U.S. Congress

Back in 2007, we wrote that AIPAC has an "almost unchallenged hold on Congress." Little has happened since then to alter that conclusion, and we will probably get another demonstration of Congressional spinelessness this week. On Tuesday, the House is scheduled to vote on H.R. 867, an AIPAC-sponsored resolution denouncing the recent Goldstone Report on possible war crimes by Hamas and Israel during the Gaza War last year. You can read the resolution here. You should then read Judge Goldstone's response here, which points out the errors in the House resolution. And then read historian Tony Judt's eloquent statement here. If you're convinced that the resolution makes a mockery of America's professed commitment to justice and human rights, then you might express that sentiment here or here. Or just call your Congressman's office and tell him/her to grow a backbone and vote against it.

Meanwhile, over in Israel itself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is completing the Obama administration's humiliating retreat from the principles set forth in the president's Cairo speech of less than five months ago. In a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Clinton did not criticize continued Israeli home demolitions in East Jerusalem (a practice she had previously denounced), and praised Netanyahu for making "unprecedented concessions" on settlement expansion. Huh? This is Clintonian double-talk worthy of her husband. Netanyahu's "concession" was to insist that Israel would keep building whatever and wherever it wished in East Jerusalem, and would also continue the "natural growth" of settlements in the West Bank, but would not start any completely new settlements for awhile. Bear in mind that virtually every country in the world regards all of the settlements -- both the unauthorized outposts and the vast neighborhoods built by the Israeli government -- as illegal under international law, and the United States used to say this too. And for this "concession" the Palestinians are supposed to enter into another meaningless round of discussions, while the bulldozers and construction crews continue to eat away at the land on which they hope to establish a state of their own. To praise Netanyahu's position as an "unprecedented concession" is like discovering someone is robbing your house, and then expressing gratitude when they offer to do it a bit more slowly.

The two-state solution was on life-support when Obama took office, and at first it appeared he might make a serious effort to nurse it back to health and make it a reality. At least, that's what he said he was going to do.  Instead, he and his Secretary of State are in the process of pulling out the plug. But what will they do when "two states for two peoples" isn't an option and everybody finally admits it, and the Palestinians begin to demand equal rights in "greater Israel?" Will the United States support their claims for equality, democracy, and individual rights, or will it continue to defend and subsidize what will then be an apartheid state? Well, if it's up to our courageous reps in Congress, you know what the answer will be.

Avi Ohayon/GPO via Getty Images

According to Section 603 of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Department Reorganization Act, the president must submit an annual report to Congress outlining U.S. national security strategy. This requirement has produced a number of timeless literary classics, such as the Clinton administration's 1995 "National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement" (a glowing paean to democracy, institutions, human rights, and other liberal ideals), or the Bush administration's 2002 "National Security Strategy of the United States of America," (a portentous bit of bombast mostly remembered for its justification of preventive war).

Academics like me normally love such exercises, in part because it conforms to an idealized view of what the policy process should be. First, the administration identifies vital U.S. interests, and then sketches the various intermediate objectives that must be met in order to advance or protect them. Then it lays out the specific policies it intends to follow to achieve these goals, and then (supposedly) goes ahead and implements them. The whole exercise is also consistent with the appealing notion of democratic accountability, because Congress can ponder the administration's priorities and plans and decide not to fund policies it doesn't like. Grand strategic pronouncements of this sort are also an obvious opportunity to communicate intentions and priorities to the outside world.

We scholars also like these documents because they give us a chance to aim our intellectual firepower at a fixed target. Dissecting written arguments is something we've been trained to do since graduate school, and giving an academic an official statement of "national security strategy" is like putting a seven-course meal in front of a gluttonous gourmet. We can dissect the underlying assumptions, identify the theoretical underpinnings that are supposedly shaping policy, compare and contrast this year's version with earlier reports, and look for contradictions, gaps in logic, or other shortcomings. Plus, these reports make a great teaching tool; they are the bureaucratese that has launched a thousand class discussions. If your job involves teaching and writing about U.S. foreign policy, in short, you should be grateful that Goldwater-Nichols forces every administration to produce something new to feed on each year.

Of course, you shouldn't assume these reports actually tell you what the administration is going to do. They are often drafted by committee, or by some hired pen, and the president may not play much (any?) role in the process. More importantly, foreign policy always involves adapting to actions or events that one doesn't anticipate, and no government can ever stick to its strategic vision with complete fidelity. Even so, these statements are usually worth reading, if only to get an idea of an administration's basic inclinations, or at least what it thinks it is trying to accomplish.

The Obama administration hasn't offered us its version of our "national security strategy" yet, and despite everything I just said, I'm beginning to wish they weren't compelled to do so by law. For one thing, I suspect it will look a lot like the Clinton administration's versions, and consist of a long "to-do" list drawn from familiar liberal interventionist dogma. But more importantly, this is one of those periods where the main features of U.S. grand strategy may not be easy to talk about openly and honestly.

In simple terms, what Obama seems to be attempting is a wide-ranging process of selective retrenchment. This is hardly surprising, because the Bush administration got us badly overcommitted and refused to raise taxes to pay for it. So Obama is getting us out of Iraq, and appears to be rethinking his approach to Afghanistan. He's making constructive concessions to a number of potential adversaries (such as Russia), in order to gain their support on more pressing issues (such as Iran)  He's telling his Secretary of Defense to rein in defense costs, emphasizing diplomacy at every turn, and letting everyone know that Uncle Sam isn't going to solve all the world's problems all by itself. He's not retreating to Fortress America, of course, but he and his team aren't swaggering around saying that America is the "indispensable nation" either.

Given the mess he inherited from Bush and the need to repair America's public finances, this approach makes eminently good sense.  But when you're s great power engaged in a process of retrenchment, you probably don't want advertise that fact in your official statement of "national security strategy."  If you do, you'll just get a lot of flak from hardliners, who still haven't figured out that the previous eight years was mostly a disaster and that U.S. resources aren't infinite. And a few minor adversaries may decide to test your limits, and you'd rather not have to waste time responding. Spelling things out explicitly might also make some Americans nervous, because they've gotten used to America being #1 and they've forgotten that the best way to stay there is to get others to do the heavy lifting instead of trying to do it all ourselves.

Obama should stick to his present course -- as subtly and quietly as possible -- and when it's time to fulfill that Section 603 requirement, he should ask his advisors to write up a strategy statement that does not spell out what is really going on. And if they can make it sufficiently boring so that nobody pays much attention, so much the better.

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Riffing on Greenwald, Andrew Sullivan nails it:

Late empires are known for several things: a self-obsessed, self-serving governing class, small over-reaching wars that bankrupt the Treasury, debt that balloons until retreat from global power becomes not a choice but a necessity, and a polity unable to address reasonably any of these questions -- or how the increasing corruption of the media enables them all.

Obama is, in some ways, a test-case.

He was elected on a clear platform of reform and change; and yet the only real achievement Washington has allowed him so far is a massive stimulus package to prevent a Second Great Depression (and even on that emergency measure, no Republicans would support him). On that he succeeded. But that wasn't reform; it was a crash landing after one of the worst administrations in America's history.

Real reform -- tackling health care costs and access, finding a way to head off massive changes in the world's climate, ending torture as the lynchpin of the war on terror, getting out of Iraq, preventing an Israeli-led Third World War in the Middle East, and reforming entitlements and defense spending to prevent 21st century America from becoming 17th Century Spain: these are being resisted by those who have power and do not want to relinquish it -- except to their own families and cronies.

Nepotism is part of the problem; media corruption is also part; the total uselessness of the Democratic party and the nihilism of the Republicans doesn't help. But something is rotten in America at this moment in time; and those of us who supported Obama to try and change this decay and decline should use this fall to get off our butts and fight for change."

Wish I'd said that. And it makes me wonder: would Obama agree with the above (meaning he is a reluctant prisoner of well-entrenched interests), or is he is part of the problem too?

GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images

Several people have recently asked me if the Obama administration's tough line towards Israel's settlements and its insistence on a two-state solution invalidates the arguments that John Mearsheimer and I made about the political influence of the "Israel lobby." Not surprisingly, a few critics have made similar points in print. For what it's worth, I think Obama's approach is largely consistent with the views we set forth in the book, and certainly with our overall aim in writing it.  

To review: in our book we argued that U.S. Middle East policy in recent decades has been strongly influenced by a loose coalition of individuals and groups which we termed the "Israel lobby." We pointed out that the lobby did not "control" U.S. Middle East policy (though it was a powerful influence), and we emphasized that the various groups that made up this loose coalition didn't agree on everything (such as the merits of a two-state solution). All of them have sought to encourage a "special relationship" between the U.S. and Israel, however, and all to maintain nearly-unconditional U.S. support. Absent their influence, we argued, U.S. policy in the region would be substantially (though not entirely) different.

Like plenty of other interest groups in the United States, the Israel lobby worked in legitimate ways within the American political system and successfully acted to shape public discourse about Israel in ways they believed would reinforce the special relationship. As a result, the entire subject had become something of a taboo issue, especially for anyone seeking a prominent career in American politics or in the U.S. foreign policy establishment.  

Finally, we saw this situation as increasingly harmful to U.S. and Israeli interests alike, and argued that a more normal relationship would be better for both countries. In particular, we hoped that a more open discussion of these issues would lead to a revision in U.S. policy, and that more moderate and sensible groups within the "pro-Israel" community would become more influential. We even expressed the hope that the more hardline groups might reconsider their policy positions. In short, our main concern was not the existence of a powerful pro-Israel lobby; it was the fact that the most influential groups within that "loose coalition" were advocating policies that were harmful to the U.S. and Israel alike.

This basic portrait of the lobby's activities and influence fit the historical record up through the 2008 Presidential election. What has happened since? After pandering to the lobby during the campaign (just as all major candidates do) and remaining studiously silent during the Chas. Freeman debacle, President Obama has taken several recent steps that signal a different approach. He has appointed a Middle East envoy (George Mitchell) with a reputation for evenhandedness. Obama wasn't available to meet with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu during the AIPAC policy conference, so Netanyahu had to delay his trip. Obama has already spoken in one Muslim country (Turkey) and is about to give a major address to the Muslim world from Cairo, after first stopping off in Saudi Arabia, and isn't touching down in Israel on this tour.

Most importantly, he and other administration officials -- including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel -- have forcefully reiterated the Administration’s commitment to a genuine two-state solution and its opposition to Israel's settlements policy, including the fig leaf of "natural growth." That position was recently echoed by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, which suggests that Obama's team has been quietly lining up EU support for their position.  Special envoy Mitchell reportedly drove that point home in his recent meeting with Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, and there’s no question that Israeli leaders are feeling the heat.  And Obama himself has emphasized that "part of being a good friend is being honest," suggesting that he understands the pitfalls of unconditional U.S. support.

Do all these steps mean the lobby has lost all its power, and that our book was all wrong? Not hardly.

Let's start by recognizing that all Obama has done so far is lay down some rhetorical markers. That's not a trivial step, especially since he and his aides have used unusually direct language and haven’t waffled in the face of initial Israeli protests. If nothing else, these declarations make it harder for Obama to backtrack later on and mark a clear departure from Bush’s (failed) approach. But Obama has yet to put any real pressure on Israel, and he certainly hasn’t tried to make U.S. support (still over $3 billion/year) conditional on Israeli compliance. And the main bone of contention right now is simply whether Israel is willing to stop expanding settlements; we haven't even gotten to all the steps that will be necessary to make a viable Palestinian state possible.

Furthermore, we pointed out in our book that the lobby exerted more influence in Congress than on the Executive Branch, and we noted that several past Presidents (e.g., Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush) had been able to put limited pressure on Israel in recent decades. So mild Presidential pressure on Israel is hardly unprecedented. In the meantime, the situation on the Hill hasn't changed very much: a recent AIPAC-sponsored "Dear Colleague" letter telling Obama to privately coordinate his Mideast diplomacy with Israel (and proposing various conditions on the Palestinians) garnered 76 signatures in the Senate and 329 in the House.  And there are signs that Israel's supporters on the Hill are beginning to mobilize in more direct ways.

Nonetheless, there are also signs that AIPAC's control on the Hill may be diminishing too, Richard Silverstein has pointed out that two prominent progressive Democrats -- Barney Frank (D-MA) and Robert Filner (D-CA)--did not sign the AIPAC letter, and recent meetings between Netanyahu and several congressmen (including John Kerry of Massachusetts, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations committee) included sharp exchanges over Israel’s settlements policy.  Most of the signatures on those two AIPAC letters were probably pro forma anyway, and they don’t seem to have had the chilling effect that AIPAC-sponsored missives had in previous eras. Thus far, Congressional pressure on Obama seems intended to moderate the Administration’s positions, but not derail its efforts entirely.

So where does this leave our arguments about the lobby's profound influence?

First, our main goal in writing our book was to encourage a more open discussion of this issue. We were describing the situation as it existed up through 2007 (when we finished the book), but we believed that if the taboo were challenged and a more open discourse emerged, more and more Americans would realize that the "status quo" lobby (e.g, AIPAC, the Christian Zionists, the neoconservatives, and groups like the Zionist Organization of America) were advocating policies that were bad for the United States and also bad for Israel itself. The good news is that a more open discussion has emerged in recent years, as illustrated by Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, by numerous commentators in the blogosphere like Ezra Klein, Phil Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, Richard Silverstein, Matt Yglesias, and others, and by clear-eyed columnists such as Roger Cohen. Jon Stewart's Daily Show has done its part too, with some pointed commentary on Gaza and at least one wickedly satirical look at AIPAC itself.

Second, partly because of this more open discourse, more and more people -- including Americans who care strongly about Israel's well-being -- have begun to realize that failure to achieve a two-state solution is jeopardizing Israel’s long-term future.  As we wrote in our book and as I’ve blogged about before, the only alternatives to a two-state solution are the ethnic cleansing of millions of Palestinians, the creation of a binational democracy, or some form of apartheid. That is why Ehud Olmert eventually came around to the two-state solution, and people who used to reject the idea of pressure have begun to see the light. Even Martin Indyk is starting to sound a little bit like us. In other words, what it means to be "pro-Israel" is being redefined, thereby creating space for Obama to move toward a more sensible U.S. policy.

Third, events in the region have reinforced this growing sense that a different course of action is needed. The 2006 war in Lebanon and the recent carnage in Gaza have underscored the futility of trying to solve these problems by force alone and cast doubt in Israel's efforts to portray itself as the eternal victim. More and more people are aware of the long-term demographic trends, and they also know that the Arab League has offered to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel once the Palestinians have a viable state of their own. Some people also realize that settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would remove an arrow from Iran’s quiver and make it easier to mobilize a united front against Iran should that become necessary. Of course, the election of the most right-wing government in Israel's history (and the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister) hasn’t made it any easier for defenders of the status quo either.  

Fourth, the behavior of some of Israel’s most fervent defenders may have helped open eyes and ears as well. In particular, the reflexive tendency to smear and marginalize critics of the "special relationship" by accusing them of being either anti-semites or "self-hating" Jews has become a self-discrediting enterprise, because the charge keeps getting directed at people for whom it is so obviously false. Condemning neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers is a worthy enterprise, but smearing respected individuals such as Carter, Desmond Tutu, Tony Kushner, Tony Judt, or others is transparently bogus and intended solely to stifle intelligent discourse on a vital subject. And when defenders of any cause have to stoop to such tactics, it reveals that they are defending an increasingly weak case.

Finally, we argued in the conclusion of our book, part of the solution here was the emergence of a different sort of pro-Israel lobby, one that might be equally influential but in the service of smarter policies. There are encouraging signs on this front, and the increased prominence of groups such as J Street, the Israel Policy Forum, or Brit Tzedek v'Shalom are encouraging developments. There is no reason why groups like AIPAC cannot evolve too, and begin to use their considerable political acumen in the service of a more far-sighted approach.

People who think that the Israel lobby is some sort of secret Jewish conspiracy probably also believe that its influence could never be countered and that the groups within it are irredeemable. That is the essence of conspiracy theories -- and especially anti-Semitic ones--they impute dark and magical powers to some secret organization or cabal and portray it as evil, all-powerful, unchanging, and unstoppable. By contrast, those of us who see the lobby as a typical interest group engaged in the normal rough-and-tumble of democratic politics have recognized that its considerable influence (which no one seriously denies) could be mitigated or modified over time, especially once it became clear that the policies promoted by its most powerful components were in fact harmful to U.S. and Israeli interests alike. We wrote our book to contribute to that process, and while realists should probably never be too optimistic -- and especially about the Middle East -- it's hard for me not to see the recent turn in U.S. policy as encouraging. Now let's see what Obama says in Cairo.

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images

At the New Yorker blog, Steve Coll reports that the U.S. Congress is preparing a five-year $1.5 billion per annum non-military aid package for Pakistan, with full support from the Obama administration. (You can read the text of the legislation, entitled the "Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act," here.) 

This step sounds impressive, until one remembers that Pakistan's population is nearly 180 million and its GDP in 2006 was about $144 billion. So the aid package amounts to around a 1 percent increase in Pakistani GDP, which works out to about $8 for each Pakistani. In other words, the U.S. Congress is going to increase their per capita income from $850 per year to about $858. (It's actually less than that, because some of the money goes to administrative expenses, auditing, and the like.)

This act might have some symbolic value, and I'm willing to assume that a few good things might get done with the money. But let's not forget that Pakistan has already received about $45 billion of U.S. economic and military aid since 1946 (measured in constant 2007 dollars), so it’s not like $1.5 billion today is going to work miracles. Moreover, because money is fungible, even careful accounting can't prevent Pakistan from shifting some of its own resources to other areas, which means the areas we are trying to help (such as education and public health) may not get that much better.

Overall, it's hard for me to believe it will have much effect on the lives of ordinary Pakistanis or do much to erode the endemic anti-Americanism there. Pakistan actually got a big influx of money after 9/11 (due in part to increased U.S. aid and also to a lot of reverse capital flight), yet the increased cash either went to the army or tended to fuel financial and real estate speculation instead of genuine economic growth. Moreover, even with the best of intentions, big aid initiatives like this one are bound to reinforce perceptions that the United States is perennially interfering in Pakistani society, which probably reinforces hostility and suspicion.  

Instead of another aid package, we could probably do more to help Pakistan by removing U.S. tariffs on Pakistani exports (e.g., textiles), which would benefit Pakistani producers and American consumers alike. But that would trigger opposition from domestic interests here, so Congress will just adopt the politically convenient but less helpful step of appropriating more money.

Is there anything more absurd than the U.S. Congress's decision to deny funds to close Guantanamo, on the grounds that this might result in detainees being held on American soil? Excuse me, but isn't this taking the "not-in-my-backyard" principle to absurd lengths? We're not talking about letting a suspected terrorist walk around free in your hometown while he awaits trial; we talking about putting them in jail while they are tried (and by a military tribunal). If convicted, they'd end up in prison (along with over 200,000 other federal prisoners already incarcerated and the more than 3,000 convicted murderers now on death row). If acquitted, they could still be deported.  

This episode betrays a certain schizophrenia about America's role as a world power. On the one hand, the foreign policy elite continually tells Americans that the United States is the "leader of the free world," and that they have a long list of global responsibilities. As a result, the United States spends a lot of money on its national security apparatus, tells lots of countries how to run their own affairs, maintain an extensive array of military bases, and send its armed forces into harm’s way in various faraway lands. Indeed, William Pfaff is not far off in saying that the United States has become "addicted to war."

But on the other hand, U.S politicians somehow believe that all this overseas activity shouldn't have any impact here at home, apart from making us stand in long security lines at the airport. So President Bush didn't raise taxes to pay for the war on terror or the war in Iraq, and now Congress doesn't think the American people would tolerate having a couple of hundred suspected terrorists in prison somewhere in the United States.  

Frankly, if Americans are that skittish and self-absorbed, the country has no business exercising any sort of "global leadership" and the various Congresspersons who voted to deny the funds should immediately demand the abrogation of all existing alliances, the termination of all military activities overseas, and a return to a strict policy of isolationism. I don't think that's a good idea, by the way, but at least our Congressional representatives would be being consistent.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

"You see this napkin? In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 Senators on this napkin."

--Former AIPAC official Steven Rosen, speaking to a sympathetic journalist (Jeffrey Goldberg).

"Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Arlen Specter (D-PA), John Thune (R-SD) were joined by 72 of their Senate colleagues in writing to President Obama today, encouraging him to work towards achieving peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors in a manner that takes into full account the risks that Israel will face in any peace agreement."

--Press release from office of Sen. Dodd, May 19, 2009.

The letter in question is the Senate version of the AIPAC-drafted letter circulated by Reps. Steney Hoyer (D-MD) and Eric Cantor (R-VA) in the House. It calls for the Obama administration "to work closely and privately" with Israel and that the United States "must be a trusted mediator and a devoted friend to Israel." In other words, Obama's team should act as "Israel's lawyer" in peace talks, just as Bill Clinton’s team did during the failed Oslo process. It says that once the Palestinians meet a series of demanding conditions, then "an accord with Israel will be easier to attain," and it calls for the Arab states to move "toward normal ties with Israel" without specifying any steps that Israel might take to facilitate this process. There is no mention of an end to settlement construction, lifting the blockade of Gaza, or halting the creeping incorporation of land in and around Jerusalem. It declares that Israel "will be taking the greatest risks in any peace agreement," but the signatories remain blissfully unaware that continuing to delay a two-state solution poses a far greater threat to Israel's long-term future. For a more detailed critique, see M.J. Rosenberg here.

There is a broad agreement that groups like AIPAC exert more influence on Capitol Hill than on the Executive Branch. Let's hope so.       

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

In his best-selling book Soft Power, my friend and colleague Joseph Nye famously defined "soft power" as a state's ability to attract others to a set of "shared values and the justness and duty of contributing to those values."

Among other things, he saw the American system of higher education as a key source of this sort of attraction. Encouraging tens of thousands of foreign students to attend U.S. universities was an effective way to familiarize them with the core values of democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and free markets, and Nye argued that future elites educated here would be more inclined to share U.S. policy preferences. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, "I can think of no more valuable asset to our country than the friendship of future world leaders who have been educated here."

I find this argument persuasive. Indeed, I once wrote: "the American university system remains a potent mechanism for socializing foreign elites. Students studying in the United States become familiar with U.S. mores while simultaneously absorbing mainstream U.S. views on politics and economics." (Full disclosure: over forty percent of the students at the Kennedy School of Government are from overseas, and I firmly convinced that helping to educate them is good for the world and good for America, too.)

From a parochial American perspective, however, this aspect of "soft power" has at least one downside. In addition to learning about American values and in most cases acquiring a more accurate and favorable impression of American society, some foreign students who study here also acquire an in-depth knowledge of how the American system of government works. They also learn how to talk to Americans in ways that we will find persuasive. In short, they gain a greater ability to manipulate our political system to their advantage.

For example, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has a law degree from Columbia and also took courses at Georgetown. He has been something of a darling in hardline circles in Washington, and he was savvy enough to hire one of John McCain's foreign policy advisors (Randy Scheunemann) to lobby on Georgia's behalf. According to Stephen Sestanovich of the Council on Foreign Relations, these efforts gained Georgia a "broad base of support" in Washington. This is partly a testimony to Saakashvili’s own political skills, but his effectiveness inside-the-Beltway suggests that he learned a lot about what makes America tick while he was a student here.

A second example might be Ahmad Chalabi, the former head of the Iraqi National Congress and one of the key promoters of the U.S. invasion in 2003. Chalabi received a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and proved to be unusually good at cultivating powerful friends in Washington. Indeed, his ability to sell bogus ideas about Iraq to gullible American neoconservatives suggests that he knew more about American than he did about politics in Iraq.

Then there's former (and possibly future) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who went to high school outside Philadelphia and to college and graduate school at MIT. His fluid command of English and obvious familiarity with the American politics and culture have made him an effective media performer and a popular figure on Capitol Hill, where he testified in 2002 in favor of the invasion of Iraq. And let's not forget Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who received an M.A. in public policy from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and served as Saudi ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005.

The United States is more susceptible to this sort of influence than most other countries for three reasons. First, the United States is a global superpower with commitments all over the world, and its leaders don't have time to master all the details of different regional situations. So when a smooth-talking foreign representative with lots of local knowledge shows up and tells us what he or she knows we'd like to hear, we are more inclined to buy it.

Second, foreign countries know that whatever the United States does will have a big impact on them, so they devote a lot of effort to shaping our perceptions in ways that will benefit them. If they are smart, they send their A-Team over here, and people who know how our system works and what buttons to press will be especially valuable. By contrast, we don’t have the time, energy, personnel or incentive to do that for the other 190-plus countries out there. Here it's also worth noting that the number of foreign students studying here significantly exceeds the number of American studying abroad. According to the Institute of International Education, there were over 600,000 foreigners studying here in 2008, compared with about 250,000 Americans studying overseas.

Third, the United States has a uniquely permeable political system. If a foreign diplomat can't persuade the State Department, Treasury, or Defense, there are 435 Congressmen and 100 different Senators for them to go to work on. As Ken Silverstein shows in his fascinating and funny book Turkmeniscam, there are also a host of lobbying and PR firms who are happy to help foreign governments sell their story here too. And someone who has studied here for a few years is bound to know a lot about how to do that more effectively than someone who has never lived here before.

This is not -- repeat not -- an argument for raising the drawbridge and keeping foreign students out. Knowing how our system works doesn’t enable foreign diplomats or government officials to dictate what the U.S. government does, and sometimes an all-out effort to bamboozle us will get nowhere, or even backfire. On balance, therefore, keeping our ivory towers open is almost certainly a net plus for the United States. And there's undoubtedly a positive-sum benefit when students from a variety of cultures come together to wrestle with common problems -- I see this every day in my courses. But let's not be naive: there are certain costs too, unless one wrongly assumes that foreign leaders will never, ever, try to get us to do something that might be in their interest but not in ours. And in those cases, an intimate knowledge of how American politics operates will give some foreign representatives an edge.

International politics is a competitive business, and it’s hardly surprising that other countries use their knowledge of the United States and its political system to try to advance their own interests. Instead of keeping foreign students out, however, perhaps the answer is to get more Americans to study abroad, so that we're as good at manipulating them as they sometimes are at manipulating us.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images