The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2014 29 frequently in recent months, wondering whether we lived up to the general’s trust. What I see is an American foreign policy establishment that lacks the capacity for consistent strategic analysis and policy- making. Decisions at the White House have tended to be ad hoc and personalized. During my time in the U.S. government, it was this way more often than not. The Eisenhower administration was an exception. Ike used to say: “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” The Nixon and Ford administrations believed firmly in top-down policymaking, and Henry Kissinger used the National Security Council apparatus to good analytical effect. These administrations were the butt of jokes for their perceived overuse of the analytic process, but that process was useful as an educational tool, both up and down the ladder of authority and responsibility. Strong and visionary Secretaries of State, like Dean Acheson and George Shultz, who enjoyed the confidence of the presi- dents they served, have devised and executed highly successful strategies. President Harry Truman and Acheson, for example, worked closely to create the institutions that dominated trans- Atlantic and even global relations throughout the Cold War. Three decades later, President Ronald Reagan and Shultz laid the basis for the end of the Cold War through an approach based on realism: strength, not only in military and economic capabili- ties but also in resolve; and a firm and consistent agenda with which they continued to engage with the Soviet Union through good times and bad. They believed that the Soviet Union would change, a belief that needs to be the bedrock assumption of American policy in the era of Putin. Preventive diplomacy is the functional equivalent of deter- rence, and it is more necessary than ever in an era when nuclear deterrence is less relevant to today’s threats than it was at the height of the Cold War. I think that the best way to make preven- tive diplomacy work and to justify my Ukrainian colleague’s trust in the seriousness and constancy of U.S. policy would be to build an improved institutional capacity in the foreign policy machin- ery for serious analysis and for the setting of strategic priorities. It must operate at the highest levels of government. If the United States followed the advice offered by former Sec- retary Shultz to make greater use of clusters of Cabinet secretar- ies with similar functional responsibilities to consider policy issues, and less use of White House “czars,” that would help enormously. But the culture of Washington may have to change, too—a difficult proposition. Preventive diplomacy cannot work in the absence of agreed, long-term strategic objectives. It would be like deterrence without a target. n