Draft

11/17/58

THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE POLICY MAKER

by Henry A. Kissinger

Any observer of the American scene must be struck by the tenta-
tive quality of our policy both (domestic and foreign). In a period of
revolutionary upheaval in every part of the world our diplomacy for all
its technical skill has lacked vision. There has been no bold initiative
since the Marshall plan projected America's concern for the growth and
cohesiveness of Europe. Millions are groping for a new orientation, but
America acts almost as if it were a spectator at a play which did not
- plays don't concern
spectators -
autonomics,
violent changes - transformations
concern it. Major parts of the world are undergoing revolutionary upheaval;
but America seems hardly aware that many peoples find increasingly little
in America with which to identify themselves; Beyond any disagreement over
specific policies exists an ever-growing distrust or at least incomprehension
of America's purposes. And at home we have (elaborated) a cult of dispassion
and lassitude which has deprived much of our domestic performance, outside
the economic field, of dynamism and a sense of direction.

It would be comforting to believe that this state of affairs is
due to particular mistakes of policy which can be reversed more or less
notariously
it
it
easily; Unfortunately the problem is more deep-seated. The lack of vitality
of our policy makers is matched by the stagnation of many of their critics.
It has been a long time since there has been a real debate on policy issues
beyond a bland competition for slogans such as "peace" or "prosperity." As
David Riesman has pointed out in a brilliant paper, we have every reason to
be worried not only about the things which are done but about the alternatives
which are presented to us both by your political and our intellectual leaders.

2.

It is often argued that our best people are no longer attracted into government service. It may be equally pertinent to inquire how qualified our "best people" are for the task of policy making in a revolutionary period. Others trace the cause of our difficulties to the lack of respect shown the intellectual by our society. However, a case could be made for the proposition that in some respects the intellectual has never been more in demand; that he makes such a relatively small contribution not because he is rejected but because he is embraced too enthusiastically, and for the wrong reasons.

## II

Any society faces the problem whether the qualities which are encouraged in the rise to eminence are also the qualities required once eminence is reached. The more specialized it becomes, the more the qualities displayed at the early stages of a career may be irrelevant to the requirements of leadership. At the lower levels of an organization, the requirement is to encourage increasingly for a kind of technical skill which may have nothing to do with the inspiration and creativity needed for leadership. Eminence thus is often reached for reasons which are irrelevant to the tasks which must be performed in the highest positions. Despite all personnel procedures and perhaps because of them, superior performance at the apex of an organization is frequently in the deepest sense accidental.

The dilemma, real enough in the "private" sector, is even more complicated when it comes to selecting personnel for the higher levels of our government. In a society which has prided itself on its "private" character it is inevitable that the qualities which are most esteemed in civilian pursuits should also be generally rewarded by high governmental

4.

In such an environment little opportunity exists for real creativity, or even for an understanding of it. Substantive problems are transformed into administrative ones. Fluency is priced above profundity. Issues are dealt with as if they were a series of ad hoc decisions. Creativity is not consciously discouraged but it often goes unrecognized. Innovation is subjected to "objective" tests which deprive it of spontaneity and which turn it into projections of the familiar. Momentum is confused with purpose.

The approach works reasonably well in the private sector of our society because the goals of the economic effort are more or less fixed and because most executives can substitute long experience in their line of endeavor for reflectiveness. But when the same method is applied to national policy making, its limitations become dramatically apparent. The executive soon discovers that he must pay a price for the lack of a conceptual framework for dealing with his new environment. Even when he belongs to the very small groups that have had an opportunity to participate in study groups on say foreign policy in one of our large cities, he has engaged in this activity as a strictly extra-curricular effort, usually in a passive manner and at any rate without the intensity which leads to independent thought.

As a result, many of our top policy makers begin their governmental careers with only superficial acquaintance with the problems with which they are required to deal. In fact, high office is desired by many precisely because it is thought to offer a *new* and *different* challenge. It is not surprising that many of our high officials have to begin their governmental careers with extensive briefing on almost every aspect of the subject-matter for which they are responsible. They therefore can rarely benefit from the strong will which is often their outstanding trait. Great decisiveness

in a familiar environment may become arbitrariness or at least erratic
behavior when the criteria on which decisions are based prove elusive.
Consciously or not, our top policy makers often lack the assurance or the
conceptual framework to impose a pattern on events.

The usual reaction is to take refuge in the method which has served
the policy maker so well in private life. If the issues prove ambiguous or
the criteria for decision unclear, it will be assumed that the alternatives
have been incorrectly presented. The obvious solution is to multiply the
advisory staffs both official and non-official. The result is policy making
by committee. Every decision is cleared by an ever-increasing circle of
officials to make certain that no policy fails because a point of view has
gone unrepresented. Every policy failure leads to the formation of more
committees in order to discover the elusive facts which are thought to have
caused the breakdown. The committee system is therefore less an organizational
device than a spiritual necessity.

Yet whatever the motive, the impact of the committee system on
policy is pernicious. A committee is a forum of negotiation. Its operation
has a logic of its own independent of the specific tasks for which the
committee was called into being. Since individual policy papers are never
accepted in their entirety, they are conceived with an eye to the process
of adjustment, which alone will yield what is thought of as policy. Whether
they are overstated to permit concessions, or phrased vaguely to allow
freedom of interpretation, they are at least one step removed from the problem
of action. The committee system is more concerned with coordination than

6.

with judgment. Its internal processes are so complicated that agreement
however vague tends to become an end in itself. Indeed often the only
achievement is the fact of agreement and not its content.

The elaborateness of the process is compounded by the tendency
of advisors to advise.Silence may mean not that the idea under discussion
is good but that the advisor is inadequate. Much of committee procedure is
therefore designed to permit each participant or agency to register objections;
Therefore, too, the committee system stresses avoidance of risk rather than
great conception. A policy dilemma is produced because the advantages and
disadvantages of alternative measures appear fairly evenly balanced; other-
wise there would be no need for discussion. But in assessing these alternatives
the risks always seem more certain than the opportunities. No one can ever
prove that an opportunity in fact existed, but failure to foresee a danger
involves swift retribution.

In this manner policy is transformed into a series of ad hoc
decisions which distort its essence. Profound policy derives not so much
from the skill of individual moves as from their relationship to each other.
It requires a sense of proportion; it thrives on a feeling for style. All
these intangibles are negated where problems become isolated cases each of
which is disposed of on its "merits" by experts in the particular difficul-
ties it involves. It is as if in commissioning a painting, a patron would
ask one artist to draw the face, another the body, another the hands and
still another the feet simply because each artist is particularly good

8.

[N]

3

Unfortunately, not everything that sounds plausible is profound and many profound ideas do not seem plausible - at least at first glance, the only glance permitted by most committees. Rapidity of comprehension is not always equivalent to responsible assessment - it may even be contrary to it. The time spent on safeguarding against error is often taken away from the definition of goals. And in the absence of a well-understood set of purposes each problem becomes a special case. The typical pattern of our governmental process is therefore endless debate about whether a given set of circumstances is in fact a problem until a crisis removes all doubts — but also the possibility of effective action. The price to be paid for the absence of a sense of direction is that more time is spent in identifying problems than in solving them.

The result is a paradox: the more intense the search for certainty, the greater will be the inward insecurity of the participants. The more they seek "objectivity," the more diffuse the efforts become. Because of the lack of criteria on which to base judgments, work sometimes becomes an end in itself. Their insecurity leads officials - and other executives as well - to work to the point of exhaustion as one goal that they have done all that could be asked. This insecurity is also shown by the fact that almost in direct proportion as advisory staffs multiply they are dis-trusted by those at the top. Officials increasingly feel the need for "outside" - and therefore unbiased - advice. Memoranda which are produced within the bureaucracy are taken less seriously than similar papers which are available to the general public. Crucial policy advice is increasingly requested from ad hoc committees of outside experts.

These committees are often extraordinarily useful. They provide a fresh point of view. They can focus public discussion. They may even galvanize the bureaucracy. Nevertheless they suffer from serious drawbacks. Whatever the previous experience of the members they too require extensive "briefing." This places an additional strain on the bureaucracy, while the members of the committee are frequently ready to make their best contribution at the point when the group is disbanded. Then again, the committee is of necessity drawn from the same background as the top officials simply because it contains the largest pool of talent in our society. They have therefore also been victims of the prevailing debilitating administrative pace. And the committee process with its trend towards the fragmentation of policy and its bias towards simplified approaches is almost as pervasive in private as in governmental groups.

In some respects "outside" ad hoc groups can even be said to represent an important diversion of talent. The number of outstanding individuals with experience in a given field is severely limited. As a result, the same people are called in again and again on related tasks. (It would be interesting to study the percentage of overlap of groups studying say disarmament or military policy over a five-year period.) Their discussions soon become predictable and sometimes even stereotyped.

In this manner ad hoc committees deprive our society of the full benefit of the individuals with previous governmental experience. The ideal situation would be a "leapfrogging" process in which the current group of high officials expands its intellectual capital while another group

10.

often with previous service concentrates on the problem of looking ahead. But constant membership on committees prevents many of their members from deriving full intellectual benefit from former governmental service. They do not have sufficient leisure to analyze their experience or to draw lessons from it; they are forced to stay intellectually at the level of their most recent official position.

Moreover, outside groups are handicapped by the fact that unless they constitute themselves into a pressure group seeking to mould public opinion - a function beyond their scope and contrary to their purpose - they can be effective only if they convince the bureaucracy. If they are too far in advance of existing thinking, they are ignored. If they only confirm what has already been considered within the government they are unnecessary. The relationship of ad hoc committees to the bureaucracy is therefore somewhat analogous to that of a member to his committee: generally both can be effective only in a narrowly circumscribed area which may be somewhat ahead of existing views but is rarely really creative. Indeed because their report can often be presented as a "new" idea, ad hoc committees sometimes tend to foreclose the really fundamental examination of policy which may be required.

All these factors combine to produce in American policy a combination of formalism and rigidity alternating with spasms of innovation, almost for its own sake. The cumbersomeness of the method of arriving at decisions causes most of our initiatives to occur during crisis periods. In calm times we have a tendency to act as if stability were a natural condition, at least in part because the process of arriving at new departures is so painful that it is generally not embarked upon except under pressure.

11.

The formalism is the result of the tendency of a bureaucracy to protect itself against all contingencies. Thus on any given issue some paper will be produced for almost any eventuality. This does not mean, however, that the policy is broadly conceived. Where everything is open for discussion, nothing is ever finally settled or even sharply focussed. Although a memorandum may exist for almost every case, it is usually so vague that it has to be renegotiated when the situation to which it applies arises. Even more important, it is frequently so abstract that it cannot guide day-to-day action. In the deepest sense many of our policies are not "real" to our policy makers: they produce a document but not sustained measures capable of being applied over a period of time.

The rigidity of American policy is therefore a symptom of the psychological burden placed on the policy makers. Policies developed with great inward doubt and accepted by rather close division become almost sacrosanct as soon as they are finally officially adopted. The reason is psychological rather than substantive. The status quo has at least the advantage of familiarity. Short of catastrophe, its very existence is a demonstration that the worst has been averted. There is no point in borrowing trouble by changing course, all the more so as an attempt to do so involves the prospect that the whole searing process of arriving at decisions will have to be repeated.

Thus the cumbersomeess of the method of arriving at decisions causes most of our initiatives to occur during crisis periods. When frustration becomes too great or a crisis brooks no further evasion there arises the demand for innovation almost for its own sake. Yet the problem of innovation is not solved simply by calling

12.

for it. Creativity cannot be achieved by fiat. The lack of a sense of direction which has produced the policy impasse in the first place will also inhibit a successful response. Creativity will be conceived mechanically and identified with novelty. Policy is now suddenly adopted not because it is profound but because it is new. Therefore too many ideas are first rejected in tranquil times because they are too far in advance of the thinking of the bureaucracy and then when a crisis produces the demand for a new approach they may be accepted though it is now too late; or even more ironically *they may not* be rebuffed again because in the interim they have become "old hat."

The combination of unreflectiveness produced by the style of life of our most eminent people in and out of government, faith in administrative processes, and the conversational approach to policy accounts for much of the uncertainty of our policy and its lack of a sense of proportion. It is the deepest cause of our failure to contribute a sense of direction to a world in turmoil.

III

13.

What then is the role of the intellectual in this situation? Can he overcome the impasse? Why does he not inject creativity and a sense of proportion into our policy-making process? Is the difficulty caused by a rejection of the intellectual?

The attack on "egg-heads" and the anti-intellectualism of much of American society has undoubtedly discouraged many thoughtful people from making their full contribution. However, a case could be made for the proposition that, far from being rejected, the intellectual has never been more in demand. Every organization of any size or claim to importance, governmental or private, has its panel of experts. Many political leaders have intellectuals as advisors. Throughout our society policy planning bodies proliferate, research organizations multiply. There is a general recognition that our performance will be not better than the talent we manage to attract into key positions. What then is the difficulty?

One problem is the demand for expertise itself. Every problem which our society recognizes - leaving aside the question whether these are always the most significant - calls into being panels, committees or study groups supported either by private or governmental funds. Intellectuals with a reputation soon find themselves so burdened that their pace of life hardly differs from that of the executive whom they advise. They cannot supply perspective, because they are as harassed as all other prominent men. All pressures on them tend to keep them at the level of the performance that gained them their reputation. They become in a sense administrators of a static body of thought, which assumes ritualistic overtones. In his desire to be helpful, the intellectual is too frequently compelled to sacrifice his greatest contribution to society:

14.

his creativity.

This is compounded by the conception of the intellectual held by the officials or organizations that call on him. A bureaucratized society - the adjective is not intended invidiously - is based on an elaborate specialization of functions. This both delimits tasks and establishes categories of expectations. A person is considered suitable for assignments within certain "classifications." But the classification of the intellectual is determined by the premium society places on administrative skill. The intellectual is therefore rarely found at the level where decisions are made; his place commonly is on the advisory staffs where alternatives are prepared. And in preparing these alternatives he is not a free agent. It is the executive who determines in the first place whether he is in need of advice. He and the bureaucracy frame the question to be answered. They and not the intellectual determine the standard of relevance. They decide who is consulted and therefore the definition of "expertness."

The contribution of the intellectual to policy planning is therefore in terms of criteria which he has played a minor role in establishing. He is rarely given the opportunity to point out that any query delimits a range of possible solutions or that an issue is posed in terms which are irrelevant. The nature of "utility" is beyond the competence assigned to him. He is asked to solve problems not to establish over-all goals. As a result the intellectual is often used to legitimize a point of view which already exists within the policy-making apparatus. When decisions are arrived at by what are in effect adversary proceedings, a specialist - particularly if he is not himself part of the bureaucracy - is a useful weight in the scale. This is why contend-

15.

ing factions within the bureaucracy try to build up batteries of outside experts or of semi-independent research groups, and why articles or books become tools in the bureaucratic struggle. In short, what our executives want all too often from the intellectual is not ideas but authority.

This attitude affects not only the use to which the intellectual is put but also the conception of excellence which underlies the recognition of the individual as an expert. For the fact that the need for excellence is constantly invoked is not a guarantee that its nature will be understood.

An expert can be considered, an individual who best represents the prevailing views or a person charting new paths. Excellence can be identified with doing the familiar as well as possible or it can be equated with pushing back the frontiers of knowledge and of insight. The search for talent can limit itself to finding personnel for familiar tasks, or it can include an effort to bring about conditions in which creative men produce not yet imagined needs, and can develop original and valid policies.

It has almost invariably been true that the intellectuals whom society finds most acceptable and who are therefore most in demand are also those whose approach or style is the most comforting. Excellence is more often thought to consist of the ability to perform at a high level but within an already understood framework, rather than of true creativity. The individual who strikes out on unfamiliar paths is regarded askance.

The proverbial difficulty prophets face in being recognized at home is almost inevitable; they are prophets after all precisely because they transcend the traditional frame-work. In some respects this reaction is healthy or at least understandable. A society can function only by reducing most actions

16.

to a standard of average performance - a high standard if it is fortunate, but still a pattern not beyond the capability of its people at least potentially. To attempt to conduct each act of policy by acts of prophetic insight is to dissolve all restraints and to undermine social cohesiveness.¹ But because the vast majority of social actions depend on routine, the nature of creativity is very rarely understood. The most that can be hoped for is that there be a belief in its existence; that society not destroy or divert what it cannot fully understand.

Paradoxically, the great valuation our society places on expertise may be even more dangerous to creativity than indifference. It is inevitable that in a society which prides itself on being *practical*, many intellectuals guide their usefulness by the extent to which they are drawn into administrative and policy-making activities.² By its rewards our society thereby creates a structure of incentives which put an accent on essentially stabilizing qualities: the quickness of comprehension essential for committee work, is that stabilizing?

1.

Any society must therefore strike a balance between the requirements of organization and of inspiration. Organization and the routine on which it is based require continuity, and cannot be geared to an expectation that a great man will appear to guide each generation. Inspiration is required to adapt to new conditions or to create new purposes. The danger in an overemphasis on organization is that routine becomes an end in itself. The peril of an excessive concern with inspiration is that it brings about a mood of exaltation and fanaticism which tolerates no deviation.

17.

the gregariousness required for any cooperative effort. It turns the intellectual into a "specialist" in ideas, one component among many others considered necessary for effective policy formulation. Even further, the intellectual is often selected as a representative of a specialized approach: a committee on military policy will have a spokesman for the "all-out war" concept as well as one for "limited war." A committee on foreign policy will have proponents for the "uncommitted areas," as well as "specialists" on Europe.

The individuals who achieve prominence as advisors to large organizations in turn set the tone for the intellectual effort in major fields, even outside the bureaucratic frame-work. The intellectuals who advise large organizations are often able to dominate intellectual effort in their field by their prestige and occasionally because they have easier access to funds for research projects. They become a professional group of liason men between the bureaucracy and the "academic" intellectuals. They develop an "in-group" with its own jargon and its own ethos. This sometimes inhibits the intellectual outside the circle from working on problems with policy implications because it convinces him that fruitful research in these fields is impossible without access to classified information. As for the intellectuals drawn into too extensive relationships with large organizations, it is not a far step from being willing to be consulted to needing consulting relationships for one's self-esteem. And since individuals who challenge the presuppositions of the bureaucracy, governmental or private, can rarely maintain their relationship as advisors, great pressures are created to elaborate on familiar themes rather than to risk everything on new departures which may

18.

fail or else prove unacceptable.

This is not to say that the motivation of the administrator
towards the intellectual is cynical. He wants help sincerely. His
problem is that he does not know the nature of the help he requires;
And he generally does not become aware of a need until the problem is
already critical. What is considered "policy planning" too often in-
volves simply the projection of existing problems into the future. In
short, the bureaucracy is more concerned with symptoms than with causes;
it wants "solutions" to specific problems, not a definition of purposes.
Of necessity it gears intellectual effort to its own requirements and its
own pace: The deadlines are inevitably those of the policy maker and not
of the intellectual. The administrative approach to intellectual effort
therefore unwittingly tends to destroy the environment from which great
thought could flow. Its insistence on "results" discourages the intel-
lectual climate which might produce profound ideas, whether or not the
bureaucracy feels in need of them. Instead of leavening the inflexibility
of administration, the intellectual too often becomes a prisoner of it.

This is strikingly illustrated by the extent to which many re-
search organizations even when they have financial independence reflect
the views of their sponsoring agency. This is because financial control
is the least effective means of achieving intellectual conformity and in
many respects the least insidious. No self-respecting person will alter
his views for monetary gain. His effort will be affected by the problems
with which he is dealing. His thinking will be influenced by all the in-
tangibles of fellowship produced by constant association with a particular
group. As long as the sponsoring agency retains the right to define the

19.

tasks of its research agency - or even the majority of them - it will
also determine the point of view of the product. There is no reason
why an "outside" group should react very differently to a particular
set of problems than the bureaucracy, if its activites are concentrat-
ed on the same range of issues. After all, the onesidedness which the
"independent" research group is designed to overcome is itself the re-
sult of an excessive and very sincere concentration on a very narrow
range of problems. It is not removed if the research agency has no great-
er possibility for applying a wider perspective than its sponsoring organ.

In part, one of the greatest uses of sponsored research groups may be less the originality of their work but the opportunity they provide to present ideas outside of organizational channels. One of the problems of a bureaucracy is to filter ideas to the top. It is often difficult to obtain a hearing for proposals which run counter to the well-intrenched views of the higher echelons. "Outside" research organizations, since they are not limited to bureaucratic demands, can overcome this hurdle to some extent and are occasionally deliberately used by the bureaucracy for this purpose. Their function in this respect is less to conceive than to galvanize.

Thus though the intellectual participates in policy-making as
rarely before, the result has not necessarily been salutary for him or for
the government. Nor has the present manner of employing outside experts
or the typical work of research groups done more than reduce somewhat the
dilemmas of the policy planners. The production of so much research of-
ten simply adds another burden to already overworked officials. It tends

20.

to divert attention from the act of judgment on which policy ultimately depends to the assembly of facts - which is relatively speaking the easiest step in policy formation. Few if any of the recent crises of US policy have been caused by the unavailability of data. Our policy makers do not lack advice; they are in many respects overwhelmed by it. They do lack criteria on which to base judgments. In the absence of commonly understood and meaningful standards, all advice tends to become equivalent and every problem turns into a special case. In helping the bureaucracy to find its way out of this maze, the intellectual too frequently becomes an extension of the administrative machine, accepting its criteria and elaborating its problems. While this too is a necessary task and sometimes even an important one, it does not touch the heart of the problem, which is that purpose must dominate the mechanism if we are to avoid stagnation. The dilemma of our policy is not that it cannot act on what it has defined as useful - though this too happens occasionally - but that the standards of utility are in need of redefinition. The intellectual does not perform his full responsibility if he shies away from this essential task.

IV

The entire responsibility for the current state of affairs
should not be placed upon the policy maker, however. The stagnation
of our policy is produced not by the limitations of his perspective
alone nor solely by his tendency to turn the intellectual into an extension
of the bureaucracy. There are intellectuals within the bureaucracy who
have avoided the administrative approach but who have nevertheless contri-
buted to the existing stagnation through a perfectionism which paralyzes
action by posing impossible alternatives. There are intellectuals outside
the bureaucracy who are not part of the maelstrom of committees and study
groups who must share the responsibility for the prevailing confusion
because they refuse to recognize the inevitable element of conjecture in
policy making. The "men of affairs" have tended to predominate not only
because of the practical bend of our society but also because an insufficient
range of options has been offered by the intellectuals.

The difficulty is that intellectuals even when they have not
been turned into appendages of the bureaucracy have too often confused
the mode of analysis with the mode of action. One of the most crucial
components of policy is the factor of time; policy making is in a sense
the art of timing. But analysis is essentially timeless; it seeks to
derive principles or insights of general validity. Profound policy fits
its measures to circumstances. Analysis strives to eliminate the accidental;
its thrust is in the direction of universality. The policy maker must
often act on insufficient knowledge; his measures are based on an assessment
which cannot escape including an element of conjecture. Analysis on the
other hand, seeks to encompass the greatest range of factors; it is not

22.

completed until all avenues of research have been explored. The policy maker is faced with situations where at some point discussion will be overtaken by events; to delay for the sake of refinement of thought may invite disaster. Analysis can and must always sacrifice time to clarity. The difference between the mode of action and the mode of analysis is therefore one of perspective: policy looks towards the future; its pace is dictated by the need for decision in a finite time. Analysis assumes an accomplished act or a given set of factors; its pace is the pace of reflection.

This difference colors much of the relationship between the policy maker and the "academic" intellectual in or out of government. It is unavoidable that "academic" intellectuals in and out of government should have recourse to a method which has shaped their whole experience. The difficulty arises not from the method but from the refusal to recognize its limitations. The quest for certainty which is essential for analysis, ~~may produce paralysis~~ when applied to policy. The search for universality which is one of the noblest aspects of intellectual effort may lead to something close to dogmatism in national affairs. The attempt to eliminate conjecture which is inherent in first-rate scholarship may result in a tendency to avoid dilemmas by denying their reality often on grounds of pure methodology. ("How can you be *sure* what the Russians intend?") Because of these biases analyses of past actions by "academic" intellectuals are frequently far superior to the precepts formulated to guide future policy. Although this is to some extent unavoidable, there is nevertheless a tendency to recoil from *do have* in many "academic" intellectuals.

23.

before the act of choosing among alternatives, which is inseparable from
policy making, and to ignore the tragic aspect of policy making which lies
precisely in its inherent uncertainty. There is a temptation to attempt to
combine the advantages of every course of action; to delay commitment
until "all facts are in," until, that is, the future has been reduced to
an aspect of the past.

As a result, on almost every issue, the perhaps excessively
short-run and manipulative approach of the bureaucracy and its adjuncts
is opposed, if at all, by an abstract, rigid formalism which all too often
cannot be related to the problem at hand. The technicians who act as if
the Cold War were its own purpose are confronted by others who sometimes
talk as if the Cold War could be ended by redefining the term.² The
Machiavellianism of short-term expedients much too frequently has as its
sole antagonist a Utopianism which seems more concerned with registering
a dissent than with contributing a sense of direction. The self-righteousness
which sees in conscientious coordinating procedures a sufficient gauge of
valid policy is little affected by a perfectionism which segments policy
into cycles of self-improvement and self-projection (do we have the moral
right to act abroad as long as there is a Little Rock?), or by a fastidious-
ness which spends more energy on establishing a moral equivalence between
our short-comings and those of Communism than on defining the moral content
of what we stand for. (Are our security measures different in kind from
those of the Soviet Union? Or: Since we both distrust each other we
should prove our good faith first if we expect them to prove theirs.)

2. See for example Eric Goldman in Millis, Walter, Fund for the Republic p.

24.

The intellectual if he is to deepen national policy therefore faces a delicate task. He must steer between the Scylla of letting the bureaucracy prescribe what is relevant or useful and the Charybdis of defining these criteria too abstractly. If he inclines too much towards the former he will become a technician; if he chooses the latter, he will run the risk of confusing dogmatism with morality and of becoming as wrapped up in a cult of rejection as his opposite number is in a cult of success. The intellectual should not refuse cooperation with the large organization, governmental or private, for then they will become even more fixed in their administrative rut. He _must_ avoid permitting the organization to define all standards of relevance or utility. He should not be concerned that he has "customers" and that they will judge him by his utility in the attainment of short-term goals -- great ideas are rarely accepted for the right reasons. He fails only when he makes their criteria his own or when his ego becomes involved either in the act of participation or in that of rejection. If he turns himself into a barterer of technical remedies, either in the realm of expedients or in that of morality he must not be surprised at the increasing bureaucratization of our society.

Indeed it may well be that one of the deepest contributions the intellectual can make at this moment lies in an attitude. Where so much is done by routine and creativity is so often conceived as an extension of the familiar, the intellectual by his bearing and his concerns must demonstrate the overriding importance of purpose over technique. Where the deepest challenge is to find concepts and goals for a world that has outstripped our presuppositions, intellectuals should know better

25.

than almost any other group the fragility of the process of creation and
the dedication required to conquer new ideas. They must not contribute
to the administrative myopia which is always obsessed with the symptoms of
problems at the expense of a sense of direction. At the same time those
intellectuals who do not participate in the administrative process or who
reject its criteria must take care that protest does not become an end in
itself. They must realize that there is a form of perfectionism which is
an evasion of responsibility, an intellectual fastidiousness which paralyzes
action and a humility which comes close to spiritual pride.

To be sure, the task is not the intellectual's alone. The
executive, in and out of government, must come to a new valuation of the
nature of reflection and a new reverence for intangibles. If we are to
retain any dynamism, our executives must set themselves more modest goals - as well
as more
truly
hope-
with respect to the intellectual. They must realize that in their insistence
on "results" they often destroy the climate for creativity and put a
premium on qualities which they could most easily duplicate within their
own organizations. The attempt to judge creativity in terms of adminis-
trative criteria is the most certain prescription for stagnation for it
makes it impossible ever to transcend the standards of the moment.

The stakes could hardly be higher: the deepest cause of the
inhumanity of our time is probably its "objectivity," the pedantic appli-
cation of administrative norms. Its symbol may well be the "commissar,"
the ideal-type of a bureaucrat, who condemns thousands without love and
without hatred simply in pursuance of an abstract duty. But we would do

ourselves an injustice if we ignored that the commissar is not a Soviet
but a universal phenomenon - the Soviet system has simply encouraged it
in its most extreme form. He is the administrator whose world is defined
by regulations in the making of which he had no part, to whom reality is
exhausted by the organization in which he finds himself. Our challenge
is to rescue the individual from this process; to escape from the preten-
tiousness and stultifying quality of an atmosphere in which all sense of
reverence for the unique is lost in the quest for reducing everything to
manipulable quantities. Not only the spontaneity of American policy will
depend on how well we solve this problem, but also the fate of human dignity.

Draft

11/17/58

by Henry A. Kissinger

Any observer of the American scene must be struck by the tenta-
tive quality of our policy both domestic and foreign. In a period of
revolutionary upheaval in every part of the world our diplomacy for all
its technical skill has lacked vision. There has been no bold initiative
since the Marshall plan projected America's concern for the growth and
cohesiveness of Europe. Millions are groping for a new orientation, but
America acts almost as if it were a spectator at a play which did not
concern it. Major parts of the world are undergoing revolutionary upheaval;
but America seems hardly aware that many peoples find increasingly little
in America with which to identify themselves. Beyond any disagreement over
specific policies exists an ever-growing distrust or at least incomprehension
of America's purposes. And at home we have elaborated a cult of dispassion
and lassitude which has deprived much of our domestic performance, outside
the economic field, of dynamism and a sense of direction.

It would be comforting to believe that this state of affairs is
due to particular mistakes of policy which can be reversed more or less
easily. Unfortunately the problem is more deep-seated. The lack of vitality
of our policy makers is matched by the stagnation of many of their critics.
It has been a long time since there has been a real debate on policy issues
beyond a bland competition for slogans such as "peace" or "prosperity." As
David Riesman has pointed out in a brilliant paper, we have every reason to
be worried not only about the things which are done but about the alternatives
which are presented to us both by our political and our intellectual leaders.

[N]

2.

It is often argued that our best people are no longer attracted into government service. It may be equally pertinent to inquire how qualified our "best people" are for the task of policy making in a revolutionary period. Others trace the cause of our difficulties to the lack of respect shown the intellectual by our society. However, a case could be made for the proposition that in some respects the intellectual has never been more in demand; that he makes such a relatively small contribution not because he is rejected but because he is embraced too enthusiastically.

II

Any society faces the problem whether the qualities which are encouraged in the rise to eminence are also the qualities required once eminence is reached. The more specialized it becomes, the more the qualities displayed at the early stages of a career may be irrelevant to the requirements of leadership. At the lower levels of an organization, the requirement is increasingly for a kind of technical skill which may have nothing to do with the inspiration and creativity needed for leadership. Eminence thus is often reached for reasons which are irrelevant to the tasks which must be performed in the highest positions. Despite all personnel procedures and perhaps because of them, superior performance at the apex of an organization is frequently in the deepest sense accidental.

The dilemma, real enough in the "private" sector is even more complicated when it comes to selecting personnel for the higher levels of our government. In a society which has prided itself on its "private" character it is inevitable that the qualities which are most esteemed in civilian pursuits should also be generally rewarded by high governmental

R

(free enterprise)

office. This means that an extraordinary and increasing premium is placed
on administrative skill. But though administrative ability is very useful
in high office, it does not touch the central problem of policy making.
The essence of good administration is coordination among the specialized
functions of a bureaucracy. The task of statesmanship is to impose purpose
on routine. Administration is concerned with execution; policy making must
also address itself to developing a sense of direction.

Very little in the experience which forms American leadership
groups prepares them for the tasks to be performed in high office. The
American executive (or the lawyer coming from a business background) who
is placed in a policy-making position is rarely familiar with the substance
of the problems into which he finds himself projected, partly because the
effort to achieve eminence in his previous profession has absorbed most of
his energies. Even after they have achieved high positions, our executives are
shaped by a style of life which inhibits reflectiveness. For one of the
characteristics of an increasingly bureaucratized society is the enormous
work-load of its top personnel. The greater the specialization of functions
the greater the need for "coordination." Everything is geared to the act
of decision and not to the development of the criteria on which a decision
is to be based. Issues are reduced to their simplest terms. A premium is
placed on "presentations," which take the least effort to grasp and which
in practice usually means oral "briefing." (This accounts for the emergence
of the specialist in "briefings" who prepares charts, one page summaries, etc.)
The executive even in the private sector is dependent to an increasing
extent on his subordinates' conception of the essential elements of a problem.

In such an environment little opportunity exists for real creativity, or even for an understanding of it. Substantive problems are transformed into administrative ones. Fluency is priced above profundity. Issues are dealt with as if they were a series of ad hoc decisions. Creativity is not consciously discouraged but it often goes unrecognized. Innovation is subjected to "objective" tests which deprive it of spontaneity and which turn it into projections of the familiar. Momentum is confused with purpose. (taken as a substitute for)

The approach works reasonably well in the private sector of our society because the goals of the economic effort are more or less fixed and because most executives can substitute long experience in their line of endeavor for reflectiveness. But when the same method is applied to national policy making, its limitations become dramatically apparent. The executive soon discovers that he must pay a price for the lack of a conceptual framework for dealing with his new environment. Even when he belongs to the very small groups that have had an opportunity to participate in study groups on say foreign policy in one of our large cities, he has engaged in this activity as a strictly extra-curricular effort, usually in a passive manner and at any rate without the intensity which leads to independent thought. (Same trouble, too. difference only in quantity and historical)

As a result many of our top policy makers begin their governmental careers with only superficial acquaintance with the problems with which they are required to deal. In fact, high office is desired by many precisely because it is thought to offer a *new* and *different* challenge. It is not surprising that many of our high officials have to *start* their governmental service with extensive briefing on almost every aspect of the subject-matter for which they are responsible. They therefore can rarely benefit from the strong will which is often their outstanding trait. Great decisiveness

6.

[Y]

The elaborateness of the process is compounded by the tendency
of advisors to advise. Silence may mean not that the idea under discussion
is good but that the advisor is inadequate. Much of committee procedure is
therefore designed to permit each participant or agency to register objections.
Therefore, too, the committee system stresses avoidance of risk rather than
great conception. A policy dilemma is produced because the advantages and
disadvantages of alternative measures appear fairly evenly balanced; other-
wise there would be no need for discussion. But in assessing these alternatives
the risks always seem more certain than the opportunities. No one can ever
prove that an opportunity in fact existed, but failure to foresee a danger
involves swift retribution.

in one particular category. Such a procedure in stressing the components would lose the meaning of the whole.

The committee system not only has a tendency to ask the wrong questions, it also puts a premium on the wrong qualities. The committee process is geared to the pace of conversation. Even where the agenda is composed of memoranda these are prepared primarily as a background for discussion and they stand and fall on the skill with which they are presented. Everything therefore depends on the ability to absorb ideas by ear and to present arguments fluently. Quickness of comprehension is more important than profundity; plausibility more useful than reflectiveness. For all their cumbersome procedure and their striving for "objectivity" there is something approaching frivolity about many committees. Ideas are accepted because no one can think sufficiently quickly of an objection; or they are rejected because they cannot be grasped very readily. Individuals skilful in marshalling arguments tend to dominate; others, perhaps more thoughtful, have no impact because they may not be attuned to adversary proceedings or because they require more time to make judgments. The ideal "committee man" does not make his associates uncomfortable; he does not operate with ideas too far in advance of what is generally accepted. Thus the thrust of committees is towards a standard of average performance. Since a complicated idea cannot be easily absorbed by ear - particularly when it is new - committees lean towards what fits in with the most familiar experience of their members. They therefore produce great pressure in favor of the status quo. Committees are consumers and not creators of ideas.