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20 Sep 2007

DLA Piper Hosts Foreign Policy Event Featuring Lee Hamilton

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On Wednesday, September 19, DLA Piper US LLP hosted a keynote address by Iraq Study Group Co-Chair Lee Hamilton on the future of American foreign policy. The Washington, DC event, “Iraq and Beyond,” was attended by a group of business leaders, diplomats, elected officials, journalists and current and former ambassadors, including sitting Ambassadors from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lichtenstein, New Zealand and Bulgaria. Senator George J. Mitchell, Chairman of the Global Board of DLA Piper, Governor James Blanchard, chair of DLA Piper’s Government Affairs practice and Secretary William S. Cohen, chairman and chief executive officer of The Cohen Group also spoke at the event.

DLA Piper’s Government Affairs practice has been called one of the most high-powered and high-profile in the nation’s capital. Many of the attorneys and other professionals in this group have held senior positions in all branches of federal and state government. This distinguished group includes three former congressional majority leaders: Mitchell, the former Senate Majority Leader, House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, and House Majority and Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, and is led by former U.S. Ambassador to Canada and former Michigan Governor Jim Blanchard.

Mitchell’s and Hamilton’s remarks follow.

Beyond Iraq
Senator George Mitchell, September 19, 2007

The topic “Beyond Iraq” is so vast that it virtually invites a filibuster.

But Jim urged Bill and I to be brief, and of course senators always follow governors’ orders.

To do that, I’ll discuss just one aspect of the larger issue. I believe that our highest priority, now and beyond Iraq, must be to renew and reinvigorate the network of alliances among free nations that developed over the past half century under the leadership of the United States, and to regain our moral stature in the world.

In the twentieth century Democracy faced three challenges to its existence: Depression, Fascism, and Communism.

The signal event of that century was the ultimate triumph of Democracy.

In the aftermath of World War Two, in an effort to secure peace and promote stability, the United States led the way in building new international institutions and alliances.

The United Nations was created.

NATO was established.

The European Union was founded.

Germany and Japan were rebuilt and became democratic and resurgent.

All this and more have helped what began as the North Atlantic Alliance to become the most successful economic, political, and military collaboration in history.

But the world today is much different than it was a half century ago, and our alliances are now under great stress, just as we face new and dangerous threats.

In the aftermath of nine eleven there was widespread sympathy for the American people and identification with us and with our values.

Sadly, that has almost totally dissipated.

Today, American power is ascendant in the world.

But just as our power is the greatest it’s ever been, our standing in the world is the lowest it’s ever been, a fact which should be deeply disturbing to all Americans, and to our friends.

This negative reality severely impairs our ability to lead effectively, to create needed coalitions to deal with the many problems we face.

We’re now seeing that in Iraq, in the effort to contain Iran, to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and across the full range of foreign policy.

For our democracy, power and principle are mutually enhancing. They must be firmly bound together.

Unfortunately for too many people, in and out of the U.S., our power and our principles now appear to be diverging.

Power increasingly is perceived to be the primary or even the exclusive basis of American influence in the world.

But it’s not.

Power is clearly important and we must be prepared to use it when necessary, but force must be used in a manner consistent with our ideals.

For it is ideals that always have been the primary basis of American influence in the world.

They’re not easily summarized, but surely they include:

• the sovereignty of the people;
• the primacy of individual liberty;
• the rule of law, applied equally to all citizens;
• and opportunity for every member of society.

We must never forget that because of those ideals the United States was a great nation long before it was a great military or economic power.

In this dangerous world there are, of course, those who are violently hostile to us and to our ideals. But many more people admire our ideals. They’re concerned about what they perceive as a gap between our words and our deeds. To the extent humanly possible we must close that gap, not by compromising our ideals, but by conducting our actions at the level of our principles.

The strength of American democracy is that we have principles to guide us and power to protect us.

We must maintain and enhance both, because one without the other will be inadequate to the challenges we will face, beyond Iraq and throughout the twenty-first century.

One final point: Although none of the current conflicts are exclusively or even primarily economic, the essential ingredient in conflict resolution is and will be the social stability necessary to permit economic growth and job creation.

To a man without a job, to a woman who can’t feed or care for her children, to a young adult lacking education and skill, debates about Democracy seem irrelevant.

They worry about coping day-to-day.

Democracy means the rule of the people.

It also must mean opportunity for the people, all of them.

Modern history demonstrates that democratic governance and free markets are the most effective form of political and economic organization ever devised by human beings.

We should encourage the growth of such institutions among others, and help where we can. But in the end we must recognize that the principle of self determination means that individuals and nations ultimately are responsible for their own lives and futures.

Toward a More Pragmatic Foreign Policy
Lee Hamilton, September 19, 2007

American foreign policy confronts a basic paradox. The United States stands alone as the world’s most powerful nation, with the strongest military, the largest economy, the highest level of technological capacity, and the most extensive cultural influence around the world. And yet America’s ability to accomplish things abroad has rarely – in recent memory – seemed so limited. How can this paradox be explained? And how should we adjust our foreign policy to maximize our influence?

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush set astonishing goals for U.S. foreign policy:

1. We would defeat terrorism and states that sponsor terrorism, and not hesitate to take preemptive action to do so.
2. We would deter and even aim to change hostile regimes that sought weapons of mass destruction – specifically, the “axis of evil” of Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
3. We would abandon support for stability in the Middle East on behalf of democratic transformation.
4. We would ensure that no competitor to U.S. hegemony was permitted to emerge.

To implement those goals, U.S. action was robust.

1. We launched a global war against terrorism.
2. We largely spurned an international system largely of our own making, rejecting several international norms and treaties.
3. We invaded Afghanistan.
4. We refused to engage with adversaries.
5. Most notably, we invaded and occupied Iraq.

It is hard now to take ourselves back to 2003. In the days running up to and following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the mainstream of debate in this country dealt openly with the transformation of the world with American power. Some spoke openly – and favorably – of American empire.
Today, we confront a very different international landscape. Everywhere we turn, we confront the limitations of our power. In Iraq, the definition of success has been lowered to the containment of sectarian violence. In Afghanistan, we struggle against a resurgent Taliban and rampant opium trade. In Pakistan, al Qaeda has reconstituted its sanctuary and its top leaders elude capture. In Iran, a defiant President chastises us, foments instability in Iraq, and continues to pursue a nuclear program. China and particularly Russia openly defy us. In Latin America, Hugo Chavez has consolidated his power and stands at the vanguard of a new generation of leftist leaders. Across the Islamic world, extremism only seems to be increasing, and the cause of democracy appears to have stalled.

The truth is, we are not the omnipotent power we appeared to be in 2003, nor are we the impotent power we sometimes appear to be today. Both our overreach and the course correction that seems to be taking place today – with an increasing deference to diplomacy and international cooperation – have ample historical precedents. The problem is that too often we set unachievable goals for American foreign policy. These goals then distort policy implementation, and our competence suffers as we seek to carry out hugely ambitious missions, and as we are forced to sustain burdens that are untenable to the American people.

To understand our foreign policy goals, it may help to briefly look at the political and policymaking process that leads to those goals. American foreign policy is largely determined by the decisions of one person: the President. Every four years, we elect somebody to hold that office without a substantial debate about the foreign policy questions that will dominate their term in office. The 9/11 Commission found that there was only one mention of “terrorism” in the 2000 campaign. In 2004, an election in which national security played an important role, the question of Iran hardly came up – most of the argument had to do with what the candidates did over thirty years ago, during Vietnam. In the early stages of the 2008 campaign, there is much talk of the current news from Iraq, but not a substantial discussion of extremism in the Islamic world, which is likely to be more consequential to the security of the American people.

The understandable fact is that foreign policy debates are often driven by domestic politics. Thus, candidates often fall back on sloganeering – debates about who is “tough” or “strong.” Instead of looking ahead to how a candidate will govern in office, much of the debate revolves around a simplified or partisan analysis of the headlines – so as a candidate, George W. Bush decries “nation building” in reference to Kosovo, even though nation building would go on to be the dominant issue of his presidency; or Bill Clinton runs for re-election on a collection of domestic policy platforms, and then focuses his second term on the Balkans and Middle East peace-making. When ethnic constituencies come into play – as they often do, for instance, with Cuba or the Middle East – campaign positions can be shaped by our political map.

The political considerations of foreign policy are even more acute in the Congress. Foreign policy rarely dominates congressional campaigns. When it does – or when it comes to votes – members are often driven by party discipline. Ethnic politics can also be hugely influential. I’ll never forget talking to one member about a particularly contentious question involving U.S. policy toward Turkey. My colleague told me his district was 100 percent for taking a hard line toward the Turks. When I asked him the basis of this determination, he said he’d heard about the issue at three Greek Orthodox churches over the last recess.

The problem with this simplified or distorted debate is that whereas education or health care policies are subjected to extensive vetting by a broad cross-section of the American population, foreign policy ends up being debated and shaped by an elite group of people – academics, pundits, lobbyists, and activists who follow the issues closely. It is from this group that the President’s closest advisors are chosen. This was the case when I came to Congress in 1965, and it is very much the same today. With regard to military intervention – which takes places at an alarming clip of roughly one major intervention every two years – this may be more pronounced today since we shifted to an all-volunteer fighting force, insulating the direct consequences of military action from the vast majority of the American people.

This is not to criticize America’s foreign policy elite – many talented and patriotic individuals rise through these ranks. But there are problems borne out of this disconnect between policymaking and the people. Ordinary Americans bear the burden for our foreign policies –

1. Not just the troops and their families,
2. But taxpayers who fund expensive endeavors.
3. Consumers and workers whose well-being is increasingly tied to our relations with other countries.
4. Or, most dramatically, the person going to work in the World Trade Center. With each passing year, the line between “foreign policy” and “domestic policy” becomes increasingly blurred. Yet the root of so many ambitious foreign policy decisions – take, for example, the decision to go to war in Iraq – is made by a strikingly small group of people.

So how does this add up to unachievable goals? In articulating foreign policy, Presidents aim for simple and dramatic frames that serve a political purpose of rallying the nation. In approaching the world, policy elites are by nature interventionist – the aim of the specialist is to find solutions to every problem, not to set priorities about the key interests of the American public. Thus the political aims of Presidents often find a common ground with the policy aims of our foreign policy elites on behalf of ambitiously interventionist goals.
Once they are articulated, these goals complicate implementation. Take President Kennedy’s vow to “pay any price” and “bear any burden” in defense of liberty, or President Bush’s goal of “ending tyranny” in the world – the former sets the bar too high, the latter is simply impossible. But these goals have practical consequences.

1. Vietnam becomes tougher to abandon when it is a test of our national will, not simply a distant nation with an internal conflict.
2. The post-Saddam Hussein problems in Iraq – for instance the disastrous decisions to dissolve the Iraqi Army and jettison all Baathists from Iraqi society – can be attributed in part to the zeal to spread transformational democracy, not stability. In short, once set, these goals lead to dilemmas for everyone from the cabinet official in Washington, to the diplomat or troop on the ground.

There is also a distinct problem in setting priorities. If you look at any National Security Strategy or presidential campaign platform, it goes beyond our ability to implement. Our resources are not unlimited. We cannot, for instance, effectively fight a war in Iraq, stabilize Afghanistan, and deal with Iran and North Korea, and combat terrorism and nuclear proliferation around the world. When we try to do everything at once, we do things less well. And we certainly become even more reactive – wrestling with implementing these huge goals, and not anticipating what might be over the horizon: the next 9/11, or the next nuclear domino to fall. In turn, we often have trouble sustaining our policies. The American peoples’ patience is not inexhaustible. Our resources are not unlimited. We are concerned about problems at home. We do not want an empire and, frankly, we’re not very good at it.
This brings me to my core point. American foreign policy would be better off if it reflected a key aspect of the American character that is often overlooked: pragmatism. We often hear – in foreign policy debates – about the balance between our interests and our ideals. What we do not often hear is a frank discussion of:

1. What we can achieve and what we cannot achieve in the world;
2. What we are prepared to provide in terms of lives and resources;
3. What we can achieve on our own and what we must seek to achieve through international cooperation;
4. What we can reasonably expect when it comes to something like democratic reform, and how long it will take, even with steady time and effort, to achieve it.

It is important for Presidents to rally and inspire the nation, and for specialists to consider ambitious solutions to the challenges that we face. Yet those efforts must be complemented – in both our political dialogue and our policymaking process – with more of a focus on how these goals will be carried out in practice, and how they will impact the lives of ordinary Americans. All of our policies should be able to pass the basic test of pragmatism: not just how proposals sound in speeches, or what they would accomplish with limitless resources – but how would they work out in practice?
That means we should seek progress instead of perfection in our policies. And we should be more precise in our aims. Instead of conflating all terrorist and extremist groups, we should focus our resources on the core of al Qaeda.

1. Instead of demanding the change of regimes we do not like, we should try to change their behavior.
2. of demanding the immediate transformation of closed governments into full-blown democracies, we should seek the extension of more rights and opportunities to their citizens, and more transparency and accountability by their governments.
3. Instead of demanding American hegemony, we should try to shape a multi-polar international system to serve our interests.
4. We should be idealists without illusions, and pragmatists with a vision.

After the shock of 9/11, Americans knew we needed to be more engaged in the world. After the shock of the last few years, Americans understand the limits of what we can accomplish in the world. They are ready for leadership that speaks candidly about these questions. Leadership that lays out goals that are achievable, that sets priorities, and that uses our awesome power not to transform the world, but rather to make the lives of ordinary Americans safer and better, and to move the arch of history steadily in the right direction.

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