Big Think Interview with Richard Haass | Big Think

Big Think Interview with Richard Haass

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A conversation with a creator of US foreign policy from Administrations Carter to Bush Jr.

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Dr. Richard Haass:

Dr. Richard Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a position he has held since July 2003. He is the author or editor of eleven books on American foreign policy, including War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (Simon and Schuster, May 2009). He is also the author of one book on management: The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization (Brookings, 1999).

From January 2001 to June 2003, Dr. Richard Haass was director of policy planning for the Department of State, where he was a principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Confirmed by the U.S. Senate to hold the rank of ambassador, Dr. Haass also served as U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan and U.S. envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process. For his efforts, he received the State Department's Distinguished Honor Award.

Dr. Haass has extensive additional government experience. From 1989 to 1993, he was special assistant to President George H. W. Bush and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. In 1991, Dr. Haass was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions to the development and articulation of U.S. policy during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Previously, he served in the Departments of State (1981-85) and Defense (1979-80) and was a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate.

Dr. Haass also was vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, the Sol M. Linowitz visiting professor of international studies at Hamilton College, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a lecturer in public policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. A Rhodes Scholar, Dr. Haass holds a BA from Oberlin College and the Master and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Oxford University. He has received honorary doctorates from Hamilton College, Franklin & Marshall College, Georgetown University, and Oberlin College.

Dr. Richard Haass was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Richard Haass: I’m Richard Harass and I’m president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Question: When are wars necessary?

Richard Haass: Generically, wars in necessity are wars were I think the vital interest of the nation are at stake in which there are no viable alternatives to the use of force.

For example, diplomacy doesn’t look appealing or attractive or it’s been shown to be unsuccessful, sanctions aren’t going to do the trick and living with the certain situation is deemed to be unacceptable.

A war of choice is very different. A war of choice usually has two qualities.

One is that the interest at stake tend to be less than vital and secondly there are in fact other policies that are available. It could be diplomacy or it could be simply tolerating a situation or it could be sanctions or what have you.

And just to be clear, I'm not suggesting that war of choices are per se undesirable or wrong or bad but simply they are just that, they are wars of choice and they only make sense if you believe that the cause and benefits not only line up to the benefit or greater than the cause but also that the cause and benefits of using military force make more sense than using alternative foreign policies.

Question: What were the unnecessary wars in American history?

Richard Haass: One of the most obvious one that many people will recall is Vietnam. Vietnam was not a war of choice the United States had to fight. It was clearly not central. I would argue to the overall balance say between the United States and the Soviet Union and the United States invested a great deal in large part because it exaggerated the stakes that were in fact there. So, that’s the most obvious contemporary war of choice.

More recently you have wars like Kosovo and Bosnia, where again the United States did not have to intervene. The interests at stake were important arguably.

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