THINK TANKS: HELPING TO SHAPE
U.S. FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY
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The growth in the role played by think tanks in U.S. foreign and national security policy "has been a natural response to the deepening engagement of the United States in the world during the last half century," says Robert E. Hunter, Senior Adviser at the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C., and a former U.S. Ambassador to NATO. These institutions have helped "to train America's leaders, shape future policies...engage the Congress, enlist leaders in a wide variety of professions with an interest in public policy, and educate the American public," he says. |
The dawn of the 21st century finds the United States deeply involved in the outside world, more so than ever before in its history, and, in terms of the reach of its global engagement, more so than any other country. It has diplomatic relations with about 180 sovereign states; its military forces are deployed, in large measure or small, throughout the world; its role in the global economy is unmatched and is made manifest, in some degree, in virtually every other country; and it belongs to a host of international institutions. Other nations look to the United States for leadership, for help in providing for their security and prosperity, for diplomacy in preventing war and making peace, and for wisdom in shaping the work of international bodies that cover a wide range of human activity.
The United States makes and carries out its foreign policy -- more correctly, its many foreign policies -- through a number of government entities that bring to bear their different and often contending perspectives. They range from the staff of the president in the White House to the Departments of State, Defense, and Treasury, several intelligence agencies, and a few dozen other departments and agencies that have a direct impact both on determining what the United States does abroad and then in carrying out the government's decisions.
Furthermore, the United States Congress has its own foreign policy responsibilities, some mandated by the U.S. Constitution, some by law, and others by custom. Nor is the Congress simply a passive reflection of the will of the American president although, in much of U.S. foreign and security policy, he is usually pre-eminent. All activities of the administration require congressional funding. Through a large number of committees, it sifts through the proposals, programs, and performance of U.S. foreign policy and brings under close scrutiny what each department and agency does abroad. Perhaps in no other country does the legislative arm of government have such a major role, often in opposition to the will of the president, in trying to shape American policy toward the outside world.
This role for Congress demonstrates the importance for any president of gaining popular support for the administration's foreign and national security policies. This is particularly important among opinion leaders throughout the country, in order to ensure that there is a solid basis of domestic support for U.S. activities abroad. While a president is often given the benefit of the doubt in foreign policy, this is not automatic or assured. Nor has the U.S. role in the world been so constant -- or so determined by a limited range of factors, as is the case in many other countries whose attentions are focused on immediate neighbors or their own region -- that there is widespread popular understanding, over time, of the proper U.S. course in the world.
Also in the United States, as in other countries, political leaders come and go, and the directions of foreign policy can be deeply affected by the outcome of elections -- both for president and for members of the Senate and House of Representatives. But perhaps in no other democratic country does the election of a new president and change of administrations mean such a wholesale change of leading officials, in foreign policy and national security as well as in domestic areas of policy. Especially when the presidency is transferred from one political party to the other, virtually all senior officials are replaced, to a significant depth in the bureaucracy, so that the conduct of foreign policy suddenly comes into the hands of people who do not have immediate experience of the problems and challenges that the nation faces. It is often a few months before the new team is fully in charge, even if the incoming president appoints his new officials rapidly, as opposed to doing so only over a period of many weeks or longer.
Against this background, it can be fairly asked how the United States is able to devise foreign and defense policies, set in train the means for carrying them out, and build political support for them. There are several answers to this question. But one of the most important has been the creation of a set of institutions that, in their scope and pervasive nature, has no parallel in other countries -- institutions that are known, in characteristic American jargon, as "think tanks."
This term is only a few decades old, but the idea of creating institutions that focus both on the study of foreign policy and the building of support for it has a long pedigree in the 20th century. For example, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was created in 1910 to advance the cause of peace. Then Councils of Foreign Relations were set up in New York and Chicago in 1921 and 1922, respectively, the former founded by "businessmen, bankers, and lawyers determined to keep the United States engaged in the world;" the latter a group of "concerned Chicagoans united by a common interest in international affairs and a concern over 'ignorance and half-considered proposals on the subject." These efforts, designed to draw together, educate, and energize American elites, came just as the era of isolationism was setting in.
But the great flowering of research and policy institutions in the United States occurred only after World War II, when it became clear that the U.S. would henceforth have to be deeply and permanently engaged abroad, and that it would have to exercise a high degree of leadership, both in creating and enabling new international institutions to be effective -- such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade -- and in drawing the democracies together to meet the growing challenge from the Soviet Union and communism. For the first time in its history, the United States needed a fully-developed, comprehensive, and understandable grand strategy. The American think tank came to the rescue.
Perhaps the first such institution created in the post-war era was what is now the RAND Corporation. It sprang from the desire of leaders in the newly-created U.S. Air Force to devise purposes and programs for their new military service. To ensure that the research institution to be created would not just be a reflection of bureaucratic thinking, it was set up as far from Washington as possible, in Santa Monica, California. High-quality, objective research on national security became the institution's first hallmark. Over the years, the Pentagon created several other think tanks devoted exclusively to defense issues (RAND has subsequently found other sponsors, in and out of government, in many different fields). These have included the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Center for Naval Analyses. These research institutes have their analogues in the hard sciences, including two run by the University of California: the Los Alamos National Laboratory (originally created in 1942 to design and build the first atomic bombs) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (set up a decade later, at first to create hydrogen weapons).
Also important in devising and shaping U.S. foreign policy was the creation of a plethora of other research institutes established across the country, some within private corporations or labor unions, some free-standing, and some attached to leading universities -- ranging from the University of California at Los Angeles and Stanford University on the West Coast to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the East Coast. It has even been said, whimsically, that for every permutation and combination of the words "foreign," "international," "strategic," "global," "research," "policy," "center," "institute," and "council," there is an American think tank with that as its title.
These various institutions serve many purposes, ranging from research into regional problems and functional issues, such as economics and military affairs, to work designed specifically to build popular understanding of, and political support for, U.S. involvement in the outside world and specific ideas and policies. There is the United Nations Association, which is charged with increasing popular understanding of that institution, as well as the Atlantic Council, the Overseas Development Council, the Arms Control Association, and many world affairs councils, which are groups of local citizens interested in foreign policy, spread all across the country. Several other specialized think tanks have been created, such as the publicly-funded U.S. Institute of Peace, which focuses on research, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which works primarily in other countries to promote democratic development. NED has four offshoots: two allied with the Republican and Democratic parties, one with labor, and one with business. And there is a host of other bodies, designed to promote one cause or another in foreign policy, often combining a research unit with public education and efforts to affect opinion within the Congress.
For many years, the think tanks that are most politically influential in shaping U.S. foreign policy have been based in Washington, D.C. Each of these has a deep interest in research, and most also have a public presence. Several stand out today, including the Carnegie Endowment, RAND, and the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (the latter two having set up Washington offices), the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the American Enterprise Institute (with significant ties to the corporate world), the Institute for Policy Studies (known for its liberal views), and the Heritage Foundation (known for its conservative views).
Each of these institutions and their companions has its own particular focus, or niche; some are identified with one or another part of the political spectrum, and some try scrupulously to be bipartisan or simply non-partisan. Some focus on publications and gaining exposure for their research staff in the media, some focus on providing advice to members of Congress, some try to influence the administration currently in office -- and some do all of these things. All are interested in ideas and, given the nature of foreign policy, in having an impact on power, directly or indirectly; and all have some role in education, whether for the general public or just elites -- leaders in different professions, in both private and public sectors.
Two features of the American foreign affairs think tank are particularly important. First, many of them are concerned with bringing people together to discuss ideas and policy options, often from different disciplines -- academia, business, government, and, within government, people from both the administration and Congress. Nor are these activities designed only to share information or to develop the best ideas. They are also designed to build support for policies and, even more broadly, to help create consensus, to the degree possible, about which issues are most important, what the great differences of viewpoint are, and what approach the United States should follow. This is the foreign affairs think tank as "secret weapon." It brings together people with different perspectives and roles in the overall U.S. political process -- both in and out of government and from Congress as much as from the administration. Where this co-mingling of people and policy ideas works, it helps to foster a major element in the making of U.S. foreign policy -- the forging of bipartisanship. As every administration, and every Congress, has learned, it is when a bipartisan approach to a policy can be crafted that that policy has the best chance of succeeding, both at home (in gaining support) and abroad (in carrying the authority and the commitment of the nation behind it).
Second, the foreign affairs think tanks are a major source of talented people to serve in an administration and on congressional staffs. And they are a haven for departing government officials who want to remain engaged in foreign policy, to gain new ideas and inspiration, while also enriching the think tanks' research projects and symposia with insights gained from government service. Virtually unique to the United States, this "in and out" movement of officials, often swapping jobs with counterparts in think tanks, is a critical element in bringing new ideas into government, and it plays a significant role in building support among leaders of the various public-policy professions regarding the major directions for the nation abroad.
Indeed, few people ascend to senior foreign policy and national security office in the U.S. government without having first passed through one or another think tank, whether as staff members, contributors to publications, or simply as participants in study groups or other types of meetings. The current secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, led one such institute, the Center for National Policy. At the same time, the value of these think tanks to America's wider purposes is reflected in the fact that almost all of them are exempt from taxation -- either on income generated from their activities, or on contributions made to them by individual Americans or grant-giving philanthropies. The government, in short, subsidizes the think tanks.
In sum, the growth of the role played by the American think tank in foreign and national security policy has been a natural response to the deepening engagement of the United States in the world during the past half century. It has helped to train America's leaders, shape future policies (beyond those being developed within government at the moment, where outsiders can play only a limited part), engage the Congress, enlist leaders in a wide variety of professions with an interest in public policy, and educate the American public. Indeed, the think tank has become indispensable to U.S. foreign policy and to America's role in the outside world.