Thread by @MMazarr

Worth a re-read: George Packer's marvelous @ForeignAffairs essay on Richard Holbrooke, which offers great perspective on events. Holbrooke served in Vietnam + Afghanistan--yet somehow his experience in one didn't force him to break from policy on the other
foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-…

Holbrooke was skeptical of US chances in Vietnam. His advisor job, he wrote, "puts me continually in the position of advocate of plans and projects which would seek to make a reality out of the clichés that everyone pays lip service to"

In 1967, at 26, he wrote a memo railing against the chances for victory: "Hanoi uses time the way the Russians used terrain before Napoleon’s advance on Moscow, always retreating, losing every battle, but eventually creating conditions in which the enemy can no longer function"

His boss, Nicholas Katzenbach, was reluctant to sign such a bold dissent. He did, but SecState Rusk sent back a depressing reply: “I always try to find out what the president thinks before I give my advice.” The message: Officials place their influence at risk with every dissent

Packer relates a later diary entry from Holbrooke, about Afghanistan. “It is beyond ironic that 40+ years later we are back in Vietnam. Of course, everything is different—and everything is the same. And somehow, I am back in the middle of it ..."

" ... I had not thought much about it for years, now it comes back every day. ... I think we must recognize that military success is not possible, + we must seek a negotiation. But with who? The Taliban are not Hanoi, + their alliance with Al Qaeda is a deal-breaker.”

Packer writes that Holbrooke "knew from Vietnam that what the US was doing in Afghanistan wouldn’t work—but he thought he could do it anyway. And there was something else. If he applied the real lesson of Vietnam—don’t—he would be out of a job. And then who would he be?"

Again: Dissent = risk. Packer describes Holbrooke increasingly sitting, incredulous, in policy meetings about Afghanistan, jotting notes like "THIS IS NONSENSE." But he stayed quiet, and "kept the caustic skepticism to himself," and continued publicly advocating for the mission

He had become the 2009 version of Robert McNamara: The responsible senior official who becomes convinced that a war cannot be won, who cannot help but express the doubts in private, but who--when stepping to the microphone--speaks "the clichés that everyone pays lip service to"

His last backer in the cabinet had become Hillary Clinton, and "he couldn’t allow a glimmer of light or a breath of air between them. And she was with the generals. As a result, almost no one knew what Holbrooke thought of the surge. He kept it from his colleagues and his staff"

There has been a lot of talk recently, fueled by "The Afghanistan Papers" and other things, about lies, mendacity, people who knew we were failing assuring America and the world that we were winning. The collapse of the US mission has placed these discussions in stark relief

I saw a bit of this, as an extremely marginal observer, in the Pentagon in 2008-10. Reading Packer affirms my impression that human dynamics--peer pressure, conformity (esp w/seniors), the "can-do" spirit of mission-driven organizations, and (sometimes, yes) crude careerism ...

... better explain tragedies than dishonesty or mendacity. The key question, to me, about the future, is not "how we get rid of the criminals and liars." Foreign policy debacles are usually the unintended outcomes of good intentions + people rather than the fruit of malign ones

Yet the truly tragic fact remains that *many people inside each of these policies saw the failures coming,* but did not or would not speak up; or were not listened to; or were suppressed. The Bay of Pigs; Vietnam; the US rush to the Yalu in Korea; Iraq 2003--all the same story

I can easily picture the desk officer or intel analyst or 3-star, watching memos about Afghan withdrawal planning cross their desk, thinking, "This is nonsense." But seeing no point in speaking up--or else doing so, w/a memo that becomes Appendix P in the NSC briefing book ...

... and then senior officials, if they *are* actually exposed to such dissents (because they often are), nodding sagely and looking around the table and knowing, "You know what, this is happening," and finding some excuse to sidestep the warning.

Those memos, and the private reflections + messages of the doubters, then become proof of systemic dishonesty. (They knew!) But they just prove the crushing weight of a foreign policy imperative ("we *must* do X") joined to path dependence + conformity
publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/michael…

(One lesson: The problem is rarely an "intelligence failure." Intel often does warn, and anyway most senior officials are usually well aware of the *possibility* of a given tragedy. The problem isn't lack of warning--it's that taking the warning seriously has huge human costs)

So the question is, how do we solve for *that* problem? How can we ensure that the next Holbrooke does not feel compelled to keep silent? That the next Rusk does not tailor their analysis to the president's desires? That systemic incentives favor, rather than punish, warning?

(And don't reflexively reach for papers on "rigorous interagency processes" in which "red teams" are conducted and dissenters are taken seriously. Every reasonable administration makes such promises. Just about every one gives rise to a debacle anyway.)

It would be great if the problem on display now--deeply-debated policy pursuing good intentions going tragically awry--had a simple solution. It doesn't. But that is no excuse not to make the effort to build better habits. If we don't, it will be the ultimate lesson unlearned