Michael Maiello's picture

    How Foreign Policy People Think, Part V

    Today's edition is about track records.

    Here is Anne Marie Slaughter, more than a year ago in the Washington Post, telling us all exactly what would happen, and how the world would react, if the U.S. failed to act militarily against Assad in Syria:

    "The world does not see the complex calculations inside the White House — the difficulty of achieving any positive outcomes in Syria even with intervention, the possible harm to Obama’s domestic agenda if he plunges into the morass of another conflict in the Middle East. The world would see Syrian civilians rolling on the ground, foaming at the mouth, dying by the thousands while the United States stands by."

    This is not what happened.

    Experts dominate foreign policy debates.  So experts should be right in their predictions, right?

    By the way, another thing which is a bit harder to quantify as I would have to prove a negative is that with regards to ISIS in Iraq, Slaughter now says that experts have been warning use for a year that inaction in Syria would allow ISIS to flourish. I haven't yet found an example of Slaughter saying that any time before her Times op-ed calling for action.

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