The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2012

proach,” in the October 2007 FSJ .) Images of physical solidarity with the oppressed deliver messages a hundred times more effectively than words. Some diplomats claim that such public association with the oppressed puts innocent people in danger. They are quite wrong. In my work at Human Rights Watch, every vulnera- ble group and human rights defender in Africa I spoke with said exactly the opposite. Of course, this comes down to ef- fective senior-level leadership. The worst generals plan to fight the last war, and so it is with senior diplomats. Bad leaders close off debate that does not fit the established policy. They focus on the 48-hour news cycle, the four- year domestic electoral timeline and their two- or three-year diplomatic posting roster (and next job). Effective foreign policy leaders, by contrast, obsess about creativity, inclu- sivity and transparency, internally and externally. They assemble a broad mix of voices into the policy machine, es- pecially dissenters. The age of foreign policy carried out by self-selecting, in- house “experts” ought to be long gone by now. Telltale Signs The good news for Foggy Bottom is that the United States is already better at this than most other Western states, especially those in Europe. But it still has a long way to go. President Barack Obama, for example, reached out to ordinary Arab citizens well before the Arab Spring, beginning with his June 2009 speech in Cairo. Yet that turned out to be a half-measure at best, as much motivated by a counterterrorism narrative as promoting democracy. Washington still has a number of thuggish regional allies in its diplo- matic closet: Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and various Central Asian and sub-Saharan African states. And wor- ryingly, it still seems to be pursuing business as usual with many of them. To be fair, of course, there are not enough hours in political leaders’ days to keep tabs on everything. They have to rely on advice from below, and bad advice leads to bad policy. But how, whether one is a top official or an entry-level political officer, can you spot bad advice? Based on more years than I care to remember inside the foreign policy machine, as well as time outside look- ing in, I offer the following list of plat- itudes that should set alarm bells ringing. “ He’s the only game in town .” My all-time favorite in the hit parade of bad policy advice, this is an extension of FDR’s “thug” doctrine — but with a subtle difference. It tantalizingly al- lows the speaker to “hold his or her nose” and to demonstrate awareness of dealing with bad people — while con- veniently carrying on business as usual. For obvious reasons, the thug in question won’t allow any other “game” to take shape on his watch, as we saw in pre-upheaval Tunisia, Syria and Libya. A variant is to bemoan “ the lack of a credible alternative to President X ” — ignoring the fact that the people of the country in question are the proper judge of that, not foreign diplomats. Moreover, if President X really is the only game in town, that should really worry us! “ He’s clearly a brutal dictator, but he i s progressive and helpful in some ways, so let’s cut him some slack. ” This atti- tude was often heard in pre-upheaval Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain. Tunisian President Ben Ali was regularly por- trayed as great on women’s rights — so long as women didn’t oppose him (for which they could expect to be tor- tured). If we look hard enough, we can say something positive about everyone. Mussolini made the Italian trains run on time. “ We have no leverage on the re- gime .” Maybe you do have levers that you’re not using, or you aren’t looking hard enough for them. Or you expect them to work too quickly, even though effective pressure takes months or years to build under even the best of conditions. The United States has been extraordinarily creative in applying pressure on Iran; it’s amazing what a bit of well-directed willpower can achieve. “ The country has no domestic U.S. constituency, plus we use up interna- tional political credit to get anything done, so we can just ignore the problem altogether .” In situations like this, it is common to hear the “national interest” argument deployed, usually to justify inaction or the wrong action. In the early 1990s, Somalia was not a priority U.S. “national interest.” Oops. “ He clearly stole the elections, but that didn’t affect the final result .” How could any foreign diplomat possibly know this, or think that such a patron- izing judgment matters more than the view of the people directly affected? Yet I have heard Western officials use the phrase in countries ranging from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea to Uganda and Burundi in the past 18 months, to explain why they are letting leaders produced by dodgy elections slide by. Remarkably, senior Western policymakers keep echoing the line in other parts of the world, too. “ His country’s just been through a terrible conflict; we shouldn’t be too de- manding .” In other words, let’s put the past behind us and move on, even if that means setting aside sustainability, justice and accountability. Recent ex- 44 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 2 The good news about democratic legitimacy is that it’s relatively easy to identify and measure.