Think Tanked

5 Questions for Heritage's James Carafano

Heritage Foundation's James Carafano is one of the more outspoken and colorful think tank scholars. The 25-year Army veteran is Deputy Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies. In a continuation of 5 Questions, Carafano talks to Think Tanked about Afghanistan, why state militias are a good thing, budget cuts at the Pentagon, big bucks from the defense industry and why we still have problems with national security professional development.

1) With a draw down of troops set to begin this summer, why is Afghanistan strategy still being discussed? Many of the major think tanks put out a significant report in the last few months on Afghanistan strategy and many of them have the ears of key stakeholders. Is there a hindrance to strategy with all this discussion?

I don’t think all the variations of “cut and run” in Afghanistan from various think tanks is going to have any influence on the course of events. The future will largely be determined by the success or the failure of the strategy on the ground. No one on any side of the debate thought the 2011 deadline for “significant” withdrawals made any sense. The fact that the White House seems to be backing off the deadline reflects two things. First, the administration thinks the strategy might work. Second, it did not see a big “anti-war” sentiment in the mid-term elections. Therefore, the calculation at this point seems to be that the White House thinks the war is “manageable.” So all those reports did was a kill a lot trees and stray electrons. On the other hand, if things “go south” over the next year, you might see the president dust some of them off as he scrambles for an “exit” strategy.

2) You're a strong proponent of state militias. What's the case for that and what are the differences between them and the militias people are used to hearing about?

Most people know very little about these. More properly called “State Defense Forces” or SDFs, they are authorized by the Constitution and many states such as Texas use them very, very effectively as volunteer organizations. They are not to be confused with “pop-up” organizations that are not created or authorized under state laws. One of the jobs of think tanks is to bring attention to important issues that people are not paying attention to and to provide “facts” and not just opinion. With that in mind, Heritage undertook what I think is the only major survey of these organizations. In the U.S., 23 states and territories have SDFs which had a total force strength of 14,000 members. SDFs are a proven force in homeland security and emergency response efforts. After 9/11, the New York Guard, New York Naval Militia, and New Jersey Naval Militia were activated. After Hurricane Katrina, SDF forces from at least eight states responded to support recovery efforts. What we concluded was that states, Congress, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can take some basic steps to enhance and expand the capabilities of the nation’s SDFs.

3)Larry Korb recently wrote that it's possible to shave the Pentagon budget by $1 trillion while still maintaining a 6% increase in spending from the period of 2001-2010. Is he right?

First, don’t assume that just cutting the Pentagon’s budget will generate efficiencies. That is the last thing that is likely to happen. Pentagon spending is driven by plethora of federal rules and Congressional dictates (most of the Army’s R&D budget, for example, is dictated by earmarks). If Congress wants the Pentagon to spend money more efficiently it has to change the rules, not cut the budget. That said; there are lots of ways to make defense spending more efficient. In one report we identified $35 billion in potential savings. The issue is if you create these savings, is that an excuse to gut the defense budget? I would argue no. The US military has been on a virtual “procurement holiday” since the end of the Cold War. A lot of our military hardware is wearing; needs to be replaced or modernized or augmented. The wars have only accelerated the demands to recapitalize the force. Savings need to be plowed back into modernization or we going to finish up with a worn out, undersized, underpowered military just like in the aftermath of Vietnam.

Furthermore, I would argue that the obsession with cutting defense to balance the federal budget makes no sense. Defense is not even the “big ticket” in government spending—accounting for less than one-fifth of the federal budget (50 years ago it was half). National defense now ranks a lowly fourth in overall government spending priorities, falling behind the combined cost of Social Security and Medicare, public education, and means-tested welfare aid. Before Congress starts gutting defense and making us less safe it ought to go after these programs first. Defense spending, as a percentage of GDP, even with the costs of fighting overseas, is at a near historic post-World War II low. We live in a dangerous world and the military has never been busier, the idea that our forces can sustain big defense cuts just does not pass the common sense test. Strategy not “green eye shades” should dictate military requirements.

4) A number of media accounts in the last year criticized think tanks for taking money from the defense industry. Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute responded with: "I'm not going to work on a project unless somebody, somewhere, is willing to pay. This is a business...bottom line is that if what I write and say is true, it doesn't really matter what my motives are." What should the relationship be between research and the defense industry?

I can only speak for Heritage. First, our financial statement is online. What you see is that corporate giving accounts for single digits of the foundation’s income. Several defense companies do contribute to Heritage. They represent a small percentage of corporate giving. All the defense company money goes to general operations and does not fund specific programs. I am responsible for coordinating all the foreign policy and national security research at Heritage. All of our research requirements are driven by the research staff—we don’t do work on behalf of others. Our research centers get an annual budget for research and that is not tied to individual sources of donations. Fund raising is done by the development staff not the research staff. We constantly monitor research to ensure there are no “conflicts of interest.” I feel pretty comfortable with our process and that our analysts are adequately “fire-walled” and protected from outside influence.

5) Nearly 10 years after 9/11, there are still major gaps in national security professional development. Why is there still a struggle here?

I could not be more demoralized with a) the lack of attention to national security professional development or b) most of the junk that is put out that purports to national security professional development reform. Mostly what you get are just different ways to “centralize” and re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic (i.e. the Office of the President). Most of it is also incoherent. I have written tons on this issue. Here is a link to one paper as an example. I also wrote a piece for Joint Force Quarterly a while back. The problem is a) nobody really owns this issue so there is no real stakeholder to undertake a reform agenda and b) the lack of really good research and analysis. I am sure what will happen is nothing till the next Pearl Harbor and then we will all scuttle around and do something for the sake of doing something. The great irony is that the Bush administration made a half-decent effort at professional development at the end of its tenure, but they really didn’t get it off the ground. The new administration lost interest it and the whole thing is moribund as far as I am concerned.

5 Questions for Chicago Council's Thomas Wright

Executive Director for Studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Thomas Wright's professional career has moved him up and down the East Coast, but he now finds himself right smack in the middle of the Midwest. In a continuation of the "5 Questions" series, Wright answers questions about the Chicago Council, the advantages and disadvantages of being a think tank in the Midwest and how hometown President Barack Obama is doing on foreign policy.

1) With so many global issues in the world, how does the Chicago Council on Global Affairs decide what studies to take on?

The Chicago Council is the nation’s second oldest foreign policy institute, founded in 1922 less than one year after the New York Council on Foreign Relations, so we have a track record of closely following a number of global issues. Foremost amongst them is America’s engagement with the rest of the world, which arises out of our original mission to educate the public on foreign policy and foster a sense of internationalism in a region known for its isolationist tendencies.

We are in the middle of a project on the relevance of the transatlantic alliance given the changing strategic priorities of the United States, which is looking at U.S.-European cooperation on nuclear weapons policy, protection of the global commons, counterinsurgency, and engagement of the Muslim world. Our Asia work has focused on the sources and trajectory of soft power and influence in East Asia. And a Chicago Council task force recently looked at how the United States can better engage religious communities abroad rather than dealing solely with regimes.

For the past thirty-five years, we’ve run the nation’s most in depth public opinion survey on American attitudes toward foreign policy—quadrennial from 1975 to 2002 and biennial since then. As it happens, we’re currently poring over the data for the 2010 survey which will be released in Washington DC, in partnership with Brookings, in mid September.

Since Chicago is a major commercial center, we have a long standing interest in the global economy, which is of direct and personal interest to many of our members. The international financial crisis has put us into overdrive on this topic. Looking ahead, we’re particularly interested in how the United States can regain its economic competitiveness, the economic dimensions of security, and the long term geopolitical implications of this period of economic stress.

Apart from that, the studies department also produces articles and reports by our staff and fellows on a range of topics, including Obama’s foreign policy, the future of multilateralism, the effects of globalization on the American heartland, immigration, and energy and climate policy. Outside of the studies department, we also have a significant research program on overseas development and food security, which draws on the region’s agricultural expertise and has helped shape and influence the national debate on those topics.

2) What are the disadvantages of being a think tank working on global issues outside the beltway?

I’m not sure that there are many disadvantages. It’s important to keep in touch with the debate in Washington so as to ensure that our research adds value. With that in mind, we’re in DC almost every week. Obviously, launching projects and reports is complicated by the fact that we don’t have our own facilities in Washington but we partner with other think tanks on a regular basis which works quite well. For instance for our transatlantic project Washington roundtables, we’ve partnered with the Hudson Institute, the New America Foundation, SAIS, and CNAS.

3) What are the advantages of being a think tank working on global issues outside the beltway?

We have a little bit of space and distance to research and write about issues without getting pulled into the need to be a part of the daily news cycle. The global context for U.S. foreign policy is in a state of flux but collectively it’s tempting for the think tank community to amplify the debates on the urgent while neglecting what’s important over the long term. This is turning into a problem because the political science academic community has largely abdicated its traditional role (back in the days of Kissinger, Huntington, and others) of providing in depth analysis on America’s major foreign policy challenges, preferring instead a more quantitative approach that tackles abstract puzzles (with some notable exceptions of course!). We’re a small outfit but we try to take advantage of the fact that we’re outside of the daily news cycle to provide some of that more in depth analysis. The other thing worth mentioning about our location is that being in Chicago provides us with access to expertise, particularly on the global economy that may otherwise get overlooked if one were to solely focus on the East Coast.

4) The Chicago Council’s membership is heavily drawn from the business community. How does that impact upon your research on foreign policy and global issues?

We’re a membership organization, open to all, with over 7000 members, which is unusual for a think tank and allows us to connect directly with a broader community than would normally be involved in foreign policy debates. Given that Chicago is a major commercial center, business is a significant part of what we do. As we pick up the pieces of the greatest financial crisis and recession since the Great Depression, one of our key messages have been reinforced, which is that America’s global role requires a healthy U.S. economy and a healthy global economy.

The geopolitical implications of the crisis also show that U.S. foreign policy will have to come to terms with a more confident and stronger China but also that Europe remains the bloc with interests and values most aligned with those of the United States on many of the key international challenges. Our members, and the Chicago Council as a whole, are keenly aware of their location between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans so increasing America’s expertise on Asia while simultaneously strengthening its relations with Europe is something we’re well positioned to look at.

5) You’ve recently written an article for the Washington Quarterly assessing President Obama’s foreign policy. How do you think he has fared so far?

The article you mention is about Obama’s strategy of engagement, which I think can be best understood as the first half of a worldview developed by critics of the Bush administration during the 2000s. This worldview conceptualized America’s foreign policy into two parts—cooperative partnerships with those states and non-state actors who operate within, or seek to join, the international order, and war, containment, or coercive diplomacy toward those, such as terrorist organizations, the Taliban, and North Korea who seek to undermine, destroy or operate outside of it.

This first part of this worldview—strategic engagement—is premised on the assumption that most states share the same challenges and it seeks to increase global cooperation near to the heights achieved by Western countries during the Cold War. While there have been some successes, including, at least until very recently, in engaging the Muslim world, several key challenges and problems have come into focus.

In particular, the experience of 2009 suggests that the premise of Obama’s strategy of engagement—that the interests of the major powers are broadly aligned in the need to tackle the same problems—was flawed. Some major powers, particularly China, accept parts of the international order but also have significant differences with the United States about the order’s shape, purpose, and future direction as well as their role in upholding it. Unfortunately, the administration is struggling to come up with a strategy to increase cooperation with these states that have less in common with the United States than members of the old Western order.

The United States is entering into a period of geopolitics unlike that which it has previously experienced. Americans are used to countries being friends or enemies but relations with rising powers like China will be a peculiar blend of cooperation and rivalry. It will be a more competitive world than the past twenty years but unlike the Cold War, it will be a competition within limits and between interdependent powers.

In order to succeed in this new environment, the administration will need to develop a more competitive form of engagement that is clearer about what it wants from the international order and has a strategy that will build support for it. A strategy of competitive engagement would recognize geopolitical realities while remaining faithful to the core insight of engagement that the world is interdependent and many of today’s foreign policy challenges can only be tackled multilaterally.

For more from Tom Wright, follow him on Twitter.

5 Questions for CAP's Brian Katulis

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Brian Katulis rarely sees the sense in sugarcoating things. In the 5 Questions series, Katulis talks about how think tanks often fall short, what a progressive approach can bring to the table in Afghanistan and whether or not the Obama administration or think tanks have the "balls" to help with Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

1) When are think tanks at their best? And when are they at their worst?

Think tanks are at their best when they challenge the conventional wisdom and inject new ideas into policy and political debates. When they contribute innovative proposals that cut against the grain of popular opinion and spark a new debate, that’s when think tanks have real impact. Our Iraq strategic redeployment plan at the Center for American Progress in 2005 and 2006 helped set the framework for a new debate from which a number of alternative strategies on Iraq were developed.

Think tanks are also at their best when they make new connections – between grassroots activist groups, academia and policymakers – in an attempt to develop new ideas and then put those ideas into action. Far too many think tanks like to sit back in an ivory tower, write a policy paper, and organize a panel discussion, and then just leave it at that.  The most effective think tanks look for ways to inject their ideas into the bloodstream of the policy and political debates, and they are constantly looking for new avenues to turn their ideas into practice.

Think tanks are at their worst when they serve as echo chambers for positions advanced by those in government. This happens with surprising frequency in Washington, especially on national security – most of the debates on policy issues take place between the 40 yard lines in the middle of the field, and this in part due to how think tanks conduct their research and analyses. For example, the use of think tank analysts on government-sponsored trips to warzones like Iraq and Afghanistan is something that deserves greater attention. The trips aren’t problematic themselves – but independent analysts taking such trips need to take greater care about the biases introduced by the limitations of their experience and the agenda that was set for them.

On national security, there is quite often a herd mentality among think tank analysts, journalists, and bloggers – a reluctance to ask fundamental questions on what is necessary and what is not to make Americans secure, and an inclination to split the difference and muddle positions rather than have sharper debates.

Think tanks are also at their worst when analysts view their positions as an application for government employment. Far too many analysts “position” themselves for jobs rather than take clear positions on issues, resulting in hedged and unclear analyses on the national security. I saw this happen a lot in 2007-2009 – and in my view pulling punches in pursuit of a Dilbert-level government job is not worth it. A job at a think tank shouldn’t be an expensive SF-171 (one of the application forms for US government jobs), and the Beltway policy community suffers from too much group think as is.

2) What does a progressive foreign policy bring to the table as military efforts are soon to be ratcheted-up in Afghanistan?

Progressive foreign policy thinking has much more it can contribute to the situation in Afghanistan than it has to date. In particular progressives can help map out alternatives to the current course and develop better ideas on some of the key elements to stabilizing Afghanistan – outlining the investments needed in institutions and economic development to achieve a sustainable end state and advance justice in Afghanistan, developing policy recommendations on a more effective and limited use of force against irreconcilable insurgents grounded in moral principles as well as efficacy arguments, and mapping out a conceivable exit strategy.

Progressives have a lot to offer on effective governance and have a distinct advantage over conservatives, who are disinclined against making governance central. It is striking that in many of the hot spots around the world – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen – these countries are excellent descriptions of what many conservatives in America support here at home – in those places that are pose the greatest threats from non-state terrorist networks, there’s no or very limited government, a lot of people have guns, and religion dominates the politics – exactly in line with what many conservatives espouse.

3) What can think tanks contribute to Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts at this juncture?

The most important thing think tanks can do is think outside of the box and offer creative solutions to what is a difficult situation that has been horribly mismanaged and lacking in serious leadership on all sides for years. They should do so by examining different aspects of the issue that can help create a sustainable agreement and looking for ways to build bridges between different groups or communities that fundamentally disagree at this point.

The worst thing that think tanks working on these issues can do is serve as echo chambers to ineffective policies that have not achieved tangible progress towards a viable peace agreement. The think tank field is crowded when it comes to Middle East peace, and most products published and events organized in this field do little to advance the debate – a lot of pabulum, with plenty of lines but nothing to say.  The Israeli-Palestinian issue has become so deeply politicized, and it’s not helped by the near constant posturing by analysts trying to score points rather than solve problems.

The most important contribution think tanks can do is to analyze and do the things that people in government cannot or will not do – exploring all avenues towards a sustainable peace agreement, the end goal that is often forgotten in the tactical and short-sighted debates that tend to dominate Middle East peace policy analysis.

4) In a recent Foreign Policy article, Aaron David Miller said:

Right now, America has neither the opportunity nor frankly the balls to do truly big things on Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Fortuna might still rescue the president. The mullahcracy in Tehran might implode. The Syrians and Israelis might reach out to one another secretly, or perhaps a violent confrontation will flare up to break the impasse.

But without a tectonic plate shifting somewhere, it's going to be tough to re-create the good old days when bold and heroic Arab and Israeli leaders strode the stage of history, together with Americans, willing and able to do serious peacemaking.

Is he right?

Among all of the former peace processors and experts in this field, Aaron David Miller has one of the better batting averages when it comes to predicting and analyzing what is happening.  The overall thrust of his comment – that opportunities are limited and that the “good old days” of Arab-Israeli peace making seem to be a correct descriptive analysis of where we are.  But the good old days weren’t always so good on the Arab-Israeli peacemaking – they just seem so with the 20-20 hindsight of what has been an awful situation for more than a decade now.

At this moment, America seems to lack a clear strategy for moving forward – and I’m not sure if it has to do with lack of opportunity or courage. It may have more to do with a complex situation that has become increasingly stalemated and all sides have become even more entrenched. Opportunities are limited, but new opportunities can be created through new strategies. At this point, I don’t see a clear strategic approach from the Obama administration – it has employed a set of tactics that have not yielded tangible results.

The Obama administration could help make a tectonic plate shift if it moved towards a more coherent strategy focused on a comprehensive regional agreement, but the clock is ticking.

5) You are a part of a rather politically diverse Working Group on Egypt at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that has had some recent impact on U.S. policy. What is the goal of the working group and what are its methods?

The working group is really just getting underway, and I was honored to be asked to join the group because it is focused on an issue with which I have a close personal connection. Back in the 1990s, I lived and worked in Egypt on democracy promotion efforts, and I’ve seen how successive U.S. administration fall into the trap of conventional wisdom of backing the ruler we know out of fear of what a more open and democratic process might bring, or out of a lack of creativity regarding how political reform can be pragmatically yet more effectively elevated on the U.S.-Egypt bilateral policy agenda. With a leadership transition looking likelier in the coming next few years, Egypt is an important opportunity to meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people I came to know who desire a more democratic and open government that respects the basic human rights of its citizens.

This working group has great diversity – and I know some of the other members quite well and have great respect for their contributions to the policy debate. But since we’re really just getting underway, there’s really nothing interesting to say about the inner workings of the group beyond the fact that we’ve reached across various divides in an attempt to advance what has been one of the more difficult policy challenges. It’s been fun putting our heads together in not only developing the core arguments and rationales, but also looking for the best avenues to take the ideas and turn them into policy change and action.

For more from Brian Katulis, follow him on Twitter.

5 Questions for Cato's Julian Sanchez

Cato Institute Research Fellow, Julian Sanchez, set off quite a firestorm among conservatives for criticizing what he sees as a sort of closing the conservative mind. To kick off of a series called "5 Questions," Sanchez answered questions about "epistemic closure," how he knows if he's done a good job and whether or not it's fair to declare the death of think tanks.

1) How did you come up with "epistemic closure?"

So, I hadn't initially intended to coin a phrase: In my initial post about this, I had just thought I was using the two words descriptively. What I meant to refer to was the way conservative media had stopped engaging in a useful, corrective way with the larger public conversation and congealed into this interconnected and self-contained alternate universe, itself insulated from factual correction by a narrative that says, essentially all non-movement information sources are not just slanted a bit to the left, but barely distinguishable from the old Soviet Pravda.

As it turns out, "epistemic closure" has an unrelated and rather technical meaning in philosophy that I'd forgotten about, and that was probably jangling around in the back of my head. Possibly also the philosopher Colin McGinn's phrase "cognitive closure," which has a meaning much closer to what I was talking about—although McGinn's talking about domains of knowledge where our brains are just wired in a way that makes it impossible for us to acquire certain kinds of knowledge.

I don't know that I'd choose a different term now though. I mean, I doubt any logicians dipping into the debate are getting confused and imagining that we're talking about the technical sense of "closure under entailment" or whatever. And I know some people find it intolerably pretentious to use a word of more than three syllables, but they think it's elitist to use indoor plumbing, so I don't know if another term would've satisfied them. I've seen folks using zingier phrases like "information loop" or "bubble world"—but part of me suspects that a clinical sounding phrase like "epistemic closure" made it easier for conservatives to start engaging the problem. Nobody wants to talk about their "impotence" but "erectile dysfunction" (or better, "ED") is a little less threatening.

2) What's the source of the epistemic closure you've been writing about? What's the way out?

I think the explosion of media—blogs and Web magazines and Internet radio and cable—have had a lot to do with it. In principle, it would be nice to have all these conservative media acting as a corrective to a press corps that overwhelmingly self-identifies as liberal, but they've been so focused on being "the conservative alternative" that the fundamental journalistic mission to report fairly and accurately ends up taking a distant second place. Also, as these individual outlets get integrated into a larger conservative media sphere, the lines between serious think tanks or journals of ideas & the talk radio entertainers and wacky fringe sites get blurred, because there's a sense that they're all on the "same team" in a self-conscious way that you really don't see between, say, the Times & the Post & explicitly ideological liberal sources like the Nation or Rachel Maddow. So you've got folks who know better on the right treating World Net Daily or the AM radio shouters as serious and credible—Reagan's 11th commandment.

If there's a way out, I think it starts with what we're seeing now, which is folks on the right starting to acknowledge the problem and talk about it, and realizing that in the long term an informed base that's in touch with reality is more important than a maximally riled up base. 

3) When are think tanks at their best?

Well, there are different kinds of missions think tanks can have. Places like the Urban Institute are more geared toward big original research projects, and they do a great job of that. Those are often more focused on a couple of core issues. Cato certainly does some of that, but I think we and places like AEI and Brookings add value mostly by acting as translators. Which is to say, we'll get into the policy weeds and the technical academic literature, and try to survey it and make it accessible to an educated general audience. I think there's also increasingly room for think tanks to serve as a platform for the kind of longer form, sustained investigative reporting that the traditional press isn't supporting as much anymore. And they can also lay the groundwork for policy. So, for instance—not that I'm especially fond of this policy—New America Foundation was pushing for a national broadband policy for years before it became a live option politically, and by getting out ahead of the issue, I think they ended up exerting a strong influence on the FCC's work there.

4) How do you know if you've done a good job? 

I've been a reporter for most of my career, so it's really only in the past six months that I've been a think tanker, which means I've got a limited track record here to draw on. Ultimately you know you're doing a good job if your proposals and criticisms get incorporated into the larger public policy conversation—so whether you win or lose on the particular issue, people at least feel obligated to engage your arguments and respond to them. And, of course, you're doing a good job if you're successfully engaging the best ideas folks on the other side are putting out.

5) Are we really at the end of think tanks, as Bruce Bartlett has declared?

Well, if we get to the point where all we're doing is servicing the donor base—providing rationalizations for people's preexisting beliefs and positions—then we'd certainly deserve to be at the end. But again, especially as traditional journalistic outlets become less able or willing to support intensive long-form policy reporting, think tanks serve an important niche, and I think the national conversation will be much poorer if nobody's doing that work—trying to think in a serious and sustained way about what's good policy (as opposed to what's tactically optimal or good for ratings) but also trying to articulate the results of that thinking for an audience outside academic journals or professional conferences. 

For more of Julian Sanchez, follow him on Twitter or visit his blog.