State Department Bias Discussion
Over at IsraPundit, a Ted Belman post on Prof. Gil-White has elicited an extremely active discussion on how to mitigate the State Department’s seemingly anti-Israel practices. We've looked at some of Gil-White's theories before and emerged unimpressed, not impressed), but this discussion bears some attention. An excerpt from our most recent comment:
There is such a thing as institutional memory, especially in the halls of Foggy Bottom. Practices and sensibilities are incubated and enforced by everything from eye-rolling of friends in hallways to the body language of superiors during meetings to the promotion of like-minded deputies in offices. That the United States has an a vaguely pro-Arab and anti-Israel policy is far better explained by reference to norms that describe ‘dispassionate analysis’ and ‘diplomatic respectability’ than it is by invoking some sort of age-old, psychological desire to exterminate Israel. No one at the State Dept. wakes up and says "I'm going to try to destroy Israel today". Rather, ingrained assumptions about how an analyst acts, what leaders are given a wide berth, what priorities should be triaged, etc all contribute to a climate inhospitable to Israeli interests. During the Cold War, it might have made sense for the United States to sacrifice Israel in order to win Arab backing.... But in an age of global Islamist terrorism, US interests and Israeli interests align - conventional wisdom at the State Department just hasn’t caught up yet.
If this less grandiose but far more plausible theory is right - if it's not about agenda, but about sedimented institutional practices - then the solutions being proposed will have to be rethought. Rather than radical political change, those who think that the State Department is misguided have much slower and more painstaking work ahead of them. Future leaders have to be instilled with three elements: (a) a clear understanding of the concrete situation in the world, (b) an understanding of diplomatic practice, and (c) the thick skin to resist Foggy Bottom's subtle Leftward pull. Future diplomats must be incubated in the same way that conservatives incubated future Supreme Court justices – they must be familiar with knowledge about the world, they must have an understanding of how that knowledge is produced, and they must be equipped with the ability to defend their beliefs. Among other things, this task will require reorienting conservative campus leadership from its current, ‘activist’ obsession.
There is such a thing as institutional memory, especially in the halls of Foggy Bottom. Practices and sensibilities are incubated and enforced by everything from eye-rolling of friends in hallways to the body language of superiors during meetings to the promotion of like-minded deputies in offices. That the United States has an a vaguely pro-Arab and anti-Israel policy is far better explained by reference to norms that describe ‘dispassionate analysis’ and ‘diplomatic respectability’ than it is by invoking some sort of age-old, psychological desire to exterminate Israel. No one at the State Dept. wakes up and says "I'm going to try to destroy Israel today". Rather, ingrained assumptions about how an analyst acts, what leaders are given a wide berth, what priorities should be triaged, etc all contribute to a climate inhospitable to Israeli interests. During the Cold War, it might have made sense for the United States to sacrifice Israel in order to win Arab backing.... But in an age of global Islamist terrorism, US interests and Israeli interests align - conventional wisdom at the State Department just hasn’t caught up yet.
If this less grandiose but far more plausible theory is right - if it's not about agenda, but about sedimented institutional practices - then the solutions being proposed will have to be rethought. Rather than radical political change, those who think that the State Department is misguided have much slower and more painstaking work ahead of them. Future leaders have to be instilled with three elements: (a) a clear understanding of the concrete situation in the world, (b) an understanding of diplomatic practice, and (c) the thick skin to resist Foggy Bottom's subtle Leftward pull. Future diplomats must be incubated in the same way that conservatives incubated future Supreme Court justices – they must be familiar with knowledge about the world, they must have an understanding of how that knowledge is produced, and they must be equipped with the ability to defend their beliefs. Among other things, this task will require reorienting conservative campus leadership from its current, ‘activist’ obsession.
