foreignpolicy--2020-09-22--Africa’s Creative Industries Are Ripe for U.S. Investment

Africa ’ s Creative Industries Are Ripe for U.S. Investment When one of Nigeria ’ s biggest artists , Burna Boy , released his new album , Twice as Tall , in August , it became an instant global success .
Burna Boy ’ s international popularity had skyrocketed the year before with the release of his fourth studio album , African Giant , which garnered the artist his first Grammy nomination and sold out arenas in Europe and North America .
Twice as Tall , which , like African Giant , is in the Afrobeats genre , a style @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , took that success further : It hit No .
1 in dozens of countries on Apple Music ’ s worldwide charts and reached the top 60 on the Billboard 200 in the United States .
But its importance does not rest solely on its record-breaking stats .
The album also serves as the latest example of the growing global reach of African artists .
After years of trying to sell Western music in Africa , global music labels are now looking to Africa for talent—a shift that was apparent in Billboard magazine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which featured three of Nigeria ’ s biggest stars : Davido , Tiwa Savage , and Mr Eazi .
In the past few years , global audiences have become increasingly familiarized with African musicians .
That ’ s partly due to collaborations with popular Western artists , such as Drake ’ s 2016 hit “ One Dance , ” featuring Nigeria ’ s Wizkid , or the visual album Beyonce released on Disney+ this summer , Black Is King , which features an array of African musicians , including Burna Boy .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of social media and digital streaming that has altered the musical landscape .
While physical distribution in limited markets caused long delays in the past , African artists can now quickly build global fan bases—and connect instantly with followers around the world .
In some ways , the pandemic has pushed these trends forward .
One of the silver linings of COVID-19 is that national lockdowns and international travel bans have accelerated digitization efforts across African markets .
Africa ’ s creative industries have reaped the benefits , since digitization democratizes content creation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and distribution .
For instance , Burna Boy turned to multiple U.S. producers for Twice as Tall , and Sean Combs , also known as Diddy , served as an executive producer , working on the album over Zoom , despite the eight-hour time difference , during the pandemic .
As artists such as Burna Boy expand their reach worldwide , the continent ’ s increasingly urban , tech-savvy population—the youngest in the world—is also becoming a larger market for creative content .
Nigeria alone has about 97.5 million unique mobile subscribers—nearly half @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Even Ghana , a smaller market , has about 16.7 million unique mobile subscribers—about 55 percent of the population—and about 10.7 million mobile Internet users .
Nollywood , Nigeria ’ s film industry , accounted for $ 7.2 billion ( or 1.42 percent ) of Nigeria ’ s gross domestic product as of 2016 .
It employs 300,000 people directly and more than 1 million others indirectly .
In South Africa , creative and cultural industries contribute about 3.1 percent of the country ’ s GDP and account for 3.6 percent of employment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to generate 2.9 billion rand ( about $ 178 million ) in 2020 .
In Kenya , annual growth rates in digital music and gaming are estimated to be well over 10 percent .
The success of African creators and musicians—and the global demand for the content they produce—has not gone unnoticed by U.S. companies .
The 2018 Hollywood blockbuster Black Panther , which showcased African actors , music , and design influence , brought in more than $ 1.3 billion at the global box office and is the highest-grossing superhero film of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years , the world ’ s three largest record labels—Universal Music Group , Sony Music , and Warner Music Group—have all expanded their presence in African markets by signing African artists , acquiring African record labels , or opening new offices on the continent .
In April , Apple Music expanded from 12 to 37 African countries , and in May , Universal launched its highly successful Def Jam label in Africa .
Meanwhile , Netflix has been working to acquire and support African content creation .
It isn ’ t only the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government has long sought to build stronger ties between the U.S. and African markets .
For example , the African Growth and Opportunity Act exempts import tax for certain cultural goods coming from African countries with trade agreements , and the United States Agency for International Development ran a project called the African Diaspora Marketplace from 2009 to 2016 to support the businesses of U.S.-based African diaspora entrepreneurs .
Prosper Africa , an initiative by President Donald Trump ’ s administration to foster trade and commercial ties with Africa , has now taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ opportunities on the continent .
But in the era of U.S.-Chinese competition , U.S. investment in Africa ’ s burgeoning creative industries has never been more important .
As China continues its government-to-government loans for infrastructure and expands its commercial presence in African markets by increasing foreign direct investment as well as private equity and venture capital investments , the United States should actively seek to maintain influence in African markets .
With strong people-to-people and culture-to-culture ties , the creative industries can serve as a strategic sector for American soft power .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. policymakers should prioritize investments and partnerships in sectors such as music , film , and gaming to enable leading U.S. companies to increasingly tap into fast-moving markets that speak directly to the millions of young , urban , and connected Africans .
At the same time , investment in African creative industries will also bring back content to the United States that both reflects U.S. diversity—since there are at least 1.6 million African immigrants living in the United States today—and feeds the increasing demand for Afrocentric content in the $ 700 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Connections to African markets will play a critical role in the United States ’ ability to shape perceptions of the West on the continent .
Take , for instance , a recent tweet from a group of Nigerian child comedians , the Ikorodu Bois , who are known for recreating movie trailers and music videos .
The group , which has nearly 1 million Instagram followers , caught the eye of Netflix in June after they recreated scenes from the Netflix film Extraction .
When the company sent them production equipment , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a thank-you video that ’ s been watched at least 3 million times globally and caught the eye of U.S. celebrities such as Will Smith .
Now , the Ikorodu Bois have been invited to Hollywood—something they ’ ve called a life dream .
By encouraging even more engagement by U.S. entertainment companies , the United States will be able to tap into this kind of youthful energy and build shared cultural values .
These kinds of partnerships are becoming more important as China moves beyond its historical sectors of investment , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the United States has long had a strong competitive edge , such as media , entertainment , technology , and higher education .
And while more Africans consider the United States to be the better development model for their countries , according to a 2016 survey , China is a close second—and it is already seen as the greater external influence on African countries .
China may gain further ground as it cements its standing in the continent ’ s mobile-phone and consumer-app sectors .
Transsion , a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the market share for feature phones , or nonsmartphones , in African markets , and its joint venture Transsnet has launched Boomplay as a rival to Spotify and Apple Music .
Boomplay works directly with African musicians to reach listeners through its platform , and Transsnet raised $ 20 million in external funding last year to support its expansion .
Tencent , a Chinese tech giant , has also announced plans to expand its music streaming service , Joox , to Africa after it proved to be a hit in Southeast Asia and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 .
While the United States is not in a position to match China ’ s investments in Africa in other sectors such as infrastructure , it does have the resources to accelerate U.S. private and public involvement in Africa ’ s creative industries .
Any new efforts from the United States to facilitate trade and investment in African markets should prioritize this sector .
That may take many forms : Advisors for private companies and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation could be specifically trained to look for opportunities in creative industries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ development finance institutions and governments , specifically Nigeria and Kenya , to advance regulatory reform that supports anti-piracy enforcement ; a representative from the music or film industry could be added to the U.S. President ’ s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa ; and a task force of retired industry executives and financiers could assist in forging financial partnerships between U.S. funds , African banks , and digital media companies .
These moves will not only unlock opportunities for U.S. companies in a rapidly growing market , but also position the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that drive consumption patterns on the continent for decades to come .
And for both the United States , eager to encourage pro-U.S. sentiment and economic ties , and African nations , where the United States can invest in the dreams of millions of young people , that will be a good thing .

When one of Nigeria’s biggest artists, Burna Boy, released his new album, Twice as Tall, in August, it became an instant global success. Burna Boy’s international popularity had skyrocketed the year before with the release of his fourth studio album, African Giant, which garnered the artist his first Grammy nomination and sold out arenas in Europe and North America. Twice as Tall, which, like African Giant, is in the Afrobeats genre, a style of pop music with West African roots, took that success further: It hit No. 1 in dozens of countries on Apple Music’s worldwide charts and reached the top 60 on the Billboard 200 in the United States. But its importance does not rest solely on its record-breaking stats. The album also serves as the latest example of the growing global reach of African artists.
When one of Nigeria’s biggest artists, Burna Boy, released his new album, Twice as Tall, in August, it became an instant global success. Burna Boy’s international popularity had skyrocketed the year before with the release of his fourth studio album, African Giant, which garnered the artist his first Grammy nomination and sold out arenas in Europe and North America. Twice as Tall, which, like African Giant, is in the Afrobeats genre, a style of pop music with West African roots, took that success further: It hit No. 1 in dozens of countries on Apple Music’s worldwide charts and reached the top 60 on the Billboard 200 in the United States. But its importance does not rest solely on its record-breaking stats. The album also serves as the latest example of the growing global reach of African artists.
After years of trying to sell Western music in Africa, global music labels are now looking to Africa for talent—a shift that was apparent in Billboard magazine’s May 2020 cover story, which featured three of Nigeria’s biggest stars: Davido, Tiwa Savage, and Mr Eazi. In the past few years, global audiences have become increasingly familiarized with African musicians. That’s partly due to collaborations with popular Western artists, such as Drake’s 2016 hit “One Dance,” featuring Nigeria’s Wizkid, or the visual album Beyonce released on Disney+ this summer, Black Is King, which features an array of African musicians, including Burna Boy. But overall, it’s the rise of social media and digital streaming that has altered the musical landscape. While physical distribution in limited markets caused long delays in the past, African artists can now quickly build global fan bases—and connect instantly with followers around the world.
In some ways, the pandemic has pushed these trends forward. One of the silver linings of COVID-19 is that national lockdowns and international travel bans have accelerated digitization efforts across African markets. Africa’s creative industries have reaped the benefits, since digitization democratizes content creation and breaks down geographic barriers to collaboration and distribution. For instance, Burna Boy turned to multiple U.S. producers for Twice as Tall, and Sean Combs, also known as Diddy, served as an executive producer, working on the album over Zoom, despite the eight-hour time difference, during the pandemic.
As artists such as Burna Boy expand their reach worldwide, the continent’s increasingly urban, tech-savvy population—the youngest in the world—is also becoming a larger market for creative content. Nigeria alone has about 97.5 million unique mobile subscribers—nearly half of the country’s population. Even Ghana, a smaller market, has about 16.7 million unique mobile subscribers—about 55 percent of the population—and about 10.7 million mobile Internet users. Nollywood, Nigeria’s film industry, accounted for $7.2 billion (or 1.42 percent) of Nigeria’s gross domestic product as of 2016. It employs 300,000 people directly and more than 1 million others indirectly. In South Africa, creative and cultural industries contribute about 3.1 percent of the country’s GDP and account for 3.6 percent of employment. The local music industry is expected to generate 2.9 billion rand (about $178 million) in 2020. In Kenya, annual growth rates in digital music and gaming are estimated to be well over 10 percent.
The success of African creators and musicians—and the global demand for the content they produce—has not gone unnoticed by U.S. companies. The 2018 Hollywood blockbuster Black Panther, which showcased African actors, music, and design influence, brought in more than $1.3 billion at the global box office and is the highest-grossing superhero film of all time. In the past four years, the world’s three largest record labels—Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group—have all expanded their presence in African markets by signing African artists, acquiring African record labels, or opening new offices on the continent. In April, Apple Music expanded from 12 to 37 African countries, and in May, Universal launched its highly successful Def Jam label in Africa. Meanwhile, Netflix has been working to acquire and support African content creation.
It isn’t only the private sector taking notice. The U.S. government has long sought to build stronger ties between the U.S. and African markets. For example, the African Growth and Opportunity Act exempts import tax for certain cultural goods coming from African countries with trade agreements, and the United States Agency for International Development ran a project called the African Diaspora Marketplace from 2009 to 2016 to support the businesses of U.S.-based African diaspora entrepreneurs. Prosper Africa, an initiative by President Donald Trump’s administration to foster trade and commercial ties with Africa, has now taken over the effort to connect Americans to opportunities on the continent.
But in the era of U.S.-Chinese competition, U.S. investment in Africa’s burgeoning creative industries has never been more important. As China continues its government-to-government loans for infrastructure and expands its commercial presence in African markets by increasing foreign direct investment as well as private equity and venture capital investments, the United States should actively seek to maintain influence in African markets.
With strong people-to-people and culture-to-culture ties, the creative industries can serve as a strategic sector for American soft power. Through programs such as Prosper Africa, U.S. policymakers should prioritize investments and partnerships in sectors such as music, film, and gaming to enable leading U.S. companies to increasingly tap into fast-moving markets that speak directly to the millions of young, urban, and connected Africans. At the same time, investment in African creative industries will also bring back content to the United States that both reflects U.S. diversity—since there are at least 1.6 million African immigrants living in the United States today—and feeds the increasing demand for Afrocentric content in the $700 billion U.S. market for media and entertainment.
Connections to African markets will play a critical role in the United States’ ability to shape perceptions of the West on the continent. Take, for instance, a recent tweet from a group of Nigerian child comedians, the Ikorodu Bois, who are known for recreating movie trailers and music videos. The group, which has nearly 1 million Instagram followers, caught the eye of Netflix in June after they recreated scenes from the Netflix film Extraction. When the company sent them production equipment, the Ikorodu Bois tweeted excitedly about the gift with a thank-you video that’s been watched at least 3 million times globally and caught the eye of U.S. celebrities such as Will Smith. Now, the Ikorodu Bois have been invited to Hollywood—something they’ve called a life dream. By encouraging even more engagement by U.S. entertainment companies, the United States will be able to tap into this kind of youthful energy and build shared cultural values.
These kinds of partnerships are becoming more important as China moves beyond its historical sectors of investment, such as transport infrastructure, into areas where the United States has long had a strong competitive edge, such as media, entertainment, technology, and higher education. And while more Africans consider the United States to be the better development model for their countries, according to a 2016 survey, China is a close second—and it is already seen as the greater external influence on African countries.
China may gain further ground as it cements its standing in the continent’s mobile-phone and consumer-app sectors. Transsion, a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer, controls more than 50 percent of the market share for feature phones, or nonsmartphones, in African markets, and its joint venture Transsnet has launched Boomplay as a rival to Spotify and Apple Music. Boomplay works directly with African musicians to reach listeners through its platform, and Transsnet raised $20 million in external funding last year to support its expansion. Tencent, a Chinese tech giant, has also announced plans to expand its music streaming service, Joox, to Africa after it proved to be a hit in Southeast Asia and as demand for streaming spiked because of COVID-19.
While the United States is not in a position to match China’s investments in Africa in other sectors such as infrastructure, it does have the resources to accelerate U.S. private and public involvement in Africa’s creative industries. Any new efforts from the United States to facilitate trade and investment in African markets should prioritize this sector. That may take many forms: Advisors for private companies and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation could be specifically trained to look for opportunities in creative industries; Prosper Africa could work with African development finance institutions and governments, specifically Nigeria and Kenya, to advance regulatory reform that supports anti-piracy enforcement; a representative from the music or film industry could be added to the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa; and a task force of retired industry executives and financiers could assist in forging financial partnerships between U.S. funds, African banks, and digital media companies.
These moves will not only unlock opportunities for U.S. companies in a rapidly growing market, but also position the United States to retain influence in sectors that drive consumption patterns on the continent for decades to come. And for both the United States, eager to encourage pro-U.S. sentiment and economic ties, and African nations, where the United States can invest in the dreams of millions of young people, that will be a good thing.


foreignpolicy--2020-09-22--Is the Blob Really Blameless?

Is the Blob Really Blameless?

Is the Blob Really Blameless ?
Francis Gavin recently published a lengthy review of my 2018 book , The Hell of Good Intentions : America ’ s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy .
I am flattered that he judged the book to be of sufficient importance and potential influence to warrant such sustained attention , even though his assessment is harshly negative .
Gavin ’ s essay raises several important issues , and it would be a telling indictment if his criticisms were well founded .
Fortunately , his main charges miss their mark while nicely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the book .
Explaining why his objections are unconvincing will hopefully move the debate on U.S. grand strategy forward .
Although Gavin offers up many complaints about the book , his critique rests on four main claims .
First , he argues that apart from some obviously costly blunders in the Middle East , U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has been a great success .
Second , he claims the alternative grand strategy that I and others have recommended ( variously termed “ restraint ” or “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disaster , which is why the foreign-policy establishment and the broader American public have rejected it .
Third , he portrays me and my fellow restrainers as centrally placed figures with enormous potential to shape debates on U.S. foreign policy , not a relatively small minority confined mostly to a handful of universities .
Given our alleged prominence , he suggests that our failure to convince the elite or the public to embrace our proposals is further evidence that our ideas are unsound .
Lastly , he rejects my characterization of the foreign-policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individuals and institutions sharing a common worldview ( namely , a commitment to the strategy of liberal hegemony ) , claiming instead that it is an intellectually diverse group of open-minded and dedicated professionals that holds itself to high standards and has only the best interests of the country and the world at heart .
Let me consider each of these criticisms in turn .
In contrast to the assessment that I and many other critics have presented , Gavin believes recent U.S. foreign policy has been remarkably successful .
Why does he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words , the United States is still “ far and away the most important player in international politics.
” But this standard is much too easy : Given America ’ s overwhelming power position when the Cold War ended and the enormous geopolitical advantages it still enjoys , it would have required repeated disasters of truly epic proportions to erode U.S. primacy completely or even put the United States in a position of parity with any other country .
At no point did I claim that the United States has come close to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to ask is whether the United States has used its power wisely and in ways that have made the American people more secure and prosperous or whether repeated acts of omission and commission in the conduct of foreign policy have undermined the national interest in important ways .
Unfortunately , as a recent Rand Corp. study makes clear , the answer is all too apparent .
The United States stood unchallenged when the Cold War ended and was on good terms with the other major powers , including Russia and China .
Today @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , faces a rapidly rising and increasingly hostile China , and Beijing and Moscow are effectively aligned together against the United States .
Given these unfortunate developments , as well as the opposition that Washington faces from minor powers such as Iran and North Korea , foreign-policy experts from both major political parties are now issuing the usual strident warnings about the need to restore America ’ s deteriorating strategic position .
If the past 25 years or so have gone so swimmingly , why are they now so concerned ?
The situation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ great either .
Another way to answer this question is to consider what the architects of U.S. foreign policy said they were trying to accomplish during the Bill Clinton , George W. Bush , and Barack Obama administrations and ask if they succeeded .
Consistent with the strategy of liberal hegemony , these three administrations were openly committed to spreading democracy , human rights , open markets , and other liberal values while at the same time preserving America ’ s position of primacy .
Well , how did those ambitious efforts turn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2019 marked “ the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom , ” a trend that long predates the Trump administration .
The Economist Intelligence Unit ’ s annual Democracy Index has chronicled a similar trend , and in 2017 it downgraded the United States itself from the category of “ full ” to “ flawed ” democracy .
Globalization under U.S. auspices produced a major global recession in 2008 and a powerful backlash in the United States and Europe alike , and it was under siege well before President Donald Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As realists had warned , projects like NATO enlargement have poisoned relations with Russia , laid the groundwork for subsequent conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine , and driven Russia and China closer together .
( Gavin denies that anti-American balancing is even happening , but these and other examples demonstrate the opposite . )
Furthermore , the Clinton administration ’ s ill-advised strategy of dual containment in the Persian Gulf kept thousands of U.S. troops in the region during the 1990s , a situation that helped convince Osama bin Laden to attack the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administrations devoted countless hours trying to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , only to come up empty-handed and humiliated .
North Korea became a nuclear weapons state , and both India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons and expanded their arsenals despite intense opposition from Washington .
Iran has yet to cross the nuclear threshold , but it went from zero centrifuges in 2000 to roughly 19,000 before signing the now-defunct Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015 , and it is for all intents and purposes a latent nuclear weapons @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developments , Gavin tries another line of attack .
He admits that U.S. policy in the Middle East has been a “ disaster ” but suggests that the United States has done very well in Europe and East Asia , which he calls “ the world ’ s two most geopolitically important regions.
” Major war has not broken out ; some potential nuclear weapons states did not race to get the bomb , and America still has valuable allies in both areas .
There are two problems with this argument .
First @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the regions that really matter , then why did U.S. leaders let themselves get dragged repeatedly into Middle Eastern quagmires that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives and which made it harder for Washington to respond effectively in the more “ geopolitically important regions ” ?
Both the Bush and Obama administrations wanted to do more in Asia , for example , but they kept pouring time , attention , money , and scarce military resources into the Middle East instead , while allies in Asia and Europe looked on with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Europe and East Asia is hardly a great success story .
True , World War III has not broken out in either region , but that was unlikely to occur no matter what the United States did and thus is hardly a meaningful mark of achievement .
Nor has Germany or Japan acquired the bomb , which might have occurred under some scenarios but not under many others .
Given what U.S. leaders believed their policies would achieve , however , the overall record is disappointing .
NATO enlargement was supposed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ free and above all peaceful ; instead , we have witnessed wars and frozen conflicts in the Balkans , Georgia , and Ukraine and a deteriorating security situation in the Baltic area , not to mention increasingly acrimonious relations with Russia itself .
If U.S. policies were so successful , why did the Obama administration have to send more troops to Europe to reassure America ’ s prosperous but poorly equipped allies , and why did Trump ultimately do the same , despite his all-too-obvious skepticism about NATO ’ s value ?
U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to strengthen democracy in the region , yet Poland , Hungary , and Turkey are moving steadily away from liberal democracy , and others may follow suit .
As for East Asia , not only did North Korea successfully test a nuclear weapon while the United States was distracted by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq , but the strategy of liberal hegemony pursued by Clinton , Bush , and Obama played a major role in facilitating China ’ s emergence as a serious peer competitor .
Deng Xiaopeng ’ s “ Four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China ’ s enormous potential , but the United States consciously aided its ascent , based on the hope that doing so would hasten its transition to democracy , turn Beijing into a “ responsible stakeholder , ” and bind it so tightly within U.S.-led institutions that future conflicts would be easy to manage .
One is hard-pressed to think of another case where an overwhelmingly dominant great power deliberately facilitated the rise of the only country that could possibly pose a serious challenge to its privileged position .
It is obvious that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. leaders now worry about unfavorable power trends in Asia and are actively trying to build a balancing coalition to contain Chinese power .
I share their concerns and agree with this prescription ( and said so in the book ) , yet Gavin apparently regards the policies that led to this worrisome situation as a great success .
They surely were for China—but not for the United States .
Gavin also suggests that I am opposed to U.S. primacy , saying that I appear to “ prefer a world marked by balancing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States is unchecked.
” This is pure invention on his part : In fact , I have argued the opposite for years .
My criticisms of the excesses of U.S. foreign policy stem from my concern that repeated errors have weakened America ’ s global position while at the same time squandering resources that could have been used to strengthen the country ’ s power base at home and benefit all Americans .
Gavin and I both like U.S. primacy ; where we differ is on the best way to preserve it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attack on this point is to suggest that recent U.S. foreign policy is no worse than it was in earlier historical periods and that it compares favorably with the performances of states like Russia and China .
Regarding the first point , it is hardly a ringing defense , as I noted in my book , to say that the United States ’ recent mistakes are no worse than some of its earlier follies .
As for the second point , there ’ s no question that some countries have done worse than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quarter century .
But that ’ s not a convincing defense either , especially when other states have done markedly better .
China has grown much more powerful , improved the lives of its people dramatically , avoided the quagmires the United States has repeatedly plunged into , and steadily gained international influence .
Xi Jinping ’ s recent assertiveness has triggered growing alarm , which only shows that imitating America ’ s sharp-elbowed and insensitive approach to foreign policy is unwise .
Vladimir Putin is a brutal autocrat , and Russia ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but even those of us who are repelled by his behavior must concede that he has played a weak hand well .
Despite an aging population and a sclerotic economy that is smaller than Italy ’ s , his policies have made Russia a force to be reckoned with in several areas and at relatively low cost .
The United States , by contrast , held mostly aces and still managed to lose many of the hands it played .
Gavin ’ s second complaint is that the strategy of offshore balancing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a disaster , and he offers up an extended counterfactual of assorted bad things that might occur if the United States stopped garrisoning the world and trying to force other states to embrace its values .
I present a different set of counterfactuals in the book ( and a few other places ) , suggesting that adopting offshore balancing in the 1990s would have 1 ) led to better ( though not perfect ) relations with Russia ; 2 ) made the 9/11 attacks much less likely to happen ; 3 ) reduced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction ; 4 ) kept the United States out of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq ; and 5 ) left Washington in a far stronger position vis-à-vis Beijing .
As with all counterfactuals , neither of us can prove we are right .
But we do know that the United States tried liberal hegemony , and we know how badly it turned out .
To bolster his counterfactual , Gavin falls back on the infamous 1930s analogy , perhaps the most moth-eaten trope in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In his view , the interwar period demonstrates what happens when the United States withdraws from world affairs : You get the Great Depression , the rise of fascism , and eventually a catastrophic world war .
He seems to think that this is a telling blow against my argument , but we do not know what form ( s ) U.S. involvement would have taken or whether it would have dampened or intensified the rivalries of the interwar period .
Given the many tangled conflicts that were present in interwar Europe , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mix would have guaranteed peace is hardly a slam-dunk .
Moreover , Gavin is attacking a straw man .
Neither I nor any other advocate of offshore balancing is suggesting that the United States should adopt the same approach to world politics that it took during the 1920s and 1930s .
None of us is calling for the United States to leave the United Nations or cut the defense budget to 1920s levels , and most restrainers believe the United States should stand ready to ally with others if doing so is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a regional hegemon in Europe , Asia , or the Persian Gulf .
As noted above , that is certainly my view with respect to Asia .
What restrainers are saying is that the United States should stop squandering time , money , military personnel , and political legitimacy trying to spread democracy and liberal values around the world ; stop subsidizing the security of wealthy allies that have the wherewithal to defend themselves ; and stop pursuing hyperglobalization without regard for its damaging consequences at home and its impact on the balance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ adjustments would allow the country to concentrate its resources on the challenge that a rising China presents and help address the accumulating problems it faces domestically .
Even if Gavin ’ s unprovable conjecture about the 1930s were correct , it is irrelevant to today ’ s debate about U.S. foreign policy .
Perhaps Gavin ’ s oddest claim is his suggestion that restrainers are not a distinct minority within the broader foreign-policy community but rather a group with considerable prominence and status .
In his telling , the debate between us and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a fair fight among equal forces , and if our ideas have not been adopted by policymakers or the public , it is not for lack of a hearing .
Instead , he insists , it is because the ideas themselves are obviously unsound .
His evidence for this claim is that I have an endowed chair at the Harvard Kennedy School , write a regular column for Foreign Policy , and have a fair number of Twitter followers .
He points out that a few other restrainers have positions at elite universities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ideas from time to time .
Restrainers have not been silenced or marginalized , he suggests , and if our policy recommendations made sense , they would have been readily embraced by the body politic .
This argument is disingenuous because restrainers remain a small faction within the broader foreign-policy community .
And while I have the good fortune to hold a professorship at Harvard and the opportunity to publish my ideas , such a position is hardly a direct line to policy influence .
Consider that the economist Paul Krugman is in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ am—he is the recipient of a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ; has held distinguished professorships at Stanford , Princeton , and now the City University of New York ; writes a regular column in the New York Times ; and has 4.6 million Twitter followers .
Yet he ’ d surely be the first to admit that his views on economic policy are frequently ignored by those in power .
Moreover , what about the rest of the faculty who teach foreign policy-related subjects at the Kennedy School ?
My colleagues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his former chief of staff Eric Rosenbach ; former Assistant Secretaries of Defense Graham T. Allison and Joseph S. Nye ; former U.N .
Ambassador Samantha Power ; former Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns ; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers ; and former National Security Council official Meghan O ’ Sullivan .
One could add others , including the senior fellows whose ranks include former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford .
To be clear : I have great respect for these colleagues , remain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ am grateful for all I have learned from them over the years .
But with the possible exception of the historian Fredrik Logevall , none of them could be described as an advocate of foreign-policy restraint .
The balance of power at Harvard is a good reflection of the situation in the foreign-policy community itself .
There are no restrainers at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs , at Stanford , or in Yale ’ s well-known grand strategy program .
You won ’ t find any at Johns Hopkins University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , where Gavin now teaches , and they are either absent or badly outnumbered at his former employer , the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin .
The picture is even more heavily slanted in the world of think tanks and lobbies inside the Beltway .
In his review , Gavin makes much of the Charles Koch Foundation ’ s recent efforts to promote a broader debate by supporting scholars and policy analysts with different views on U.S. grand strategy and helping to fund the new Quincy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraging developments , but their existence today hardly undermines the argument of a book dealing primarily with the period from 1993 to 2016 .
And my assessment then remains true today : “ [ O ] rganizations and individuals committed to America ’ s global leadership role and to an ambitious foreign policy agenda are far more numerous and much better funded than groups arguing for greater U.S. restraint.
” Gavin also suggests that American voters have consistently rejected offshore balancing because they are content with the way things are .
In his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that pursuing a grand strategy that was so bad for so long would escape the scrutiny of the American voter.
” There is no puzzle here at all : Foreign policy is a minor concern for most of the public most of the time , but even so , the mounting failures did not escape voters ’ attention .
As I noted in the book , all four post-Cold War presidents ran for office promising to do less abroad and more at home , and one of them—Obama—rose to the presidency in good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against Iraq that most of his Democratic Party rivals had supported .
Each of these presidents acted differently once in office , but they all knew voters were not enthusiastic about liberal hegemony .
Nor does Gavin challenge the considerable evidence I presented showing how the public ’ s views on foreign policy are sharply at odds with the views of foreign-policy elites or the chapter that explains how the foreign-policy establishment inflates threats , exaggerates benefits , and conceals costs to convince the American people to go along with policies that keep @ @ @ @ @ @ @ efforts to keep substantial U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq , even though 76 percent of Americans polled would like them withdrawn , are merely the latest evidence of this enduring disconnect .
Moreover , if liberal hegemony is such a stunning success and the American people are happy with it , then how are we to explain Trump ’ s triumph in 2016 or the improbable popularity of an avowed socialist like Bernie Sanders ?
Both men ran for president challenging the core principles of liberal hegemony , and their rejection of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their appeal .
Gavin and I agree that Trump has been a disaster as president and foreign policy is not the main reason he got elected in 2016 .
But the facts are clear : Trump ran for office saying U.S. foreign policy was a “ complete and total disaster ” and promising to “ shake the rust off.
” He was openly opposed by dozens of experienced foreign-policy experts from both political parties , yet he crushed the Republican primary field and won enough votes against a former secretary of state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And foreign policy was far from irrelevant , as voting patterns in 2016 showed that “ Trump made significant electoral gains among constituencies that were exhausted and politically alienated by 18 years of fighting [ overseas ] .
” The American people are much less enamored with liberal hegemony than Gavin maintains and increasingly open to alternatives .
Gavin ’ s defense of the foreign-policy establishment begins by cherry-picking a few quotations , such as my somewhat snarky remark that liberal hegemony has been a “ full employment policy for the foreign-policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration official Kori Schake ’ s declaration that the elite ’ s rejection of offshore balancing “ isn ’ t a conspiracy ” —thereby falsely implying that I said it was—and then proceeds to link the book to the conspiracy theorists analyzed in Richard Hofstadter ’ s classic The Paranoid Style in American Politics .
His apparent aim is to convince readers that I believe members of the foreign-policy elite act solely to advance their personal ambitions and are engaged in dark plots to thwart the national interest .
This charge is baseless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote : “ America ’ s foreign policy elite is not a conspiracy of privileged insiders who are consciously seeking to advance their own fortunes at the nation ’ s expense .
On the contrary , the institutions examined in this book are filled with dedicated public servants who genuinely believe that U.S. dominance is good for the United States and for the rest of the world .
At the same time , however , the pursuit of liberal hegemony appeals to this elite ’ s sense of self-worth , enhances their power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do .
These individuals also operate in a system that rewards conformity , penalizes dissent , and encourages its members to remain within the prevailing consensus.
” I stand by that statement , which the rest of the book fleshes out in detail .
The Hell of Good Intentions is thus squarely in the tradition of well-known works like C. Wright Mills ’ s The Power Elite , as well as the extensive literatures on bureaucratic politics , interest group politics , and the military-industrial complex , not to mention the work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tendency of the foreign-policy establishment to exaggerate threats .
Gavin dismisses my concerns about the lack of accountability within the establishment by saying tenured academics are even less accountable , but the mores of academia are not the issue .
He writes that his own “ sense as a historian , … immersed in the decision-making of foreign policy officials , is that most took their responsibilities quite seriously.
” I agree , but once again , that isn ’ t the point .
The real question is twofold : 1 ) Did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among key officials and the broader community of advisors , policy wonks , and pundits lead them to make repeated mistakes ?
and 2 ) Were those who conceived , sold , and implemented policies that repeatedly failed held accountable for their errors ?
On these questions , Gavin is silent .
It is striking that his long and detailed review does not mention any important foreign-policy figure who suffered significant professional consequences for making important and repeated professional errors .
Having acknowledged that U.S. policy in the Middle East has failed for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s explanation for how Paul Wolfowitz could go from selling the disastrous Iraq War at the Defense Department to the presidency of the World Bank to being forced to resign that post amid accusations of ethical lapses and then to a senior sinecure at the American Enterprise Institute and membership on a State Department advisory panel ?
Furthermore , what explains the Teflon-like durability of Elliott Abrams or John Bolton ?
Were the other Bush administration officials who deceived the country into a disastrous war subsequently ostracized within the establishment or considered ineligible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of pundits , public intellectuals , and so-called liberal hawks who supported the Iraq War pay any discernible price ?
Were the persons who ordered CIA personnel to commit acts of torture ever prosecuted ?
For that matter , who made the key errors of judgment that left the country vulnerable on 9/11 ?
( You certainly won ’ t find the answer in the official 9/11 Commission Report . )
Were the higher-ups whose actions led to the travesties at Abu Ghraib prison ever punished ?
Have the individuals who were convinced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a more peaceful world and make the United States safer suffered any negative consequences for this enormously consequential misjudgment ?
What about the officials whose well-intentioned interventions helped create failed states in Libya , Syria , and Yemen ?
Did they acknowledge these mistakes openly so that the country could avoid repeating them in the future ?
Apart from Obama himself , they haven ’ t .
Instead , many of the officials who made these errors—even , as my title suggests , with good intentions—ended up landing lucrative and influential post-governmental jobs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a return to power in some subsequent administration .
If one believes , as Gavin does , that U.S. foreign policy has been a great success , then this degree of continuity is undoubtedly reassuring .
But if one believes it would be better if the country learned from its mistakes and stopped recycling officials who have repeatedly failed to achieve their own stated goals , the absence of accountability is more troubling .
Trump ’ s chaotic approach to governing has shown that relying on amateurs , criminals , ideologues , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way to manage domestic affairs , foreign policy , or a pandemic response .
Indeed , were I writing the book today , I would draw a sharper distinction between the career civil servants who provide valuable institutional memory and often bring valuable skills and considerable dedication to the conduct of foreign policy and the elected officials and political appointees who are primarily responsible for more consequential strategic missteps .
As stated explicitly in the book , the need for accountability must be tempered by a degree of forbearance because all humans are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ improve over time.
” What is needed , therefore , is not a root-and-branch destruction of the entire foreign-policy establishment but the creation of a foreign-policy elite that is more open to different perspectives than was the case between 1992 and 2016 and also exhibits a higher degree of accountability .
Gavin ’ s review is misleading in one final but noteworthy respect .
He portrays himself as a detached historian floating above the fray , a neutral , nonpartisan observer who is ideally positioned to render an objective judgment on these matters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in government , held a paid job with a think tank , consulted for the private sector , or served on a political campaign , ” he declares , he should be an “ easy audience ” for my argument .
Such statements are meant to persuade readers that his criticisms come from a disinterested position and are therefore all the more telling .
This pose should fool no one .
Gavin , who currently directs the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins , is a fully engaged partisan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as even a casual survey of his own writings makes clear .
He is a staunch defender of deep U.S. engagement all over the world , for the reasons laid out in his essay .
That is his privilege , of course , and I have no problem with his holding views on grand strategy that differ from mine .
Most of my Harvard colleagues and some of my best friends do too .
It would be more honest , however , for him to acknowledge these differences openly , instead of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the fight .
But please , don ’ t take my word for any of this .
If you have read this far and are still interested in my views on the future of U.S. foreign policy , I would encourage you to get a copy of The Hell of Good Intentions , read it , and then read Gavin ’ s review .
When you are finished , ask yourself which perspective you find most convincing .
I believe most readers will find my analysis and recommendations more persuasive , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After all , if he wasn ’ t so worried about restraint ’ s intrinsic and growing appeal , he wouldn ’ t have gone to such lengths to try to discredit it .

Francis Gavin recently published a lengthy review of my 2018 book , The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy. I am flattered that he judged the book to be of sufficient importance and potential influence to warrant such sustained attention, even though his assessment is harshly negative. Gavin’s essay raises several important issues, and it would be a telling indictment if his criticisms were well founded. Fortunately, his main charges miss their mark while nicely illustrating the complacent mindset that I criticized in the book. Explaining why his objections are unconvincing will hopefully move the debate on U.S. grand strategy forward.
Francis Gavin recently published a lengthy review of my 2018 book, The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy. I am flattered that he judged the book to be of sufficient importance and potential influence to warrant such sustained attention, even though his assessment is harshly negative. Gavin’s essay raises several important issues, and it would be a telling indictment if his criticisms were well founded. Fortunately, his main charges miss their mark while nicely illustrating the complacent mindset that I criticized in the book. Explaining why his objections are unconvincing will hopefully move the debate on U.S. grand strategy forward.
Although Gavin offers up many complaints about the book, his critique rests on four main claims. First, he argues that apart from some obviously costly blunders in the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has been a great success. Second, he claims the alternative grand strategy that I and others have recommended (variously termed “restraint” or “offshore balancing”) would be a disaster, which is why the foreign-policy establishment and the broader American public have rejected it. Third, he portrays me and my fellow restrainers as centrally placed figures with enormous potential to shape debates on U.S. foreign policy, not a relatively small minority confined mostly to a handful of universities. Given our alleged prominence, he suggests that our failure to convince the elite or the public to embrace our proposals is further evidence that our ideas are unsound. Lastly, he rejects my characterization of the foreign-policy elite as a mutually reinforcing community of individuals and institutions sharing a common worldview (namely, a commitment to the strategy of liberal hegemony), claiming instead that it is an intellectually diverse group of open-minded and dedicated professionals that holds itself to high standards and has only the best interests of the country and the world at heart.
Let me consider each of these criticisms in turn.
Has U.S. foreign policy been successful?
In contrast to the assessment that I and many other critics have presented, Gavin believes recent U.S. foreign policy has been remarkably successful. Why does he think so? Because, in his words, the United States is still “far and away the most important player in international politics.” But this standard is much too easy: Given America’s overwhelming power position when the Cold War ended and the enormous geopolitical advantages it still enjoys, it would have required repeated disasters of truly epic proportions to erode U.S. primacy completely or even put the United States in a position of parity with any other country. At no point did I claim that the United States has come close to falling that far.
The proper question to ask is whether the United States has used its power wisely and in ways that have made the American people more secure and prosperous or whether repeated acts of omission and commission in the conduct of foreign policy have undermined the national interest in important ways. Unfortunately, as a recent Rand Corp. study makes clear, the answer is all too apparent. The United States stood unchallenged when the Cold War ended and was on good terms with the other major powers, including Russia and China. Today, it has antagonistic relations with Russia, faces a rapidly rising and increasingly hostile China, and Beijing and Moscow are effectively aligned together against the United States. Given these unfortunate developments, as well as the opposition that Washington faces from minor powers such as Iran and North Korea, foreign-policy experts from both major political parties are now issuing the usual strident warnings about the need to restore America’s deteriorating strategic position. If the past 25 years or so have gone so swimmingly, why are they now so concerned? The situation at home doesn’t look so great either.
Another way to answer this question is to consider what the architects of U.S. foreign policy said they were trying to accomplish during the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations and ask if they succeeded. Consistent with the strategy of liberal hegemony, these three administrations were openly committed to spreading democracy, human rights, open markets, and other liberal values while at the same time preserving America’s position of primacy.
Well, how did those ambitious efforts turn out? According to Freedom House, 2019 marked “the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom,” a trend that long predates the Trump administration. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index has chronicled a similar trend, and in 2017 it downgraded the United States itself from the category of “full” to “flawed” democracy. Globalization under U.S. auspices produced a major global recession in 2008 and a powerful backlash in the United States and Europe alike, and it was under siege well before President Donald Trump began launching his various trade wars. As realists had warned, projects like NATO enlargement have poisoned relations with Russia, laid the groundwork for subsequent conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, and driven Russia and China closer together. (Gavin denies that anti-American balancing is even happening, but these and other examples demonstrate the opposite.)
Furthermore, the Clinton administration’s ill-advised strategy of dual containment in the Persian Gulf kept thousands of U.S. troops in the region during the 1990s, a situation that helped convince Osama bin Laden to attack the United States on 9/11. All three administrations devoted countless hours trying to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, only to come up empty-handed and humiliated. North Korea became a nuclear weapons state, and both India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons and expanded their arsenals despite intense opposition from Washington. Iran has yet to cross the nuclear threshold, but it went from zero centrifuges in 2000 to roughly 19,000 before signing the now-defunct Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, and it is for all intents and purposes a latent nuclear weapons state today.
Mindful of these disturbing developments, Gavin tries another line of attack. He admits that U.S. policy in the Middle East has been a “disaster” but suggests that the United States has done very well in Europe and East Asia, which he calls “the world’s two most geopolitically important regions.” Major war has not broken out; some potential nuclear weapons states did not race to get the bomb, and America still has valuable allies in both areas.
There are two problems with this argument. First, if Europe and East Asia are the regions that really matter, then why did U.S. leaders let themselves get dragged repeatedly into Middle Eastern quagmires that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives and which made it harder for Washington to respond effectively in the more “geopolitically important regions”? Both the Bush and Obama administrations wanted to do more in Asia, for example, but they kept pouring time, attention, money, and scarce military resources into the Middle East instead, while allies in Asia and Europe looked on with growing dismay.
Second, U.S. policy in Europe and East Asia is hardly a great success story. True, World War III has not broken out in either region, but that was unlikely to occur no matter what the United States did and thus is hardly a meaningful mark of achievement. Nor has Germany or Japan acquired the bomb, which might have occurred under some scenarios but not under many others. Given what U.S. leaders believed their policies would achieve, however, the overall record is disappointing. NATO enlargement was supposed to create a Europe that was united and free and above all peaceful; instead, we have witnessed wars and frozen conflicts in the Balkans, Georgia, and Ukraine and a deteriorating security situation in the Baltic area, not to mention increasingly acrimonious relations with Russia itself. If U.S. policies were so successful, why did the Obama administration have to send more troops to Europe to reassure America’s prosperous but poorly equipped allies, and why did Trump ultimately do the same, despite his all-too-obvious skepticism about NATO’s value? U.S. engagement and NATO enlargement were also supposed to strengthen democracy in the region, yet Poland, Hungary, and Turkey are moving steadily away from liberal democracy, and others may follow suit.
As for East Asia, not only did North Korea successfully test a nuclear weapon while the United States was distracted by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the strategy of liberal hegemony pursued by Clinton, Bush, and Obama played a major role in facilitating China’s emergence as a serious peer competitor. Deng Xiaopeng’s “Four Modernizations” began the process of unleashing China’s enormous potential, but the United States consciously aided its ascent, based on the hope that doing so would hasten its transition to democracy, turn Beijing into a “responsible stakeholder,” and bind it so tightly within U.S.-led institutions that future conflicts would be easy to manage. One is hard-pressed to think of another case where an overwhelmingly dominant great power deliberately facilitated the rise of the only country that could possibly pose a serious challenge to its privileged position. It is obvious that this approach failed, which is why U.S. leaders now worry about unfavorable power trends in Asia and are actively trying to build a balancing coalition to contain Chinese power. I share their concerns and agree with this prescription (and said so in the book), yet Gavin apparently regards the policies that led to this worrisome situation as a great success. They surely were for China—but not for the United States.
Gavin also suggests that I am opposed to U.S. primacy, saying that I appear to “prefer a world marked by balancing between great-power rivals to one where the United States is unchecked.” This is pure invention on his part: In fact, I have argued the opposite for years. My criticisms of the excesses of U.S. foreign policy stem from my concern that repeated errors have weakened America’s global position while at the same time squandering resources that could have been used to strengthen the country’s power base at home and benefit all Americans. Gavin and I both like U.S. primacy; where we differ is on the best way to preserve it.
Gavin’s last line of attack on this point is to suggest that recent U.S. foreign policy is no worse than it was in earlier historical periods and that it compares favorably with the performances of states like Russia and China. Regarding the first point, it is hardly a ringing defense, as I noted in my book, to say that the United States’ recent mistakes are no worse than some of its earlier follies.
As for the second point, there’s no question that some countries have done worse than the United States has over the past quarter century. But that’s not a convincing defense either, especially when other states have done markedly better. China has grown much more powerful, improved the lives of its people dramatically, avoided the quagmires the United States has repeatedly plunged into, and steadily gained international influence. Xi Jinping’s recent assertiveness has triggered growing alarm, which only shows that imitating America’s sharp-elbowed and insensitive approach to foreign policy is unwise. Vladimir Putin is a brutal autocrat, and Russia’s political order is mired in corruption, but even those of us who are repelled by his behavior must concede that he has played a weak hand well. Despite an aging population and a sclerotic economy that is smaller than Italy’s, his policies have made Russia a force to be reckoned with in several areas and at relatively low cost. The United States, by contrast, held mostly aces and still managed to lose many of the hands it played.
Would a different strategy have worked better?
Gavin’s second complaint is that the strategy of offshore balancing that I and restrainers recommend would be a disaster, and he offers up an extended counterfactual of assorted bad things that might occur if the United States stopped garrisoning the world and trying to force other states to embrace its values. I present a different set of counterfactuals in the book (and a few other places), suggesting that adopting offshore balancing in the 1990s would have 1) led to better (though not perfect) relations with Russia; 2) made the 9/11 attacks much less likely to happen; 3) reduced (but not eliminated) the risk of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; 4) kept the United States out of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and 5) left Washington in a far stronger position vis-à-vis Beijing. As with all counterfactuals, neither of us can prove we are right. But we do know that the United States tried liberal hegemony, and we know how badly it turned out.
To bolster his counterfactual, Gavin falls back on the infamous 1930s analogy, perhaps the most moth-eaten trope in the mainstream foreign-policy establishment’s playbook. In his view, the interwar period demonstrates what happens when the United States withdraws from world affairs: You get the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, and eventually a catastrophic world war. He seems to think that this is a telling blow against my argument, but we do not know what form(s) U.S. involvement would have taken or whether it would have dampened or intensified the rivalries of the interwar period. Given the many tangled conflicts that were present in interwar Europe, the claim that inserting U.S. power into the mix would have guaranteed peace is hardly a slam-dunk.
Moreover, Gavin is attacking a straw man. Neither I nor any other advocate of offshore balancing is suggesting that the United States should adopt the same approach to world politics that it took during the 1920s and 1930s. None of us is calling for the United States to leave the United Nations or cut the defense budget to 1920s levels, and most restrainers believe the United States should stand ready to ally with others if doing so is genuinely necessary to prevent the rise of a regional hegemon in Europe, Asia, or the Persian Gulf. As noted above, that is certainly my view with respect to Asia.
What restrainers are saying is that the United States should stop squandering time, money, military personnel, and political legitimacy trying to spread democracy and liberal values around the world; stop subsidizing the security of wealthy allies that have the wherewithal to defend themselves; and stop pursuing hyperglobalization without regard for its damaging consequences at home and its impact on the balance of power abroad. We believe these adjustments would allow the country to concentrate its resources on the challenge that a rising China presents and help address the accumulating problems it faces domestically. Even if Gavin’s unprovable conjecture about the 1930s were correct, it is irrelevant to today’s debate about U.S. foreign policy.
Do restrainers have a lot of influence?
Perhaps Gavin’s oddest claim is his suggestion that restrainers are not a distinct minority within the broader foreign-policy community but rather a group with considerable prominence and status. In his telling, the debate between us and the rest of the foreign-policy establishment is a fair fight among equal forces, and if our ideas have not been adopted by policymakers or the public, it is not for lack of a hearing. Instead, he insists, it is because the ideas themselves are obviously unsound.
His evidence for this claim is that I have an endowed chair at the Harvard Kennedy School, write a regular column for Foreign Policy, and have a fair number of Twitter followers. He points out that a few other restrainers have positions at elite universities and are also able to publish their ideas from time to time. Restrainers have not been silenced or marginalized, he suggests, and if our policy recommendations made sense, they would have been readily embraced by the body politic.
This argument is disingenuous because restrainers remain a small faction within the broader foreign-policy community. And while I have the good fortune to hold a professorship at Harvard and the opportunity to publish my ideas, such a position is hardly a direct line to policy influence. Consider that the economist Paul Krugman is in an even more favorable position than I am—he is the recipient of a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; has held distinguished professorships at Stanford, Princeton, and now the City University of New York; writes a regular column in the New York Times; and has 4.6 million Twitter followers. Yet he’d surely be the first to admit that his views on economic policy are frequently ignored by those in power.
Moreover, what about the rest of the faculty who teach foreign policy-related subjects at the Kennedy School? My colleagues include former Defense Secretary Ash Carter; his former chief of staff Eric Rosenbach; former Assistant Secretaries of Defense Graham T. Allison and Joseph S. Nye; former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power; former Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns; former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers; and former National Security Council official Meghan O’Sullivan. One could add others, including the senior fellows whose ranks include former National Security Advisor Susan Rice and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford. To be clear: I have great respect for these colleagues, remain on good terms with them, and am grateful for all I have learned from them over the years. But with the possible exception of the historian Fredrik Logevall, none of them could be described as an advocate of foreign-policy restraint.
The balance of power at Harvard is a good reflection of the situation in the foreign-policy community itself. There are no restrainers at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, at Stanford, or in Yale’s well-known grand strategy program. You won’t find any at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, where Gavin now teaches, and they are either absent or badly outnumbered at his former employer, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. The picture is even more heavily slanted in the world of think tanks and lobbies inside the Beltway.
In his review, Gavin makes much of the Charles Koch Foundation’s recent efforts to promote a broader debate by supporting scholars and policy analysts with different views on U.S. grand strategy and helping to fund the new Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. These are encouraging developments, but their existence today hardly undermines the argument of a book dealing primarily with the period from 1993 to 2016. And my assessment then remains true today: “[O]rganizations and individuals committed to America’s global leadership role and to an ambitious foreign policy agenda are far more numerous and much better funded than groups arguing for greater U.S. restraint.”
Gavin also suggests that American voters have consistently rejected offshore balancing because they are content with the way things are. In his words: “It is also puzzling that pursuing a grand strategy that was so bad for so long would escape the scrutiny of the American voter.” There is no puzzle here at all: Foreign policy is a minor concern for most of the public most of the time, but even so, the mounting failures did not escape voters’ attention. As I noted in the book, all four post-Cold War presidents ran for office promising to do less abroad and more at home, and one of them—Obama—rose to the presidency in good part because he had opposed a war against Iraq that most of his Democratic Party rivals had supported. Each of these presidents acted differently once in office, but they all knew voters were not enthusiastic about liberal hegemony. Nor does Gavin challenge the considerable evidence I presented showing how the public’s views on foreign policy are sharply at odds with the views of foreign-policy elites or the chapter that explains how the foreign-policy establishment inflates threats, exaggerates benefits, and conceals costs to convince the American people to go along with policies that keep failing. The establishment’s stubborn efforts to keep substantial U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though 76 percent of Americans polled would like them withdrawn, are merely the latest evidence of this enduring disconnect.
Moreover, if liberal hegemony is such a stunning success and the American people are happy with it, then how are we to explain Trump’s triumph in 2016 or the improbable popularity of an avowed socialist like Bernie Sanders? Both men ran for president challenging the core principles of liberal hegemony, and their rejection of that flawed strategy was an important part of their appeal. Gavin and I agree that Trump has been a disaster as president and foreign policy is not the main reason he got elected in 2016. But the facts are clear: Trump ran for office saying U.S. foreign policy was a “complete and total disaster” and promising to “shake the rust off.” He was openly opposed by dozens of experienced foreign-policy experts from both political parties, yet he crushed the Republican primary field and won enough votes against a former secretary of state to end up in the White House. And foreign policy was far from irrelevant, as voting patterns in 2016 showed that “Trump made significant electoral gains among constituencies that were exhausted and politically alienated by 18 years of fighting [overseas].” The American people are much less enamored with liberal hegemony than Gavin maintains and increasingly open to alternatives.
The nature of the foreign-policy community
Gavin’s defense of the foreign-policy establishment begins by cherry-picking a few quotations, such as my somewhat snarky remark that liberal hegemony has been a “full employment policy for the foreign-policy elite.” He approvingly quotes former Bush administration official Kori Schake’s declaration that the elite’s rejection of offshore balancing “isn’t a conspiracy”—thereby falsely implying that I said it was—and then proceeds to link the book to the conspiracy theorists analyzed in Richard Hofstadter’s classic The Paranoid Style in American Politics. His apparent aim is to convince readers that I believe members of the foreign-policy elite act solely to advance their personal ambitions and are engaged in dark plots to thwart the national interest.
This charge is baseless. Here’s what I actually wrote: “America’s foreign policy elite is not a conspiracy of privileged insiders who are consciously seeking to advance their own fortunes at the nation’s expense. On the contrary, the institutions examined in this book are filled with dedicated public servants who genuinely believe that U.S. dominance is good for the United States and for the rest of the world. At the same time, however, the pursuit of liberal hegemony appeals to this elite’s sense of self-worth, enhances their power and status, and gives them plenty to do. These individuals also operate in a system that rewards conformity, penalizes dissent, and encourages its members to remain within the prevailing consensus.”
I stand by that statement, which the rest of the book fleshes out in detail. The Hell of Good Intentions is thus squarely in the tradition of well-known works like C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite, as well as the extensive literatures on bureaucratic politics, interest group politics, and the military-industrial complex, not to mention the work of historians who have explored the chronic tendency of the foreign-policy establishment to exaggerate threats.
Gavin dismisses my concerns about the lack of accountability within the establishment by saying tenured academics are even less accountable, but the mores of academia are not the issue. He writes that his own “sense as a historian, … immersed in the decision-making of foreign policy officials, is that most took their responsibilities quite seriously.” I agree, but once again, that isn’t the point. The real question is twofold: 1) Did a powerful and rarely questioned strategic consensus among key officials and the broader community of advisors, policy wonks, and pundits lead them to make repeated mistakes? and 2) Were those who conceived, sold, and implemented policies that repeatedly failed held accountable for their errors? On these questions, Gavin is silent. It is striking that his long and detailed review does not mention any important foreign-policy figure who suffered significant professional consequences for making important and repeated professional errors. Having acknowledged that U.S. policy in the Middle East has failed for many years, what is Gavin’s explanation for how Paul Wolfowitz could go from selling the disastrous Iraq War at the Defense Department to the presidency of the World Bank to being forced to resign that post amid accusations of ethical lapses and then to a senior sinecure at the American Enterprise Institute and membership on a State Department advisory panel?
Furthermore, what explains the Teflon-like durability of Elliott Abrams or John Bolton? Were the other Bush administration officials who deceived the country into a disastrous war subsequently ostracized within the establishment or considered ineligible for future service? Did the raft of pundits, public intellectuals, and so-called liberal hawks who supported the Iraq War pay any discernible price? Were the persons who ordered CIA personnel to commit acts of torture ever prosecuted? For that matter, who made the key errors of judgment that left the country vulnerable on 9/11? (You certainly won’t find the answer in the official 9/11 Commission Report.) Were the higher-ups whose actions led to the travesties at Abu Ghraib prison ever punished? Have the individuals who were convinced that helping China rise rapidly would create a more peaceful world and make the United States safer suffered any negative consequences for this enormously consequential misjudgment?
What about the officials whose well-intentioned interventions helped create failed states in Libya, Syria, and Yemen? Did they acknowledge these mistakes openly so that the country could avoid repeating them in the future? Apart from Obama himself, they haven’t. Instead, many of the officials who made these errors—even, as my title suggests, with good intentions—ended up landing lucrative and influential post-governmental jobs, from which they could position themselves for a return to power in some subsequent administration. If one believes, as Gavin does, that U.S. foreign policy has been a great success, then this degree of continuity is undoubtedly reassuring. But if one believes it would be better if the country learned from its mistakes and stopped recycling officials who have repeatedly failed to achieve their own stated goals, the absence of accountability is more troubling.
Trump’s chaotic approach to governing has shown that relying on amateurs, criminals, ideologues, and unqualified relatives is hardly a smart way to manage domestic affairs, foreign policy, or a pandemic response. Indeed, were I writing the book today, I would draw a sharper distinction between the career civil servants who provide valuable institutional memory and often bring valuable skills and considerable dedication to the conduct of foreign policy and the elected officials and political appointees who are primarily responsible for more consequential strategic missteps. As stated explicitly in the book, the need for accountability must be tempered by a degree of forbearance because all humans are fallible and “some officials learn and improve over time.” What is needed, therefore, is not a root-and-branch destruction of the entire foreign-policy establishment but the creation of a foreign-policy elite that is more open to different perspectives than was the case between 1992 and 2016 and also exhibits a higher degree of accountability.
A fair-minded judge?
Gavin’s review is misleading in one final but noteworthy respect. He portrays himself as a detached historian floating above the fray, a neutral, nonpartisan observer who is ideally positioned to render an objective judgment on these matters. Because he has “never worked in government, held a paid job with a think tank, consulted for the private sector, or served on a political campaign,” he declares, he should be an “easy audience” for my argument. Such statements are meant to persuade readers that his criticisms come from a disinterested position and are therefore all the more telling.
This pose should fool no one. Gavin, who currently directs the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins, is a fully engaged partisan in America’s grand strategy debates, as even a casual survey of his own writings makes clear. He is a staunch defender of deep U.S. engagement all over the world, for the reasons laid out in his essay. That is his privilege, of course, and I have no problem with his holding views on grand strategy that differ from mine. Most of my Harvard colleagues and some of my best friends do too. It would be more honest, however, for him to acknowledge these differences openly, instead of portraying himself as someone without a dog in the fight.
But please, don’t take my word for any of this. If you have read this far and are still interested in my views on the future of U.S. foreign policy, I would encourage you to get a copy of The Hell of Good Intentions, read it, and then read Gavin’s review. When you are finished, ask yourself which perspective you find most convincing. I believe most readers will find my analysis and recommendations more persuasive, and Gavin might even agree with that prediction. After all, if he wasn’t so worried about restraint’s intrinsic and growing appeal, he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to try to discredit it.


foreignpolicy--2020-09-23--Zambia Is on the Verge of a Pandemic-Related Debt Default

Zambia Is on the Verge of a Pandemic-Related Debt Default Here is today ’ s Foreign Policy brief : Zambia faces debt default as coronavirus cripples economy , China and India agree to de-escalate tensions along the Line of Actual Control , and protests in Colombia against police brutality continue .
We welcome your feedback at morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .
Zambian President Edgar Lungu ’ s government said that it was seeking “ the suspension of debt service payments for a period of six months ” from private creditors holding around $ 3 billion in international bonds , possibly making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on its debt due to the coronavirus pandemic .
The government blamed “ a combination of declining revenues and increased unbudgeted costs caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
” It is asking bondholders to meet on Oct. 20 to seek permission to defer interest payments until next April as it plans to restructure its debt .
Ripple effect .
Zambia has been hurtling toward a debt crisis for months .
In July , the Wall Street Journal reported that government debt was on course to surpass 100 percent of the country ’ s gross @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economic pressures that far predated the pandemic .
But Zambia is one of several African countries suffering from a heavy burden of debt , and if its default represents the first in a string of similar cases , it could be disastrous for countries across the developing world .
Silver lining ?
But as Ashfaq Zaman wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this month , some developing countries could be better off in the long run .
African economies have several advantages over their European counterparts , including a much younger population , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contract significantly in the aftermath of the pandemic , “ the coronavirus could be the great global leveler for this generation.
” Great power rivalry at UNGA .
Tensions between the United States and China flared at the U.N. General Assembly after U.S. President Donald Trump called on China to be held “ accountable ” for “ [ unleashing ] this plague on to the world , ” referring to the coronavirus .
Speaking after Trump , Chinese President Xi Jinping warned of a “ clash of civilizations ” but refused to enter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that “ we will continue to narrow differences and resolve disputes with others through dialogue and negotiation.
” Tuesday ’ s events reflect both countries ’ broader attitudes toward international bodies like the United Nations .
As the United States grows increasingly hostile toward multilateralism , China is working to step into the void .
As Foreign Policy ’ s Colum Lynch wrote in August , China has slowly expanded its role at the U.N. , becoming more deeply involved in international peacekeeping efforts , financial investment , and global education .
Greece @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tuesday , Greek and Turkish officials agreed to resume talks for the first time in four years in order to try to resolve their long-running dispute in the eastern Mediterranean .
Officials did not say when talks would begin , but preparations are underway and they could start as early as the end of the month .
Both countries have a wide gap to bridge .
Greece and Cyprus have been pushing the European Union to take a tougher stance on Turkey , and Cyprus recently scuttled plans by the bloc to sanction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ similar pressure to Turkey .
A summit of EU officials to discuss the dispute originally scheduled for later this week has been postponed to the beginning of October .
Tensions ease around the LAC .
China and India have agreed not to send more troops to their contested border and to refrain from engaging in activity that could be seen as provocative .
According to a statement released by the Indian government , both sides have agreed to “ avoid misunderstandings and misjudgments ” and to “ refrain from unilaterally changing the situation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ follows a series of meetings between military commanders which came on the heels of a marked increase in tensions along the Line of Actual Control ( LAC ) this year .
Tensions flared late last month after both sides accused the other of firing shots over the LAC , the first time shots were reported fired in decades .
That incident followed a deadly altercation in June that left dozens of soldiers dead .
Protests in Colombia continue .
Protests against police brutality in Colombia turned violent as anger over the police killing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boiled over .
Tensions between protesters and police in Colombia have intensified in recent weeks .
Earlier this month , at least seven people were killed in clashes after the police killing of a man in the capital of Bogotá .
In addition to the seven deaths , officials said hundreds of people were injured in the ensuing unrest .
Afghan talks falter .
Zalmay Khalilzad , the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan , warned that the current levels of violence in the country are too high as the risk to the peace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grows .
While Khalilzad expressed hope in the current round of negotiations , he also warned that there “ will be setbacks and obstacles.
” Khalilzad ’ s statements come after a wave of violence hit Afghanistan earlier this week , in which dozens of security force personnel and Taliban militants were killed in clashes .
Several civilians were also killed over the weekend in a series of airstrikes launched by the government in the northern part of the country .
Mali leader seeks an end to sanctions .
Colonel Assimi Goita , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ junta , demanded that the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS ) end the sanctions it imposed on the country in the aftermath of last month ’ s coup , which brought down the government of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita .
Earlier this week , the junta rolled out plans to install former Defense Minister Bah Ndaw , a retired military officer , as interim president to lead the transitional government , with Goita himself serving as prime minister .
ECOWAS has not yet responded to the developments in Mali @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the junta ’ s appointments nor respond positively to its demands .
The bloc previously warned the junta that it would only lift its sanctions if civilian leaders were picked to lead the transitional government .
Finland will begin using coronavirus-sniffing dogs at Helsinki Airport on Wednesday , part of a pilot program aimed at making dogs a part of screening for COVID-19 .
The tests will be voluntary and will deliver results within 10 seconds , after which participants will take a conventional test in order to help researchers determine the accuracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person ’ s health can change the way they smell , and researchers at the University of Helsinki recently found evidence that dogs can use bodily scent to sniff out the virus .
Wednesday ’ s pilot program will be the first large-scale trial run for coronavirus-sniffing dogs and will help determine if dogs can be used as an effective tool for detecting the virus .
For more from FP , visit foreignpolicy.com , subscribe here , or sign up for our other newsletters .
Send your tips , comments , questions , @ @ @ @ @ @ @

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Zambia faces debt default as coronavirus cripples economy, China and India agree to de-escalate tensions along the Line of Actual Control, and protests in Colombia against police brutality continue.
Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Zambia faces debt default as coronavirus cripples economy, China and India agree to de-escalate tensions along the Line of Actual Control, and protests in Colombia against police brutality continue.
If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here.
Zambia’s Experience Could Be a Sign of Things to Come
Zambian President Edgar Lungu’s government said that it was seeking “the suspension of debt service payments for a period of six months” from private creditors holding around $3 billion in international bonds, possibly making Zambia the first African country to default on its debt due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The government blamed “a combination of declining revenues and increased unbudgeted costs caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.” It is asking bondholders to meet on Oct. 20 to seek permission to defer interest payments until next April as it plans to restructure its debt.
Ripple effect. Zambia has been hurtling toward a debt crisis for months. In July, the Wall Street Journal reported that government debt was on course to surpass 100 percent of the country’s gross domestic product this year, rooted in economic pressures that far predated the pandemic. But Zambia is one of several African countries suffering from a heavy burden of debt, and if its default represents the first in a string of similar cases, it could be disastrous for countries across the developing world.
Silver lining? But as Ashfaq Zaman wrote in Foreign Policy earlier this month, some developing countries could be better off in the long run. African economies have several advantages over their European counterparts, including a much younger population, and since European economies are also expected to contract significantly in the aftermath of the pandemic, “the coronavirus could be the great global leveler for this generation.”
What We’re Following Today
Great power rivalry at UNGA. Tensions between the United States and China flared at the U.N. General Assembly after U.S. President Donald Trump called on China to be held “accountable” for “[unleashing] this plague on to the world,” referring to the coronavirus. Speaking after Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned of a “clash of civilizations” but refused to enter the fray with Trump, saying only that “we will continue to narrow differences and resolve disputes with others through dialogue and negotiation.”
Tuesday’s events reflect both countries’ broader attitudes toward international bodies like the United Nations. As the United States grows increasingly hostile toward multilateralism, China is working to step into the void. As Foreign Policy’s Colum Lynch wrote in August, China has slowly expanded its role at the U.N., becoming more deeply involved in international peacekeeping efforts, financial investment, and global education.
Greece and Turkey ready to talk. On Tuesday, Greek and Turkish officials agreed to resume talks for the first time in four years in order to try to resolve their long-running dispute in the eastern Mediterranean. Officials did not say when talks would begin, but preparations are underway and they could start as early as the end of the month.
Both countries have a wide gap to bridge. Greece and Cyprus have been pushing the European Union to take a tougher stance on Turkey, and Cyprus recently scuttled plans by the bloc to sanction Belarusian leaders over its unwillingness to apply similar pressure to Turkey. A summit of EU officials to discuss the dispute originally scheduled for later this week has been postponed to the beginning of October.
Tensions ease around the LAC. China and India have agreed not to send more troops to their contested border and to refrain from engaging in activity that could be seen as provocative. According to a statement released by the Indian government, both sides have agreed to “avoid misunderstandings and misjudgments” and to “refrain from unilaterally changing the situation on the ground.” The joint decision follows a series of meetings between military commanders which came on the heels of a marked increase in tensions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) this year.
Tensions flared late last month after both sides accused the other of firing shots over the LAC, the first time shots were reported fired in decades. That incident followed a deadly altercation in June that left dozens of soldiers dead.
Keep an Eye On
Protests in Colombia continue. Protests against police brutality in Colombia turned violent as anger over the police killing of a man who violated coronavirus restrictions boiled over. Tensions between protesters and police in Colombia have intensified in recent weeks. Earlier this month, at least seven people were killed in clashes after the police killing of a man in the capital of Bogotá. In addition to the seven deaths, officials said hundreds of people were injured in the ensuing unrest.
Afghan talks falter. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, warned that the current levels of violence in the country are too high as the risk to the peace talks between the government and the Taliban grows. While Khalilzad expressed hope in the current round of negotiations, he also warned that there “will be setbacks and obstacles.” Khalilzad’s statements come after a wave of violence hit Afghanistan earlier this week, in which dozens of security force personnel and Taliban militants were killed in clashes. Several civilians were also killed over the weekend in a series of airstrikes launched by the government in the northern part of the country.
Mali leader seeks an end to sanctions. Colonel Assimi Goita, the leader of Mali’s military junta, demanded that the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) end the sanctions it imposed on the country in the aftermath of last month’s coup, which brought down the government of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Earlier this week, the junta rolled out plans to install former Defense Minister Bah Ndaw, a retired military officer, as interim president to lead the transitional government, with Goita himself serving as prime minister.
ECOWAS has not yet responded to the developments in Mali, but it is unlikely to support the junta’s appointments nor respond positively to its demands. The bloc previously warned the junta that it would only lift its sanctions if civilian leaders were picked to lead the transitional government.
Odds and Ends
Finland will begin using coronavirus-sniffing dogs at Helsinki Airport on Wednesday, part of a pilot program aimed at making dogs a part of screening for COVID-19. The tests will be voluntary and will deliver results within 10 seconds, after which participants will take a conventional test in order to help researchers determine the accuracy of the dogs’ reading. A person’s health can change the way they smell, and researchers at the University of Helsinki recently found evidence that dogs can use bodily scent to sniff out the virus.
Wednesday’s pilot program will be the first large-scale trial run for coronavirus-sniffing dogs and will help determine if dogs can be used as an effective tool for detecting the virus.
That’s it for today.
For more from FP, visit foreignpolicy.com, subscribe here, or sign up for our other newsletters. Send your tips, comments, questions, or corrections to morningbrief@foreignpolicy.com.