Interview by Kia Golsorkhi-Ainslie
Portrait by Rebecca Zeller

KGA Who do you see as the Quincy Institute’s primary audience?

TP Our campaign targets everyone. We want to change the entire framework of policy, and you can’t do that by only focusing on legislators or civil servants. The American population, especially the younger generation, is already against the establishment foreign policy and the idea that the US must sustain global military dominance. But this energy doesn’t get sufficiently channelled towards Washington – at best, it is only during presidential campaigns. Several previous presidents campaigned on an anti-war message, with some variation, but didn’t pursue it to the same extent once in office, even if it’s evident where public opinion lies. We don’t need to convince the public, only teach them how to channel their energy into a political force. 

KGA One would have thought that the defeat in the global war on terror would have led to repercussions in terms of leadership and a change of policy, but we haven’t seen that. Where is the incentive for change?

TP There is safety in numbers, so politicians responsible for policy failures usually get away with them when everyone has been wrong. It’s easy to evade responsibility if everyone is wrong. Would Trump have been able to come to power had he not channelled the anti-war sentiments of the American public, after ten years of defeat? I am not saying that he is genuinely anti-war, but he was willing to channel that sentiment when others were not. This was a factor in Hillary Clinton’s loss, where the public perception was, quite correctly, that she was a warmonger. The problem is that it’s not enough to have checks and balances only once every four years. They should occur regularly across all levels of policy-making.

KGA It’s less the elected leaders I worry about than the advisors on whom they rely. Trump criticised the Iraq War, then hired John Bolton as national security advisor. This new cohort doesn’t seem to have less belligerent instincts.

TP This is partly because the grand strategy of liberal hegemony has been so dominant. You cannot succeed in Washington with a different perspective on foreign policy. This system kept the grand strategy in place, quashing people who may have been able to design, formulate, and then implement anything else. I taught at Georgetown University, and in my class on Middle Eastern geopolitics, students expressed a variety of opinions, including those critical of US interventionism. Yet their papers tended to align quite unanimously with US foreign policy. This was because many of the students at Georgetown plan on entering government, who will review their essays when they apply. They understand that to get a job, you have to sing along with the tune, regardless of your views. As long as this is the case, you can’t have realistic expectations of change. This is part of the reason why we created Quincy.

KGA I wanted to ask broadly about the idea of foreign policy as a distinct branch of policy, as in foreign versus domestic. Is that distinction still meaningful?

TP It used to be easier to differentiate foreign policy from domestic policy, but with globalisation, it’s no longer sustainable. When the foreign and domestic converge, foreign policies become not just a question of national interest, but a political tool used to undermine domestic rivals. We see this with the Israel-Palestine issue in the US: nothing gets resolved because it has become a domestic political football. I am in favour of keeping foreign policy democratic, but as we saw with Covid-19, it risks overriding other factors that should influence the decision, such as real expertise. Clearly, it is a problem that there is such a divide between the establishment and the rest of government. I think we have so many policies in which the decision-making class has completely lost touch with the rest of the population, but this is not unique to foreign policy. But you’re right – the foreign policy establishment in particular does tend to sustain a certain status quo, therefore, everyone inherits the same beliefs. Even if a civil servant joins with an alternative viewpoint, they are narrowed down to fit the institutionally accepted one, and to survive and progress, they must abide by it. This is incredibly problematic when the establishment collective commits massive mistakes. No one is held accountable, and the policy never changes. I am not sure if it is more common in foreign policy than in other areas, but it definitely exists there.

KGA How do you overcome government secrecy surrounding foreign and security policy?

TP In the US, you can file a FOIA lawsuit to demand the release of public information, but they’re often heavily redacted. There have been cases where the original document has been later revealed alongside the redacted version, and it’s clear that the redactions are completely mundane, and not sensitive at all. This, obviously, undermines any sense of transparency, which leads to profound distrust. This has long been the case in certain parts of America, in a way you don’t see as much in Europe. There are two reasons for this: the first being the Iraq War, in which the government lied and thousands of Americans were killed. The other is the financial crisis, for which the financial elite evaded all responsibility. This is how anti-establishment candidates win elections: they campaign on a platform of grievances against the elites. The establishment needs to undertake the lengthy process of accountability if it wants to rebuild its relationship with the public.

KGA Is Quincy’s aim to establish peace as a more profitable alternative to war?

TP Historically, economies as a whole rarely benefit from war. Specific industries, however, do. In the US, you have what Eisenhower called the Military Industrial Complex, which benefits handsomely from perpetual war. At the same time, some of the largest anti-war forces in the US are funded by major industrialists who have no stake in war, and suffer for it. Charles Koch, for example, is a supporter of the Quincy Institute and a libertarian whose first political act was taking out an ad against the Vietnam War. And you have, of course, major donors in the centre or the left against war as well. Bill Gates recently said that war sets back everything he has been working for. That economies benefit from war is false. We strongly believe that peace is better for the economy as a whole. .