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Hadn't seen that @dandrezner mentioned my @IntOrgJournal piece on how experienced advisers can get away with very risky policies under inexperienced presidents in his (scary) piece on Venezuela this morning. 1/ washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/0…
Here's a @monkeycageblog version from July 2016 on why experience matters for overseeing advisers, even the experienced ones. Without the shadow of an experienced chief, incentives to make careful plans or mitigate risk go down. washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca… 2/
Couple wrinkles this week: this is a moment when Trump and his natsec team will be juggling multiple major issues, incl North Korea diplomacy, Indo-Pak crisis, and Venezuela. Not to mention breaking Brexit news. 3/
The India-Pakistan crisis is particularly scary, see @clary_co in @monkeycageblog today: washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/… 4/
The North Korea summit has enormous implications for US allies and the future of alliances in Asia, as Patricia Kim writes today in @monkeycageblog washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca… 5/
All this as the US is taking a more confrontational approach to China, and moving away from the kind of boots-on-the-ground interventions Trump opposes in the Middle East and seems to think is unlikely to happen in Venezuela. 6/
But as @DenisonBe wrote recently in @monkeycageblog, leaders often get sucked into dangerous interventions that can lead to occupation (cc @dmedelstein), whether policymakers intend it or not. washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-ca…
In a situation with multiple, high-stakes crises, you'd want someone (ideally at NSC but not necessarily) to be looking at the big picture, prioritize, coordinate responses, etc. The crises are more deeply linked than they appear: 8/ @monkeycageblog washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/…
Here, a president who hasn't confronted a serious crisis, hawkish advisers with their own priorities and experience, and multiple major events at the same time. This is a recipe for increased risk: in group decisions, individuals' biases add up, rather than cancel out. 9/
The multiple crises might make this even worse because it opens up the possibility of bureaucratic horse-trading or just acting under the radar. Bottom line: experience isn't any guarantee, but it's not nothing either. 10/10
For those interested in the academic version: this is my @IntOrgJournal piece on how experienced principals affect the way bias (of agents/advisers) aggregates in group-decision-making: cambridge.org/core/journals/…
