Among the three links Tekboy provided from Foreign Affairs was an essay by Martin Indyk entitled "Back to the Bazaar"....It's nicely written, very clear, and unobjectionable. That's the problem...I decided it was more about Indyk, who was a player in the Clinton administration and who is now among the govt-in-waiting types at the Brookings Institution. It appears to me to be meant to be a part of a body of work which will keep him positioned for positions in any future Democractic administration and if, oh by the way, the Bushies should be so inclined, to help him get a position there. My cynical take is that for most players, the playing gets addictive and thus most of their subsequent actions are aimed to get back in.
while you're right about the addiction problem in general, IMHO you're wrong about Indyk and about the piece as well. If you want to see how somebody who's trying to preserve his "viability" behaves, watch Dennis Ross. The script is straightforward: adjust smoothly to the new line of the day set by your key constituencies, spin one's past record furiously to bring it into line while never admitting to having made any mistakes, and offer innocuous general advice that nobody really disagrees with.
Indyk, in contrast, presents evidence for a withering critique of the policies he helped formulate; admits they helped contribute to a disaster; frankly acknowledges having made nasty tradeoffs of ideals for interests; and recommends an entirely new course of action that has little chance of ever being adopted because it would piss off far too many important constituencies. As statements by officials or ex-officials go (admittedly a rather narrow genre), this is actually something of a heartfelt cri-de-couer that reads more like a swansong than a job application. My hunch is that his former bosses will be furious with him for writing it (because it is far too honest for their taste about what drove Clinton administration policies), and that if anything it will hurt his chances for getting back in the game rather than help them.
tb@stillinwithdrawal.com
PS you're right about Lake, but that's because he was ambivalent about the whole game even while he was playing it--which helped make him a weak NSA. Samantha Power's piece in the October Atlantic captures his trademark handwringing style:
theatlantic.com |
