Jaded Optimists:
The Young Guns of Foreign Policy

John Hallett Norris

There are two central truisms regarding the foreign policy profession in the United States. One: The post-World War II crop of diplomats-Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Paul Nitze, Averell Harriman, and others-represented a golden age when men of honor and wisdom guided the United States with a steady hand and remarkable vision as they held the Soviets in check and molded modern institutions ranging from NATO to the World Bank.

Two: Things have pretty much gone to hell in a hand-basket ever since, with the foreign policy field increasingly dominated by partisans, ideologues, and the shortsighted, as a once-proud profession has been reduced to little more than a special interest lobby bent on personal indulgence.

Yearning for the elitism of the forties, fifties, and early sixties has become fashionable. Yet, as extensive conversations with young American foreign policy professionals reveal, much of the current conventional wisdom regarding the next generation of foreign policymakers is remarkably wrongheaded.

John Hallett Norris is Special Adviser to the President of the International Crisis Group. He previously served in both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The opinions expressed in this article are his own.