It's hard to believe, but ten years ago Robert Kagan published "Power and Weakness" in the pages of Policy Review.  Coming on the heels of the invasion of Afghanistan and the start of the Iraq debate, Kagan's essay seemed to crystallize the state of the transatlantic relationship back in the day. 

To celebrate it's 10th anniversary, Policy Review has come out with a special issue devoted to the essay, asking a variety of smart people to weigh in.  Oh, and me.  As I put it in my essay, "I come to praise Kagan's insights -- and then to bury them."  You'll have to read the whole thing to see what I mean. 

Check out the rest of the essays as well.  With the passing of a decade, it's pretty easy to point out the ways in which Kagan's analysis breaks down (and, to be fair, the ways in which it doesn't).  To his credit, Kagan himself is painfully aware of how his essay has aged: 

Ten years ago, when I wrote the original essay, it would not have occurred to me that anyone would be commenting on it a year later, let alone a decade later. As Tod knows, I only wrote the essay because he had invited me to speak at a conference, and I had to deliver something. No doubt the other contributors will recognize the experience. Therefore from the beginning I have been acutely aware of the essay’s limitations — and have had the good fortune to have all those limitations pointed out to me frequently, in many languages, with greater or lesser kindness over the years, and now again at the scene of the crime a decade later.

I remember talking with Kagan when the original essay came out and blew up, and I can aver that he was just as surprised as anyone else about its impact.  Let this be a lesson for policy wonks everywhere.  Sure, most of the time when you write something it disappears into the ether, to be forgotten almost immediately.  But on occasion, serendiptity or fortuna strikes, and you've suddenly got a major essay on your hands.  Always write with that in mind -- because if your essay does blow up, you better be ready, willing and able to defend every paragraph of it. 

OK, in Episode I, your humble blogger talked about what undergraduates should and should not do to get into a quality Ph.D. program in political science.  In this exciting sequel, the natural question to ask is, "what if I'm not an undergraduate?" 

To explain the advice I'm about to give, however, let me begin with a small parable.  Consider two applicants, Johnny Undergrad and Jenny Postgrad.  By a strange coincidence, Johnny and Jenny matriculated at the same undergraduate institution, received identical grades during their time as undergraduates, and both wrote fine theses.  They both followed the guidance provided in my dos and don'ts post to the letter.  The only difference is that Jenny is four years out of college, while Johnny is not.  The latter, a senior, is now applying to grad programs.  So is Jenny, but she's spent the past four years earning some coin and collecting some very relevant work experience for an important government/multinational corporation/NGO/think tank organization.  

Now, you would think, ceteris paribus, that Jenny would have the stronger application for a Ph.D. admissions committee - she's more mature, more seasoned, and possesses an identical academic record.  But you would likely be wrong. 

See, Johnny has been in more recent contact with his undergrad professors.  Since their memory of Johnny is likely stronger than Jenny, their letters of recommendation will be less bland and boilerplate.  Johnny hasn't signaled that callings other than being a professor might tempt him, since he applied straight out of undergrad.  Johnny's grades are an accurate reflection of his abilities, whereas Jenny's academic skills atrophy with every year out of the ivory tower (pro tip:  if you don't know what ceteris paribus means, you're in trouble).  Any thesis that Johnny has written is more up-to date. 

This is the challenge you face if you are a post-baccalaureate applicant - and with each year further away from your graduation date, these problems get worse.  So, if you want to be admitted, Jenny's goal should be to do everything possible to her file resemble something that blows Johnny out of the water.  How does she do that?  Here are five useful tips: 

1.  Reconnect with your professors. You need to have strong letters of recommendation, and almost all of those letters should come from people inside the academy. Fair or not, admissions committees will discount letters from people who themselves do not have a Ph.D.. If you're thinking of applying to a Ph.D. program, start by making sure the profs who you worked closely with as an undergraduate have a sharp memory of you. Remind them of what you were interested in as an undergrad and update them on what's your interests are now. If you've collaborated with academics during your post-bac jobs, make sure they write you a letter. You will need one recommendation from your supervisor/boss even if they don't have a Ph.D. - but make damn sure that, besides praising your overall competence and maturity, they talk about your burning desire to go back to the academy.

2.  Ace your GREs.  The GREs are a good first approximation of whether you have the intellectual chops to cut it in a doctoral program.  If you've been out of school for a while, they might count a bit more, because there is that question of whether you're really ready to go back to school.  An outstanding GRE score will not automatically get you admitted, but it can allay any fears about your abilities to earn a Ph.D.

3.  Craft your personal statement with care.  You have a more interesting tale to tell than undergraduate applicants, because you're like, older and stuff.  That said, the statement also needs to signal an admissions committee that you know exactly what you are getting yourself into, and are eager for the challenge.  Sure, you can talk about how your research interests are born out of your real-world experience, but make sure you also phrase your research interests in the context of the relevant literature.  Again, this signals to an admissions committee that you know your interests from multiple perspectives.  Furthermore, as a twentysomething, you have the luxury of reading up on the relevant academic literature and not being intimidated by big words like when you were 18 years old.  Use that intellectual maturity to your advantage in your statement!! 

4.  Publish, publish, publish!  You know that phrase "publish or perish?"  It's not just for professors anymore.  Demonstrating an ability to publish - even if the publication is not a peer-reviewed academic journal - is a signal to an admissions committee that you understand what you're getting yourself into.  Publishing in a policy journal, or a think tank report, can count for something - particularly if it's a sustained piece of research.  So, if your job requires you to write, try to get that writing into the public domain. 

5.  Get a master's degree.  OK, let's say that your undergraduate performance was... less than stellar.  Or, it's been a long time (more than five years) since you were in college.  These are the situations when getting either a professional or terminal master's degree makes some sense -and a two-year program is a better option than a one-year program.  If you know you want to get a Ph.D., then make sure you indicate that fact to the professors closest to your area of interest at the outset, take their courses, and have them supervise your thesis.  Oh, and write a sharp M.A. thesis and think about getting it published.  Strong letters from professors indicating that you did well in graduate school are the ultimate trump card, and are the one way that Jenny's application packet can blow Johnny's out of the water.  With a good M.A. degree, Jenny can ensure that she is a better, stronger, faster version of Johnny. 

Now, I'm still a bit reluctant to proffer this last recommendation, for a few reasons.  First, a terminal master's ain't cheap.  This means accruing a decent amount of debt and then going to graduate school for a few more years and then, if you're lucky, getting a job that won't help all that much in paying down your debt.  Second, this approach takes at least two years to execute.  You can't apply to a Ph.D. program in your first year of an M.A. program, because applications need to be in by January and your master's program profs won't know you well enough to draft good letters (that's why a two-year program is superior).  Furthermore, as crazy as this sounds, for most Ph.D. programs, your M.A. coursework won't count - you'll often need to do a certain number of course requirements (it does help intellectually, however).  And with all of this, there's still no guarantee you get accepted. 

All that said, however, if you really want the Ph.D. and you're well out of college, this is the best gambit.  A strong performance in an M.A. program - professional or not - is the best signal to a Ph.D. admissions committee that you can cut it in a doctoral program.  Oh, and one last point:  as a risk-averse strategy, choose an M.A. program at a Ph.D.-granting institution, so you can always try to complete your doctorate in your home institution. 

Erik Voeten reminds us that now is the time "when undergraduates interested in a career in political science have to choose between PhD programs."  Erik offers some very useful pointers on how to choose, but there is a deeper question to ask -- is it worth it to get a Ph.D. in political science?  As one graduate student blogging at Duck of Minerva puts it: 

I'm loving graduate school; it's been on balance the best time of my life; and nevertheless there have been times when (to quote a colleague) I've wished I'd taken the blue pill and kept my job.

Or, as Steve Saideman phrases it: 

[A] PhD in Political Science should only be for those who are passionate and curious and do not care where they end up living.  And that they need to be aware that the job market can be pretty challenging and stressful.

Checking my blog archives, I see that I've mused on this topic before -- so, rather than repeat myself, here are some links.  If you're wondering about the virtues of getting a Ph.D. vs. a policy degree like SAIS or Fletcher, click here and here.  If you're really interested in politics and are debating between a Ph.D., a law degree, or going the apprentice route, click here. 

But I want to blog about a question related to something buzzing about the foreign policy blogosphere:  what if you're female?  Micah Zenko at CFR and Diana Wueger at Gunpowder & Lead have blogged about the underrepresentation of women in foreign policy positions in the government, think tanks or the academy.  Wueger asks readers to "spend 10 minutes thinking about what you can do to help your female staff or friends or Twitterbuddies to advance in their careers." 

After ten minutes, I have some positive words and some cautionary, bordeline controversial pieces of advice.  Here goes. 

My hunch is that, all else equal, the value-added of getting a Ph.D. might be greater for women than men.  Wueger blogs about a big problem:  the difficulty/trepidation that women have when seeking mentors, particularly if their field is dominated by men.  The advantage of getting a Ph.D. is that it pretty much forces the person to work hard at collecting mentors and advisors.  Furthermore, these relationships are forged through years of TAing, RAing, and pleading for dissertation advice.  So, even if women are shyer about seeking mentors/male advisors are warier about advising female students, these barriers can be broken down with time. 

That's the good news.  The bad news is two-fold.  First, Wueger argues that the assignments women get at the outset have a powerful effect on their later careers: 

There’s a gap in the types of tasks women and men are assigned early in their careers. Intentionally or not, women tend to given more administrative or support work rather than policy or research work; path dependence takes over from there. I recall a prominent scholar regularly asking his female research assistant (RA) to pick up his dry cleaning and take his car to the shop—things he didn’t ask of male RAs.

OK, for the record, my male RAs were too forgetful to request as little starch as possible this is a problem, but I suspect it's decreasing.  The more serious problem operates through a subtler channel -- women might get shunted into research areas that are seen as more female-friendly.  For example, I believe that more women study international political economy or international organizations than international security.  Even within security studies, I suspect that there are more women studying "human security" than more standard guns & bombs kind of security.  This might be due to interest, but there are path-dependent effects at work, and so successive waves of women go into those fields in greater numbers.  So, that's a thing. 

The second problem is, I suspect, even greater and trickier to discuss, but here goes.  Unlike the apprentice or professional degree paths, the Ph.D. route to a foreign policy career has a few BIG decision-making nodes that have profound effects on a person's career choice.  For the Ph.D., the first job after getting one's doctorate matters a lot, particularly if said Ph.D. is pursuing the academic career track.  The first job can define whether you want to be thought of as a researcher first, a teacher first, a policy wonk first, and so forth.  Also, it usually requires moving -- with the exception of Ph.D. granting institutions in-Boston-well-not-in-Boston-but-nearby-no-not-Tufts, universities do not hire their own. 

The thing is, most people are between 27-32 years of age when they complete their Ph.D..  This also happens to be the peak demographic of the whole getting married/having children phase of life.  And, women tend to marry men a few years older than them.  The professional difference between 50 and 53 is negligible, but those few years can make a HUGE difference in one's late twenties/early thirties.  It means that, on average and regardless of career choice, the man in the relationship is more firmly embedded down his career path. 

For newly-minted women Ph.D.s, this can impose profound constraints on career choices.  Their best job offer might be inconvenient for their spouse's career, and so they pass on it.  I saw this very dynamic play out multiple times with female colleagues when I was in graduate school.  There are a lot of good reasons to subordinate one's first job choice to family considerations, but it has a negative impact on one's long-term career trajectory.

[What about you?--ed.  As a man, the age effect was reversed.  My fiancee was younger and therefore at a more embryonic stage of her career, which meant she was more portable.  For the record, I accepted a post-doc that I otherwise wouldn't have taken for her career, but this was a minimal sacrifice.  It only delayed my first job by a year and I got a ton of writing done during those twelve  months.]

This problem is not unique to those earning doctorates.  Those with non-Ph.D. career tracks , however, have more career-decision nodes at later and earlier ages.  I suspect this problem is magnified for Ph.D.s in a way that it isn't for those who pursue more apprentice-oriented or shorter-degree tracks.  But I'd be interested in hearing differing opinions on this in the comments below. 

So, to sum up:  if you're a woman and you're trying to pursue a foreign policy career, there are some advantages by getting the Ph.D., but there are big pitfalls at the beginning and end of getting the doctorate.  I urge you to have a good sense of what you want to study before someone shapes that decision for you.  And have some good, long conversations with any potential spouse about what you want to do with your career. 

Am I missing anything?  Seriously, am I? 

One of my occasional concerns about foreign policy is how ill-conceived, ill-informed, or simply illegal policies get fixed.  As I've noted before, one of the problems with relying on whistleblowers is that the kind of person who believes themselves to be a truthteller also tends to have otherbaggage.  To the blunt, the personality tropes that permit whistleblowers to speak truth to power also frequently make it easy to paint them as odd or unhinged. 

For exhibit A of this concern, see Matt Bai's New York Times Magazine profile of Scott Ritter, the weapons inspector who prominently and loudly insisted that there were no weapons ogf mass destruction in Iraq.  Ritter was right, but he was also plenty odd in the way he went about arguing his point.  In recent years Ritter has gotten himself into legal trouble by... well, let's say by doing things on the internet with individuals posing as ostensibly underage girls.   Bai focuses on the ways in which Ritter's belligerent insistence of his own rightness explains both his Iraq behavior and his refusal to plea bargain his current legal difficulties:

If there is a connection between Ritter the activist and Ritter the accused...  it probably lies in the uncompromising, even heedless way in which he insists on his version of reality, and how he sees himself always as the victim of a system that is self-evidently corrupt. “I’m someone who believes the truth needs to be heard,” Ritter told me. “And if I’m empowered with the truth, I’m not going to shut up.”

Such stridency has repercussions. Taken in isolation, this latest case against Ritter... is hardly the kind of thing that lands you on “America’s Most Wanted.” It’s not as though Ritter, who is the father of twin 19-year-old daughters, was trolling an adolescent site looking to prey on minors. Nor did he ever hint at meeting with the fictional Emily face to face. There’s little question the man needs help, but such cases are routinely disposed of through plea bargains, and prosecutors in Ritter’s case were willing, initially, to let him escape with a single guilty plea, which may well have meant probation rather than jail. Especially given Ritter’s previous arrests in New York, this seems to have been a more-than-equitable resolution, and most accused sex offenders in the age of Megan’s Law would probably have jumped at it.

But Ritter has forcefully insisted all along that he did nothing wrong, beyond betraying Marina’s trust. “Why would I plead guilty to something I didn’t do?” he asked me, when I raised the issue of a plea arrangement. I suggested he might have done it to avoid going to jail.

“No,” he replied. “Wrong answer. Then I’m not a man. Then I’m not a human being.”

People like Ritter might be truth-tellers, but because they have additional baggage, their ability to perform their truth-telling function becomes compromised.

This fact was getting me down, but then I read Jack Shafer's excellent review of Max Holland's Leak:  Why Mark Felt Became Deep Throat.  Shafer's review is designed to puncture the romantic myth of Felt as a lone crusader who dared to bring down Nixon because It Was The Right Thing To Do: 

Recasting Deep Throat as an avenger and not a patriot, Leak illuminates our understanding of the press by explaining why sources leak. Anonymous sources — especially Washington’s anonymous sources — almost invariably have an ax to grind, as Betty Cuniberti established in her classic August 1987 Los Angeles Times story. One unnamed Reagan administration official tells her that most Reagan White House leaks are “personal,” aimed at other White House officials. “There’s a great deal of infighting,” he tells her.

Reagan White House staffers who couldn’t get the president’s attention would slip “Message-to-Reagan” leaks to the press to generate news stories or press conference questions to which he would have to respond, Cuniberti writes. The art of the leak requires information to be packaged just right, she notes. A national security adviser who wanted to plant a story in the press — a so-called authorized leak — might avoid giving the information directly to a reporter because the reporter would rightly view it as a self-serving leak designed to advance the administration’s views. Even rookie reporters get suspicious of sources’ motives. Better to have a subordinate convey the leak to disguise the motive and make the information seem more authentically newsworthy.

Leak‘s persuasive position is that Felt gamed Woodward, making him think that he was on the side of the angels when what he was trying to do was screw his enemies and become the next J. Edgar Hoover. That’s not a criticism of Woodward or his Watergate work, which by the standards of any day was very good....

Nor was Felt’s gaming of Woodward unusual. Every source leaks for a reason, and it’s usually not about preserving the constitution and the American way. As Stephen Hess writes, sources have many reasons to leak. They leak to boost their own egos. They leak to make a goodwill deposit with a reporter that they hope to withdraw in the future. They leak to advance their policy initiative. They leak to launch trial balloons and sometimes even to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. But until contesting evidence arrives, it’s usually a safe bet that a leak is what Hess calls an “Animus Leak,” designed to inflict damage on another party.

Shafer is trying to burst the noble bubble surrounding Felt, but to this political scientist, his argument was very soothing.  A world in which we must rely on whistleblowers that possess martyr complexes for important information about national security is a dangerous world.  It is too easy to tarnish whistleblowers because of their other personality tropes. 

Bureaucrats or career-minded political appointees leaking to advance their own aims, however, covers a lot more rational actors.  Even if their motives are far from pure, the combination of individual incentives encourages a lot more leaking than would otherwise occur.  Like Adam Smith's invisible hand, even if the intent is not for policymakers to provide more information to the press, the combined effect is a larger and more accurate spotlight on the foreign policy machine. 

My point:  I'll take a world of greedy and power-seeking bureaucrats over a world of noble, self-righteous whistleblowers to promote transparency in foreign policy and national security. 

What do you think? 

Last week I had a good rant about the persecution complex of realist international relations scholars. 

This is a discussion that needs to continue, however -- see the responses by Justin Logan, Alan Alexandroff and Steve Saideman, for example.  So, I invited two of the smartest and least-likely-to-whine realists I know to respond.  John Schuessler (an assistant professor in the Department of Strategy at the Air War College) and Sebastian Rosato (an assistant professor of political science at Notre Dame) offer their take below.  I will respond later in the week: 

Realists are Right After All

Sebastian Rosato and John Schuessler

Dan Drezner claims that academic realists have a "strong, cultivated sense of victimhood." He is tired of what he sees as their unjustified griping that they are pariahs in the academy, among the general public, and in the foreign policy community. And he wants them to just come out and admit that they've failed to "popularize their own ideas."

As it happens, his post comes shortly after the publication of our article, "A Realist Foreign Policy for the United States" (Perspectives on Politics), in which we have a different take on these issues.

Let's start with whether or not people like realism. In our article, we ask what kind of policy the United States can pursue that will ensure its security while minimizing the likelihood of war. We then point out that IR scholars have tended to dismiss the possibility that realism has anything to contribute to the debate. The charge comes in a variety of forms, from ‘realism causes war' to ‘realism prevents progress.' This prompts critics to label realists as irresponsible or even immoral and to call for more ‘enlightened' or ‘morally acceptable' alternatives. It is for good reason that Robert Gilpin has said that "no one loves a political realist." This hostility extends to the policy community. As we discuss in our article, U.S. policymakers have taken and continue to take their cues not from realism but from its main theoretical antagonist, liberalism. There is no need to take our word for it, however. John Owen, Colin Dueck, and Michael Desch, among others, have pointed out that American foreign policy has been guided by liberal principles since the Founding.

Our article describes and defends a realist foreign policy to guide U.S. decision makers. Our recommendation, which is logically derived from realist principles, is that the United States should balance against other great powers as well as against hostile minor powers that inhabit strategically important regions of the world, while otherwise practicing restraint. We then show that had the United States and other great powers followed our realist prescriptions, some of the most important wars of the past century-including the world wars, the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War-might have been averted. Simply put, realism offers the prospect of security without war.

We wrote our article at least in part to popularize realist thinking. This would not count for much, and realists could still be accused of failing to spread their ideas, if we were the first realists to do so. But as we note, realists have been vocal contributors to the debate on U.S. foreign policy since World War II, even going so far as to oppose both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Since the end of the Cold War, realists have been some of the loudest voices calling for restraint, with John Mearsheimer, Chris Layne and Steve Walt all urging the United States to adopt an "offshore balancing" posture, which overlaps considerably with our own preferred policy. On the merits, such an approach, and the realism that underpins it, should be popular. After all, if the United States had abided by its precepts, it likely would have been involved in fewer wars than it has been over the past few decades.

We did not write "A Realist Foreign Policy for the United States" with Dan's criticisms in mind, but if we had we would also have noted the following.

For one thing, we have cited only some of the evidence that Americans dislike realism. Dan argues elsewhere that the public is not unsympathetic to realism, but others have claimed that public opinion is essentially liberal. As for the foreign policy community, we share Justin Logan's sense that there's a dearth or even a complete absence of bona fide realists inside the Beltway. Realism's approval ratings in the academy are hardly better. Dan's concession that realism is not the most popular paradigm among IR scholars is an understatement-indeed, if you ignore Marxism, it's the least popular approach in the field. As a recent survey concludes, "realism does not have the hold on the field it is often thought to have" and, in fact, it never did. Realist research has never made up more than 15% of published articles, for example. And although we agree with Dan that realism commands a lot of attention in the classroom, it is typically presented as a crude, dated, unscientific, amoral approach that needs to be heavily amended or, preferably, jettisoned entirely. No other approach receives as much criticism.

This is unfortunate, as realists seem to turn up on the right side of history as often as not-the Vietnam and Iraq wars are prominent examples-and may do so again if the Obama administration stumbles into a foolish war with Iran (a war that prominent realists have opposed).

This is not to say that we feel victimized.  But as card-carrying members of an academic approach that is excoriated and ignored despite being regularly vindicated by real world events and providing a better recipe for peace and stability than the alternatives, we admit to being confused.

Note: John Schuessler's views are his own and do not represent those of the Air War College, the Air Force, or the Department of Defense.

Ross Douthat had a great column to start the new year, offering his own interpretation on the Ron Paul phenomenon.  His last few paragraphs:

There’s often a fine line between a madman and a prophet. Perhaps Paul has emerged as a teller of some important truths precisely because in many ways he’s still as far out there as ever.

The United States is living through an era of unprecedented elite failure, in which America’s public institutions are understandably distrusted and our leadership class is justifiably despised. Yet politicians of both parties are required, by the demands of partisanship, to embrace the convenient lie that our problem can be pinned exclusively on the other side’s elites — as though both liberals and conservatives hadn’t participated in the decisions that dug our current hole.

In this climate, it sometimes takes a fearless crank to expose realities that neither Republicans nor Democrats are particularly eager to acknowledge.

In both the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, Paul has been the only figure willing to point out the deep continuities in American politics — the way social spending grows and overseas commitments multiply no matter which party is in power, the revolving doors that connect K Street to Congress and Wall Street to the White House, the long list of dubious policies and programs that both sides tacitly support. In both election cycles, his honest extremism has sometimes cut closer to the heart of our national predicament than the calculating partisanship of his more grounded rivals. He sometimes rants, but he rarely spins — and he’s one of the few figures on the national stage who says “a plague on both your houses!” and actually means it.

Obviously it would be better for the country if this message weren’t freighted with Paul’s noxious baggage, and entangled with his many implausible ideas. But would it be better off without his presence entirely? I’m not so sure.

Neither prophets nor madmen should be elected to the presidency. But neither can they safely be ignored (emphases added).

Conor Friedersdorf and Glenn Greenwald take a similar position.  Greenwald in particular argues that Paul's positions on foreign policy/national security/civil liberties are so much better than the bipartisan consensus view that Paul's tacit approval of those odious newsletters should be heavily discounted.  As Greenwald puts it, progressives who don't support Paul must apparently accept the following preference ordering:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

I'm of two minds about this line of argument.  On the one hand, there is no denying that Paul's worldview has helped him to launch a powerful critique on American foreign policy.  This can't just be dismissed as "yes, he was right on Iraq, but..." either.  As Douthat, Friedersdorf and Greenwald observe, Paul really is the only candidate to bring up these issues not named Gary Johnson or Jon Hunstman.  His hypothesis that the United States has invited some blowback by overly militarizing its foreign policy cannot be easily dismissed.  

Think of it this way:  Paul is a hedgehog.  He knows One Big Thing and uses it to construct his worldview.  We know from Philip Tetlock that hedgehogs are less likely to be right when making predictions than foxes -- those people who know a little about a lot of things. Hedgehogs outperform foxes is in getting big macro-consequential events correct, however.  We tend to ignore such predictions, however, because hedgehogs usually lack the emotional intelligence necessary to persuade nonbelievers.  I  want Paul banging on about the dangers of excessive government intrusion and overexpansion.  That's not nothing.

Here's the thing, though -- precisely because Paul is a hedgehog, he brings other less-than-desirable qualities to the table.  I don't think his intriguing take on foreign policy and civil liberties can be separated from, say, his batshit-insane views about the Federal Reserve.  In fact, let me just edit Greenwald's proposed tradeoff so that it's a bit more accurate:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have some Muslim children inadvertently die by covert drones and cluster bombs, and a disproportionate percentage of America’s minorities imprisoned for no good reason, and the CIA taking action with minimal checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers and lots of rhetoric & covert action against Iran that makes Glenn Greenwald hyperventilate in exchange for avoiding a complete and total meltdown of the global economy due to the massive deflation that would naturally follow from a re-constituted gold standard. 

I don't like this choice, but it's an easy one to make.    

To paraphrase both Douthat and This is Spinal Tap, there's a fine line between prophetic and crazy.  I would posit that only someone who fanatically accepted this entire worldview would have been capable of inspiring the Ron Paul movement.  Only those leaders with sufficient levels of ideological zeal to never compromise, never bend on principle, until they eventually reach a position of power are able to foment revolution.  This kind of zeal requires a singular worldview that might contain some worthwhile elements but is likely also based on some axioms or articles of faith that seem a little nuts and makes the person wrong an awful lot of the time.  These kinds of leaders, precisely because they were in the political wilderness, will tend to be supremely convinced in their own rightness if they ever win power. 

Ron Paul is great at affecting the marketplace of ideas.  He would be worse than Newt Gingrich if he actually became  president, however.  The great presidents -- Washington, Lincoln, FDR -- knew the when to compromise and when to stand firm, when to lead public opinion and when to follow it.  They were, in other words, great politicians.   The presidents who simply knew they were right on everything and resisted compromise -- Jackson, Wilson, Bush 43 -- tended towards the disastrous.  Paul would be part of the latter group. 

So if Ron Paul wants to influence the debate, that's good.  He raises important questions about important issues.  He's also wrong about some really important issues and therefore should be kept away from the presidency. 

Fortunately, as James Hohmann's Politico story suggests today, Paul and his supporters seem to care about the former more than the latter: 

As much as anything else, [Paul's] pitch centers on sending a message.

“This is ideological,” he said here late Friday night at his last campaign stop of 2011. “So it isn’t a numbers game. It has to do with determination.”

He paraphrased a Samuel Adams quote, saying, “It doesn’t take a majority to prevail. It takes an irate, determined minority keen on starting the brushfires of liberty in the minds of men.”

“So in many ways, it’s a political revolution to change these ideas, but it’s an intellectual revolution,” Paul explained, wrapping up a nearly hourlong speech. “It’s a change in ideas about economic policy, understanding our traditions about foreign policy, understanding monetary policy. This is where we’re making progress. This is where we have advanced so much over the last couple decades and even in the last four years.”...

Many of his die-hard supporters see him more as an alarm-sounding Paul Revere than a Founding Father.

“I would say its 10 percent campaign, 90 percent a movement,” said Quaitemes Williams, a 26-year-old nursing student who drove from Dallas to volunteer for the full week before the caucuses. “Once you’ve seen the light, you can never go back to the dark. Once you learn about the Federal Reserve and foreign policy, you can’t go back to thinking in the right-left dichotomy.” (emphasis added)

That last quotation, by the way, is part of what I find problematic about the Paul movement.  The revolutionary leader worries me -- but the Jacobin followers scare the ever-living crap out of me.   

Your humble blogger has  just completed writing a long essay on the 2012 candidates and their foreign policy views that will be coming out soon.  Readers will be shocked, shocked to learn that it's pretty scathing. 

I'm hardly the only person to make this point.  When Senator Lindsay Graham is castigating his fellow Republicans, you know there's a problem.  FP's own David Rothkopf thinks this is a harbinger of Obama winning re-election.  And now the New York Times' Michael Shear reports that the GOP presidential candidates' myriad foreign policy gaffes are starting to embarrass the Republicans' foreign policy wonks: 

[T]he embarrassing moments are piling up, and some veteran Republicans are beginning to wonder whether the cumulative effect weakens the party brand, especially in foreign policy and national security, where Republicans have typically dominated Democrats.

“It is an ‘Animal House.’ It’s a food fight,” said Kenneth Duberstein, a chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan. “Honestly, the Republican debates have become a reality show. People have to be perceived as being capable of governing this country, of being the leader of the free world.” ....

[S]ome veterans of past Republican administrations said the candidates’ national security stumbles could have a more lasting impact on how voters perceive the party in the future.

“This is the core of the Republican brand. You mess with it at your peril,” said Peter Feaver, a national security official under President George W. Bush. He compared the foreign policy flubs to reports about safety problems in Toyota vehicles.

“The whole reason you bought a Toyota was so that you didn’t have those problems,” he said. “It cuts directly to the essence of the brand. Republicans should be concerned about this.”

George W. Bush confronted some of the same concerns in his party during his 2000 campaign, especially after he was unable to name the leader of Chechnya, Taiwan, India or Pakistan. But Mr. Bush surrounded himself with veteran Republican foreign policy advisers who helped reassure the doubters.

Peter Wehner, a former speechwriter for Mr. Bush, said that “in the short run, you can do some damage to the so-called brand,” but he said long-term damage would happen only if the party’s presidential nominee made such mistakes.

“The key thing is the nominee,” Mr. Wehner said. “One worries, if you are a Republican, if you get too many statements like this.”

Mr. Wehner said many of the Republican candidates had demonstrated a “pride in ignorance and a lack of knowledge.” But he predicted that voters would not reward those kinds of appeals during the primaries and caucuses.

Peter is a good friend, and I don't like to see him this anguished in print, so let me say that for once I agree with Peter Wehner.  Six months from now, when we know who the GOP nominee will be, I suspect a lot of the ignorance on display right now will be forgotten. 

I say this because, oddly enough, even before a vote has been cast, the political ecosystem actually seems to be working.  Sure, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain have had their moments in the sun -- and then the media reported on them, and people actually listened to what they were saying.  At which point, they crashed and burned.  They didn't only crash and burn because of their foreign policy gaffes -- but I don't think they helped. 

I can understand if international observers look at what's been said and gasp in horror at the American process of selecting a major party nominee.  In the end, however, the difference between the system now and the system fifty years ago is that nowadays someone like Cain can enter the race.  Before, the barriers to entry would have been higher.  Now, the barriers to entry are low, but the crucible of the campaign is far more fierce.  So people like Cain or Bachmann can enter and then be destroyed. 

At this juncture, it looks like Mitt Romney is the most likely nominee, and he's also the candidate who's done the most heavy lifting in thinking about foreign policy.  There's a lot of stuff to criticize in his foreign policy views, to be sure -- but that's true of Barack Obama as well.  Romney does pass the test of someone whohas some background knowledge about the world, and someone who has actually bothered to think about the subject.  Post-primary, that will be the foreign policy brand of the GOP. 

[And if it's not Romney?--ed.  Then it's Newt Gingrich, who, again, has demonstrated a little knowledge about foreign affairs.  Throw in Rick Santorum and Jon Hunstman as wild card candidates yet to have their bubble.  Huntsman clearly knows foreign affairs, and that's also been Santorum's strength in the debates.] 

Don't worry, Peter -- the wheel is turning. 

Yesterday at NRO, the always-interesting Reihan Salam Josh Barro* offered a robust defense of inside-the Beltway thinking about economic policy -- which he labels the "Washington Consensus" (NOTE:  not exactly the same thing as this Washington Consensus): 

While it contains a lot of errors, the Washington Consensus is right more often than it is wrong. Even more importantly, critiques of the Washington Consensus are wrong more of then than they are right—meaning that taking Washington Establishment down a peg will tend to do more harm than good....

Since the Washington Consensus contains lots of errors, there are outsiders with better ideas in these areas. Nominal GDP targeting, championed by Scott Sumner and others, would constitute a major improvement of monetary policy. Higher capital requirements and a tax on financial institutions that benefit from government backstops, among other reforms, would reduce systemic risk in the banking sector.

But the question is, would empowering outsiders at the expense of the establishment tend to replace the Washington Establishment’s biggest policy errors with outside wisdom? Or would it more often gut sound-but-unpopular policy and replace existing errors with bigger errors?

There are numerous policy areas where the hegemony of the Washington Establishment is the only thing saving America from popular but terrible ideas—trade, immigration, foreign aid.

I tend to agree with Reihan, particularly with his TARP example.  What I'm wondering is whether this holds true with foreign affairs as well.  Let's face it, the foreign policy community (myself included) supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  Clearly, we have made Very Big Mistakes.  Foreign policy wonks outside the mainstream are very fond of claiming that being outside the mainstream is evidence that they're right.  There are also many areas where the foreign policy consensus seems unsatisfying at best or catastrophic at worst. 

That said, it'a far from clear to me that populist foreign policy responses would necessarily be all that much better.  One could argue that, in toto, the American public is pretty damn realist -- but I doubt that a populist foreign policy would actually resemble realpolitik.  The problem gets back to Salam's point -- even if there is mass discontent with the foreign policy establishment, there is not necessarily a lot of consensus about what should be in its stead.  Some critics would likely prefer a radical retrenchment of American military power -- combined with a similar retrenchment in economic openness.  Others would prefer a greater embrace of multilateral structures -- regardless of whether they actually worked or not. 

My hunch is that more bad would occur than good -- but I want to hear from readers on this.  Is there such a thing as foreign policy "common sense"?  And, if so, would we see it implemented if the foreign policy community was winked out of existence?   

*Yes, Barro is always interesing as well

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.

So I see Rick Perry gave a quasi-foreign policy speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars 112th National Convention.  Here's the gist of the foreign policy section: 

[A]  president should never send our sons and daughters into war without a plan to win, and the resources to make that possible.

In the dangerous world we live in today, our enemies often don't wear a uniform or swear allegiance to a particular flag, but instead to an ideology of hatred.

As the tenth anniversary of the attacks of 9-11 approaches, we must renew our commitment to taking the fight to the enemy, wherever they are, before they strike at home.

I do not believe America should fall subject to a foreign policy of military adventurism.

We should only risk shedding American blood and spending American treasure when our vital interests are threatened.

And we should always look to build coalitions among the nations to protect the mutual interests of freedom-loving people.

It is not in our interests to go it alone. We respect our allies, and must always seek to engage them in military missions.

At the same time, we must be willing to act when it is time to act.

We cannot concede the moral authority of our nation to multi-lateral debating societies.

And when our interests are threatened, American soldiers should be led by American commanders.

I say this because we owe to them, and to their loved ones, to make sure any war we wage is led by the country with the most advanced military technology and the best training.

We have the finest fighting force the world has ever known.

We have a generation of heroes who love their nation, and who willingly sacrifice all that we may always be free.

The men and women of the United States Military are the greatest ambassadors of freedom this nation has ever sent abroad.

That's why, when we send them to war, we must give them every weapon and every resource to help them succeed.

James Lindsay analyzes the content over at CFR, concluding that, "There is something in it for every significant foreign policy constituency in the GOP," although "any mainstream Republican or Democratic presidential candidate could have given Perry’s speech."  This is likely because, "while Perry’s speech was heavy on foreign policy bromides it was short on specifics."

Lindsay is being kind -- this speech is ninety-eight percent concentrated pablum (contra Lindsay, the "multilateral debating society" crack does signal it being a GOP speech).  Seriously, I hereby challenge my friends at Shadow Government who might be Perry-friendly to find something of interest in this speech.  It's the foreign policy equivalent of this scene from The Distinguished Gentleman: 

Now, to be fair to Perry, this San Antonio News-Express news story suggests that he had some constraints on what kind of speech he could deliver.  So, really, I'm not sure that anything of consequence can be divined from this.... er.... assemblage of cliches that maybe, just maybe, passes the Turing Test. 

Still, what Perry said is such pure, unadulterated boilerplate that, as a foreign policy commentator, one must step back and gape in wonder.  Reading it, the absence of anything interesting kept nagging me as hauntingly familiar. 

And then I realized -- Rick Perry had just delivered the Wolf Blitzer of foreign policy speeches!!  It's familiar, yet utterly devoid of interesting content!! 

And for that, Rick Perry is the distinguished inaugural nominee of the Wolf Blitzer Award for Foreign Policy Boilerplate. 

Here's an open secret -- most American foreign policy observers loathe domestic politics.  To those who seek to define and distill the national interest, the notion that factions or parties can get in the way of the common good is very, very frustrating.  This is why, whenever gridlock breaks out in Washington, there is a spasm of caterwauling from prominent foreign policy thinkers that Something.  Must.  Be  Done. 

This leads to some silly memes, like claims that a third party will break the logjam.  It won't -- a glance at Duverger's Law and you know that the first-past-the-post electoral system in this country means that a two-party system is the only stable long-term equilibrium.  A third party in the United States could only achieve electoral viability in one of two ways:  either supplanting one of the existing parties, or focusing on success in a particular region.  Since neither of these outcomes has occurred since the Civil War, I'm not holding my breath. 

Gridlock frustration also leads to proposals of Grand Diagnoses and Remedies for Fixing the System.  Fareed Zakaria goes down this road, offering a diagnosis of why partisanship has been rising in the United States and then links to Mickey Edwards' essay in The Atlantic of how to fix things.  Zakaria, riffing off of Edwards, lists four reasons why partisanship is so high: 

1)  Redistricting has created safe seats so that for most House members, their only concern is a challenge from the right for Republicans and the left for Democrats....

2) Party primaries have been taken over by small groups of activists who push even popular senators to extreme positions.

3) Changes in Congressional rules have also made it far more difficult to enact large, compromise legislation.

4) Political polarization has also been fueled by a new media, which is also narrowcast.

These sound compelling, except that A) none of them really explain increased polarization in the Senate; and B) only the fourth trend is in any way recent (the rest of these phenomenas can be traced back to the 1970's).   

The real problem with Congress is that any proposed institutional reform to correct the problems would require either a dilution of legislative power or a dilution of the minority's power to obstruct.  Neither minority nor majority parties in Congress will be interested in moves like that unless and until we're in a crisis that made 2008 look like a ripple in the pond. 

If you are looking to this humble blogger for ways out of this current problem... um... look elsewhere.  My training is in international relations, and I've found that people with that kind of training tend to prefer policy reforms that provide political leeway and insulation to the executive branch.  These measures are appealing because they tend to minimize the number of stupid interactions with galactically stupid members of Congress.  Over the long-term, however, even a stupid Congress still serves as a valuable check on executive branch authority. 

I'm as frustrated as the next foreign policy observer when it comes to the current policy paralysis.  I know my own kind, however, and we suffer from the flawed belief that there was a halcyon era of bipartisanship in the foreign policy days of yore.  Be very, very wary when a foreign policy pundit gives advice about how to reform the American system of government.  Most of the time they are relying on decades-old Introduction to American Government arguments that are either obsolecent or incentive incompatible. 

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Your humble blogger has been rather persistent in pointing out the virtues of bridging the gap between international relations scholars and policymakers, and rather adamant in insisting why this hasn't happened: 

[T]he fundamental difference between economic policy and foreign policy is that the former community accepts the idea that economic methodologies and theory-building enterprises have value, and are worth using as a guide to policymaking.  This doesn't mean economists agree on everything, but it does mean they are all speaking a common language and accept the notion of external validity checks on their arguments. 

That consensus simply does not exist within the foreign policy community.... Many members of the foreign policy community explicitly reject the notion that social science methodologies and techniques can explain much in world politics.  They therefore are predisposed to reject the kind of scholarship that political scientists of all stripes generate.   This might be for well-founded reasons, it might be simple innumeracy hostility to the academy, or it might be a combination of the two.  I'd love to have a debate about whether that's a good or bad thing, but my point is that's the reality we face.

Now I see in The Forum that James Lee Ray is also arguing that political science merits a greater role in foreign policymaking. The abstract for his article:

Foreign policy decision makers tend to rely on historical analogies. The “surge” in Afghanistan, for example, was inspired in part by the “surge” in Iraq. Processes for dealing with foreign policy issues involving the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were substantially different from those processes in the Bush and Obama administrations aimed at dealing with economic crises in 2008 and 2009. The latter processes were influenced extensively by economists, especially in the Obama administration. The decisions to send additional troops to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan involved relatively few political scientists. More substantial input from political scientists in the decision making process about the surge in Afghanistan might have produced more knowledgeable and informative analyses of relevant historical and political data in the form of structured focused comparisons of the wars and counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as analyses and interpretations of data on larger numbers of cases pertaining to broader phenomena of which the US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are examples. Perhaps political scientists deserve a role within foreign policy making processes more similar to that reserved for economists in processes focusing on economic issues.

Within the article itself, Ray is quite explicit in comparing the influence of political scientists to economists:

[I]t is probably safe to say that no President would consider appointing anyone but economists to the Council of Economic Advisers. So perhaps there could be a space for political scientists in foreign policy-making processes analogous to that niche for economists on the Council of Economic Advisers in processes set in place by the U.S. government to deal with economic issues?...

It is true, perhaps, that economics  is a more coherent academic field of inquiry than political science, or than the subfield that deals with international politics. Perhaps for that reason, economists are better placed to offer advice to governmental decision-makers than are political scientists. Nevertheless, the argument here is that the greater deference shown to economists by government officials when economic issues are dealt  with than that accorded to political scientists when foreign policy issues arise is not entirely justified....

If the argument here is valid, then perhaps there should be more space set aside in foreign policy-making processes  in the U.S. government for political scientists. For example, perhaps National Security Advisers should be political scientists, for reasons analogous to those  that have up to this time led to the appointment of nothing but economists to the Council of Economic Advisers. 

I pretty sympathetic with Ray's conclusions, and therefore I really, really want to agree with his causal logic.  It's just that I don't. 

The gist of Ray's evidence is that the Obama administration relied on analogical reasoning in deciding on the Afghan strategy in 2009, and therefore concluding that a "surge" there would work as it did in Iraq.  If more political scientists had been in the room, Ray posits, perhaps this cognitive failure would have been avoided.  In comparison, Ray observes that the Iraq surge decision was lousy with advanced poli sci degrees (including David Petraeus, William Luti, Eliot Cohen, J.D. Crouch, and FP's own Peter Feaver). 

There are a few holes in this analysis.  First, I'm not totally sold on the cases used by Ray.  True, political scientists played a large role in the surge decision in Iraq, which is conventionally viewed as having worked.  The thing is, political scientists (Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol) played an even larger role in the decision to invade Iraq , which is conventionally viewed as having not worked.  Ray's case slection is too circumscribed. 

Second, had Obama consulted more international relations scholars, he would have received perfectly muddled advice.  Ray himself acknowledges this: 

The evidence just reviewed that is potentially relevant to the decision by the Obama Administration about the surge in Afghanistan tends to point in diverse directions. Some of it casts doubt on the prudence of the Obama Administration’s decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, while other findings could be used to support that decision.

Had Obama or his advisor consulted extensively with academic IR specialists, he still would have needed to exercise political judgment to determine which advice was worth following. 

To be clear, I strongly favor having more Ph.D.s in political science in the loop on foreign policy decisionmaking.  I'm just not sure Ray's case is all that persuasive. 

What do you think? 

Fareed Zakaria's Washington Post column today opens as follows:

Every few months, commentators find a new grand strategy that animates Barack Obama. First he was the antiwar candidate, because his rise in the Democratic primaries had much to do with his early and consistent opposition to the Iraq war. But even some on the right, including Robert Kagan, pointed out that he was interventionist on other issues, such as Afghanistan. Some criticized his multilateralism, pointing to his offers of engagement to all comers, from Iran to Russia to China. More recently, watching his vigorous outreach to Asian countries threatened by China, the scholar Daniel Drezner concluded that the new grand strategy was one of “counterpunching.”

In fact, the search itself is misguided. The doctrinal approach to foreign policy doesn’t make much sense anymore. Every American foreign policy “doctrine” but one was formulated during the Cold War, for a bipolar world, when American policy toward one country — the Soviet Union — dominated all U.S. strategy and was the defining aspect of global affairs. (The Monroe Doctrine is the exception.) In today’s multipolar, multilayered world, there is no central hinge upon which all American foreign policy rests. Policymaking looks more varied, and inconsistent, as regions require approaches that don’t necessarily apply elsewhere (emphasis added).

A minor point and then a major point.  Minor point:  as I said before, there's a difference between a foreign policy "doctrine" and a grand strategy, and Zakaria is conflating the two here. 

The major point:  the whole "world is too complex and multilayered to fit into a grand strategy" sounds great -- except that it is precisely in this kind of uncertain environment when countries need to prioritize what's important and what's not.  Or, as I phrased it in Foreign Affairs: 

A grand strategy consists of a clear articulation of national interests married to a set of operational plans for advancing them. Sometimes, such strategies are set out in advance, with actions following in sequence. Other times, strategic narratives are offered as coherent explanations connecting past policies with future ones. Either way, a well-articulated grand strategy can offer an interpretative framework that tells everybody, including foreign policy officials themselves, how to understand the administration's behavior.

That's what a coherent grand strategy should provide.  Admittedly, it's much easier to do this when a single overarching threat exists -- but it's still necessary in a complex world. 

Zakaria seems to equate a grand strategy with rigidity, but that's hardly necessary.  Linking back to my previous post on whether Reagan was really a Reaganite, one could argue that Reagan's greatest strength was his ability to simultaneously articulate a toghness in his rhetoric but have a political gifts to make exceptions when necessary.  This is the only way a president who traded arms for hostages, negotiated with terrorists, refused to escalate a crisis with the Soviet Union, cut and ran after a terrorist attack, and came veeery close to negotiating a nuclear-free world with the Soviet Union could have the reputaion as a hawk.   

I agree with Zakaria that there are times when grand strategy is not necessary -- but this ain't one of them.  Or, to repeat what I said back in April: 

[I]f I were Obama's foreign policy team, I'd start thinking very hard about a speech that clearly prioritizes American interests and values.  Because unless the president defines his grand strategy, pundits will be more than happy to define it -- badly -- for him.

I have an essay in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs entitled, "Does Obama Have a Grand Strategy?"  

I daresay the title is pretty self-explanatory.  It's subscriber only temporarily accessible to non-subscribers --  but here's the gist: 

Despite what its critics say, the Obama administration has actually had not just one grand strategy so far but two. The first strategy, multilateral retrenchment, was designed to curtail the United States' overseas commitments, restore its standing in the world, and shift burdens onto global partners. This strategy was clearly articulated, but it delivered underwhelming policy results.

The second, emergent grand strategy is focused on counterpunching. More recently, the Obama administration has been willing to assert its influence and ideals across the globe when challenged by other countries, reassuring allies and signaling resolve to rivals. This strategy has performed better but has been poorly articulated. It is this vacuum of interpretation that the administration's critics have rushed to fill. Unless and until the president and his advisers define explicitly the strategy that has been implicit for the past year, the president's foreign policy critics will be eager to define it--badly--for him.

That's the thesis, but to be honest, my favorite passage also happens to be the snarkiest: 

If grand strategies are so overrated, why the furious debate? For two reasons, one petty and one substantive. The petty reason is that everyone in the U.S. foreign policy community secretly hopes to be the next Kennan. When a commentator bewails the failings of the United States' grand strategy, it is usually because he has scribbled down his own set of musings on the topic. Indeed, complaints about grand strategy have plagued every U.S. administration since the end of World War II for precisely this reason. Grand strategies are easy to devise-they are forward-looking, operate in generalities, and make for great book tours. Whenever a foreign policy commentator articulates a new grand strategy, an angel gets its wings.

It's funny because it's true. 

[What's the substantive reason?  Tell me!!  TELL ME!!--ed.  You'll have to read the whole thing to find out.]