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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tekboy who wrote (28377)	5/5/2002 12:21:55 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

tb, what do you make of Powell's announcement of a Mideast conference in the summer? A week ago, State staffers were leaking to the Post how down in the dumps they were; now Powell is undertaking major policy initiatives. What's your take?

To: tekboy who wrote (28377)	5/5/2002 1:25:06 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

tb@intellecutalpoliceman.com Let me agree and disagree with this post. I agree with the argument that "professionals" are going to know more about the details of any situation, be able to argue more clearly with the details in mind, be able to balance multiple variables better, and, to other professionals, be more convincing. And I agree that us non-professionals, if we are serious about understanding these issues, need to read the pros. But I don't think we should stop there; nor do I think we should always choose a "professional" version over a non-professional version of an argument. Several reasons: 1. Professionals, like very other group, tend to have cultures and subcultures. These serve to reduce the chaos of all the information that comes in to some sort of rudimentary form. So some gets bolded; others gets silenced. It's in the silences that things become interesting. And it's frequently in the silences that some non-professionals write. 3. Professionals are no more nor less likely than any other group to create forms of otherness. They should do better; that's one of the things professionalism is about. But having lived in "professional" groups of one sort or another, I'm struck more by how human they are rather than how professional they are. (Interesting contrast jumped out of my keyboard there). 4. The professionals you have in mind see, speak, write from the vantage point of their views of the public policy interests of the US government. If they are in, obviously so; if they are out, they wish to get back in. Good for the rest of us to stay skeptical. 5. But having written all that, one of the things that strikes me is evident in Foreign Affairs now. The definition of "public policy interests of the US government" can be drawn broadly or narrowly. This incarnation of Foreign Affairs draws it much more broadly than I had anticipated and thus the arguments are instructively unpredictable. An interesting comparison helps me think about this. LindyBill posted a link to a long piece from the Cato Institute about the failures of the Marshall Plan. The argument was completely predictable from the positions of the Institute. The opposite is not true of the Brookings folk. They are center-left, best I can tell, but the papers are unpredictable. Just some thoughts.