tonight's program, please consider becoming a member or making a donation to support our work in other educational programs like this. and definitely check out some of our upcoming programs, some of which you see on the screen right now. you can find out about those and more on our website at smithsonian associates network. and once again, we do encourage you to follow that survey when you exit the program evening. we would love to hear from and your input on tonight's chalk up the survey come up as soon as you leave this room and of course danielle, this book is a for sale. so if you'd like to learn more about that, there is a link on the program web page. and if you'd like to find out where to purchase that. so once again, thank you all so much and please enjoy the remainder of your lifwithout fut me turn it over to you. have a couple of questions depending on sort of what you

say. i think i know what you're going to say, but but depending on on what you say, maybe, maybe. and then we'll it up for questions. there is a microphone in the room all i ask since this is being televised, if you could walk up, introduce yourself, ask a question, make a comment if you feel free, but ask a question also just so we can record it and get the audio so without further. jeff, please. great. thank you. thank you very much. i'm i'm to be here at the american foreign policy council. i know very well you're founder president herman kershner. you know, i go back a long ways, more years than either one of us would probably care to admit. and i'm very familiar with your work here. you are from washington. standards are fairly small institution, but you punch well above your weight and make many good contributions to american foreign policy. so i'm pleased to be here.

you ask if i might begin my remarks and i will talk about this book, but to begin by saying a few words about my career because as i understand it, many of are interns and probably just on the cusp of trying to figure out what your own careers are going to be like. and i thought maybe by chance that might be helpful to to hear what someone else's careers would like and machiavelli once said that i remember if it was in the prince or the discourses livy, but machiavelli once said that everyone's career and indeed everyone's life is a combination of things. what you aim for and plan and intend to do. on the one hand and fortunate look on the other hand. and that's certainly the case in instance, i think it is the case of many other people in washington with whom i'm

familiar. thank you all. he went on to say he estimated that, maybe you're planning and you're in or intending maybe constitute a little more than of your outcomes and fortune, maybe a little less than half i don't know if you actually believe or not. he was trying to talk people who believed in that or that their whole lives for control by the outside. and they had no at all. that's not our problem today, obviously, but at all events. i think machiavelli was completely right on the few comments i make about my own career. we'll illustrate that to. a tee i think i. i began when i was more or less your age as a as a in college with the thought that i wanted to be a professor. i wanted to teach political philosophy. i wanted to read philosophy. i wanted to write about i wanted to teach about it. and so when i graduated, i went to graduate school and did an mba and a ph.d. at princeton.

and continue on what i thought was my normal course as it happened. the job opened up unexpectedly at the university, pennsylvania and i ended up getting that job. it was maybe the best job in the country at that point in my and i was really pretty well convinced that i was the master of my own ship, that things were moving along just as had planned them. i found after having been at penn for a few years, that really wasn't entirely the case and that penn, at least in my department, was running through assistant professors for three year contracts, and then flushing us out and starting again on the bottom and. so it was clear that i was to have to do something else. my first and natural, i think, response was to look and see if there's another job somewhere. there were very few at that point and those are the were were places i simply had no interest in being. and so i was really sort of

stymied in terms of my career plan. and so susan and i and my who's back here somewhere had been in washington, d.c. on a washington semester program, our junior year in college and it turned out it was a wonderful experience. so maybe somewhat akin to the experiences you guys are having. we met with members, congress, with senior executive branch officials, with justices of the court. i was a kind of a mini argument with justice william douglas one day and it just seemed to me that in the words of my southern, this was a rather tall cotton. and the other half of that it was a very tense and edgy time in washington in the spring of 1968, robert kennedy was assassinated. martin luther king was assassinated. riots and all the rest were breaking out, not blocks from where we're sitting today.

the capitol hill was surrounded with sandbags and military police guarding capitol. and then at a kind of an intensity to the experience. and susan and i thought, well, maybe we'd like to come back here. we could. so being suddenly blocked altogether of my academic ambitions, we decided i'd take a look and see what jobs that were here. so i applied at places thought it would be in a congressional budget office and places like that. but my parents were from indiana and they were very fond of junior senator richard and so a complete lark. i submitted a letter of application to senator william's office. that's you did it in those days. you wrote a letter, you put a stamp on it, and you mailed and you hope to hear something back. no email. and so i got a call back from his chief of staff, who at the time was a young guy and then

mitch daniels, which subsequently, of course, what had to be director of the office of management, two time governor of indiana, the president of the university, and so i interviewed mitch, and it turned out he was from princeton, too, which was a very nice coincidence. and he said in his droll way, i thought, i had to see you because i wanted to see a creature like you actually existed. and i said, what do you mean? he said, well, i mean, someone with a ph.d. from an ivy league school who's a conservative republican, i didn't know if there such a thing. so i said, well, so at any rate, i was the job. and after thinking about it a bit, i took it. when you speak about fortune life, if you had told me three years before that i was to be a capitol hill staff, i wouldn't have even known what you meant or what hill staffers do, much

less i would be one. but it turned out i really actually enjoyed it a great deal. senator lugar is a very intelligent, thoughtful guy. mitch head still has the the best and, sharpest political instincts of anybody i've ever met. and so it was really a wonderful place to be. and so the two years that we were planning to stay here past and and i was still there four or five years later, at which point mitch and i became senator lugar's chief staff. then something happened which was totally unexpected and could never have been planned for. and that is in a very short years. senator lugar went from being the minority minority member, the least senior member on the foreign relations committee to be the chairman that it never happened before. and i've so far as i know, i don't think it's ever happened since. no one could have expected that. but the short of it was i went over and became staff director, the senate foreign relations

committee, which turned out to be really think the best job i have ever had either before or after i was able to hire a brand staff entirely. and i think we put together the foreign policy team in town. if you didn't exist at that point. but otherwise you would have, otherwise it would have the second or two probably hired your staff out of you and so it was very good and we worked with the members of the senate of the house. we passed major pieces of legislation and the committee back on the map again, where had fallen into disrepair over the previous years. and i work very closely with the state departments. was the reagan administration. and we tried as best we could to be supportive of their initiatives. not everyone, but most and it really was it was a wonderful learning experience. and i thought about staying longer.

but by then i'd been on the hill for seven or eight years and i didn't want to become what we used to call a professional rep and spend my entire life on the hill. and so i decided to go out on my own and join up with two of my friends that we started a small government relations firm, which again proving adage that it's better to be lucky than smart. we would go to a very quick start, hired some major clients and gradually we had turned it into one of the better known, more successful washington lobbying firms in town. i hate to confess, but the i became actually a bit seduced by the money when i was a professor. never thought it would be you're not going to the professor of business to make money. but at any rate, i stayed on for 18 years altogether and we made a very good run of it in my own defense as an academic, i.

i did teach for 20 years during that period of time at georgetown one class, each year on the congress side, graduate class on congress and national security policy. so i kept one over in the water of academia and, convinced myself that i was still somehow an academic. and so i finally left in 2004 and sold my half of the company to my partner and the susan and i then plan to build a house. i'm on the chesapeake bay and i was intending to write a book that i've had on my mind for a long time. and the blue i got a phone call from bob zoellick at the state department. he was at that point the deputy secretary of state for condoleeza rice. and he said, look, i told connie i thought you would be a good choice to be assistant secretary for legislative affairs. and i said, well, bob that's a very nice name. thank you so much for the thought. but that's not really my plan at this point.

we're planning to move out of town and write a book. and then bob's typical, he said, well, that's the wrong answer. please, just go meet with connie and the long and the short of it was that was charm and i guess i didn't screw up too badly because she ended up offering the job to to be assistant secretary. and after somewhat complex compromise and process of my own, i began and served in this position for throughout the second term of the george w bush administration and from 2005 to 2008, it was very intense and, complex job. we were in charge of trying to get the state department budget passed each year. we were in charge of trying to get legislation in the department or the administration passed. we were in charge trying to stop bad ideas came from the hill that we didn't like. and by the way, there were a lot more of the latter than the

former. and we were in charge of trying get the treaties consented to by the senate, although as you probably know, treaties are a very big business these days and presidents prefer do things by some kind of an executive agreement or another because it's just too hard to get the senate to anything and also nominations, which took up inordinate amount of our time when you think about it, the state department has far more nominees that they have to get confirmed than any other cabinet department by far, every cabinet department has to have their senior staff at the assistant level, assistant secretary level above confirmed of the state department. in addition of the constitutional requirement, ambassadors have to be confirmed. we have lots and lots of confirmations to do every year. there are roughly what i don't know 190 some ambassadors and if the average ten years, three years or so we were having to

confirm 60 or so ambassador hours every year and this was difficult and often extremely unhappy and unpleasant job there were no end to things that came up. but at all events it was a wonderful learning experience and that was over i'm very glad i did it at that point. we finally decided to make good on our plan to, build a house on the chesapeake bay, and to escape from washington and which which we did. and so i began work this long standing book project and at that point i thought, well, maybe i should teach a little bit. and it turned out that the president of the christopher newport university, which was right there, was paul trible, was in the process of turning it from a solo institution, really a pretty good liberal arts school. now and so i met with paul and he said, oh, you've got a

teacher. so i taught there full time for a year. and then after that i taught the next three or four years off and on various courses on american and on foreign policy, on political philosophy and, whatever. i could talk them into. and that was a very good, a good place to be at that point again, somewhat out of the blue in the same way the bob zoellick call came. i got a phone call from assistant dean of duke barton school of public policy at the of virginia and he was an acquaintance of mine and what i had taught at georgetown for 20 years, i always would invite couple of guest lecturers. and so students didn't just hear from me, but would hear it sometimes from the virgin. viewpoints, as hard as that is to believe on a college anymore. and so this is this friend of mine who was political views flat out opposite of mine. i asked to come and he was fairly well received by the

students and i had him back year after year. and so when he called, said he was now at the university of virginia. and could i return favor and do some guest lectures in his classes? and so i said, well, sure, i'd be happy to. one thing led to another, and i began to teach full time at uva every spring semester. and so that brings almost up to the present time. and as can see, there's a complete mix of things which i had planned, do and intended to do, and. things which really were a matter of fortune and usually for all practical purposes, good fortune and bad fortune. and so i would just encourage you, as you think about your career, to think about what you want to do, think about why you want to do it, think about what will make you feel fulfilled as the mythology joseph campbell

said, follow your bliss. think about what you want to do, what your assets are, how you'd like to see your life unfold. but at the same be wide open to which might come along that are not expected, that are even a little blue, because often those things are at least as good as what you have in your own mind about what should be doing so will leave it at that as one piece of summary wisdom. i guess, you know, plan am but also be open now the real thing i want to talk about today, the second major piece of something which i learned over 45 years in washington is is a little bit different. it's a subject which i take up in this most recent book. i've, which just was published in, april called as does the alarm was kind enough to say american materialism. why our domestic policies our

foreign policies and, our intelligence assessments often fail. and this is, as i say in the preface, a book that was 45 years in the making and reflecting something which i learned throughout my whole career in washington. it began when i was, a newly minted foreign policy staffer for senator lugar. he went on the last senate delegation to iran to see the shah and they came back and i therefore followed things iran very closely. and i can't remember november or december, but it was right at the end of. 1978, and then in. january 1979, the shah abdicated left the country after several months of uncertain about what was going to happen, the ayatollah khomeini assumed power and iran has won a theocratic

government. ever since. and shortly khomeini came in. i ran into an acquaintance of mine who was a mid-level cia analyst, and i said to him, how did you guys iran so wrong? how could you miss this? after all, iran had gone from one of our closest allies in the middle to an implacable enemy that's more or less remained that way ever since. how did you guys this? i mean, after all, iran wasn't just some country middle east, but after israel was our closest ally. and along with saudi arabia, saudi arabia were called the twin pillars of oil producer and guardians of the gulf through, which so much of the oil that fueled western economies came. and as i found, was absolutely fascinating, and it stuck with me, he said, well, you know, we in the intelligence business are very good at context. we're very good at saying

material things, seeing tangible things, things we can count. and so when we looked at iran, we saw before him so many hundred troops the shah had so many thousand tanks. the shah had so many thousand. so our agents the secret service and, it appeared to us that there was absolutely nothing on the horizon that was going to jeopardize his power. he might face protests continually as he had been, but he was in good shape. the intelligence agency, which were predicting that the shah would be in good shape all way through the mid 1980s. and as far out as the eye could see, which of course, wasn't what happened very shortly after these fearless predictions were made, the shah abdicated. and so i thought about this and stayed with me really throughout of the different jobs which i've described to you that far too often when policymakers are looking at making policy they realize far too heavily on what you might call economic causation or material causation

that reasons things happen are for material reasons. and that's really what the purpose of this book is to explain a, how this came to be. it wasn't always thus. it certainly wasn't always in the first hundred and 50 years of our country history from 1789, up until really the progressive era and for the second and third decades of of the 20th century. how it came to be. but more importantly, how this plays itself out in domestic policy and foreign policy and in intelligence assessments. i won't belabor my whole analysis of how it came to be other than to just say shorthand, it came with the arrival of progressivism from europe, progressivism being a kind of a pale version. marxism, which terms always to

over accentuate the importance of materials, things and if you're interested in you can see a long and somewhat. difficult analysis about all of this the book. but what i'd like to do today, rather, is to talk and just give you some examples about how is i think, an excessive belief in material causation makes our policies deficient, something economics is not important that doesn't have a role. it's simply not beginning. and then the ball is so if i could let me just spend a few minutes, five or six, 8 minutes on domestic policy, then on foreign policy, which is after all your brief here and then talk a little bit about the intelligence agencies and intelligence assessments and try to demonstrate to you how i think this is the case and why is our policies, even though is very well intentioned, often are not altogether.

one, trumps the domestic. if you were to sit in on these debates on the hill or in the executive branch of out what we should do and education policy or a crime policy or agriculture policy or food stamps or whatever it is. every one of these debates ends up being premised on the question of how much money are we providing for for these particular jobs for these particular tasks? and the conventional wisdom held certainly by the democratic party and progressive, especially but also by a lot of republicans, is that they all on money and the key to success is to provide more resources, more money, more is always the answer. and so if you look at, let me just mention education policy as an example. if you look at education policy, this is the beginning and end of all wisdom. how do you improve our educational attainment in this

country, which is often criticized as, being not very good and there are many shortcomings when it you provide resources. how do you measure how good you're doing how well you sincere you are, what intending to improve educational attainment in this country? how much money are you? are providing? you're providing more money than last year and this is when you sit in these debates just become striking. you can hardly not see this, but you're not looking for it. and when you look at the education policy. the interesting thing about it is that there's really absolutely no empirical evidence that this is true. there is some role for material inputs. without a doubt. you need to pay teachers in schools and so forth, but it is the beginning and end of all wisdom about how you improve

educational attainment in this country. to the contrary, there are a number of things of which if you really want to have a decent education policy that involve money at all and all involve, simply throwing resources at the of the problem. these might include, for example, taking a look at the family in the united states. when you look at the many families the parents of absolutely no interest in education and provide very little preparation for their children to go to school, i'm no particular fan of and certainly not of the teachers unions, but it's a little bit of an unfair rap to lay everything off on how good or bad teachers are because a lot of kids to school where they've they've got an almost zero vocabulary they don't know anything they don't particularly care to know. and to put it all on teachers is a little bit of a bum rap i think. but the family structure, this is very important. likewise to what what is the quality of the teachers you're

hiring? likewise to what exactly they're teaching, as opposed to some of the things that pass for education today or. how about encouraging work competition, which was an average here of life, seems to produce better and monopolies do. all of these things important and if you think you're going to solve educational attainment problems in this country, you could double the amount of money we spent or triple it and still not going to get the kind of you want. you're too much with your head wrapped. the notion that the only way to improve education is to provide more money, more resources. and so this is an example. but you can you can trace the same pattern over and over in all the different cabinet departments and in all different debates that go on about how do we do good, do we make good policy? let me mention other thing about a number of other things about

our domestic that flow from the success of reliance on a notion of economic causation. if you listen sometimes to in the press or members of congress, particularly on the left, will ask why is it that poor people or working class people, this country, whatever vote republican or trumpet these days, well, how can that be? don't these people know their own self interest? i mean, it's the left that wants to provide to use mitt romney's famous or more stuff. how what's the matter with people? why can't they understand where their self-interest lies? and this seems a kind of a straight up question in a way that was very interesting written, i think it was 2008 by my uncle thomas frank. the book was called what's the matter with kansas and raises

this very question why is it exactly that kansas, which he takes because he knows about it, why is it that so many kansans, particularly ones, are not in the elite, but are more class? why is it that they ever would vote republican? why? why? why do they do this? how could they not know what their self-interest is? this seems like a very fair, neutral question, but if you think about it and unpack in a little bit. it's not a fair or neutral question. it's a question that depends entirely on the premise that people's self interest are always monitory, are always financial, always material, and that human beings can't have deep, true interest. other than financial interests. and so what happens is that what we call days, cultural issues, for want of a better word word, these these are kind of dismissed being red herrings.

but the fact of the matter is, people have all kinds of interests, economic interests for short are very important. not that they're not important are important, but they're not the thing that's important. and people are more complex than economic beings. -- economicus or far more complex than. they care about other things of faith, country, family. and it's not weird to think that people might do some degree cast their votes on this part of what they take as their self-interest rather than simply on economic basis, on whether or not they receive more money from from the federal government. is still a word like this for the first 150 years of our country's history where it was assumed somehow that people's

self-interest always mature. it was always financial but again this sort came in i think was a largely what the progressive movement and the early century that's been with us for a hundred years now. by the way, i make an argument, i don't know if you believe it or not, but it just seems to me that progressive ism is the dominant intellectual background and characterization of our country right now, even that most all of the elites, the people who who deal with symbols, numbers and words are somehow or of a material kind mindset of a of a progressive kind of mindset and this is certainly true of the democratic party, but it's also true of educational institutions. it's true academia. it's true of the media. it's true of the entertainment industry. it's true of most not for profits, not not not the council

of course clear enough, but it's also true of many republicans who somehow harbor this notion as well on the back of their mind. and so i think that the again, it's not that it's not that material things on the money are unimportant but it's that somehow the notion that they are all important is a conceit that comes from nowhere other than what you might. back to a european even marxist notion of that economics what shape of the bottom most everything that occurs and shape why it occurs. so maybe said about domestic issues. so there are a whole host of other sides to this which i including questions like why this turns out was to over exaggerate or i shouldn't say over exaggerate just exaggerate what people think is the

importance of money in politics, which i think is vastly exaggerated, and that most all empirical evidence points to its being not nearly as important as most people to think. it also, i think suggests, why you have this phenomenon of of our government that we pass a lot of bills and we a lot of things but they all concern inputs money resources and there's very little of what you might call concern about or results to the contrary i mean there is virtually no intelligent congressional oversight about anything. what passes for congressional oversight is some gotcha kind of thing where somebody's obviously done something wrong. know, i think the secret service and but put to take a look bills which they passed nobody in the

executive branch or the congress ever looked seriously at what does this actually and what is it not accomplishing or to the contrary, all a question of measuring inputs rather than measuring results. and so there are a number of other things that follow from thinking about it this way. but in the interests of moving along and opening up eventually. let me turn to foreign policy for a few minutes minutes and let me just discuss to of american foreign policy. first, take a look at the state department and priorities. the state department budget. i don't know exactly what it is today, but it's something in the range of $60 billion. and what you see is that 40 billion of it to 32/3 goes to provide foreign assistance to

other countries. only one third, roughly 20 billion, goes to pay the salaries of all state department employees, both americans and foreign nationals of 59,000 people. altogether goes to pay for building our buildings and our embassy heads and so forth goes to pay for security. both our officials and our embassies goes to pay for all the visa programs and stuff goes, to pay for road travel and the things that go into having a diplomatic presence and being able to conduct diplomacy in some way. only only one third. well, all about the other two thirds is clearly all a question of providing financial to countries. now, i, i actually know a little bit about this and i suppose, and i don't say this with any particular pride. i was, i guess, the chief salesman for foreign assistance on the hill from 2005 to 2008.

but thinking about it all in the terms in which i do in this book, it to me that what one could say is that there some very useful and good foreign assistance programs but they tend to be the ones that have a very specific objective objective very, specific and goal clearly understood and clearly measurable. and you could take something like counter-narcotics of the plan colombia a while back changed colombia from being a country that was virtually a narco terrorist state to becoming a normal country of most of the credit for this is due to the colombians themselves. but american assistance colombia was an important part it and it was important because it was clear what the objective was. it was what we were trying to achieve it was clear how we measured results and didn't. and this kind of program think makes some sense also to, for example, counter proliferation

strategy. there are a number of times in which counterproliferation strategies been very successful or conventional. libya, for example, gadhafi was still lurking around, but there were a number of cases in which that's the case that the assistance we provide is very useful in achieving concrete, clear, objective and measurable results or, as a very good example, the counter aids programs in. we have a very substantial to providing a aids in sub-saharan africa and this to is clear what the objective is. it's clear what we're trying to do and it's clear to that it's measurable. the results are measurable almost to the person you can tell and how many lives have been saved by these programs, these kind of programs as well

as, say, providing some military assistance to israel, because you know what they need and you want to help them to do it. i mentioned this in part because the reason i'm late is that does have capitol hill is screwed up to fairly well because bibi's here today presumably asking for more aid and programs like that a certain amount of sense. but what the great majority of the foreign assistance programs far more amorphous than this and the goals are not measurable in clear cut. they're more like, well, we want to do good. we want to encourage growth. we want to encourage development. you know, the word development is itself, i think, very interesting. it's a word borrowed from biology, if you think about it, human beings and other sentient beings, life have a pattern of development.

human beings go from embryos to baby to small children to adults. and and if something from the outside doesn't come in and interfere, they have this almost natural progression of world development and what does a development program of the state department idi tend to do is to assume that there is such a thing like that also in the sphere of nations and it's a natural thing countries to develop in that way and that all that needs to be done is provide some money to, stimulate this to happen. now the evidence for this as well seems to be vanishingly small. that you've can point to countries where there is no development at all. in fact, the contrary, you look at venezuela. i mean, this was once a somewhat prosperous country. now after after regimes,

including two six year terms of a maduro, maybe a chavez maybe a third term coming if they cheat enough that countries don't necessarily develop in the certain way, they can go backwards as venezuela's done. i mean, this government has virtually destroyed the country. and so there's. reason to think the parliament is quite a natural thing and how this to being was a lot of economic models that were produced the stages of growth were the stages of growth seemed to be natural and if you simply provide money here and there and here you will get economic. and again, as i say, i, i think this is a a rather vague and not necessarily always very well founded notion, but it relies on the notion that it is economic and economic assistance that is needed, above all for to develop. and that's not entirely true.

you can see it was venezuela simply as going and there's no amount of economic assistance we could provide for venezuela today that would make slightest bit of difference in terms of its future. this is a problem of governance, of money, and so so as i've said in a couple of other instances, is that this was not always the case that. we behave like this as a country for the first, what, years, 1789, up until the several years before war two when we did the lend-lease program, we virtually provided no foreign assistance to anybody at all. and this began to change with the land lease program and then ultimately world war two. more with the plan and with the assistance to greece, turkey. and then finally became fully institutionalized as a project. around 1961, when the agency for

economic development, i think, was created. and since then, we've proceeded along on the basis of these often unspoken models that the way for a country to develop and it will naturally is if can provide more resources. if provided with more resources, it will succeed and. some of these programs i think are run in such a way that there is no prospect of their being very helpful to be perfectly vulnerable and i again, this is a result of a rather long experience watching our foreign assistance programs are are provided and watching how money is doled out. sit around the with the senior staff at the state department and the you watch how decisions are made, how much money country aid should be in country b it

would curl up your hair. i and and so. well let me leave it at that that this is it's two thirds and by far and away the project of the state department currently let me mention a second thing about foreign policy. there. there is a professor at tufts named drezner who wrote an article a couple of years back and foreign foreign affairs journal and he said economic sanctions have become the principal tool of american foreign policy. and i think he's right. i think he's absolutely right if i made you guess how many academics sanctions we have in place currently, i bet you would underestimate it. every time there are roughly 11,000 economic sanctions, we have place now against other countries, against other groups,

other individuals, against certain systems, against ships, against any quasar i don't dual use military everything and and this tool was not ours case we didn't really do economic as a country from 1789 all the way up until the years just after world war one when they understood to be a tool, a useful tool of american foreign policy. we did embargoes once in a while during war times, but as the economics sanctions being put against countries and individuals in peacetime, this was not a foreign tool and it didn't become one until the post-world war one period. and again, why? well, because the progressive movement woodrow, wilson in particular, thought that this was really the way policy could

be successful and could be conducted there a wonderful wilson quotation which could have been the first piece of this book in which wilson's says, well, he was busy helping create the league of nations. you say, where? he said, if you can believe that pulling economic sanctions against the country is a harsher and more severe penalty that country than invading militarily. this seems to be, of course, absolutely ridiculous, yes. but nevertheless, there it was. this was the principal tool, the league of nations. and it got to a predictably rocky start. league of nations decided that they were going to sanction italy. they invaded ethiopia and threatened italy with sanctions and italy ignored the threat entirely. and then when italy invaded the sanctions put on italy and they made no difference whatsoever in italian policy toward ethiopia.

and i think that's something. that one needs to think about in terms all of our economic sanctions. these days as well. it depends a little bit, i suppose, on what you're trying to achieve by economic sanctions. if you're just trying to express your dissatisfaction, unhappiness with some. okay, that's that's one thing. but if you think that sanctions are going to have an effect as to change policies of other governments, i think you're going to be sorely mistaken. there really is very little evidence that that's ever worked or better yet, if you're going to change the whole foreign regime with sanctions that almost never works. and so not to say that there haven't been a few cases where it's worked. senator lugar was much involved in sanctions against south africa, the apartheid regime, and i was, as a result, of course, involve too. and there were very specific and unusual reasons why that succeeded. but for the most part, it

doesn't succeed. your goal is to change policies of foreign governments or to change the regimes themselves we have sanctioned north korea so many ways. down, forward, backward left, right, and it has not made a single bit of difference, far as i can tell. and kim jong un's policies or his nuclear development program or certainly changing the nature of his regime, we are sanctioned. venezuela, again, backward upside and downward and still maduro is there cruising very nicely, as my kids might say. how's this working out for you? and it's not particularly working out, actually. and the reason i think the people have such hopes that sanctions will work is that it again is an excessive on the notion that i change your

behavior with economic with economic means and it is vastly overestimated as a useful tool. i think. again, as i say, this is a fairly recent phenomenon, one and more current example look at russia and ukraine. we threatened russia with sanctions. you dare to invade ukraine, put sanctions on you. and again, as my kids would say, well, how did that work out? putin ignored. he invaded ukraine, then put sanctions on russia, various kinds and various types and putin is still at war with ukraine. these sanctions have had literally so far as i can judge. no significant effect at all. putin continues to do what he does because. he's not necessarily doing it for economic, but to the contrary, has an idea in his mind about greater russia is not

even an economic idea at all. and so the the are very convenient. if i were a real cynic which i might be you could almost say that. why do we put so many sanctions in place? well, it's because we can make it look like we're doing something without doing anything real. and we can take credit for being tough without actually being tough. and so this, i think, is all founded on the two great reliance. on the notion of economic causation, the ability of economics, material things to motivate people or nations and as a result of these policies are nowhere near so successful as the proponents would would like to say sometimes they are even counterpart negative. i can give you a very funny

although not really funny example of a time when the sanctions were completely and utterly counterproductive if you want to want a real example of that afterword if you're interested so those those are two ways in which think the two fundamental moral regular everyday policies of the state department are founded on notions of of of an excessive faith and economic causation. let me turn a few minutes and then i'll stop by i promise. let me turn for a few minutes to intelligence. i should be clear in the beginning that what i'm talking about and what i'm not talking about, the intelligence community has to kinds of things. it does, one of which was operations and the other one of which was analysis. and the cia reflects that example. there's a director of operations which engages in all of the so-called which you can imagine

often great risk and great difficulty and director of analysis which is by far the bigger part of the cia and i'm not talking at all about the operation side of the house, nor am i talking about provision of facts which the intelligence community to decision makers. if you were never privy to any of this, you would be astonished what we actually know what the prime minister of a country actually that the foreign minister breakfast yesterday morning. well you know here's here's what he or she said right here or how many missiles does china have lined up against the taiwan straits or whatever the case might be or what i'm talking about, though, is do you make something meaningful out of these facts? how you do an assessment in the intelligence community, how you make sense of it?

and here this usually comes in the of a kind of a lowest common denominator statement from the combined intelligence agencies in the form we that or we judge that we assess was moderately confidence whatever and this is the way the intelligence attempts to understand what's happening even to help predict or not to predict what's happening. and that's the part that i'm talking about. now i offer a number of examples in, the book, about how these intelligence assessments have gone wrong. the first one i've already mentioned to you is the case of the shah in iran, where the intelligence community and all kinds of facts. who's doing what to whom? and i'll what didn't from any of this the right thing and why in this case as i've mentioned because they were focused really

on the balance of material forces. four boxes phrased by the way, balance of material forces between the shah and his folks. and and the different protest groups there others. and then first of time, let me just two, lest you think that what happened in iran, cases of old news and we've totally changed our ways we haven't the question of the collapse, the afghan government of no one particularly sought. if the united states left afghanistan or afghanistan was going to defeat taliban. the real question was how long could the afghan government stay in place and fend off the taliban? oh, i suppose it's a case of plausible denial of our involvement or it wasn't vietnam. but the intelligence community made these, in retrospect, flat

wrong conclusions about all of us. arguing what? arguing the taliban could be held off would be in the afghan could take hold and could defend itself and could exist for 18 months, two years or some length of time out to the indeterminacy and based on what? well, based on the fact that the afghan government had when we left far more troops than the taliban had. and the way far more and much better weapons than the taliban. they had, you know, all of the billions weapons that we left behind. and, you know there was a phone call president biden made with ashraf, the afghan president, very soon before the government imploded in which he said, well,

look, mr. you you've got all the reasons to be successful here. you've got far more troops under your command than the taliban have. so no doubt about it. and and they're all organized militarily in that we've trained them and and you have, by the way, the state of the art weapons that taliban does not have. and you should be in good shape, at least a while out based on his own reading of our own intelligence. well, again, how does that work out? well, when we left the afghan government collapsed almost instantaneously, because it turns out that having more troops and having more guns and more weapons. so this is the beginning and end of all wisdom about why things happen the world well and and

admittedly was probably doing a bit of a pep talk to ghani and you know there was there was that but but the notion somehow you can count up and predict success based on the material balance of forces is really not correct. and there are other and more complex things that go to explain why things happen. i mentioned in the book ernest hemingway's book, the sun, also rises, what one character asks another one, how how did you go bankrupt? and character says, well, two ways. first, gradually, and then all at once. and that's exactly what happened. afghanistan all at once and these projection of the intelligence agency were flat wrong and a little discouraging to see the director of the cia at that time and now talk about war incredible success. they had in the handling afghanistan. their success, i suppose,

consisted in this that they were the more pessimistic of the various intelligence. so the military agencies were more optimistic than the cia. none of this was a success. it was all not right or to come even more clear. look at russia and the invasion of ukraine here. there's some good about the intelligence agency, intelligence agencies predicted and knew that putin was going to invade against ukraine and thus were far better than our european intelligence agency colleagues. and in in this they were actually better than zelensky who somehow thought or maybe in his heart of hearts that the invasion wasn't going to take place. but just like we tried prevent russia from an invading ukraine with the threat sanctions which

caused no thing to happen. putin invaded ukraine anyway and, sanctions and that caused him to change his mind one iota. ever since. but at that point, once they were so correct about the issue of what putin was going to, then the assessment was really way off the rails and they subscribed as a student. a number of people in european intelligence agencies took the notion that what that russia would defeat ukraine and be in kiev and what. depending on who you read three days four days, five days there on intelligence, people were picking out apartments at cuban supports and and planning to create a puppet government there if a formal part of the soviet you know back in the cold war they were part of russia and so

you know this assessment that they made that ukraine collapse in a very short period of time was flat wrong, flat wrong. and now what does it matter? will i suppose it matters insofar as it was clear that ukraine going to be able to hold off russia and actually for a while began to change the whole balance of things, move the border back toward russia. we might provided more quickly more and useful weapons to ukraine. but that's a policy question beyond the scope here. all i'm saying is that well, you know, this tells tells us assessment was way off the mark. just just to conclude about this other than to say i could give you many more examples if you want to. one acquaintance of mine knows everything about intelligence, said he went through a litany

and said there's virtually no major transformative event in world affairs that the intelligence agencies have predicted. and the question is why? it's not for want of resources. sure, that's for sure. and it would be very hard if these predictions were wrong in different ways. you know, run this way in one case, run it out in one case, run this way in another case. as yogi berra said, predictions hard, especially about the future and, you know, the thing that was that they they all failed and exact the same way and exactly the same way namely in taking economic things as the basis of reality and, as the reasons why things change don't change. and without a form of understand of the various things that motivate human behavior. certainly in putin's case, i don't think there was a strong economic motive to to attack

ukraine. no. economic things matter in the long run. the fact that russia has more troops and has more guns and so forth is is gradually over time making a difference. but the intelligence such about how quickly ukraine would collapse was not flat wrong. and wrong for the same reason. all of the other ones i mentioned in this chapter are wrong, namely an over of the importance of material. so let me stop there and say that i do. i feel like i was obliged to to offer a few thoughts about how we might improve the situation is a good thing to know. the intelligence agencies are reviewing how they do business and looking at whether they need more conflict, ways of thinking about things and simply counting guns and tanks and troops and so forth. that's all to the good. but what they need to understand

is what the problem really is underneath all this is make the same mistake. every time when that's a mistake. and the this is what needs to be taken a look at and thought through from the ground up. and so i make a few suggestions of policy suggestions but i, i have to admit the notion of material causation is so deeply embedded in the american at this point. the changing this is going to be very, very difficult and i think that's something we simply have to acknowledge going forward. and we can certainly it at the margins and i as i say, i'll make a number of suggestions, but i, i may be more conscious than anybody about how limited these suggestions really are in terms of a big difference. but the at any rate, this is the case i make here and it is. i what i would argue the other

big thing that i learned over the 45 years i've been in washington. and so just to summarize, if you're to look at careers, do think about you want to do think seriously it but be open to the possibility of fortune telling it in ways that you don't expect and. by the way, which i haven't touched. i found it was important not to make enemies gratuitously. but rather to. treat people decently. you can bring yourself to do. and you'll be surprised how often things come around later on in your life and interesting ways. that's true with bob.

it was true with my very liberal friend would told you that if you want to advance your chances of success i think it often is very helpful to be reasonable or sane and fair minded about things. our current republican nominee has a long way without this particular virtue. but at any rate, i think for the most part. i found it very helpful. and then finally i think, if you will, about the problems you're trying to address, not of them are amenable to a flat out economic throwing money at them kind solution. think a little bit about it think outside the box think about what actually help improve academic performance of our children. think about it things like that and the take a look too and this a a notion i have to think to that of what you should be doing what congress should be doing and what the executive branch

should be doing is some kind of real oversight or look at the results, not just the inputs, you know, all the economic sanctions that we put in place against other countries. there is not one single agency in the or in congress that has ever done any study about the real impact of economic sanctions on a particular not the treasury department, which by and large manages most of these sanctions. the state department, not the defense department, not the white house, not the congress, some congressional committee, nobody it's all about input and nothing about, whether they're successful or not. so i think you could advantage yourself a bit, if you thought about things a little more. fulsomely and look things on the basis of whether they're retrieving the results you want, just whether you're providing more inputs. so i guess i'll, i'll i'll stop there. ellen and thank you again for

posting this. and i look forward your questions or complaints or objections, your comments, whatever. i'll find this to be the better and more or part of these conversations. wonderful and tremendous food for thought. i'm sure there's tons and tons of questions. but to me the big particularly because you're speaking to a group young researchers and rising public intellectuals is the fact that the current political system in particular. sort of d prioritizes the non tangible. yes and it leads to very dangerous strategic surprise d lac, you know, here at the american foreign policy council, we spend lot of time looking at things like strategic culture and ideology and anybody is well versed in russia's imperial now neo imperial would have at least been better placed to understand that for putin, it was not just

about the material, it was about the ideological, about the imperial, about the sort of the vision, greatness, and by the way, that rubs other way as well in the middle. the what we've seen over the last nine months is a consequence of the fact that a rejectionist group of rejectionist group refused to allow trickle down economics to change it from an ideology trickle actor into a political actor. so these things, the sort of what you're highlighting, i think, is very important and it's sort of for everybody that's beginning in their careers. it's sort of it it, i think, highlights way where you can really contribute can really sort of make a mark. well, bless you for doing what you do and i would just say you you all are the beneficiaries of that a a far more thoughtful approach than you will sometimes once you get out, get away from five or ten, actually straighter. that's great. that's great. so let's let's open it up for questions. i have some my own, but why don't we whoever wants to step

up to the mic introduce yourself and have at it, thank very thank you. that on. yeah okay thank you very much for coming here and i really enjoyed it my name is nathan myers. i'm from i'm from kansas. so thank you. talking at mentioning kansas. so and i go to benedictine majoring in political science and economics. so it was my question. you talked to me sort of about how we think too much in terms of material like sort of its material view of world, which you said comes from the progressives, from this sort of this marxist explanation of the world, that everything is motivated by material factors. my question would be, because that's not very common. you look at history, you look at like for pericles with his funeral oration, thought of themselves as -- politicus, not -- economicus or you. and i think we think of ourselves today as -- economicus more.

so than -- politicus. so how since we are going to be like, you know in the politics and policy positions and the intelligence fields and whatnot, how can we influence sort of policy and stuff to for people to think or like we just the country in general to think more in -- politicus and like, how can we return to that? well, think you're exactly right. and the home politicus was, i guess would say a more and more and more common sense of looking at things for many centuries in the west than the east and everywhere. i mean, people looked at other countries, other tribes, and understood them, not merely in terms, but often in political terms and. the in fact, the you know, you see this today was a with russia. i mean, there are people who still that putin somehow invaded ukraine for reasons and i.

i just don't see a real reason. i mean, it seems to me it's been a very expensive project. and people also say, therefore, that, well, we need to give putin an off ramp and show him how harming the interests of economic interests of the russian people more. well if he was not french, he easy enough for him to find it. that's not really the problem. he needs to be actually defeated if you're going to get him out of africa, out of ukraine, the harder question you ask, how can encourage a a broader and i think right to say political is a more broad than economic and that's why i was always interested in philosophy. it seems to me that the that's the discipline that affects the more deep and serious questions about how we organize ourselves, what is the justice consists of, not what is it that? making money alone consist. and that's the harder question. and as i confess, i, i can't to you a an easy way to to do that.

there are hopes of smaller suggestion that i make, for example, i think it would be an excellent if members of congress put in place a structure in which the they required themselves to do follow on oversight of what it is they've done and way to do that, i suppose is to make piece of legislation that passed was subject to expiry of some kind. let's this sounds like right wing project but it isn't i mean this idea of of sunsetting. was actually originally a left wing idea to try to free up policy from. the baneful effects of bills, big business and and government working together. and there are a lot of places in

which this this makes sense besides just for example economic areas we passed a war powers resolution which was all fine, but it as seemingly endless life and a very wide applicability, if i could say that maybe some kind of a term limit on education or agriculture or term limits. i think would require at least the and the executive branch both to look at and to defend what it is they've done to consider how is it exactly this has worked. and i think the answer is that any fair minded person not say that the congress is filled up with old, but the answer of any firm by the person is, well, it may have worked in some ways. there's a lot of ways it just hasn't worked. and so that's that's one suggestion. i mean, and somehow institutionalizing a in a

certain way the way i hope the intelligence agency, our are doing in terms of review of their procedures, especially since afghanistan and ukraine as in another and the but but again i would say that this is perhaps a small bear compared to say all a sudden the scales off our eyes and we're going to somehow look at things in a in a more broad way and to understand that economics motivate everything. the economic thing sort of came into place with these notions that somehow if we could solve the economic problem, we would solve all human problems. and this was not just this was not a marx i. it was all kinds of people. and even worse, oliver and other. but is simply a conceit that if

you solve the economic problem, you've solve all problems. and it's as if you somehow you solve economic problem and everybody has enough you somehow going to solve every other human problem. problems of selfishness and pride and and lust for vengeance and other human motivation that there is not likely. and so i see few signs, to be honest. but but not that maybe people are beginning to understand that the economics has its place, but not everywhere. in looking at canova's revival on the conservative side, say, of conserve racism, which seems to me to have now a much stronger than it had, for example, was barry goldwater in 1964. he was kind of one of four mean. there wasn't much of a bench back there.

but now you have all kinds of places and institutions and publications and media and so forth that defend some of these broader war that's all rights oriented kind of traditions. there's that. but i think there are some on the left as well who are coming to a question mark, whether economics is really the beginning and end of all wisdom. if you look, for example, at climate change, this is not in any way, shape, form, but anything to do with economic development or providing more for people. in fact, it's usually providing less. why? because of the overarching non economic question of global warming. so you see it in way i make an argument. don't know if you ever believe or not that this whole transition of the left from equality to equity also seems to

me be a sign that maybe the economic domination of things will take us only so far and not further, in the sense that equality is part of the liberal of trying to provide more for everybody and more people, whereas equity has nothing to do with that. it has to do with sameness. and it could be at this level, it could be at this level or it could be at this. and so it's more a question of of of again of of of just this is more of a political what do we want to do in broad way? so there are others i point to, but i think suggest that there are some forces that put suggest that the economics is not the beginning and end of all wisdom itself answer to every problem. but i will fully confess and guilty to the fact that i got the you know the magic too to

make think more broadly in political terms than in the ultimate terms, which they seem the most part to do in the policymaking business. but thanks, thanks for the indulgence. yeah. and any other question. hello. first of all, thank you so much for your talk. i really enjoyed it. my name is graciela. i'm an intern here at abc and also a student at rice university and i look a lot at iran. so i found a lot of what you were saying about the sanctions interesting in as i thought what you were saying about measuring tangible versus intangible effects is very fascinating. so my is to what extent do you think that sanctions have an intangible if to what extent? one. i'm sorry. oh, sorry to. what extent do you think sanctions could have an intangible effect as opposed to a tangible affect, either positively, negatively, for example, by undermining public

support for regime, by making on the ground conditions a lot worse or on the other side, possibly strengthening the regime's cause a belligerent cause against our own interests. and yes, just what are the intended effects? maybe i'm not entirely understand your question, but i think of the programs we run, for example, all of which seem in a way me to run somewhat parallel with the american foreign policy council that we run a democracy promotion programs or programs that encourage looking at broader political questions than ideological questions. these these are all the good i take. but i suppose i'm a bit compromise also that i've been involved in quite a lot of republican institute projects and some of their trips to talk about democracy, elections and

all that the of the current president. dan twining happens to be a good friend of mine. one of the characters i often invite as a guest lecturer, by the way. and so i think there's a role certainly for what you call public diplomacy, which is not based all on economics, but based on trying to teach other ways to think about how you organize yourself, how you run a political party, how run a campaign, how how you do elections. i'm not sure if i touched at all on what you were asking? i yes, i think well, you know, so think there's a very big, you know, for places like the council to cause you to think more deeply and and to look at what might be the real factors involved and things happen the

way they do and that are sometimes there are economic but sometimes are well. and to that point, right. you can when you talk economic sanctions right there is an outcome. and iran is a perfect example. sanctions can be an economic success. i mean, tactical, but a strategic failure right. they can they can draw down resources, but they don't necessarily change the long arc right of a country. right. and that of what we've seen time, as you point out. but yeah, that's exactly right. and it and simply simply giving iran $6 billion for five i mean, some of this just boggles your mind that somehow you're going to change the iranian regime by handing out this chunk of money to them. i mean, as ridiculous. and so i agree you can certainly generate some in another country. but whether that results in change policies of the regime it

seems like the kind of regimes want to punish are the ones least to suffer from our sanctions in the sense that the you know kim jong un lives pretty well he drinks what he wants and eats whatever obviously too much and so also the iranian regime, the russian regime, the all these regimes who the elites don't care all that much what's what their populace slick and therefore it's obligatory on us as we think about them and what motivates to try to understand what better. and again it just at the risk of being a broken record it's not always all about economics well, that's just not so thank you thank you thank you. so i think we have time for one more we have one more question. so i'm alec bolo. i'm hoosier. so on behalf of the great people

of indiana, thank you for helping senator lugar and getting governor daniels his good start off in life. that's my question i was going to ask and this is just i'm kind of curious for your thoughts. you've talked a lot and spoken very about how the focus, the material and the economic aspect is obviously deficient a lot of respects. so why? my question what i'm wondering is as soon as we start moving to material, right, the non-economic factors do we start to venture off into questions of values or subject of kind of evaluations that may be reason we focus on economics is because we can agree on it. it's measurable do once we start to get into questions like to bring up iran in changing iran do we start to enter into what do we want iran to even look like. so maybe we kind of accept the devil we know and stick to sort of that economic approach. that's an question to which i

would first ask you a question. where are you from in indiana. so come noblesville, hamilton county. we have all kinds of family in noblesville. no, i had a boy. i think you touch on a very subtle an, interesting question, namely, if you had an american government that wasn't just trying to solve problems by handing out money, but was trying in some way to shape the ideals character of the country, you wouldn't want to go very far in that direction either. and so it's an excellent question. i would just say at the moment i don't think we're in any danger of that. but i would have no particular problem with us trying to shape the ideological character of other countries, you know, why not? i mean, let's let iran be iran and let's north korea, let's change the value of russia and so forth. i we need to be much more

careful of not replacing an overly economic understanding of things with some kind of ideological indoctrination, but simply replacing it with a fairer about what is it that could produce a policy that makes changes that are real. and those changes will have be ones that help democratic support and that agree are important i think everybody would agree, improving the educational system is a good idea. thinking about how to do that, i think seems to me fair game if you go too far in the direction of saying oh well here's how i will improve it will teach everybody i was really good at what stuff that i becomes a kind of an issue so i you raise a very subtle question, a my only defense about all that would to say i think we're in absolutely no danger of area on that side at the moment. but rather more on the on the side that we're on so thank you

for that. thank you. so i'm cognizant the time. so let's end it there. jeff, thank you so much. join me in thanking dr. berger. thank you for coming to the american foreign policy. we're on a small but mighty on capitol hill. and for for those that are watching at home if you're interested in our work you can visit us online at w w w dot afp dawg. thank you. perfect. thank very much. appreciate all