Very Serious Indeed

Coming soon to an American Enterprise Institute near you, Brookings Institution scholar Michael O'Hanlon will be sharing a stage with such luminaries as Frederick Kagan, Jack Keane, Danielle Pletka, Thomas Donnelly, and Gary Schmitt.

This provides, I think, an opportunity to get a little more specific about blogger critiques of Very Serious People and clerisies and so forth. The crux of the matter is that we have here in Washington, DC a certain number of institutions working in the national security sphere that are essentially crackpot operations -- AEI, The Weekly Standard, the Project for a New American Century, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies come to mind. Now one can argue 'till the cows come home whether or not it should have been clear in August 2002 that these were crackpot operations, but over the past five years they've demonstrated themselves to indubitably be crackpot institutions.

Meanwhile, a couple of ticks over to the left you have a series of basically establishmentarian organizations and individuals that, instead of doing what establishmentarian organizations are supposed to do and marginalize these crackpots, are mainstreaming them. The Saban Center at Brookings, CNN, and the opinion pages of The Washington Post are probably the biggest offenders here, but the rot has spread and to some extent afflicted other organizations as well. It's a problem. It's by no means something every single CFR member or center-left think tanker has contributed to, but too many have contributed to it, and until very recently too many others have done little to try to seize the mantle of authority from the people who keep mainstreaming crackpots whose theories have been tested and failed, over and over again, at a cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Comments

Ah, but if you look at where the money flows, the past years have not been a failure -- they've been highly successful for some people.

Harvard has a huge endowment (around $34 Billion) so it can afford to have Professor Stephen Walt wonder off the reservation and actually discuss what is in America's interest.

But for many people, this concept is ..er.. impractical. It seems to me that the closest they can approach to intellectual integrity is the motto "He whose bread I eat his song I sing."

John Hopkins University receives almost $1 BILLION per year from the US taxpayers for research -- more than any other university.

Much of that goes for its foreign policy institute and Pentagon defense research -- which has given us such sterling advice from such people as Paul Wolfowitz.

Your tax dollars at work.

Posted by Don Williams | August 24, 2007 2:54 PM

Michael O'Hanlon, Expert, 'Overthrowing Saddam: Calculating the Costs and Casualties', October 9, 2002:

"Either way, the really striking point about these estimates are twofold. First, given the expected quick pace of any war, these estimated combat costs are large but hardly astronomical, whether one compares the cost of past wars, the peacetime U.S. defense budget ($400 billion) or the U.S. GDP (well over $10 trillion, meaning war costs would almost surely be under 1 percent). Second, however, occupation costs could be substantial; CBO estimates a cost of $15 billion to $45 billion a year for a force of 75,000 to 200,000. It seems unlikely that U.S. forces would be deployed in such high numbers for long, but without major allied support that is at least a remote possibility. More plausibly, occupation costs might be in the broad range of $10 billion a year, roughly comparable to what the United States spends on its global development assistance and humanitarian relief efforts."

The CBO underestimated the actual costs by 300% and still O'Hanlon felt the need to poo-poo them in real time (he's an expert and knows best!) and provide his own very serious estimate of costs - $10 billion dollars a year. The fact that O'Hanlon was off by a whopping 1200% on estimating costs suggests he is not expert enough to be a weight guesser at a carnival, let alone quoted every day as an expert on Iraq.

Posted by joejoejoe | August 24, 2007 2:56 PM

I really don't think we've ever had a sane Foreign Policy Establishment. They've been completely mad all of my life and have never paid the slightest cost for it.

I don't think the craziness of our Foreign Policy Establishment is an accident at all.

Among the powerful of this nation, there is an amazingly strong degree of commitment to the notion that it is the U.S.' right and that it is in all of 'our' interests for the U.S. to use any degree of violence and subversion to achieve any crazy and venal goals those powerful leaders happen to convince themselves they want.

Good lord, we armed, backed & directed a military dictatorship carrying out a genocide in Guatemala two decades ago, and who ever thinks of that as some serious topic?

In 2004 U.S. forces directly kidnapped and removed the elected president of Haiti, Jean Bertrande Aristide, under the argument that we were protecting him from Dominican-based rebels which the U.S. had been most likely arming and funding, and then were just going to drop him off to his fate in the Central African Republic -- which had nothing to do with Aristide at all. Maxine Waters Randall Robinson, and Amy Goodman were on the plane with him on a return trip to the Caribbean itself, which the Bushies tried to block!

After the fall of the USSR, you would have thought that a priority would be to get Russia, the largest part of it, thriving and stable! But no, the policies that even the brilliant HARVARD scholars (and the now supposedly reformed Jeffrey Sachs) advised them were literally crazy and directly corrupt!!! They are only now crawling out of such insanity, due to the high petroleum prices brought about by Bush Jr's war in Iraq, so I guess we did help him.

In Venezuela, a popular elected leader who for the FIRST time is carrying out policies which are actually growing the Venezuelan economy (and not just in the oil sector) and ordinary people are benefitting, and the right wing and liberal hawks were appreciative when the U.S. (a) backed a military coup they likely helped foment, which then failed due to their inability to buy off the army and their inability to stop the population from rallying to the elected government's side; and (b) backed an oil shutout by the oil industry's owners to try to kill their economy!!!

And by the way -- if Chavez happened to have some authoritarian tendencies in him, exactly how did these Wise and Serious Nimrods expect him to react when they attempted to remove him militarily and to kill their economy should they have failed???

Did they think that a failed coup and an attempted economic shutdown would somehow make him *more* open to the opposition which just tried to jail and overthrow him?

What is this crap???

How the hell was ANY OF THAT in "my national interest"???? All of these were supposedly carried out in the US interest, and yet nothing could be further from the truth.

What madness is this, and how many more generations will we have to put up with backwards nonsense being carried out in supposedly 'our' national interest?

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 3:09 PM

The reason why the Establishment organizations are mainstreaming rather than marginalizing the crackpots is because, on the most momentous foreign policy decisions of the last decade and a half, the Establishment allowed the crackpots first to define the terms of debate and then to determine the outcome of that debate. Because of this original sin, the Establishment is well aware that a serious, fundamental attack on the crackpots risks quickly devolving into a circular firing squad. And that would involve terminating the careers of about 70-80% of the VSPs. And what are the chances of that?

Posted by Nils Gilman | August 24, 2007 3:14 PM

a certain number of institutions working in the national security sphere that are essentially crackpot operations

Center for American Progress, United States Institute of Peace, National Security Network, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Commonwealth Institute, Century Foundation ...

Posted by Al | August 24, 2007 3:26 PM

Here's an example of how the debate is so distorted from today's Diane Rehm show. One of the guests, Karen Tumulty from Time magazine, asserted that the Democrats were in a bind because they had claimed that the surge would fail and yet Hillary Clinton (and others) acknowledged that the surge was succeeding in specific locations.

Now, no Democrat ever asserted that the surge would not have *any* beneficial effect. What they asserted, correctly as it turns out, is that the surge would fail in its goal of stablizing Iraq. And that is *exactly* *what* *has* *happened.*

And yet, this Tumulty person made it seem as if the Democrats were proven in some respects wrong, and would have to backtrack.

Posted by Joe Strummer | August 24, 2007 3:29 PM

The 2006 Lombardi Report indicates that John Hopkins University received $1.2 Billion in Federal Research dollars in 2004. And that it ranks very high even when you take out the money for medical research.

Wonder how much of that goes to John Hopkins's
Applied Physics Laboratory (Pentagon research) and to the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) (Paul Wolfowitz's long time home)??

Posted by Don Williams | August 24, 2007 3:29 PM

…a series of basically establishmentarian organizations and individuals that, instead of doing what establishmentarian organizations are supposed to do and marginalize these crackpots, are mainstreaming them.

Here is where I think you tend to get lost in the confusion of your own unexamined assumptions and premises. What, in your view, substantively defines and differentiates these so-called “establishmentarian” and “crackpot” organizations? And who or what determines what they are “supposed to do”?

One needs to recognize not only where the money that sustains them is coming from and hence, the incentive structures that mould and direct their programs, operations, policy-mongering, and career-paths of their members.

But, also, as individuals and “experts” they share the same fundamental goals of preserving US power abroad while differing on specific tactics and implementation so that, for instance, issues of “competence” become the source of raging debate among them instead of disagreement on fundamental strategies and plans.

And, of course, they all move in the same social circles here inside the Beltway where it is held to be “crass” and “impolite” to engage in discourse that challenges colleagues by “attacking” the obvious fallacies, distortions, and outright lies they may tell.

In this context, looking for someone among them “ to seize the mantle of authority” is a bit of wishful thinking. Better to push for drawing into the fray informed analysts and observers from academia and elsewhere. And even that is no guarantee of success, as for instance witness the systematic marginalization of scholars like Walt and Mearsheimer and Juan Cole.

Posted by Justin X | August 24, 2007 3:56 PM

I would suggest that WETA, thru its news programs, has gone a long way to mainstream the crack pots.

Posted by Alice | August 24, 2007 4:13 PM

Great points. It really is excruciating to hear from this cabal. WHY ARE THEY ON MY TEVEE? Crackpots is right.

What's one of my favorite measures for the level of absolute trash coming from these people? The fact that Lyndon LaRouche sounds downright sensible in comparison.

But the problem is with the establishmentarian media. I don't begrudge crackpots at all, knock yourself out. But for it to be mainstreamed is where the danger lies. And it is, quite frankly, killing people. This is clearly driven by money first and a very sick egotism as a close second - both already identified by the other posters here.

Posted by Wilson | August 24, 2007 4:24 PM

What, in your view, substantively defines and differentiates these so-called “establishmentarian” and “crackpot” organizations?

AEI, The Weekly Standard, the Project for a New American Century, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies are bought and paid for by the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party. They are pure propaganda organs, on par with Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. They are lobbyests. They are partisan liars.

Organizations like Brookings and CNN are not particularly admirable. But they retain a degree of independence even while they are moulded, shaped and motivated by the factors you highlight. It's a question of design and intent. AEI is designed to disperse lies and propaganda. That's why it exists. Brookings is designed to uncover some sort of bipartisan "truth." It generally fails in this task, but as an organization, I don't think it intends to deceive as one of its core purposes. It is just weak and vulnerable.

The main thing that substantively defines and differentiates the two is the former organizations are committed to lying, while the latter can be shamed into telling the truth or changing its ways.

Posted by owenz | August 24, 2007 4:27 PM

Let me take what I just said a step further: Brookings is a lot like the Democratic Party. It is desperate to be liked by establishment DC. It is easily intimidated, infiltrated, and influenced by neocons. It is quick to dismiss its critics from the left. It is NOT, however, AEI.

AEI is the Republican Party in all its dishonest, destructive glory. Brookings is the Democratic Party, in all its ineffectual, incoherant messiness.

The main difference? Brookings can probably be influenced and in some ways corrected. AEI will always be evil.

Posted by owenz | August 24, 2007 4:34 PM

And just BTW, the wingnuts have been largely mainstreamed on domestic policy, too. AEI, Cato, Heritage, et al., with the active participation of almost all of the "mainstream" media, have beaten into the public consciousness all sorts of nonsense, i.e, low taxes are always good, etc., what they call "socialized medicine" is bad and doesn't work in other countries (Candadians have to come to the U.S. to get hip replacements, blah, blah, blah).

This is why a substantial part of any progressive/liberal/whatever success will require a powerful and effective information campaign to counter the endless RW lies and general blather.

Posted by d | August 24, 2007 4:57 PM

It's mighty interesting how much more frequently the organizations Matt lists show up on TV roundtable discussions of foreign policy than the organizations Al lists. If I didn't know better, I'd think that Al was actually trying to defend Matt's post.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 24, 2007 5:18 PM

Was it here that I've previously mentioned inertia? It is very powerful, but not an excuse. These people are caught in a vortex of their own making.

Posted by bajsa | August 24, 2007 6:35 PM

Re "It's mighty interesting how much more frequently the organizations Matt lists show up on TV roundtable discussions of foreign policy than the organizations Al lists."
----------
It seems to me like Clifford May of FDD has his own chair at Fox.

Posted by Don Williams | August 24, 2007 6:53 PM

The Chomsky analysis should be looking more plausible to people. On foreign affairs we have one partyin two parts. It quibbles about nickels here and dimes there within a basic interventionist consensus which hasn't fundamentally changed since 1941. There's no possibility of an anti-war or anti-interventionist candidate from either party. For the military/foreign-relations establishment, manipulating the political process to get consent is just one of the jobs that they have to, and in general it's one of their easier jobs.

Posted by John Emerson | August 24, 2007 7:12 PM

I think a reasonable analogy would be the dynamics of a Royal Court during the decadent tag-end of a particular dynasty.

In such a situation, prestige and success have relatively little to do with success or failure in the real world let alone the correct predictions of such, and mostly to do with flattery, effective intrigue, and catching the ear or the anticipating the whim of the monarch or his leading favorites.

The history books are filled with cases of e.g. highly successful generals banished due to courtly intrigues and disastrous ones promoted to greater power and influence.

Nations governed by decadent royal courts do not have a particularly successful track-record in the history books.

Posted by RKU | August 24, 2007 7:33 PM

What exactly are the non-crackpot credentials of the Saban Center?

It certainly quacks like a surreptitious right-wing crackpot institution set up in Brookings in order to make right-wing crackpottery seem more mainstream. With crackpot agents placed at Brookings, the AEI and its ilk are able to claim 'bipartisan' support for, say, invading Iran.

It was established in 2002. What are the odds of an Israel-centric thinktank agency being set up in the 2000s that isn't a crackpot wingnut operation?

Posted by Jon H | August 24, 2007 10:05 PM

Exactly Jon H!

they are setting up surreptitious right-wing crackpot institutions right under Brookings' nose. HA Those clever bastards

Oh and as for Jews (that's what we all mean when we say "neocon" and Israel-centric) you'd expect them to be devious, naturally

I think Matt Labash should head the Ministry of Truth. He could decide what is mainstream and keep others of WETA, out of the Post and so forth. Damned cable TV is a problem but if the Ministry of Truth enforced the "Fairness Doctrine", well then we'd all be safe.

Maybe Jon H, could join the secret police to root out these plots and protect the workers and people of which he is in the intellectual vanguard

Posted by Jozef | August 25, 2007 8:35 AM

I think one problem with our friend Jozef's extreme sarcasm is that every day it seems harder to tell whether he's actually being sarcastic or just (unintentionally) providing an objective descriptive of our current American reality.

It's a disturbing sign of very unfortunate times when it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between satire, sarcasm, and realism.

Posted by RKU | August 25, 2007 11:22 AM

I'd like to see a single bit of evidence that Mr. Saban gives a rat's ass about the United States' interests apart from doing Israel's dirty work for it and being a market for Saban's entertainment schlock like Power Rangers.

The Saban center runs on his money, so it's going to pursue the goals he wants pursued.

Those goals don't necessarily coincide with the best interests of the United States. Or even the best interests of Israel itself - millions of Israelis might well think Saban is a belligerent nutter.

But it's absurd to assume a thinktank set up by an Israeli billionaire is being done out of selfless altruistic concern for America's benefit.

Posted by Jon H | August 25, 2007 2:04 PM