Think Tank CAP to Create Foreign Policy "Master Plan" for 2021

Democratic think tanks are pulling out their pens and papers as they furiously try to write game plans for a possible Democratic president should Republican Donald Trump lose the 2020 election.

Here is more from Axios:

The Center for American Progress tomorrow (Jan. 14) will convene prominent Obama administration alumni to create a foreign-policy "master plan" for what they hope will be an incoming Democratic president in 2021.  CAP says the conference will feature Ambassador Samantha Power, Ambassador Susan Rice, Denis McDonough, Michèle Flournoy, Avril Haines, Jake Sullivan and more.

Democratic think tanks have largely been sidelined during the Trump presidency, and many scholars from the Obama era and Clinton era are housed within those policy shops.

Update: Here is a list of 11 advisers, including think tankers, shaping candidates' climate policies.

Think Tankers Who Signed "Never Trump" Letters Remain Shut Out of Trump Administration

Here is more from the Washington Post:

Two and a half years into President Trump’s tenure, the Republican national security heavyweights blacklisted from his administration for signing a pair of “never Trump” letters in 2016 face a crossroads — remain opposed or support him in 2020.

While some have become prominent figures of the anti-Trump resistance — denouncing him in op-eds and on cable news — others have offered policy advice from outside perches, and a select few have quietly, though mostly unsuccessfully, angled for administration jobs, hopeful that a mea culpa could end their days in purgatory.

“I’m not comfortable with letters anymore,” said Patrick Cronin, head of the Asia-Pacific security program at the Hudson Institute, who signed the first letter, which called Trump “fundamentally dishonest” and “utterly unfitted to the office.” In March 2017, Cronin was forced to withdraw from a new position overseeing a Pentagon think tank after Trump allies blasted his appointment by then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

Of the 149 experts who signed at least one of the two letters warning that Trump was unfit for office — the first published on the War on the Rocks website during the 2016 GOP primaries and the second on the New York Times’s site during the general election campaign — just one has been hired by the Trump administration. James Jeffrey, a Middle East expert who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, was named the State Department’s special representative for Syria last summer and in January was given the additional role of special envoy to counter the Islamic State.

A number of think tankers recently divided themselves on China policy, with some supporting President Trump's policies and tactics and others calling for a new strategy.

Meet the Tiny Think Tank That Destroyed the Iran Nuclear Deal

This is from the New York Times:

While many hands gripped the sword that undercut the Iran nuclear deal, no one outside the Trump administration was a more persistent or effective critic than Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of a hawkish Washington think tank [Foundation for Defense of Democracies, of FDD].

But rather than publicly celebrate President Trump’s decision Tuesday to jettison the accord, he is mourning its demise, saying he genuinely wanted to fix the agreement and worries that its unraveling could be dangerous.

That lament, though, has enraged the pact’s supporters, who never saw a fix as remotely palatable to Mr. Trump and blame Mr. Dubowitz above all others for providing the intellectual foundation for its passing. They now say he is trying to distance himself from the potentially catastrophic results.

During the congressional debate on the deal, he and his foundation colleagues testified in opposition to the deal 17 times over an 18-month period. By contrast, officials from the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, more established conservative think tanks, testified only once.

More recently, Mr. Dubowitz was the only nongovernmental official routinely consulted by both European and American negotiators in a monthslong back-and-forth over a possible side agreement to the deal, and he sometimes reviewed secret drafts. He wrote, according to two administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, parts of a report on Iran that Brian H. Hook, the chief American negotiator in the recent talks, took to White House meetings — a highly unusual step. He advised many of the deal’s most prominent critics on Capitol Hill.

But he is far from the usual tweedy think-tanker. Raised in Canada, trained as a lawyer and having worked in venture capital, Mr. Dubowitz wears tailored French suits and keeps his curly hair just so. In 2016, he received $560,221 in compensation as the foundation’s chief executive.

Top officials in the Obama administration often dismissed Washington’s foreign policy think tanks as paid agents of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, countries that annually invest tens of millions in the Washington influence game.

The Free Beacon notes that the New York Times had to issue multiple corrections to the story.  NewsBuster details the corrections.  Following are the corrections, as outlined by NYT:

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the salary of Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, when compared with those of leaders of other Washington think tanks. Mr. Dubowitz’s $560,221 compensation in 2016 was determined by the foundation’s board of directors and is commensurate with the average annual salary of other think tank leaders in Washington in recent years. It is not nearly twice as much as the salaries of his counterparts. The article also inaccurately linked the foundation to Israel’s Likud party. While the think tank does align with some of Likud’s positions, it is not directly involved with the party. The article also referred imprecisely to the funding of conferences held by the foundation and the Hudson Institute. While Elliott Broidy provided $2.7 million in funds for consulting, marketing and other services, the foundation says it received only $360,000 from Mr. Broidy for one conference.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about FDD and how it punches above its weight.

North Korea Reaching Out to US Think Tanks to Understand Trump

North Korea finds President Donald Trump's thinking on the country so confusing that it is now reaching out to think tank scholars with close ties to the Trump Administration to try to understand his policy.  Here is more from the Washington Post:

North Korean government officials have been quietly trying to arrange talks with Republican-linked analysts in Washington, in an apparent attempt to make sense of President Trump and his confusing messages to Kim Jong Un’s regime.

...To get a better understanding of American intentions, in the absence of official diplomatic talks with the U.S. government, North Korea’s mission to the United Nations invited Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst who is now the Heritage Foundation’s top expert on North Korea, to visit Pyongyang for meetings.

Trump has close ties to Heritage, a conservative think tank that has influenced the president on everything from travel restrictions to defense spending, but no personal connection to Klingner.

“They’re on a new binge of reaching out to American scholars and ex-officials,” said Klingner, who declined the North Korean invitation. “While such meetings are useful, if the regime wants to send a clear message, it should reach out directly to the U.S. government.”

North Korean intermediaries have also approached Douglas Paal, who served as an Asia expert on the National Security Council under presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and is now vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

They wanted Paal to arrange talks between North Korean officials and American experts with Republican ties in a neutral location such as Switzerland. He also declined the North Korean request.

[Evans] Revere attended a multilateral meeting with North Korean officials in the picturesque Swiss village of Glion earlier this month, together with Ralph Cossa, chairman of the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and another frequent interlocutor with Pyongyang’s representatives. 

The meeting is an annual event organized by the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, a government-linked think tank. But it took on extra significance this year due to the sudden rise in tensions between North Korea and the United States.

In a recent interview, Bruce Klingner said that he attended a meeting with North Korean officials in June but later turned down an invitation to visit Pyongyang.

South Korea's president has also been reaching out to US think tanks in order to help him understand the current administration's thinking on Korea policy.

While a handful of think tank scholars are secretly trying to broker a peace deal with North Korea, some conservative think tanks are preparing studies on war with North Korea.

2016 Republicans Outsource Policy to Secret Group of Think Tankers

Although the John Hay Initiative (JHI) - which is made up of a variety of powerful think tankers and conservative insiders - is super-secretive and not well-known, it is the go-to source for Republican candidates to get foreign policy ideas and advice.  Here is more from Josh Rogin:

There's a good reason so many GOP candidates seem to be well-prepared yet uncannily in sync when it comes to foreign policy: Most of them have tapped the same group of experts for guidance, a shadow foreign policy campaign infrastructure just waiting for a nominee to emerge.

Ever since Mitt Romney lost the race in 2012, his foreign policy team has been working to remain intact, become a resource for as many primary candidates as possible, and position itself to influence the next president, if he or she is a Republican. For candidates who haven't the time or resources to build their own foreign policy staffs at this stage, the project, called the John Hay Initiative, is a handy tool to get smart fast on complicated subjects and even hand off some heavy lifting on national security issues.

The co-founders say the group issues biweekly policy papers on a range of issues, does specific research for different campaigns on demand, and has briefed more than half of the 17 Republican candidates running for president. The Hay Initiative helped write recent foreign policy speeches for Carly Fiorina and Chris Christie, speeches that struck very similar notes. Members have also briefed Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and others. Rand Paul and Donald Trump are the outliers who have no interaction with the group, likely because their foreign policy views don't jibe.

Here is Josh Rogin's original piece about the John Hay Initiative.  It says that the group is made up of more than 150 senior foreign policy and national security experts and former officials.  Now, JHI says it has 250 experts.  It was founded by three of the top leaders of the Romney 2012 foreign policy team: Eliot Cohen, Eric Edelman, and Brian Hook.

JHI recently released a book, dedicated to the next president of the United States, which "seeks to restore the bipartisan tradition of American leadership in world affairs."

The authors of the book include a number of think tankers, such as:

• Elliot Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
• Dan Blumenthal, Director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
• Jacqueline Deal, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI).
• Paula Dobriansky, Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard University's JFK Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
• Eric Edelman, a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
• Aaron Friedberg, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) and a Senior Advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR).
• Rebeccah Heinrichs, Fellow at the Hudson Institute.
• Will Inboden, Non-Resident Fellow at GMF.
• David Kramer, Senior Director for Human Rights and Democracy at the McCain Institute for International Leadership.
• Jeffrey Kupfer, Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
• Clay Lowery, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) and Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
• Wess Mitchell, Co-Founder of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).
• J. Peter Pham, Director of the Africa Center at Atlantic Council.
• Daniel Runde, Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at CSIS.
• Michael Singh, Managing Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
• Jim Talent, Senior Fellow at AEI.

More about the John Hay Initiative can be found here.