Is the Foreign Policy Process Working?

By John Tirman, MIT Center for International Studies. Posted September 4, 2007.

For decades, political analysts have dissected the mechanisms in the U.S. government and other institutions to describe how foreign policy is made. The matter seems to rise with international crises, and those are upon us again: the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the confrontation with Iran, HIV/AIDS, and the pressures of climate change, among other issues, underscore the point. With the U.S. government split between parties, fractiousness is in full view.

With troubles for the U.S. global position mounting, it is easy to say that the foreign policy process is not working well. But what are the sources of trouble, and how readily can they be fixed?

This is not the first, doubtful moment for the wheels of the foreign policy mechanism. At the time of the Vietnam War, the criticism from the public was more deafening than today's, and it took Congress until 1971 to explore, via the Fulbright hearings, the course of the war. That same year, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, seeming to verify the malady of a dysfunctional apparatus. Later that decade, hearings conducted by Sen. Frank Church uncovered covert operations, revealing broad illegality. The Iran-contra affair, the nuclear-weapons and "star wars" buildup of the late 1970s and 1980s, and other controversial episodes earned broad scrutiny, typically spurred by public or media activism followed by congressional probes.

We have, in short, been down this road before. The question is what can better be done to make the process work more satisfactorily.

The Current Morass

What is unusual today is that the Iraq war became unpopular rather quickly, with little leadership from the Democrats or strong oppositional voices in the news media or civil society. From support above 70 percent in March 2003, for example, by February 2005 the public was evenly split on the decision to invade Iraq, and support has dwindled since. This has had an impact on accountability: the public's quick disapproval virtually demanded new answers, but Congress, under Republicans until this year, exercised little oversight, and Democrats were unwilling to challenge Bush until the midterm election season in 2006. For the first three years of the war, then, the public strong skepticism or disapproval was ignored by the workings of government.

Facing growing public unrest and political paralysis within the government, President Bush felt compelled to empanel a "fresh look" after a Republican congressman from Virginia, Frank Wolf, proposed such a review after visiting Iraq in late 2005. The White House was initially opposed, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prevailed and Congress quickly appropriated the money. Former congressman Lee Hamilton and former secretary of state James Baker headed the panel, the Iraq Study Group (ISG).

It is relatively rare when a foreign policy issue that is current, unresolved, and extremely controversial would receive its most formal review and recommendations from a non-governmental body. Apart from the co-chairs, the ISG was comprised of members with little foreign policy experience; its forty or so experts are well-versed but were drawn from the foreign policy establishment; and its work was done in secret.3 It withheld its policy recommendations until after the 2006 midterm elections, and the administration immediately undermined its conclusions -- essentially declaring it would not heed such advice -- although in practice it gradually adopted some of its views. Altogether, then, the ISG is hardly a model for exploring options.

That it was freighted with responsibilities difficult to deliver on is less a comment on ISG's competence than the deeper ailments of the system that produced the Iraq catastrophe and allowed it to fester for years. Now in charge in Congress, the Democrats have not won many points in its oversight functions, either, fidgeting over withdrawal deadlines and the level of coercive language they can use, and failing to convince enough Republicans to come along. Meanwhile, the enormous human toll in Iraq -- one-half in "absolute poverty," high child malnourishment, 70 percent without clean water, and so on -- goes practically unnoticed. So the failure of accountability persists in both branches.

Four Guideposts

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John Tirman is Executive Director of MIT's Center for International Studies. He is co-editor and co-author of Multilateralism Under Challenge? Power, International Order, and Structural Change.