Bridging the Gap of Incomprehension: Academy v Policy

When confronted with ideologically blinkered thinking, it's easy to use handing-waving as a kind of shorthand for the lack of merit that would be revealed under proper consideration. There's nothing essentially wrong with this as long as dismissiveness isn't confused with argument in itself, because, after all, if you don't pick your fights you simply become hostage to the sheer volume of opinions out there.

But caution is warranted. For if this is to get to the stage of a reflexive response, it will be harder to spot and engage with genuine positions when they're actually there. That said, it's important to acknowledge that as tempting as it might be to think so, and as true as it often was, not everyone who gave some level of endorsement to the war in Iraq was a complete ignoramous or misguided ideologue. Though I wouldn't be so kind to the people who are still "true believers" today, there were serious journalists, policy wonks, and analysts who were, at the time, split more in line with current public opinion about Iraq. Fareed Zakaria & Pamela Bone are good examples of liberal interventionist journalists, for instance, who made the wrong assessment with good intentions.

But it must be asked - why was this the case in policy circles? Why was there such a gap between what, for instance, a clear majority of historians, philosophers, international lawyers & IR theorists (whether realist, constructivist, or new stream) thought about the inevitable failure of Iraq, and what these other educated and principled policy makers thought about it?

It doesn't seem plausible to dismiss this question as irrelevant, by trying to claim that they were potentially right then, and that it's all about repeated operational failure. Yes, better planning and strategic decisions on the ground, complimented by more sophisticated diplomacy internationally, could have made an untenable situation better than it is now, but that's not the point. That kind of thinking misses the forest for the trees, and just generates clear absurdities like Thomas Friedman's sadly hilarious repetetion of the "next six months" thesis.

Clearly the individual failures in Iraq, and the War on Terror, which constitute part of the bigger failure of the Bush Presidency, do not simply exist in an atomistic vacuum. Rather, most of these failures are directly attributable to the foreign policy methodology which conceived the project in the first place - i.e. over-reliance on hard power, clumsiness with and aversion to soft power, blind animosity towards international institutions, using convenient domestic rhetoric as a replacement for genuine and clear foreign policy communication, misunderstanding of the enabling institutions of democracy, lack of proper respect for the rule of law, etc.

So, where does that leave us? This is where two articles in the latest issue of Harvard International Review may illumate the problem: Access to Power: Research in International Policymaking, and Dogmatic Dangers: When Policy Making Rigidifies Ideas. Both articles explore the difference between academy and policy, and how it's not always "pragmatic realism" in policy versus the "ivory tower" view in academia. Indeed, if Iraq shows anything, simplification for memos, pet historical analogies and the requirement for harmony with the current orthodox political narrative can often push policy makers in the opposite direction away from a realistic & rigorous understanding of the situation, and the options on the table. Go pick up a copy today.

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