My way of thinking about this question is to consider it from an organizational point of view. Each President since Harry Truman has organized the National Security Council and State Department deck chairs slightly differently. Eisenhower had a very large NSC staff which filtered paperwork like his general staff when he led the army in WWII. JFK at first conducted foreign policy discussions with roundtables of academics from Harvard, engaging in “groupthink” (this is what the writer Janus blames for the Bay of Pigs catastrophe). The paradoid Nixon in his first term spoke almost exclusively and privately with NSA Henry Kissinger, shunning the more official channels of the State Department. Which of his people the President puts where decides much foreign policy; without a President getting a grip in this way, American foreign policy bureaucracy is brainless.
This way of looking at the Presidency I picked up from an incredible book, Presidential Command, by the late Peter Rodman, who served in every Republican state department from Nixon to George W. Bush. He had an insider’s perspective on those Republican Presidents’ foreign policy decisionmaking processes, and knew alot about the Democratic Presidents too. I was first assigned Rodman’s book when I was in grad school during the Obama administration. Michael Uhlmann, an old friend of Peter Rodman’s (he was old friends with everybody!) gave us the assignment of writing the next chapter of Rodman’s book; “How is Obama organizing the state department and NSC?” was the question. There were some good articles which helped us answer that question. I think the tell all in the New Yorker by Obama-speechwriter-turned-foreign-policy-strategist Ben Rhodes also fills in a good deal.
When I got to start teaching classes on the Presidency myself, I had my students do the same exercise with Trump. And now this semester we have Biden. What can we tell so far about Biden’s foreign policy decision-making process?
To roughly follow Rodman’s template, here’s what I can find: Biden conducts shoddy bull sessions with his NSA, DoD, and Secretary of State, and these have almost certainly has contributed to the disaster in Afghanistan. As Rodman says:
In a turbulent world, the U.S. government -and therefore the President- needs to get ahead of events and shape them; this puts a premium on bold, timely, purposeful, and consistent policy-making. This includes the faithful implementation of policies as the president has decided them. These qualities are not the natural product of bureaucracies operating without strong political direction. The policy machinery will simply not work without effectual presidential control over it. (p275)
A jackpot source for understanding Biden on foreign policy is this New York Times article from May that I shared with Carl on his post: “Beneath Joe Bidenʼs Folksy Demeanor, a Short Fuse and an Obsession With Details.” The article tells us that:
Before making up his mind, the president demands hours of detail-laden debate from scores of policy experts, taking everyone around him on what some in the West Wing refer to as his Socratic “journey” before arriving at a conclusion.
A Socratic seminar is only as intelligent as the Socrates asking the questions, of course. Since Biden is the Socrates here, that is not good.
Avoiding Mr. Biden’s ire during one of his decision-making seminars means not only going beyond the vague talking points that he will reject, but also steering clear of responses laced with acronyms or too much policy minutiae, which will prompt an outburst of frustration, often laced with profanity.
So, Biden demands his interlocutors give details, unless the details aren’t the details he cares to hear, the “minutiae.” If this is true, that’s an utterly contradictory way of getting at the best decision.
Why does Biden do this? It’s political:
Those closest to him say Mr. Biden is unwilling, or unable, to skip the routine. As a longtime adviser put it: He needs time to process the material so that he feels comfortable selling it to the public.
“Selling it to the public” does not necessarily translate to good policy, of course. The article also gives us a glimpse of who Biden’s Cephalus, Glaucon, and Polemarchus are. Apparently Biden has a 3-4 friends (it is a good thing to actually have friends- even for Presidents) that White House insiders call Biden Historians:
For political advice and policy direction, he turns to the group one White House aide called the “Biden historians” — Ron Klain, the chief of staff and longtime aide; Bruce Reed, a top policy adviser who sometimes ran his vice president’s office; Mike Donilon, his political counselor and alter-ego; and Steve Ricchetti, his legislative guru and longtime friend.
The article does not say why they are called “historians”; it must be that these 4 men have been around old Joe for a long time, and know the choices he made in the past. Is Biden leaning on them because he can’t remember how he used to decide things? Consider especially this paragraph about Mike Donilon, who is sounding alot like Biden’s version of Ben Rhodes:
Mr. Donilon, who polishes Mr. Biden’s speeches and is the “keeper of the flame” when it comes to determining the president’s overall message, is less involved in the day-to-day West Wing operations than David Axelrod, who performed a similar role for Mr. Obama. But he remains an influential force, often prodding Mr. Biden toward a conclusion. He tends to stay mostly silent until the very end of a discussion, at which point Mr. Biden often embraces whatever point he has made.
“I agree with Mike” signals the end of the meeting, according to people who have witnessed exchanges between the two men.
The worst aspect of Biden’s Socratic seminars is his tendency to cut off discussion when he thinks it is over:
[Biden] never erupts into fits of rage the way President Donald J. Trump did. And the current president rarely exhibits the smoldering anger or sense of deep disappointment that advisers to Mr. Obama became familiar with.
But several people familiar with the president’s decision-making style said Mr. Biden was quick to cut off conversations. Three people who work closely with him said he even occasionally hangs up the phone on someone who he thinks is wasting his time. Most described Mr. Biden as having little patience for advisers who cannot field his many questions.
That, apparently, is exactly what happened between Biden and his military advisors on Afghanistan, leading to disastrous decisions. In March 2021 (certainly a period when the Biden/Socrates bull sessions described earlier were occurring), Biden spoke with General Milley (JCS) and Secretary of Defense Austin:
Austin and Milley made a last-ditch effort with the president by forecasting dire outcomes in which the Afghan military folded in an aggressive advance by the Taliban. They drew comparisons to how the Iraqi military was overrun by the Islamic State in 2014 after U.S. combat troops left Iraq, prompting Obama to send U.S. forces back.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Austin told Biden, according to officials with knowledge of the meetings.
But the president was unmoved. If the Afghan government could not hold off the Taliban now, aides said he asked, when would they be able to? None of the Pentagon officials could answer the question.
On the morning of April 6, Biden told Austin and Milley he wanted all U.S. troops out by Sept. 11.
I would ask: who really cares if Milley and Austin couldn’t come up with an answer on the spot to our Socrates-in-Chief Biden? The fact that the question couldn’t be answered to Biden’s satisfaction means very little, but it does show that we currently have a pathetic way of conducting foreign policy decisionmaking.
So that’s what the h*ll is going on. Biden’s epistemelogically challenged decision-making process is something he stubbornly sticks by though, refusing to fire any advisors for fear it might signal political weakness. Even if it means national humiliation, untold slaughter, and the free world at risk.
Good political science analysis, CJ. It broadened my understanding of things. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, good to see you're continuing the tradition of teaching students how presidential decision-making has worked!