The Arms-Swapper
Foreign policy is complicated. There are a lot of moving parts and because human beings are making the policy, and feelings and egos are at stake, it’s that much more difficult.
Some policymakers take a long-term view, others are myopic. Couple all that with the problem that I witnessed countless times over the course of my career at the C.I.A. and at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — the insistence of American diplomats, intelligence professionals and White House staff members that they are literally the smartest people in the world and that they know best.
Former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser once famously said,
“The genius of you Americans is that you never make a clear-cut stupid move. You always make complicated stupid moves, which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.”
He was right.