The Virtual Think Tank and thinking about security threats in the Twenty-First Century

With this post I'm opening up the comment section on Pundita blog.
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Mark Safranski, whose ZenPundit blog has been a staple at Pundita since the early days, is a contributor to the newly-published Threats in the Age of Obama, a collection of essays edited by Michael Tanji.

ZenPundit has assembled quotes from a few of the essays in Tanji's book, which give an idea of the breadth of interests represented by the contributors. I haven't yet read Threats, and I'm not familiar with all the people that Tanji has gathered for his book (see the list of contributors below). But from the names I'm familiar with the book is a good overview of the security threats that Obama's administration needs to deal with.

The book is also an example of the Virtual Think Tank; as such it's as much an example of cross-discipline thinking as it is a primer on this era's security threats.

Daniel Drezner, from his new perch at the Foreign Policy website, reported a few days ago that President Obama has been raiding America's public policy schools in a quest to stuff his foreign policy team with university deans. This isn't the first time a U.S. presidential administration has built an in-house think tank by pulling academics from their chair at a university. But no matter how much academic brainpower is assembled to advise the President, the history of results is always depressingly (and often tragically) the same:

The opinion of academics whose conclusions most closely serve the administration's partisan leanings and defense goals come to dominate foreign policy. And because the academics are specialists, who are rarely given to investigating outside their discipline, galactic-sized chunks of reality completely escape their attention.

That explains the utter weirdness that has characterized U.S. foreign policy for decades and the escalating number of purported Black Swan events to beset these shores. ('Well it just happened like a bolt out of the blue, Mr President.')

Tanji, a former supervisory intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, is well-aware of the limitations of the Virtual Think Tank (see his essay on the topic, which I've linked to above). But clearly he hopes its unfettered scope will prevent the worst oversights to arise from the blinkered research and analysis that academia produces.

We should all hope. In this era, when a handful of people can wreak as much destruction as a million-man army, the window for saying, 'Back to the drawing board' is very narrow.

Academic specialists are necessary contributors to all types of government policy, of course. The systemic problem generated by the approach is that the traditional think-tank, and the Washington institutions that rely on them, tend to limit the type of specialist whose views are considered.

And because the spur of the profit motive is largely absent from government deliberations, there isn't much incentive to rigorously question a viewpoint once it becomes entrenched at the policy level. The questioning tends to be forced in the wake of a massive failure, which is the wrong time to cast around for fresh input.

The beauty of the Virtual Tank is that it opens the door wide and encourages specialists from many disciplines and starkly opposing viewpoints to exchange ideas and pool data. That is especially vital in this era because there's a big difference between research and intelligence gathering and the kind of conclusions that derive from each. Both approaches are necessary.

I also note that Michael Tanji has invited Mark Safranski to contribute to his Threats Watch project, which is ongoing. The site is a good place to pick up news about emerging security issues.

And speaking of the Virtual Think Tank, ZenPundit has a roundup of contributions to the latest Clausewitz Roundtable.

In addition to Mark Safranski the contributors to Threats in the Age of Obama are: Daniel H. Abbott, Christopher Albon, Matt Armstrong, Matthew Burton, Molly Cernicek, Christopher Corpora, Shane Deichman, Adam Elkus, Matt Devost, Bob Gourley, Art Hutchinson, Tom Karako, Carolyn Leddy, Samuel Liles, Adrian Martin, Gunnar Peterson, Cheryl Rofer, Steve Schippert, Tim Stevens, and Shlok Vaidya.

Several of the contributors have a website/blog of their own, so Googling the names will call up their credentials.
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This entry is cross-posted at RBO with Procrustes' usual great taste in accompanying artwork.

The entry is also linked to with comments at ZenPundit and tdaxp.

Capitalism vs Democracy, Part 1: What is a foreign policy, anyhow?

It is fair to say that for almost a quarter century prior to September 12, 2001, the United States of America did not have a foreign policy; we had economics theories fobbed off as foreign policy. So from the long view it could be considered a kind of cosmic comment on insane policymaking that America's twin cathedrals to neoliberalism, globalization and economics 'shock therapy' were blasted to rubble.

One would hope that the catastrophic attack on the World Trade Center marked the end of the Insane Era in US foreign policy, but at this time the application of defense doctrine to US foreign policy should be considered a blip. There is no guarantee that the policy will outlive the Bush presidency. What's more, there's no guarantee that US foreign policy won't revert to a showcase for economics policy once Bush leaves office.

There was much right about the Reaganomics revolution -- for America. There was much right about Thatcher's economics revolution -- for Britain. There was much right about unrestricted global trade -- for the rich countries. And when viewed on a limited basis, the revolutions had positive consequences when applied to several countries. The revolutions had terrible consequences for developing countries that did not have the government and private sector infrastructures in place to accommodate a radical shift to privatization and free market economics, which could not count on NATO to come to their defense, and which had big trouble coming up with enough petrodollars to purchase energy to fuel their experimental market economy.

The fall guy for the debacles should have been the International Monetary Fund and their structural adjustment program. (Here's a foreign policy tip for governments: If you're going to do something that you're only hoping will work, you need a front man.) But no, the US government under Bush 41 and Clinton wanted to be the world standard bearer for neoliberalism, shock therapy and globalization.

So here we are today, with a good portion of the world hopping mad at the United States for pushing disastrous economic policies on them. And with foreign policy advisors who are still seriously wondering whether it's strictly necessary to work the concept of national defense into a nation's foreign policy.

To be continued tomorrow.

Pundita has been thinking, thinking, thinking

If you have not yet read Norman Podhoretz's Is the Bush Doctrine Dead? all you need do is Google the essay to get an idea of how much discussion it's touched off in US foreign policy circles and the blogosphere. As Powerline's Paul Mirengoff observes:

Mr. Podhoretz does a great job of exposing a number of myths -- from nearly all positions on the political spectrum -- about the Bush Doctrine and the extent of its author's adherence thereto.

To expose the myths Podhoretz makes short work of the embalmed thinking represented by William F. Buckley Jr. and George Will, the gargoyles still guarding the Council on Foreign Relations, and a host of chipmunks posing as learned commentators.

But the essay does more than dispute; it also proposes. In particular it reviews the "four pillars" that Norman Podhoretz has proposed as the foundation for the Bush Democracy Doctrine. It is the four pillars that plunged Pundita into deep thought. I note that Paul Mirengoff's brow is also furrowed in thought:

In the end, I agree that the Bush Doctrine is not dead. However, I fear that the Doctrine may have a fever due to a serious tension between two of its primary elements.

It is important not to get lost in the thicket: there are Bush's statements, and there are Mr. Podhoretz's pillars, which are not necessarily a seamlessly correct interpretation of the doctrine. But let us not beat around the bush; Mirengoff targets a conflict between incidents on the ground and the belief that democracy is the best antidote to terrorism. Then he takes a side in the conflict that might be called irrational but only if you're not in the crosshairs of a terrorist attack.

So now you have some idea of why Pundita has been lost in thought for days. If you've not yet had the fun of reading Podhoretz's long but beautifully written essay I suggest you settle down with it before turning to Mirengoff's pithy commentary.

I also point you to Saad Eddin Ibrahim's very important editorial for Wednesday's Washington Post titled The 'New Middle East' Bush is Resisting. His comments zero in on the very question Mirengoff raises and are a wonderful summary of the US compromises between short-term strategic interests in the Middle East and the aim of the Democracy Doctrine.*

Norman Podhoretz musters a defense of the compromises: the US had to make many compromises while fighting the Cold War and one should be grown up about the compromises needed to fell this century's global enemy. Although the defense is comforting I am not sure it stands up to brute logic.

If you complain I haven't given you enough reading for the week, you might wish to read or review We had to destroy this democracy to save it, which I published in November 2005. Note that no one in Washington has gotten around to tackling the sly question Pundita posed: "What is the difference between a market economy and a democracy?"

That is enough musing out loud. I return now to pondering those four pillars. Ready or not I will post on the status of my cogitations by noon Saturday. Until then, I hope you will join me in thinking on Podhoretz's many challenging points.

* As of this writing, the editorial is not yet available online without registering at the Post; if it's not available Thursday by 4:00 PM Eastern time I will post the entire writing at that time for readers who hate registering at websites.