E-mail a friendLeslie Gelb
airdate April 22, 2009
President emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb is considered one of the foremost writers and thinkers on American foreign policy. He held various positions at The New York Times, including Op-Ed page editor and national security correspondent, and won the Pulitzer for explanatory journalism. He also worked as a senior official in the State and Defense Departments, winning the highest award in each. In his new book, Power Rules, Gelb addresses how to use America's power in the 21st century.
Pulitzer Prize winner says the U.S. is being very moderate in its exercise of power. (2:30)
Full interview. (10:59)
Leslie Gelb
Tavis: Leslie Gelb is the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for "The New York Times." His acclaimed new book is called "Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy." He joins us tonight from New York. Leslie Gelb, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Leslie Gelb: Good to be with you.
Tavis: Is it really that simple? Some common sense?
Gelb: It isn't that simple in terms of solving things, but it is that simple in terms of figuring out what our power can do and what it can't do. And the problem is we figure it out right for the most part, and then these demons in the foreign policy world take over - the demon of ideology that says we've got to transform the world in ways that we wouldn't even think of transforming ourselves.
Domestic politics demon takes over and the arrogance of power demon takes over, and common sense just gets submerged in the process. And only when we fail, only two or three years later, after the cost in treasure and lives is paid, does common sense get restored.
Tavis: How much of the quagmire that we are in now where our foreign policy is concerned has to do with - how might I put this - has to do with us not seeing the world as it is but as we want it to be?
Gelb: I think a lot of it comes down to the world as we want to make it.
Tavis: Right.
Gelb: So here we look at Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan and we want to turn those countries into democratic free market paradises. We want to build nations and the raw material there is countries at war, corrupt governments, governments that provide almost no services to their people.
And history shows us again and again that unless people are wiling to fight for their own freedom, take care of their own people, nothing we do is going to win it for them. They've got to win it for themselves. We can help them if they really desire to put themselves out.
Tavis: So what is the most recent example, the most glaring example of late, where a lack of common sense in our approach has put us in a difficult spot?
Brenner: well, I'm concerned that that may be the case with Afghanistan and Pakistan, because we're on the verge of a long-term commitment there to rebuilding those nations, and as I said, those nations are more or less in freefall from civil war and from internal corruption and governmental inefficiency.
And if we start committing ourselves to that effort, it gets harder and harder to get ourselves out, to extricate ourselves. And we've got other priorities we have to concentrate on at this time - most especially rebuilding our economy, because that's the basis of our democracy and that's the basis of our international power.
Our fate is not going to be decided in the mountains of Afghanistan. It will be decided right here in America.
Tavis: Let me ask you - and I could have started our conversation here, Leslie Gelb - let me ask you what you mean when you say power in terms of the content of this book. How do you define power, number one, and I want to ask a follow-up about whether or not that definition, just in your own lifetime of study and work in this arena, has changed?
Gelb: All right. As they say, I'm glad you asked that question. (Laughter) To me, power is good, old-fashioned pressure and coercion based on carrots and sticks, based on your position in the world, where you get another set of leaders to do things they don't want to do.
And we confuse it all the time in America. Liberals confuse that simple, straightforward definition of power, that common sense definition of power, with what they call soft power - understanding, leadership, morality, values, and the like, and those are good things and it's good that President Obama is talking more and more in sympathy with the rest of the world.
But those efforts are not going to get the leaders of those countries to change their minds on their vital national interests. It's good scene-setting material, but it's not power.
On the other hand, the right has gone off-board with their notion of power because they've reduced it to military force and the threat of force, and military might is something you use when your power fails.
And what we can't seem to get straight, Mr. Smiley, is this - power in this world, in the 21st century, is different than it's been throughout most of history. It takes longer to take effect. There's more resistance to it from other countries around the world.
And presidents have to build time in American politics to give time for their power to work abroad. They need to establish what I call leaning power rather than screaming power, and that does take time and much more subtle applications.
Tavis: How have you, just in your own lifetime of study and expertise in these areas, how have you seen the definition, specifically of U.S. power, change, wane, grow over the years?
Gelb: Well, it has changed and gotten more confused, particularly since the end of the Cold War when liberals confused power with understanding and leadership and thought, you know, now we're the sole super power, we can sort of love our way toward working out international problems; understand our way toward resolution of difficult issues.
But it doesn't work. It just doesn't. Other countries have other interests; there are conflicts of interest. And it takes the carrots and sticks to get the leaders of those other countries to rethink what they're going to do.
And by the same token, George Bush came in and he said, "Hey, the Cold War is over, we're on the top of the mountain, alone. We can tell anybody what to do." And he tried to do that for the better part of eight years and failed time and again.
Just take a look at Iran and North Korea. When he came to office, these countries didn't have any serious missile programs and they didn't have a nuclear capability. Now both Iran and North Korea have both, despite his military threats, despite his warnings.
Tavis: You mentioned Iran and North Korea. Both are in the news of late - certainly Iran - suggesting now or saying that they welcome nuclear talks. We'll see whether that's true or where that conversation goes. But let me ask you quickly how you think we ought to use our power with regard now to Iran and North Korea.
Gelb: Well, with regard to Iran I would use it more or less the way we used it with Libya. Mr. Smiley, everything we've said about President Ahmadinejad of Iran we said and said worse about Mohmmar Qadaffi, the leader of Libya. And three years ago or so, George W. Bush made a comprehensive agreement with Qadaffi whereby he eliminated all of his weapons of mass destruction, he stopped supporting terrorism, and we let him into the international community.
It was a comprehensive agreement. And you may have noticed that a year ago or so, we agreed that Libya would come into the United Nations Security Council. The Libyan foreign minister visited the White House.
And with North Korea, he stiffed them. He wouldn't engage with the North Koreans the way he did with Qadaffi and Libya, and relations grew worse and worse. He wouldn't do the kind of negotiations he was prepared to do elsewhere.
Tavis: Let me offer this, perhaps, as an exit question, as my time is running here. Dr. King, who I regard as perhaps the greatest American we've ever produced - we could debate that, but that's my own assessment. But King, Mr. Gelb, was always fond of reminding us that it really is about the power of love and not the love of power - the power of love and not the love of power.
I raise that Kingian formulation because I want to ask you how much you think what troubles and travails us as a country has to do with our absolute love for power around the world. No matter how we use it, we just crave power as a nation.
Gelb: I don't think that's so. I think America, of all major powers in history, has been the most reluctant of all to assume power. We were isolationist for a good deal of our history, and even when the time came when we couldn't be isolationist anymore - basically after World War II - we didn't try to take over countries the way imperialist powers did throughout history. We were much more benign about it.
We made mistakes and we supported wrong guys, but by and large American foreign policy was the most benign foreign policy of any major power in history. And I think that's saying a lot.
So I don't think we've been power mad in the fashion of the Roman Empire or Chinese or British Empire or whatever. And basically, we've given people their freedoms where we could when we felt we were not engaged in some sort of important conflict that forced us to support some bad guys.
So I think our record is not nearly as bad as your question suggests, and as far as the power of love is concerned in international relations, I wish it were so. I think that power can buy you things within a country and Dr. King is living proof of that, but in the world it operates on the basis of hard interests and leaders have their own political considerations, their own interests, and they don't budge based on love. It just doesn't happen.
President Obama went to Europe, he went to Turkey, and he won over the hearts and minds of a lot of the people in those countries, but it didn't change the position of the leaders of those countries on any significant issue.
Tavis: The new book by Leslie Gelb is called "Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy." Mr. Gelb, nice to have you on the program. Thank you, sir.
Gelb: Good to be here.
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