Gates on Foreign Policy

 Reading Robert Gates: Exercise of Power, American Failures, Success, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World.

This Post review is pretty good.  Gates applauds Nixon and Reagan as having foreign policy agendas on entering office, and working effectively to implement them. He likes George HW Bush's response to the end of the Cold War, but criticizes Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Trump. He offers overviews of our history in dealing with various foreign affairs issues over the last 50 years, during much of which he was either at CIA, NSC, or DOD. Then he offers suggestions for better management.

His three big things are:

•  reviving, in my eyes, the Weinberger/Powell criteria for military engagement
• arguing for building up our non-military instruments of foreign policy--State, foreign aid, sanctions,education, etc.
• arguing for coordinated use of foreign policy instruments--he cites GWBush's Pepfar (aid to Africa for AIDS) as a model.

Two thoughts in response:

• for any organization there's a trade-off between specialization and coordination of effort. We had that in USDA, still do, and I don't think anyone has really solved the problem.  The National Security Council was supposed to be the solution originally, but Gates doesn't think much of  its modern incartnation.
• Gates in a sense is arguing for "defunding the military" as progressives are arguing for "defunding the police." In both cases the analysis is that using force is counter-productive and/or ineffective, and using available alternatives to force would work better. (This is my take, definitely not his.)

Just a note from history--in the1950's the UN was the hope of the left.  While Gates doesn't ignore the UN, it's obvious from his discussion how far its stature has fallen.