Earlier in the week I blogged about Operation Iraqi Freedom's effect on the international system (not much) and its effect on American foreign policy (pretty significant).  Moving from the systemic to the domestic to the individual level, this last Iraqi retrospective post asks a more solipsistic question.  How has Operation Iraqi Freedom affected me as a foreign policy writer? 

Ten years ago I supported the decision to invade Iraq.  If you're looking for another of the many apologies that have been penned this week, don't bother.  I offered my Iraq apology six years ago.  Looking back, I'm just grateful that I wasn't all that influential a foreign policy pundit back in the day. 

What gnaws at me is why my analytical assessment was so wrong.  I can't really blame this on Beltway groupthink.  Hell, at the University of Chicago, two of the leading anti-war proponents were just a floor below my office.  As I was blogging during the debates in the run-up to the war, I'd like to thjink I engaged critics frequently and in depth. 

After reading some of the self-reflections this week, however, I'm beginning to  think that my flaw was generational in nature.  John B. Judis wrote something interesting on this earlier in the week on why he was so dubious about Operation Iraq Freedom: 

I opposed the war, and didn’t listen to those who claimed to have “inside information” probably because I had come of age politically during the Vietnam War and had learned then not to trust government justifications for war. I had backed the first Bush administration’s Gulf War, but precisely because of its limited aims. Ditto the Clinton administration intervention in Kosovo. George W. Bush’s aims in Iraq were similar to American aims in South Vietnam. During those months leading up to the war, I kept having déjà vu experiences, which failed to interest my colleagues. Still, I wavered after Colin Powell’s thoroughly deceptive speech at the United Nations in February 2003, where he unveiled what he claimed was evidence of Iraqi nuclear preparations. I had to have an old friend from the anti-war days remind me again of the arguments against an invasion.

Contrast this with Operation Iraqi Freedom supporter Jonathan Chait's recollections: 

The Gulf War took place during my freshman year in college. It was the first major American war since Vietnam, and the legacy of Vietnam cast a heavy shadow — the news was filled with dire warnings of bloody warfare, tens of thousands of U.S. deaths, uprisings across the Middle East. None of it happened. And again, through the nineties, the United States intervened in the Balkans twice under Bill Clinton, saving countless lives and disproving the fears of the skeptics, which had grown weaker but remained.

These events had conditioned me to trust the hawks, or at least, the better informed hawks. They also conditioned me unconsciously to regard wars through this frame, as relatively fast attacks without a heavy occupation phase. People tend to think the next war will be somewhat like the last. That is a failing I will try to avoid again.

Age-wise, I'm a contemporary of Chait's and a generation younger than Judis.  Ironically, for all the Gen-Xer tropes about irony and cynicism, the foreign policy arc of our generation looked pretty damn optimistic until March 2003.  Indeed, reading the above paragraphs I can recall my attitudes about the use of force in 2002 and 2003.  America's use of force during the 1990s -- and, at the time, Operation Enduring Freedom -- had been limited in scope and pretty efficient in its execution.  Furthermore, the foreign policy principals who were planning the Second Gulf War had run the first one, which, again, had gone pretty well.  So yes, I think I had a generational bias -- I badly overestimated the capacities of George W. Bush's national security and foreign policy hands. 

How does this affect my thinking about the use of force now?  I think so, but in a limited way.  I'm more leery of arguments that the overwhelming use of force will change things for the better in places like Syria or Iran.  I'm extremely leery about the creeping militarization of American foreign policy.  I think to read people I disagree with on policy -- even, say, the Leveretts -- with a more generous eye than I did a decade ago, because I'm less sure I'm right.   

That said, I was by and large supportive of U.S. actions in Libya, and I've been skeptical about the constant warnings from 2006 onwards that the United States is being pulled inexorably into a war with Iran.  So I suppose that some of that nineties optimism still resides within me about the use of force as an adjunct to American foreign policy. 

[Lest one think I'm doing this to maintain my "viability" for a foreign policy position in the federal government, let me assure you that for very good personal and professional  reasons, there is no way I'll ever be serving the U.S. government in an foreign policy capacity in the future.  Furthermore, I've got about as secure a sinecure as I can find in the academy.  No, the views expressed here have nothing to do with any future career aspirations.]

In this, I'm more like Chait and less like the millenial generation that follows me.  Indeed, as Chait observed: 

I get the sense that their foreign policy worldview is dominated by the Iraq War in the same way the Boomer generation is dominated by Vietnam and the generation before them by World War II. The formative event of their adulthood is the reference point for all future conflict....

And I think if you look at the commentary leading up to the Obama administration’s intervention in Libya, you see the same pattern asserting itself. Anti-interventionists were treating it as Iraq redux, reprising every argument they wish they could have made in 2003. But Libya was not Iraq. I’d argue it was a success — not a perfect success, but a superior alternative to standing by as tens of thousands of people were massacred.

There's hard data that the millenial generation thinks about American foreign policy differently -- and given their formative experiences, I can't say that I blame them.  Indeed, it's just punishment for the neoconservatives that they bungled Iraq so badly that their intellectual project might die out Children of Men-style because they're producing fewer and fewer young neoconservatives.  Still, while this worldview might prevent another Iraq, I do wonder whether it also constrains more limited military actions that do yield foreign polivcy gains. 

I'm definitely more risk-averse about the use of force than I used to be.  And I hope I'm more generous with those who oppose the use of force as a foreign policy tool than I was a decade ago.  Still, going forward, I'm still probably more hawkish than the median foreign policy wonk of the millenial generation.  Which, I confess, is a very weird place to be ten years after Iraq. 

So it's the ten-year anniversary of the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, which means it's time for the obligatory commemorative blog posts and such. Go read Stephen Walt and Peter Feaver for some contrasting takes. Do wait five minutes in between clicking those two, however -- any quicker than that, and intellectual whiplash might result.

This was a Big Deal in American foreign policy, and a single blog post about it will not do it justice. So I think it's worth reflecting on the legacy of the Second Gulf War at three  different levels -- the system, the country, and the individual levels. Today's installment: How did Operation Iraqi Freedom affect the international system?

The surprising answer is: not all that much.

I don't come to this conclusion lightly. You'd think that a conflict that cost more than $2.2 trillion and led to 190,000 deaths would have some systemic ramifications. Except that it didn't -- not really.  

To understand why, consider what both standard realist, instiitutionalist, and neoconservative accounts predicted would happen. 

Realists were convinced that the largely-but-not-completely unilateral act of preemption by the United States should have triggered significant amounts of blowback. The great powers that opposed the invasion should have formed a balancing coalition against a revisionist United States. That did not happen. Furthermore, all the realist yapping about "soft balancing" looks pretty absurd in retrospect. There is no doubt that the United States suffered a few years of some serious unpopularity -- but that temporary dent ended very quickly after the 2008 election. 

Some realists fond of the "imperial overstretch" argument might try to posit that the costs of the Iraq war led to America's parlous fiscal state. Any serious look at the numbers, however, says this is not true -- the war didn't help, but the principal causes of U.S. budget deficits over the past decade were the Bush tax cuts, the rise in entitlement spending, and the decline in tax revenues caused by the Great Recession.  The Iraq war played a supporting role -- not a leading one.

The institutionalists would focus on the U.S. defection from international regimes and international institutions. In the end, the U.S.-led coalition invaded without an imprimatur from the United Nations. In the run-up to the war, the IAEA was particularly scornful of U.S. claims. Institutionalists would also have predicted some kind of punishment of the United States for its defection from the rules of the game. Absent that punishment, institutionalists would predict a weakening of global governance more generally, given the toothless  nature of enforcement.

Except that none of these things happened. Both the U.S. and the U.N. Security Council suffered minimal costs in the aftermath of the invasion. Within a few years, however, it was the United States leading the U.N.S.C. to successive rounds of sanctions against Iran and North Korea for doing things that had been used as a pretext for invading Iraq. A decade later, it turns out that global governance did a decent job in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. 

As for the neoconservatives, well, their predictions were straightforward. The invasion of Iraq was supposed to set of a tectonic shift in the politics of the Middle East. States contemplating the development of WMD should have been cowed by the might of American power. The creation of a stable democracy in Iraq was supposed to trigger a massive wave of democratic regime change across the Middle East. 

Now, to be fair to the neocons, Libya did give up its WMD program, and there has been a wave of regime change across the Middle East. But let's be clear about a few things. The Iraq invasion played a supporting and not a primary role in Qaddafi's decision. And anyone who tries to connect the regime change in Iraq with the Arab Spring needs to read Harry Frankfurt again and again and again. The fact that no one judges Iraq to be a real democracy suggests the hollowness of the neoconservative argument. 

At the systemic level, the Iraq invasion did not matter. Maybe one could argue that there was a mild acceleration of relative U.S. decline. The thing is, a lot of the metrics that people use to discuss relative power were shifting away from the United States regardless of Iraq. None of the major predictions of standard realist, institutionalist, or neoconservative models hold up terribly well a decade later. 

So does this mean Operation Iraqi Freedom doesn't matter? Of course not. Affecting the international system is a really high bar. World wars, economic depressions, industrial revolutions -- these things matter at the systemic level. It's rare that a conflict smaller than that would have systemic implications (though the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan does come to mind). Rather, the conflict's primary effects were at the national level. Iraq did have a profound effect on American foreign policy thinking. Which is the subject I'll tackle in my next blog post. 

Am I missing anything? 

As near as I can figure, the David Petraeus/Paula Broadwell story is the ultimate pundit Rorschach Test. Whatever axe one had to grind against the foreign policy community prior to the story breaking, Petraeus and Broadwell merely sharpens it. It's evidence about the sexism and double-standards at play in Washington! It shows the insularity and kiss-assedness of the foreign policy community!! It shows that COIN doesn't work, or that Petraeus was a big phony!!

I'm not immune to this impulse, so I'd like to focus on a lesson that can be drawn from this for those young, impressionistic aspirants to positions of foreign policy influence. If there's anything you can learn from the rise and fall of Paula Broadwell, it's this: do not, under any circumstances, think of a Ph.D. as merely a box to be checked on the way to power and influence in Washington.

As Fred Kaplan notes, Petraeus both benefited from and propagated the desire to develop "officer-intellectuals" within the military:

The impulse was not unique to Petraeus. It grew out of the ethos of West Point’s social science department, where Petraeus had taught in the mid-1980s. The department, known as “Sosh,” was founded just after World War II by a visionary ex-cadet and Rhodes Scholar named George A. “Abe” Lincoln. Toward the end of the war, as the senior planning aide to Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall, Lincoln realized that the Army needed to breed a new type of officer to help the nation meet its new global responsibilities in the postwar era. This new officer, he wrote to a colleague, should have “at least three heads—one political, one economic, and one military.” He took a demotion, from brigadier general to colonel, so he could return to West Point and create a curriculum “to improve the so-called Army mind” in just this way: a social science department, encouraging critical thinking, even occasionally dissent.

Lincoln also set up a program allowing cadets with high scores in Sosh classes to go study at a civilian graduate school, with West Point paying the tuition. In exchange, the cadets, after earning their doctorates, would come back and teach for at least three years. Once they fulfilled that obligation, Lincoln would use his still-considerable connections in Washington to get them choice assignments in the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, a foreign embassy, or a prestigious command post.

Now, I've encountered a lot of these scholar-officers at my various academic postings.   Many of them are among the best that the military has to offer, and offer a necessary bridge between the scholarly and martial worlds.  On the other hand, some of them are there precisely because they see the Ph.D. as a ticket to be punched on the way to something greater. And these are the ones who will usually flail about miserably.

This appears to be what happened to Broadwell at the Kennedy School of Government. By all accounts, she had succeeded at pretty much everything she had tried to achieve prior to entering the Ph.D. program. At that point, however... well, let's go to the Boston Globe's story:

One of Broadwell’s former professors at Harvard described her as a self-promoter who would routinely show up at office hours.

“It was very much, ‘I’m here and you’re going to know I’m here,’?” said the professor, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of ongoing investigations. “She was not someone you would think of as a critical thinker. I don’t remember anything about her as a student. I remember her as a personality.”

The professor said when Petraeus chose Broadwell to write his biography, there was shock among the national security faculty at Harvard because “she just didn’t have the background — the academic background, the national security background, or the writing background.”

A second Harvard faculty member who knows Broadwell and Petraeus had similar misgivings.

Now, these comments from the Harvard faculty are self-serving and indecorous; as the Globe story goes on to note, these professorial misgivings did not stop the school from embracing Broadwell's apparent success.

That said, as a professor in a policy school, those comments caused me to shudder in recognition (and it jibes with Greg Jaffe and Anne Gearan's reportage that Broadwell's coursework was below par). Any professor in one of these institutions recognizes the student profile in the Globe story. Even standard political science departments are littered with students who have sterling resumes, glittering letters of recommendation from well-connected fixtures of the foreign policy community, and that disturbing tendency to look past the task at hand to plot out steps three, four and five of their Ascent to Greatness.

Here's the thing about these students: 95 percent of them will not earn a Ph.D. -- and most of the rest who do get it will only have done so by finding the most pliant dissertation committee alive. Ambition and intelligence can get someone through college and a professional degree. It can even get someone through Ph.D.-level coursework. What it can't do is produce an above-the-bar dissertation.

In my day, I've known too many students who were talented in many ways, and yet got stymied at the dissertation phase. For people who have succeeded at pretty much everything in life to that point, a Ph.D. seems like just another barrier to transcend. It's not. Unless you are able to simultaneously love and critically dissect your subject matter, unless you thrive in an environment where people are looking forward to picking apart your most cherished ideas, you won't finish. You can guess for yourself at which task Broadwell failed, condemning her to the Jane Babbington fate.

To be clear: I don't write this peroration to suggest that finishing a Ph.D. is a sign of superior intelligence: it isn't. I've met Ph.D.'s in my field who were actually quite stupid. Consider this a public service message. As someone who has advised readers on the relative merits of getting a Ph.D., it's worth pointing out -- repeatedly -- that getting a Ph.D. is not for everyone. If there isn't an idea or a question that truly animates you, if you think of a Ph.D. as merely a ticket to be punched, then know the following: you are looking at a half-decade of misery with nothing to show for it in the end except a terminal masters degree.

Am I missing anything?

Your humble blogger has not been shy in stating that he now votes in presidential elections based largely on foreign policy considerations.  Nor has he been shy in expressing his... er... exasperation with various foreign policy kerfuffles during the campaign.  So as Election Day approaches, you might wonder -- what will Daniel Drezner do?  [Oh, give me a f**ing break, just get on with it!!--ed.]

With Barack Obama, there's an actual record to judge.... and I think it would be best to call it mixed.  The Economist, in its Obama endorsement, noted the following:

[On] foreign policy... he was also left with a daunting inheritance. Mr Obama has refocused George Bush’s “war on terror” more squarely on terrorists, killing Osama bin Laden, stepping up drone strikes (perhaps too liberally, see article) and retreating from Iraq and Afghanistan (in both cases too quickly for our taste). After a shaky start with China, American diplomacy has made a necessary “pivot” towards Asia. By contrast, with both the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and his “reset” with Russia, he overreached and underdelivered. Iran has continued its worrying crawl towards nuclear weapons.

All these problems could have been anticipated. The Arab spring could not. Here Mr Obama can point to the ousting of tyrants in Egypt and Libya, but he has followed events rather than shaping them, nowhere more so than with the current carnage in Syria. Compared with, say, George Bush senior, who handled the end of the cold war, this aloof, disengaged man is no master diplomat; set beside the younger Bush, however, Mr Obama has been a safe pair of hands.

I think that's a decent assessment, although it overlooks what is, to me, the most troubling element of Barack Obama's first-term foreign policy legacy -- his management of the foreign policy process.  As my Foreign Policy colleague Rosa Brooks has written about in agonizing detail, the dysfunction that was talked about in Obama's first year in office hasn't disappeared along with Osama bin Laden. 

Indeed, the aftermath of Benghazi puts this on full display.  To be blunt, for all the GOP efforts to make the lack of pre-attack planning an indictment of the White House, consulate security in Benghazi is not the kind of decision that rises to the White House level.  The aftermath of the attack is another story, however.  In the past 24 hours alone, report after report after report after report shows Obama's foreign policy agencies defending their own turf, leaking to reporters in ways that heighten bureaucratic dysfunction, and revealing the White House's national security team to be vindictive and petty. 

Benghazi also highlights a deeper problem with this administration -- the lack of policy follow-through.  Whether one looks at the Iraq withdrawal or the rebalancing to Asia or the Afghanistan build-up or their embrace of the G-20, the story is the same.  Even if the administration had demonstrated good first instincts, it has failed to follow up those instincts with either next steps or contingency planning. 

So, the biggest indictment of the Obama administraion's foreign policy has been poor management.  Which, as it turns out, is Mitt Romney's genuine strength, as Ezra Klein points out in his excellent Bloomberg column this AM: 

Romney’s apparent disinterest in an animating ideology has made him hard to pin down -- for the Journal editorial board, for journalists, for Democrats and Republicans, for campaign consultants, even for Romney’s closest confidantes. It has led to the common knock on Romney that he lacks a core. He’s an opportunist. He picks whatever position is expedient. He is a guy with brains, but no guts.

But after spending the last year talking to Romney advisers and former colleagues, as well as listening to him on the campaign trail, I’ve come to see this description as insufficient. It’s not so much that Romney lacks a core as that his core can’t readily be mapped by traditional political instruments. As a result, he is free to be opportunistic about the kinds of commitments that people with strong political cores tend to value most.

What Romney values most is something most of us don’t think much about: management. A lifetime of data has proven to him that he’s extraordinarily, even uniquely, good at managing and leading organizations, projects and people. It’s those skills, rather than specific policy ideas, that he sees as his unique contribution. That has been the case everywhere else he has worked, and he assumes it will be the case in the White House, too. 

This jibes with all the chatter I hear about Romney as well.  Which should lead you to think that Romney might be exactly what ails American foreign policy. 

The thing is, Romney's own foreign policy rhetoric makes it clear that managing foreign policy isn't enough.  As he's said, the president has to be a foreign policy leader.  A president has much greater leeway on these issues than on other policy dimensions.  A good foreign policy president needs to be genunely interested in the subject, possess good foreign policy insincts, and rely on a core set of ideas that allows him or her to make tough decisions in a world of uncertainty.  As I wrote last year: 

[A] philosophy of "I won't say anything until I know all the facts" is bogus because, in foreign policy, the facts are never all in. Very often intelligence is partial, biased, or simply flat-out wrong. It's those moments, when a president has to be a foreign policy decider for a 51-49 decision, that a combination of background knowledge and genuine interest in the topic might be useful.

When I use these criteria to think about Mitt Romney, he doesn't do very well.  Every conversation with every Romney advisor confirms the same thing:  this is not a guy who has engaged deeply in international affairs.  He was perfectly happy to go all neocon-y in the primary season to appeal to his base, and then tack back to the center in the general election to appeal to war-weary independents.  He's not doing this because he's dishonest; he's doing this because he doesn't care.  His choice of foreign policy neophyte Paul Ryan as his VP pick confirms this as well:  Romney/Ryan has the least foreign policy experience of any GOP ticket in at least sixty years.  

Furthermore, in the moments during this campaign when Romney has been required to display his foreign policy instincts, he's foundered badly.  He stuck his beak into the Chen Guangcheng case when silence was the better option.  He did the same thing in the aftermath of the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi, going so far as to accuse Obama of "sympathizing" with terrorists.  As for his overseas trip, well, the less said, the better.  All of these episodes show a guy who's out of his depth on matters of foreign affairs.  And when he's been criticized in taking these stances, Romney has responded by doubling down on a bad position.  His political instincts have led him to some bad foreign policy choices. 

I'm not nearly as enthusiastic about as Obama as, say, Jonathan Chait, but his endorsement of the president makes an interesting point:

It is noteworthy that... the best decisions that Obama made during his presidency ran against the advice of much of his own administration.... Many of his own advisers, both economists steeped in free-market models and advisers anxious about a bailout-weary public, argued against his decision to extend credit to, and restructure, the auto industry. On Libya, Obama’s staff presented him with options either to posture ineffectually or do nothing; he alone forced them to draw up an option that would prevent a massacre. And Obama overruled some cautious advisers and decided to kill Osama bin Laden.

On foreign policy, Barack Obama might be an indifferent manager, but by making his first decision the right one, he has saved himself numerous embarrassments and reversals. 

This was a closer call than I expected, and I honestly hope (and think there's a good chance) that if Mitt Romney is elected, he'd grow into his foreign policy role with time.  For this analyst, however, Barack Obama is the imperfect, but superior, alternative. 

And now the bitter political invective in the comments.... begin!! 

Your humble blogg -- [Wait, screw that, you should be feeling pretty proud today!! -- ed.] 

Your proud blogger will be watching tonight's foreign policy debate despite his near-certainty that it's not going to be all that illuminating or informative. He has no choice, as he has a prior commitment to watch the damn thing. 

Now, in preparation for the debate, I could encourage you to read some excellent preparatory posts by Walter Russell Mead or Spencer Ackerman, or this essay on American incolvency in grand strategy by Michael Mazarr -- but that's no fun. 

I could suggest following one of the foreign policy debate drinking games out there -- see the National Journal or Duck of Minerva, for example -- but these drinking games look exceptionally dangerous. Drink when Obama mentions bin Laden? Really? Or when Romney says "resolve"? No one would be upright after the first twenty minutes. 

No, I think the only responsible thing to do is to suggest my own debate drinking game. The idea here is to sort the possible answer such that a true "black swan" event would have to occur for the participant to risk alcohol poisoning. 

So, in that spirit: 

THE OFFICIAL 2012 FOREIGN POLICY DEBATE DRINKING GAME

Take a sip of your drink if....

1. Either candidate makes a geographical mistake (like insisting that the West Bank borders Syria or something like that). 

2. Obama says "I'm the commander in chief." 

3. Romney says that the U.S. Navy is the smallest it's been since 1916 (a dubious claim).

4. Romney accuses Obama of turning the United States into Greece.

5. Anyone on the stage (including Bob Schieffer) mentions Australia, New Zealand or Canada.

Finish your drink if....

1. Either candidate mentions the benefits of trade with China.

2. Either candidate says that Latin America is a crucial strategic region for the United States.

3. Obama says that there's some wiggle room in the 2014 withdrawal date for U.S. combat forces for Afghanistan.

4. Romney says that that there's no wiggle room in the 2014 withdrawal date for U.S. combat forces for Afghanistan.

5. Anyone onstage acknowledges that China has pretty much stopped intervening to keep its currency undervalued. 

Finish your bottle if....

1. Romney says anything positive about the United Nations.

2. Either candidate says that the United States needs to push hard for democratization in Saudi Arabia. 

3. Either "Africa" or "Doha round" are mentioned.

4. Either candidate blasts Israel for keeping its currency severely undervalued. 

5. Obama accuses Romney of a "speak loudly and carry a magic wand" doctrine. 

DRINK YOURSELF TO OBLIVION IF AND ONLY IF....

1. Bob Schieffer asks the candidates what they would do in case of zombies. 

Now I'm pretty sure that if you follow these rules, you'll enjoy tonight's debate without regretting that enjoyment tomorrow. 

The New York Times' Peter Baker wrote a pretty shrewd article pointing out that for all the differences in rhetoric, the actual foreign policy content of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney look pretty damn similar. 

Of course, even if the policies would be similar, the execution and rhetoric matter.  While I didn't think Romney's "disconcerting" line about the Olympics was all that bad in context, it wasn't a good day for his campaign.  And while the Jerusalem leg of his trip seemed to please the Israelis, Romney still managed to stir up a hornets nest of trouble: 

Mitt Romney told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who suggested his comments were racist and out of touch with the realities of the Middle East. Romney's campaign later said his remarks were mischaracterized.

"As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality," the Republican presidential candidate told about 40 wealthy donors who ate breakfast at the luxurious King David Hotel.

Romney said some economic histories have theorized that "culture makes all the difference."

"And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things," Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the "hand of providence." He said similar disparity exists between neighboring countries, like Mexico and the United States.

The CIA World Factbook has a rather different assessment of what ails the Palestinian economy: 

Despite the Palestinian Authority's (PA) largely successful implementation of economic and security reforms and the easing of some movement and access restrictions by the Israeli Government in 2010, Israeli closure policies continue to disrupt labor and trade flows, industrial capacity, and basic commerce, eroding the productive capacity of the West Bank economy.

So, Israel/Palestine is not a great example.  And let's also stipulate that it's not... diplomatic  to say that a foreign jurisdiction's development has been poor because of their culture.  And let's skip over Romney's bad data and the public fallout and  the White House glee and get to the really geeky question:  is Romney right more generally?  As Ashley Parker points out, Romney has made this "culture" argument before:

In the speech, Mr. Romney mentioned books that had influenced his thinking about nations — particularly “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” by David S. Landes, which, he said, argues that culture is the defining factor in determining the success of a society....

The argument comparing Israeli and Palestinian vitality is one Mr. Romney has made previously — in speeches and in his book “No Apology” — and one that he has used to explain economic disparities between other countries, as well.

Indeed, in No Apology, Romney uses the same David Landes quote from page 516 of Wealth and Poverty of Nations -- "culture makes all the difference" -- three separate times.  I wish, however, that Romney had read onto page 517:

On the other hand, culture does not stand alone.  Economic analysis cherishes the illusion that one good reason should be enough, but the determinants of complex processes are invariably plural and interrelated.  Monocausal explanations will not work.  The same values thwarted by "bad government" at home can find opportunity elsewhere. 

It's that last sentence that suggests where Romney might be off base.  As Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have argued recently in Why Nations Fail, it's not culture that matters as much as political institutions.  From p. 57: 

Is the culture hypothesis useful for understanding world inequality?  Yes and no. Yes in the sense that social norms, which are related to culture, matter and can be hard to change, and they also sometimes support institutional differences, this book's explanation for world inequality. But mostly no, because those aspectys of culture often emphasized -- religion, national ethics, African or Latin values -- are just not important for understanding how we got here and why the inequalities in the world persist.... they are mostly an outcome of institutions, not an independent cause (emphasis added).

The kind of gaps in economc output that Romney likes to stress are of so recent a vintage that institutions are the more likely driver of what's going on than culture.  One can't assert, for example, that culture explains why South Korea is outperforming North Korea or why West Germany was more prosperous than East Germany.  Acemoglu and Robinson don't get the final word on this -- this remains an unsettled question --  but their hypothesis is of a more recent vintage than Landes. 

So no, I don't think Romney is right -- but it's still an open debate.  That said, if this is what he actually believes, then there would be some profound implications for development policy if he was elected president.  Chaging political and economic institutions is hard work -- but it is doable through policy.  Changing culture is next to impossible -- they change, but at a glacial pace.  So when Romney says he thinks culture is the key, it's another way of saying that he doesn't think the United States, World Bank or any policy tool out there is really going to promote economic growth in the least developed world. 

That said, I will give Mitt Romney credit -- his political gaffes -- as opposed to those of his staff -- generate some damn fine debates. 

What do you think? 

As events in Syria unravel, there is a growing concern that Syrian despot Bashar Assad will use his chemical weapons arsenal to punish those rising up against him in a desperate bid to stay in power.  Eli Lake reports that the CIA is, as I type this, "scrambling to get a handle on the locations of the country’s chemical and biological weapons."

What can the U.S. do?  Elsewhere on Foreignpolicy.com, Andrew Tabler argues that the U.S. needs to be firm: 

Washington and its allies must lay down and enforce red lines prohibiting the use of Syria's chemical and biological weapons (CBW), one of the Middle East's largest stockpiles. To do so, Washington should push for a U.N. Security Council resolution under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which sanctions the use of military action, on mass atrocities in Syria -- including a reference that those responsible for the use of CBW would be held accountable before the International Criminal Court. Washington should not water down the text to make the measure toothless, as it has done repeatedly on Syria over the last year in an attempt to avoid a Russia veto. In the event of further Russian obstructionism, the United States should lead its allies  -- Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia -- in issuing a stark warning to Assad that mass atrocities in Syria will be met with an immediate military response. (emphasis added)

I'm neither a Middle East nor a nonproliferation expert, but I know a little bit about compellence, and Tabler's strategy sounds like an unsuccessful one in compelling the Syrian leader.  Assad's behavior to date suggests that he really doesn't care about anything other than staying in power -- and he's perfectly willing to use whatever tactics are necessary to stay in power.  He is now facing an adversary that, based on this week's bomb attack in Damascus, is perfectly content with using unconventional tactics.  There is simply no way that Assad will constrain himself in response to a Western threat -- no matter how credible it is --  when his alternative is losing power. 

Let's be blunt -- the only "immediate military response" that would matter would be a full-blown ground invasion (I don't think Seal Team Six could pull off an Assad decapitation at a tolerable amount of risk). It will take quite some time for that kind of operation to mobilize.  And even if there is a ground assault, Assad would likely find his way across Iraq to Iran.  Using ground force might be an advantage to using this kind of force as a signal to future leaders contemplating the use of WMD -- but I suspect it's a very weak effect. 

I tweeted parts of this critique earlier in the day, which prompted Bob Wright to suggest an alternative strategy: 

One obvious way to strengthen the incentive structure would be to pose a cornered Assad with a different choice: If you don't use chemical weapons, and just give up power peacefully, you can have a long and happy life.

But it's hard to offer him that option, because the Syrian army has already committed enough atrocities to get Assad indicted and convicted by an international tribunal and locked up for the rest of his life. So, to him, surrender may seem to entail a fate not much more attractive than death....

Suppose that, 10,000 Syrian lives ago, we could have offered Assad the option of safe haven if he surrendered power peacefully. Or, maybe, we could have offered him the option of safe haven after serving a year of jail time. Or two years, or whatever.

Now, you might argue that to let him off that lightly would have been to dishonor the 8,000 or so Syrians who had already died. Point taken. But tell that to the other 10,000. And tell that to the many thousands who may die yet.

The problem with this is that one has to assume that both the United States and Russia likely did make this offer to Assad a year ago - and he likely rejected it. 

Unfortunately, Syria is not a case that will end well.  An external ground invasion would put Western troops in the middle of a sectarian conflict.  No external intervention will allow the sectarian conflict to fester even more.  As for the United Nations, well, fuhgeddaboutit.

This is one of those cases in which the limits of U.S. influence -- or any great power's influence -- over the situation can be exaggerated.  This seems obvious to me -- but I thought it might be a useful point to make to the rest of the foreign policy community. 

Am I missing anything? 

Andrew Sullivan has a Newsweek cover story designed to best allocate Tina Brown's resources or to wave a big red flag at conservatives make the case that Obama's tortoise-like strategy of slow but steady, focusing on the long haul, has left his excitable hare-like critics on the left and the right launching fantasy-based and not reality-based critiques of his administration.  Or, as he puts it:  "The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong."

This has triggered the predictable reactions around the blogosphere, as well as Sullivan's responses.  One of the biggest perks of blogging at FP is that I rarely wade into those shark-infested waters anymore.  I have more than a passing interest in Obama's foreign policy, however, so I'm going to focus only on the foreign policy portions of Sullivan's take and see if they hold up to empirical scrutiny.  Here are the key excerpts on his pushback against the right: 

On foreign policy, the right-wing critiques have been the most unhinged. Romney accuses the president of apologizing for America, and others all but accuse him of treason and appeasement. Instead, Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death. And when the moment for decision came, the president overruled both his secretary of state and vice president in ordering the riskiest—but most ambitious—plan on the table. He even personally ordered the extra helicopters that saved the mission. It was a triumph, not only in killing America’s primary global enemy, but in getting a massive trove of intelligence to undermine al Qaeda even further. If George Bush had taken out bin Laden, wiped out al Qaeda’s leadership, and gathered a treasure trove of real intelligence by a daring raid, he’d be on Mount Rushmore by now. But where Bush talked tough and acted counterproductively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war. Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted.

Obama’s foreign policy, like Dwight Eisenhower’s or George H.W. Bush’s, eschews short-term political hits for long-term strategic advantage. It is forged by someone interested in advancing American interests—not asserting an ideology and enforcing it regardless of the consequences by force of arms. By hanging back a little, by “leading from behind” in Libya and elsewhere, Obama has made other countries actively seek America’s help and reappreciate our role. As an antidote to the bad feelings of the Iraq War, it has worked close to perfectly.

OK, so how did Sullivan do?

He has the facts on his side with respect to the BS about Obama apologizing for America.  This has been a standard line when the GOP candidates talk foreign policy and it's total horses**t.  Sullivan's comparison of Obama to George H.W. Bush and Dwight Eisenhower on foreign policy also makes sense.  The emerging strategic narrative of this administration is a shift in foreign policy resources from the Middle East to the Pacific Rim, and realist-friendly presidents like Bush 41 and Eisenhower would approve. 

That said... arguing that George W. Bush "ignored" bin Laden seems like a gross exaggeration -- even if many of Bush's anti-terrorism policies were counterproductive.  More importantly, the notion that Libya somehow "counteracted" Iraq is a problematic formulation.  It's far from clear whether Obama has been "winning the broader propaganda war" in the Middle East.  Don't take my word for it, however -- here's PIPA's Steven Kull:   

The picture is mixed. With the death of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda is weaker.  With revolutions in several Arab countries, frustrations with unpopular autocratic governments - a recruiting theme for terrorist groups - have been mitigated.  But one important contributing factor has not improved - widespread anger at America in the Muslim world.  While views have improved in Indonesia, throughout the Middle East and South Asia, hostility toward the United States persists unabated.

This does not read like a victory in the propaganda war. 

OK, what about Sullivan's foreign policy rebuttal to the left?  Here's the key excerpt

This is where the left is truly deluded. By misunderstanding Obama’s strategy and temperament and persistence, by grandstanding on one issue after another, by projecting unrealistic fantasies onto a candidate who never pledged a liberal revolution, they have failed to notice that from the very beginning, Obama was playing a long game.... He has done it with the Israeli government over stopping the settlements on the West Bank—and with the Iranian regime, by not playing into their hands during the Green Revolution, even as they gunned innocents down in the streets.

Hmmm.... I'll be honest, I have no idea what Sullivan is talking about with respect to Israel.  Ironically, Israel is one of the areas where the left and right agree that Obama has made a hash of things (albeit for different reasons).  First, it's not clear to me at all how Obama's policies have made it more likely that settlement construction will be halted on the West Bank.  Second, stepping back further, one could argue that Obama's greatest strategic miscalculation was his belief that the Israel/Palestinian issue was the fulcrum through which one can understand the problems of the region.  Third, Israel/Palestine is precisely the area where a long-term, slow-game approach carries the biggest risks.  Long-term demographic and political pressures make a two-state deal less likely over time. 

Iran is a counterfactual question.  Indeed, it's the favorite counterfactual question of the GOP 2012 presidential candidates.  It allows the candidates to portray Obama as weak, claim he botched things without any proof that the United States could have influenced the outcome, and promise that they would have handled it differently, which we'll never know in a non-multiverse world.  Still, while Obama has succeeded in applying more economic pressure on  Iran than is commonly appreciated, I don't see this regime going anywhere. 

So, how does Sullivan do?  He makes some valid points, but he proffers some serious whoppers as well.  This is far from a slam-dunk empirical refutation of Obama's critics.  As a George H.W. Bush kind of foreign policy guy, I wanted Sullivan to empirically and logically eviscerate the more hysterical foreign policy critics out there.  He didn't. 

Am I missing anything?  [UPDATE:  I did miss parallel blog posts by Andrew Exum and Kevin Drum that buttress the points made above. Go check them out.]

For the record, I don't think Herman Cain is stupid.  I do think he's willfully ignorant about anything to do with foreign policy however.  If that wasn't manifestly obvious prior to this weekend, please watch the following conversation between Cain and the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal editorial board regarding Libya: 

I have a personal preference that ignoramuses should be drummed out of presidential politics as quickly as possible, but that was just painful to watch.  Needless to say, I don't think the boning up is helping all that much. 

I don't care if this man is leading the polls in Iowa, or is still running a strong second (or a weak third) in the national polls.  I suspect he's on the downside of his popularity bubble -- and for the sake of my own sanity, I just can't pay any more attention to Herman Cain's foreign policy views. 

There's a mercy rule in Little League, and I'm applying it here -- unless and until Herman Cain surges back in the polls again, or manages to muster something approaching cogency in his foreign policy statements, there's no point in blogging about him anymore.  I can only pick on an ignoramus so many times before it feels sadistic. 

Apparently the organizers of tomorrow's GOP foreign policy debate asked David Frum to submit ten questions to ask.  For the record, no one asked me... sniff.... really I'll be fine... but that doesn't mean I can't offer some of my own.  Here would be my top 10 questions: 

1)  In the last debate, all of you declared that the United States should not help out Italy or other eurozone countries plagued by sovereign debt crises. If these economies received rescue funds from China instead, would that undermine U.S. national security?

2)  Many of you on the dias have declared that there should be no daylight between Israel and the United States.  Israeli officials have repeatedly and formally requested that Jonathan Pollard's sentence be commuted for spying for Israel.  As president, will you accede to this Israeli request? 

3)  In previous debates, many of you have warned about the dangers of a debased dollar.  At the same time, many of you have also complained that China is undervaluing its currency vis-a-vis the dollar to augment its economic growth.  Which issue do you believe is more important to America's economic strength? 

4)  Why should the United States pay any dues to the United Nations?  Do you all agree with Governor Perry that the U.S. should reconsider those dues payments? 

5)  The Doha round of world trade talks has stalled out, and bilateral free-trade agreements have proliferated in recent years.  As the president of the world's largest economy, what approach would you favor to promote greater trade liberalization? 

6)  The United States recently dispatched 100 military advisors to Uganda in an attempt to subdue the Lord's Resistance Army. What criteria would you use, as president, to decide when to use American force for the purpose of humanitarian intervention?

7)  Many of you have complained about illegal immigration flows during the campaign, but the hard data suggests that these flows have slowed dramatically over the past few years.  What is the appropriate amount of effort to devote to this issue? 

8)  What steps would you take, as president, to ensure that elements of the Pakistani government cease supporting violent non-state actors in Afghanistan and India? 

9)  Many of you have criticized the Obama administration for ignoring military advice on troop decisions in Afghanistan and Iraq.  During the pre-war debate with respect to Iraq, however, the Bush administration rejected troop estimates from Army Chief of Staff (and now Secretary for Veterans Affairs) Eric Shinseki.  When would you be prepared to overrule the advice you receive from the military? 

10)  Who, in your opinion, was the greatest foreign policy president in American history besides Ronald Reagan, and why? 

Commenters are heartily encouraged to offer their foreign policy questions in the comments. 

Every time I think I'm done picking on Herman Cain's absence of foreign policy thought, his campaign pulls me back in! 

According to The Daily Caller, Cain is planning to give a major foreign policy address... er... at some point.  Which, given his frontrunner status, is probably a good thing. 

I'd leave it at that, except that this story clearly represents the Cain campaign's efforts to push back on the notion that he doesn't know enough about foreign affairs.  And so we get... the following:

Almost every day, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is handed a one-page briefing from his chief foreign policy adviser on news from around the world.

It’s one of several things his campaign says the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, who has never held elective office before, is now doing to bone up on foreign policy — especially as he faces a big test in November at a GOP debate on national security issues.

“He’s really getting up to speed a lot more so than people give him credit for,” J.D. Gordon, Cain’s foreign policy and national security adviser who prepares the briefings, said in an interview with The Daily Caller on Monday....

Gordon says Cain has been receiving counsel from people well known in the foreign policy community. While Gordon won’t say who Cain talks with, Cain has admitted he admires people like former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton.

Other steps Cain has taken to educate himself about foreign policy, Gordon said, include his visit to Israel in August “to learn the facts on the ground.”

“He met with the deputy prime minister and the mayor of Jerusalem,” Gordon said (emphasis added).

It's the "almost" that kills me. 

Look, I get that Cain is going to put the United back in the United States of America, and the economy is really, really super-important.  So are the decisions to expend blood and treasure around the world, however.  This kind of spin on Cain's foreign policy interest  -- and, bear in mind, spin is the comparative advantage of Cain's chief foreign policy advisor -- is just f***ing absurd. 

So I see I'm not the only one perturbed by Herman Cain's decision not to take foreign policy seriously.

Politico's Ben Smith concurs, but closes out his blog post on Herman Cain's foreign policy gaps with a provocative point:

There's... something almost quaint, '50s-ish about his invocation of "experts," as though there were a professional expert class that wasn't deeply divided by party and ideology. Even in foreign policy, last redoubt of the wise men, that isn't really true any more.

Except, perhaps Cain isn't really wrong. For all the Washington bomb-throwing, President Obama's foreign policy has been characterized by continuity with President Bush's, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Africa, not with any sharp break. The foreign policy elites don't get along, but with the occasional dramatic exception -- the Iraq invasion was that -- they generally wind up giving similar advice. President Cain will probably be O.K.

This is fascinating question -- does it really matter if Cain continues to dodge any and all foreign policy questions? I've noted that specific foreign policy pledges don't matter all that much -- what about generic foreign policy knowledge?

I think it does matter, for a few reasons. First, the continuity between Bush and Obama overlooks the fact that Bush's foreign policy circa 2008 looked very different from his 2002 foreign policy. It was Bush's post-2001 first-term deviation that truly stands out. Eventually, these deviations from the norm return because they are unsustainable. During the interim, however, an awful lot of blood and treasure can be wasted. I'd like a chance to know Cain's general thinking on foreign policy topics if he seriously wants the commander-in-chief job. If he also deviates from the general contours of American foreign policy, it's the rest of America that will suffer.

Second, Cain's philosophy of "I won't say anything until I know all the facts" is bogus because, in foreign policy, the facts are never all in. Very often intelligence is partial, biased, or simply flat-out wrong. It's those moments, when a president has to be a foreign policy decider for a 51-49 decision, that a combination of background knowledge and genuine interest in the topic might be useful.

Side note: if Cain really believes that he can't talk about foreign policy without getting all the information, then why does he feel at liberty to declare the Obama administration's foreign policy to be "dumb"? Either he keeps his mouth shut about the topic or he starts articulating some positions -- he can't criticize Obama without saying what he'd do instead.

Third, without some knowledge about foreign policy, the best intelligence briefings and foreign policy advisors in the world won't be able to help Herman Cain. An awful lot of international relations knowledge is cumulative; without a decent base there's no point in trying to be briefed on the arcane stuff. That would be like trying to learn calculus without knowing any algebra. I really don't expect Herman Cain to know the names of foreign policy leaders -- but I do expect him to know which countries matter and why. In his answer to "Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan," Cain made it pretty clear that he doesn't understand why Uzbekistan matters for supplying Afghanistan. That's a problem.

Fourth, there are decisions when the particular president does matter. A President Gore doesn't invade Iraq. Apparently a President McCain would not have sent special forces into Africa.  In this post-9/11 world, the president has greater authority to assassinate people than I'd like, but there it is  -- so which people will be on Cain's target list?  So I'd like to see the "Cain Doctrine" fleshed out just a wee bit.

Finally, and not to put too fine a point on it, America's reputation for competent leadership has taken a colossal beating over the past decade. With Iraq in 2003, Katrina in 2005, the 2008 financial crisis, and the 2011 debt ceiling fiasco, America doesn't look so hot in the eyes of the world. We have a smaller margin to screw up royally than we are used to. I suspect that even Herman Cain would learn about foreign policy after a few years on the job. It's those few years that scare the crap out of me.

The Cain campaign has said that they plan to "roll out a detailed foreign policy plan sometime within the next month," so they obviously recognize that there's a problem with their current lack of positions. I look forward to perusing their plans.

Anne-Marie Slaughter has responded to my musings about her new foreign policy frontier with a potent combination of vigor and logic, topped off with just a dollop of guile.  I am happy to see that we share some vital zones of agreement -- namely, continued hegemony for the Boston Red Sox. 

About lesser issues like the contours of world politics, we have some respectful disagreements.  This is a fun debate, to have, so let's dive right in!

To summarize the gist of Slaughter's latest post:  she argues that realists think of the world through a states-only, security-first, billiard-ball approach: 

[T]he whole point of realism, as every first year IR student knows, is that structural realism (the school that holds as its bible Kenneth Waltz's Man, the State, and War) says that international relations analysts can treat the world as if it were composed only of states pursuing their power-based interests. 

In constrast, Slaughter advocates a "modern/liberal-social" because such an approach will: 

[factor in] all the important social actors, from tribes to democracy activists, focus on the relationship between those social actors and their governments, then assess interests relative to other governments that are themselves enmeshed in domestic and transnational social networks. 

Slaughter asserts that the second perspective is the superior approach despite its greater complexity, because it permits a greater focus on the "social and developmental issues" that Slaughter believes will the the primary drivers of world politics over the next decade.  As evidence for her more enlightened perspective, Slaughter compares her Twitter stream with my Twitter stream and concludes:

Going through these tweets actually offered an even more succinct contrast between how Dan and I think about foreign policy. Dan asked last week, addressed to all "IR tweeps": "Is there a better international relations song than Tears for Fears 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World?'" He got some great responses, but for me, his choice says it all about how, his protests notwithstanding, he sees the world. (Many a truth is spoken in jest.) By contrast (and again, with much less humor!), I tweeted a link on Monday to a in the Financial Times by the Israeli novelist Etgar Keret on the J14 protests and quoted the following passage: "In our current reality, the political cannot be separated from the social." The new foreign policy frontier is deeply social, as messy and unsatisfactory as that may be.

Slaughter's historiography of realism is a touch problematic, but also a bit of a distraction, so I'll leave it to others to address that question.  Instead, let's start with the Twitter evidence. 

Slaughter is clearly a huge fan of microblogging (despite its negative externalities) and its social networking capabilities.  As an earlier adopter of these technologies, I'm a fan too.  I do think there's a danger of reading too much into this kind of data, however.  If I really didn't care about the kind of social and economic issues that Slaughter embraces... well, I wouldn't be following her.  Like any curious IR scholar, however, I do follow her.  Just because I don't tweet/re-tweet about these things all that much doesn't mean I don't read/blog/write about them in other venues.  Slaughter assumes that I manage my Twitter feed the same way she does, as a natural extension of her research interests.  Trust me when I say that I value Twitter somewhat differently. 

This might be a trivial issue, but it gets at a point I hinted at in my last post:  there's a difference between what's visible and what's significant in world politics.  Twitter is highly visible, for example, but I think it's significance might be exaggerated -- or, rather, online networks merely replicate offline power structures.  The threat of coercion is often invisible -- but it's effects can be quite significant. 

Slaughter's more substantive point is her contrast between old-school realpolitik and new-school modern social-liberal foreign policy approach.  On this distincton, let me start by observing that another important modern strategy in world politics is the notion of issue-framing.  If they're good, policy entrepreneurs will be able to take their issue and frame it in a manner most favorable to their preferred policy solution.   When their policy problem is pushed to the front of the queue, they are therefore likely to win the argument. 

I bring this up by noting that I don't accept Slaughter's framing of our dispute.  She posits that only by adopting her international relations worldview is it possible to recognize the social and developmental issues that are bubbling under the surface in world politics.  Because realists primarily care about guns, bomb, and interstate security, they ostensibly will miss these problems. 

Now, I know a lot of realists, and I can kinda sorta understand how Slaughter arrived at this caricatured version of realism.  Nevertheless, Slaughter conflates subject matter with how one models the dynamics of the subject matter.   In his last memoir, even über-classical-realist Henry Kissinger acknowledged the importance of human rights issues in modern diplomacy and staecraft.  I certainly agree that the economic, social and developmental issues that are near and dear to Slaughter's heart are matters of import for world politics -- indeed, this is a theme I've written and rambled spoken about for quite some time.  I suspect most realist IPE scholars believe these issues are important... or they wouldn't be studying IPE in the first place. 

Just because I agree with the importance of these issue areas, however, does not mean that I agree with Slaughter's implicit model of how these issues get addressed.  Anne-Marie places great faith in the ability of transnational, networked, non-state actors to bend the policy agenda to their preferred sets of solutions.  I think that these groups can try to voice their demands for particular policy problems to be addressed.  I think, at the national level, that social movements can force even recalcitrant politicians to alter their policy agenda (see:  Party, Tea).  Where Slaughter's optimism runs into my skepticism is the ability of these movements to a) go transnational; and b) supply rather than demand global solutions.  I'm skeptical about the viability of transnational interests to effectively pressure multiple  governments to adopt a common policy solution, and I'm super-skeptical that these groups can supply broad-based solutions independently of national governments. 

There's a "two-step" approach to world politics with which Slaughter is intimately familiar:  it posits that interest groups and social movements can influence national policy preferences, but that outcomes in world politics are driven by the distribution of power and preferences among national governments.  In her embrace of a new foreign policy frontier, Slaughter embraces the first step and mostly rejects the second. 

That second step is really important, however, as most social movements are keenly aware.  Indeed, most of the protests that Slaughter keeps identifying on Twitter are not about solving problems on their own, but demanding that governments address or ameliorate their needs. 

Slaughter can and will point to Very Important Initiatives like the Gates Foundation or the Summit Against Violent Extremism as examples of supplying such solutions.  These can matter at particular points in particular places, but I'll need to see some powerful evidence before I think that these transnational groups are as potent as, say, nationalism as political force in the world.  All of the social movements and all of the online networks can agitate for policy solutions, but they're not going to be able to alter fierce distributional conflicts that exist when trying to address many of the topline issues in world politics show no signs of abating.  The kind of non-state actors that Slaughter embraces have not been shy in engaging issues like climate change, Israel/Palestine or macroeconomic imbalances -- but I haven't seen any appreciable change in global public policies as a result. 

Now, it's possible that Slaughter will eventually be proven right.  That's the cool thing about studying international relations, we keep adding new data with every passing day.  So, here's my challenge to Anne-Marie -- name three significant issue areas in which these kinds of networked actors will significantly alter the status quo (and I look forward to Slaughter falsifying me to within an inch of my life.).  Because I can think of far too many issues -- including those listed above -- on which their impact will be negligible. 

One final point:  I agree with Slaughter that the issues she cares about are important, and attention must be paid to them.  That said, the realist in me is not quite ready to claim that the old security-focused approach to foreign policy is truly outdated.  Yes, traditional wars are much rarer than they used to be.  That said, we're just one unsteady power transition away in North Korea, China or Pakistan for traditional concerns about militarized great power combat to return to the main stage of foreign policy practitioners.  I really hope Anne-Marie is correct about these new issues being the important ones -- because that means the horrors of great power war continue to stay a distant memory. 

As I noted last month, I gave a small talk to the International Policy Summer Institute's Bridging the Gap project.  As a spur to the participants, I offered to publish the best blog post submitted to yours truly

And the winner is.... Nuno Monteiro, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale.  Nuno's entry is a public service post, because it provides a rundown of the lessons he learned at IPSI about how political scientists can be relevant to policymakers: 

Bridging the Gap between Academia and Policy

Nuno Monteiro

After a terrific week of briefings at IPSI on how political scientists can contribute to policy, here are twelve rules I distilled:

1. There are many ways of influencing policy, both direct and indirect. You can exert direct influence by working for the government or for a think-tank. You can also exert indirect influence by publishing blog posts (either as a guest or regular blogger), opeds, policy articles, and doing media. Create a strategy that includes both types of influence.

2. The dichotomy between scholarship and policy is largely false. Most political science topics have policy implications, so think through a topic in scholarly and policy terms. These often cross-pollinate. The key is to choose research topics that allow for double-dipping: topics that have both scholarly import and policy relevance. Then produce scholarly and also policy-oriented products.

3. There are four types of products academics can provide to policymakers. Framework: what's the appropriate theory or historical analogy to understand recent events? Data: what are the patterns and what should the ground truths be? Forecast: what are the possible scenarios? Advice: what should we do?

4. Be willing to be wrong. Even if it is a probabilistic judgment, accept the risk of taking a position.

5. Don't be shy, but don't be a pain. Put your stuff out, send feelers to think-tanks and journals, but make it short.  Any pitch -- for a piece, an oped, a research project -- that takes more than two minutes to read is too long. Be persistent but not insistent (i.e., don't pitch the same idea twice to the same place).

6. Keep a twin-track curriculum. Think-tanks offer opportunities for non-resident fellows, in which you are asked to join a few events every year, write a report, or join a taskforce. This enables you to have a twin-track curriculum in which you always have an academic and a policy affiliation.

7. There are six qualities policymakers appreciate. Be engaging, constructive, future-oriented, discreet, concise, and have pity on those who have to make decisions. And remember, you're an expert, not a pundit.

8. Don't think of a policy piece as a lesser version of a research piece. Policy pieces are not dumbed-down research pieces. They must have specific policy recommendations. Seek to understand what policymakers need before you seek to be understood.

9. Maximize different networks. Don't just network in academia. Try to build networks in media, think-tanks, and government. Attend events and follow up.

10. Get institutional cover and buy in. Give your bosses a sense of why it is that you want to engage in policy debates, and of how this is a plus for your institution.  If there's a chance that something you wrote or said is controversial and will make a splash, give your boss a heads-up in advance.

11. Look for moments in which your specialty is in high demand. There will come a moment when everyone will want to know about your specialty. You should be prepared for when that opportunity arrives. If possible, take the obituary-writer approach: write drafts of possible blog posts, opeds, or policy pieces addressing a problem you see brewing. Then send them out fast.

12. Pick your battles and mix vanilla with habanero topics. If you only do vanilla topics you'll get bored, but if you only do habanero topics you'll get tired and also potentially lose your credibility. Aim for the sweet spot between being an organic intellectual and becoming seen as a wacko.

What say ye, readers -- has Nuno missed anything?