The U.S. foreign policy establishment — that is, professionals who trained in international affairs and make careers in government, think tanks, and higher education, with revolving doors among the three — plays an outsized role in U.S. foreign policy. But they fail to deliver the multilateral approach that the American public wants. They’re stuck in old schools of thought and groupthink.The piece goes on to note that think tanks and academia have failed to produce a blueprint for peace. "I am not aware of any credible plan to achieve comprehensive and sustainable international peace within a generation, nor of any forum to produce such plan."
Didier Jacobs is Special Advisor to the President of Oxfam America, a group that works to finds solutions to poverty and injustice worldwide.