{"id":11398,"date":"2008-08-24T10:41:10","date_gmt":"2008-08-24T14:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2008\/08\/24\/11398.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:49:15","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:49:15","slug":"predictability-ideology-diplom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2008\/08\/24\/predictability-ideology-diplom\/","title":{"rendered":"Predictability, ideology, diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A note by Blake Hounshell over at the Foreign Policy blog Passport praises Biden’s refreshing lack of ideology<\/a>. Mr. Hounshell reflects the scare-quotes “realism” that seems to have become dominant again in sane foreign policy discussions, presumably as a result of two terms of an administration (largely backed by the Legislature) which pushed an insane, unreal foreign policy.
\n

It does seem a bit odd to me to have that (again, scare-quoted) “realism” adopted so enthusiastically by FP<\/I>, a journal that has in the past prided itself on being the place where foreign policy ideology gets argued out. Well, no, that’s Foreign Affairs<\/a>, but I get the two confused, sometimes.
\n

But what I started wondering was whether, really, you want a person in the executive who impresses analysts with his ability to surprise them by coming to different conclusions than they expect. I understand that cases are different, one to another, and someone setting or even influencing policy should be looking at actual facts, rather than at preconceived narratives. I get that when you do that, you are not always going to come to the conclusion you expect to reach, much less the one other people expect you to reach. And I understand, as well, that when we are talking about policy, it’s often better to support a policy that has some chance of working (or for that matter, of being executed) than to support a policy that meshes with your big picture of American interests and global whatnot.
\n

On the other hand, there’s some benefit to having a well-thought-out ideology that includes a set of aims (and the priorities thereof) and a set of preferred methods (and the priorities thereof); when the actual cases arrive, you have some way to process the aforementioned facts. And if you have thought out those aims and those methods, then there’s a good chance other people will be able to predict what conclusions you will reach.
\n

And that’s a good thing. For our own people, for the leaders of other nations, for everybody. Except foreign policy analysts.
\n

Well, and I mean, if the policy is good. I’d rather have somebody with good judgment and little ideology than somebody with bad ideology and worse judgment. And I think Sen. Biden, taken one thing and another, has the makings of an excellent Vice-President, and (the Divine forbid) a reasonably good President. But not, perhaps, predictable enough for my tastes.
\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger forgot, last week, to note that although I was caught up in the hype and excitement of who-will-it-be, when it comes down to it, I didn’t really care about the vice-presidential pick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[202],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-item"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18477,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11398\/revisions\/18477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}