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Incestuous Idea Formation and American Foreign Policy
Disasters
"Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven
pillars...leave simpleness and live, and walk in the way of insight."
Proverbs, 9:1
by
Guntram Werther Ph.D.
Gold Canyon, Arizona
Delivered to the Democratic Club of Gold Canyon on 3 March
2004
Preamble:
This is one in a series of non-partisan, public service talks that I have been
asked to give within the Gold Canyon area. The sole purpose is to generate
informed discussions about complex international affairs issues. I am not
getting paid, do not care how (or whether) you vote, and belong to no
organizations save some international military-security related research groups.
For today, Dr. Briggs asks me to address two immodest questions:
1) What does it take to get a non-partisan approach to better understanding
international affairs?"
2) What does it take to help any President make "best practice"
international affairs decisions?
***********
In a work of fiction, author Ursula LeGuin (1968: 34) placed her protagonist, a
young man who was trying to gain entry to a famous school that taught wisdom,
before a closed door. To enter the school and be taught wisdom, he had to get
past this door and its door keeper. He tried every manipulation, con, and device
he knew, yet the door remained firmly shut. Finally he said, "I cannot
enter, unless you help me." That did the trick!
"I cannot enter, unless you help me."
The word 'understand', which is a font of wisdom and insight, in its
etymology means "to stand under, beneath", "to have...a tolerant
and sympathetic attitude" (Webster's Dictionary, 1867 and 1961 versions).
There is, from this perspective, no wisdom or insight without understanding, and
no understanding without modesty, plus a tolerant and sympathetic attitude.
We normally prefer the other path, to - as C.S. Lewis so starkly states it -
"cover [our] eyes from the intolerable light of utter actuality"
(Lewis, C.S., The Problem of Pain. 1996 ed., 138). I want to draw our attention
to this divergence between the world as we prefer to see it, and the world as it
is.
Today, one could say that America faces the "intolerable light of utter
actuality" in our international affair's policy. Nobody in this room likely
understands why airplanes are flown into buildings, why in the 21st century we
have slavery in Africa and elsewhere, why child-soldiers amputate limbs of
innocents, and what we are to decently and effectively do in such a world.
1) "FEAR IS PAIN ARISING FROM THE ANTICIPATION OF EVIL."
Aristotle
It seems entirely natural that today many of us fear the international
environment and what may come. Anger seems appropriate given the circumstances;
rage even. We have great power as a nation, but we are seeing the limits of this
for as the Roman Seneca tells us "Every power is subject to a greater power
(Thyestes, 612).
I have nothing to say about anger, rage, or our international power. Building
greater wisdom and insight grounded in understanding within our international
institutions is the task that I have been requested to address. That is more
than enough.
2) "WE ARE PARTICULARLY BAD AT UNDERSTANDING SOCIETAL TRENDS." Dr.
David Kay (BBC Online 2-5-2004)
I want to approach our subject from a very non-traditional perspective.
Just after 9-11, I was on one of the just reopened flights to the Washington DC
- Baltimore area to attend an international conference of the Inter-University
Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. This is a biannual meeting of international
military and civilian scholars concerned about sociological, political, and
economic issues affecting armed forces and societies.
The rank level of attendance is extremely high, and so I had the privilege of
asking a former senior officer and associate dean of one of our military
academies the following question in reference to his just completed
presentation; "What are you doing about the incestuous nature of how we
train military officers and government analysts within our university
programs?" The issue as I framed it is that government agencies and foreign
affairs institutions give grants and fund research on issues that they feel - a
priori - to be relevant and of interest to themselves. Universities and graduate
students compete to get these grants by proposing research that fits the stated
agenda, and next - if all goes well - the government agencies, military
services, and private sector (for that matter) hire these newly graduated
experts to assess international events, issues, and trends. Are we not, I asked,
in effect training people to tell us what we want to hear?
His answer was, "We are working on that." He is an honest, decent man
who clearly saw the problem. We were then and are now still training people to
tell us what we want to hear. This is a major institutional problem, and we will
not, in my opinion, avoid foreign policy disasters until we train people to tell
us what we cannot now even imagine. This kind of learning does not come from set
bureaucratic agendas that prejudge what is "necessary" and then fund
it.
Twenty years ago, when I was working on the comparative management of ethnic
national conflict, it was the height of the Cold War and nobody was interested
in ethnic conflict. Experts, department chairs, and deans told me I was wasting
my time; one suggested I try getting a job in anthropology. In 1990 the Soviet
Union collapsed and we had a celebrated "New World Order" for a few
months while the shape of things to come became the "intolerable light of
utter actuality." We have too few linguists and in the wrong languages,
hardly anyone in the USA understands ethnic and religious conflict movements
adequately precisely because we SYSTEMATICALLY trained people to study and do
other things for decades. We are in fact lousy at understanding societal trends.
Why are we letting bureaucrats set the agenda so firmly and so early in the game
of idea creation? Why do we permit the endless stuffing of square pegs into
round bureaucratic holes?
In a forthcoming essay, I will discuss in detail Senator Patrick Moynihan's
great "unanswered question": If markets are best for wealth creation,
what makes secrecy and bureaucracy best for intelligence and idea creation? It
is a darn good question!
Why not instead loose "insight" within our educational system and fund
that? What is wrong with just finding really bright people and letting them work
on what THEY see as useful and relevant? What is wrong with fostering a freer
market in thinking? Emerson remarks that "...Insight, which expresses
itself by what is called imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does
not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees; the path
of things is silent" (Emerson, Essays-Second Series).
3) "EVERY NATION MOCKS OTHER NATIONS, AND ALL ARE RIGHT" (from
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation).
The second aspect of developing a better understanding with an eye to avoiding
foreign policy disasters lies in "sympathetic attitude and tolerance".
I do not suggest that "they" are right and "we" are wrong,
nor that we condone evil - ever. Far from it. I suggest only that wisdom comes
from insight, the getting of which requires THIS difficult task of us; that we
stand beneath, be modest, and get into the heart and soul of that which we hope
to understand. Ideology, team playing, and such is not here our friend. If you
look at our current Iraq difficulty, we walked pretty much in official lock step
right off the intellectual cliff.
Today our foreign policy apparatus with its dreary bureaucratic aspect, outdated
"Cold War" security clearance mentality, and utterly paranoid mind set
is the polar opposite of what we need; especially since about 95% of
"intelligence" comes originally from public sources - newspapers, etc.
One cannot say that every foreign policy question is of this type - clearly not
- but why not wield openness where openness is best, and secrecy only where
secrecy is necessary? A good idea is not afraid of daylight.
A bit over a year ago, I was at an open academic security and intelligence
conference in Canada when a gentleman from CIA prefaced his talk with the
following vignette: "You know that you've been at this game too long when
you look in the mirror [in the morning] to shave, and ask 'Who's he working
for?'" No sympathy and tolerance welcome in that house apparently.
4) "EARNING YOUR HEMLOCK."
"If you stroke a cat, it will purr; and, as inevitably, if you praise a
man, a sweet expression of delight will appear on his face..." (Schopenhauer
1942, Complete Essays, "Man's Place in the Estimation of Others." page
55).
The Athenians killed Socrates because he "corrupted the youth of
Athens." How did Socrates do this? He asked inconvenient questions of
powerful men who claimed to know things; thereby usually proving to all present
that they didn't know what they were talking about - So they killed Socrates.
Socrates earned his hemlock. Earn yours. This is a democracy.The country does
not need another sycophant. It will hurt. "They blame him who remains
silent, they blame him who speaks much, they blame him who speaks in moderation.
There is none in this world who is not blamed." (Dhammapada @227).
You want to know how to get better foreign policy decisions? Expel secrecy and
install openness. I argue that this useful all the way up the decision tree.
There is a choice:
"I never predict something I don't want." William F. Buckley, November
3rd, 1992, on Larry King Live.
"History is a set of lies agreed upon." Napoleon.
"Produce your proof, if ye are truthful" Koran, S. II, 111.
Copyright Guntram Werther Ph.D. March 2004.
This essay may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes so long as attribution
of authorship is given.
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