We, like many around town, don’t believe Donilon will make much difference as new national security advisor. We’re so underwhelmed we’ll just cut and paste some paragraphs from Walt’s Huffington Post ‘Foreign Policy’ blog (It once was a serious publication, really).
My reservations are two-fold. First, has Donilon ever expressed an interesting or novel foreign policy idea, or shown that he has a larger vision for what the United States’ position and strategy ought to be? If so, I haven’t heard about it. This isn’t just an academic’s desire for some broader theoretical framework, because foreign policy isn’t just about making a “to-do list” and patiently checking off different items. Instead, success depends on seeing the larger picture and figuring out how to set priorities and align different goals, so that actions taken in one arena don’t end up undermining other initiatives. That is especially true when a country is facing as many different challenges as the United States currently is, and when you have to make hard choices from among a set of bad alternatives.
Second, has Donilon ever taken a position that involved some level of moral courage? Has he ever done or said anything that might be regarded as controversial inside the Beltway? Given his long career as a lobbyist and political operative, that’s hardly likely. What was his view on invading Iraq in 2003, for example? Did he publicly oppose that boneheaded decision? Don’t think so. And given that the Obama administration’s defining characteristic in foreign policy has been a tendency to spell out promising courses of action and then beat a hasty retreat from them at the first sign of serious resistance, there’s little reason to expect someone with Donilon’s bio to act any differently.
Nothing in his background as a lawyer or aide to elected officials and political appointees hints at any skill at strategic thinking, foreign policy formulation, or diplomatic maneuver that is directed at anyone other than domestic constituencies. He gives every sign of faithfully reflecting the political risk aversion, venal deference to campaign contributors, and constipated strategic imagination of the Washington establishment. We Americans have spawned our own version of the eunuchs of old, who flourished inside the walls of the Forbidden City or Topkapi/Dolmabahçe Palace. Their counterparts now practice the arts of the courtier within the Beltway at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. (It is said that Afghanistan has jirgas to make village-level decisions and loya jirgas to decide things at the national level, while Washington now makes decisions in circle jirgas.) Donilon is exhibit A of this archetypal Washington type; his presumed successor, Denis McDonough, is exhibit B.
Longtime readers know our views on Freeman’s acuity. Still, both miss the point. Presidents get a national security advisor and apparatus that conforms to their personality, recognized or not. True whether the idealized model is a Kissingerian Metternich or the process-oriented ‘preside but not decide’. And contra both Walt and Freeman, history also makes clear mediocrity is the norm.
Doubt it? As Warner Wolf used to say, ‘Let’s go to the videotape!’
