the foreign-policy aristocracy, and then taking the already agreed-upon results on the road in a meaningless dog and pony show of pro forma democratic consultation, why not start with the regular Americans out on the road, find out what kind of foreign policy they want, and then take those popular directives to the likes of Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and Anthony Lake so that these sometime public servants can serve us by implementing them.
October 17, 2006 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry Dan but that's just ridiculous. What would have happened if Roosevelt or Truman took that approach. You act as if there is this mythical coherent doctrine that people know and holds the key if only the elites were to listen. Foreign policy requires constant thought which is why it becomes the preserve of an elite. Anyone can join, they just need to make the sacrifice and devote their time and effort to understanding the issues. And they need to be up to the task. To simply say that this is useless is to mock history; we know that those who think deeply succeed more than those who don't. isn't that why Bismarck is better than Wilhelm II, why Bush the elder beats Bush the younger, etc. Interestingly, your own critique is totally abstract and doesn't seem to engage with any of the princeton report's specific proposals.
October 17, 2006 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
You act as if there is this mythical coherent doctrine that people know and holds the key if only the elites were to listen.
That's really opposite in spirit to what I said, Architect, since I defended the politicization of foreign policy. I think Americans differ greatly on their foreign policy preferences, just like any other area of American life and national policy and grass roots over foreign policy. Grass roots activism, and popular sovereignty in the area of foreign policy will be no less turbulent than in any other area. A democratic belief that national policies should be broadly determined from the ground up is not the same as a belief that there is some sort of mystical unity binding the American people together so they are of one mind. The United States is a riot of diversity and dispute. Many Americans fervantly despise other Americans and what they stand for. So that's why we have politics - to make decisions and move on despite vigorous disagreement and animosity.
I just have this notion that it is the right and responsibility of ordinary Americans to govern themselves. They are supposed to develop the germs of basic national policy ideas out of their own preferences and desires, form the movements that embody those ideas, and then work with, or do political battle against, their fellow citizens to select representatives to send to Washington to legislate national policy in accordance with their preferences. They also elect a chief executive charged with implementing the policies that have been legislated into law. These government officials are all public servants.
None of the points you raise against a central and dominant role for popular preferences and desires in the formation of national security policy are any different than the general point that has been made since time immemorial against democracy: that ordinary people are simply not smart or competent enough to govern themselves. There is truth in that, but it's true of every realm of our national life - not just national security. So yes, ordinary people may screw it up. But if we are going to try to have a democracy, we should try to promote self-government, not limit it.
There are experts in every field; and all of those fields require constant thought. A smart person forms his opinions in the light of the judgments rendered by smarter people, and by genuine experts. But none of this is an effective argument against self-government and popular sovereignty, or the principle that we are entitled to get the country we want, rather than the one the experts say we should want.
We know that we could choose various different kinds of foreign policies, policies that would lead us in dramatically different directions. Which direction should it be? Well the answer one prefers depends on the kind of country you want to have; the kind of country you want your children to live in; the sort of future you envision and hope for. It turns out that different kinds of Americans want very different kinds of future. So in aspiring to chart a course for the future of the country, why couldn't the people at the Princeton Project at least start by asking lots of different kinds of Americans what kind of future they want? If nothing else, the answers might have guided them to a set of constraints on what sort of policies are sustainable over the long haul. Instead, as Ernest Wilson says "the political basis of the report seems firmly planted in the air."
But even more important than that practical reason for consulting popular values and opinions, one would think that a group of people supposedly enamored of democracy, who have been blessed by all the educational benefits our society has to offer and the privilege of doing funded research on the national choices we face, would feel some sort obligation to help large number of Americans achieve the kind of future they want, and build the sort of country they actually prefer to live in. But there is not the slightest indication that the report is grounded in any serious empirical research whatsoever into the values and preferences of ordinary Americans.
And with all due respect to the importance of expertise and hard thinking, what is the particular kind of expertise on display in this report? It's not like it's an Army War College study that relies on expert knowledge about how nuclear bombs are made, the cost of training a division, the capabilities of space-based weaponry or the fueling requirements of long-distance bombers. Nor does it display detailed economic or technical expertise about, say, current rates of fuel consumption and production, global currency flows, or innovations in the Chinese textile industry. Nor is there any sociological or demographical expertise on display. The empirical basis for the report seems to go little beyond what a person of averager intelligence can learn by reading the New York Times.
So I susppose the expertise is some sort of "all-purpose expertise" - or maybe expertise in the area of values. But frankly I don't have any more esteem for their values than for yours, or my wife's, or my old dissertation advisor's, or my friend John's.
I didn't address the concrete proposals of the Princeton Project report in this particular thread, but I did address some of them in my post last night on Dean Slaughter's thread and in an earlier post in this Book Club discussion. Mainly, I have addressed at length the Concert of Democracies proposal. I plan to write more about the report's proposals in the area of energy policy. I have argued in the past for a Global Energy Transition Treaty, a multicomponent global regime to manage the transition to a post-petroleum economy, and I think the report comes up far short in the attention it gives to the decisive role of conflict over resources in the contemporary world.
And believe me, if somebody gave me some substantial funding and time to produce a 75-page report, I would have plenty of specifics to offer, going well-beyond lofty ideals, and platitudinous suggestions that our foreign policy be "integrated" and "multidimensional". (As opposed to what? Fragmented and one-dimensional? I await the spirited rejoinders to the Princeton Project from the one-dimensional fragmentationists.)
October 17, 2006 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just curious: what was the subject of your dissertation?
October 17, 2006 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
It was called The Logic of Contingent Existence. It was in philosophy: logic and metaphysics.
October 17, 2006 8:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
The fundamental issue of our time is the increasing competition for raw materials by an ever larger population. Standard economics is based upon continual growth to solve society's problems. Continual growth in a finite world is not realistic.
Given these pressures it is especially obtuse to come out with a policy plan which takes no notice of these conditions. With 5% of the world's population the ability of the US to continue to consume 40% of the "stuff" becomes increasingly unlikely. So, rather than discuss how the US can transition to a sustainable economy these thinkers assume our present lifestyle. They then propose a thinly disguised version of colonialism combined with the white man's burden. This time it's not religion that we are spreading but "democracy".
Like all such think groups these days, whether neo-con or neo-liberal, they operate from a false premise. The only way the US is going to maintain its lifestyle is by force. And even this may not be successful. This is why military planning is focused on control of resource rich countries and why all administrations since WWII have pushed for a strong "defense".
Notice that when it actually came time to defend our country we had to establish a new department of homeland security. Our "defense" department is really the war department renamed. The public broadly supports these policies, so we can expect that conflicts will only get worse in the coming decades as the demands of the rest of the world clash more and more with the selfish behavior of the US. Sugar coating greed and selfishness doesn't fool those being exploited.
If we want to continue to be an empire, let's, at least, not be hypocritical about it.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
October 18, 2006 8:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
The fundamental organizing principle of US foreign policy for the past 100 years (if not longer) has been the control and domination of world resources (especially oil). All of the fancy ideologies, such as 'neoliberal' and 'neoconservative' all are ultimately supportive of this one simple idea.
I say this because no matter the adminstration, the drive to control resources is what drives foreign policy. Bush's approach has relied on military force, while Clinton tended to favor the economic approach. Either way, the ultimate goal of both was to secure US access to resources.
The problem is when the rest of world starts to revolt to this state of affairs. It isn't discussed much here in the US, but there is something seriously off kilter when one country consumes an insane amount of the world's resources and is willing to spend large amounts of money to maintain it (via an enlarged military or slavish dedication to 'free trade').
Not addressing this means that any foreign policy manifestos will be fundamentally flawed.
October 19, 2006 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ivory tower approaches don't work any more - not because the "insiders" aren't smart enough, but rather because the original "think tank" movement has been pirated from effective policy development to become non-profit marketing firms for the parties. I don't think we can go back to having an effective braintrust infrastructure in a post-Rovian world.
However, at the same time there are a lot of new tools that allow distributed collaboration to produce effective ideas at a very high level. For example, nobody pooh-poohs open source software as being tinkertoy anymore. So I'm just gonna say two words here: policy wiki. Somebody give me the link once you've got it going.
Let's face facts: it's inevitable that the first great task of this century (of which the GWOT will be but a comma) is going to be the gradual dismantling of the American empire. The sun is setting on the dominance of the last superpower, and how we handle this challenge (graciously and carefully or kicking and screaming) is going to set the conditions for the next great era of international relations. If we do it right (like England) then humanity stands a chance of a better tomorrow. But if we do it poorly, then the U.S. stands a good chance of sliding into a third-world-style Banana Republic for the foreseeable future. Not to mention the damage we'll cause the rest of the world on the way down.
Some of the comments here remind me of a book by Bruce Sterling called "Islands in the Net" in which he posits that the great international standoff of the 21st century won't East vs. West, but rather North (the developed nations) vs. South (the Third World), and that due to increasingly decentralized technology options (from cell phones to missing plutonium), it won't be as easy a war to win as we might think. I for one would rather avoid fighting it at all.
October 23, 2006 2:20 PM | Reply | Permalink