WHO SPEAKS FOR AMERICA?

• Author: Easterbrook, Gregg
• Position: Evaluation of book by Eric Alterman Cornell - Abstract - Review

WHO SPEAKS FOR AMERICA? Why Democracy Matters in Foreign Policy by Eric Alterman Cornell University Press, $25

Elitism in the fashioning of foreign policy, a fact of life for much of 20th century American politics and even an active goal of Walter Lippman's cohort, is now generally perceived as a defeated problem. The Foreign Service has been racially and sexually desegregated; the club-based WASP aristocracy is in shambles; everybody knows everything via the Web and CNN; Congress has become a 535-ring circus where foreign-policy hearings are a favorite sideshow; Washington is now so open and disordered that only the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve still function as secret societies, and even they seem increasingly headline-driven. No diplomat has actually worn striped pants in a long time, or seems likely to don them again soon.

Nevertheless, posits journalist and commentator Eric Alterman, U.S. foreign policy remains "deliberately shielded from the effects of democratic debate, with virtually no institutionalized democratic participation." Alterman, who writes for The Nation and is a senior fellow at the prestigious World Policy Institute, believes that between White House primacy on trade and military-deployment issues and the continuing prevalence of a chummy, self-referential Ivy League contingent at the National Security Council, State Department, Council on Foreign Relations, and a few related organizations, the foreign policy establishment stands fast as "For Professionals Only." This is a view once often heard from the right; Alterman phrases it mainly from the left. He cites, for example, the 1998 Ohio State University public forum, staged at a time when the Clinton Administration was preparing voter opinion for what it thought would be a new round of attacks on Iraq, at which Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acted huffy and disdainful of the public when audience members barraged her with the sort of antagonistic questions from which she is normally screened.

Because it argues against the grain--asserting that something society is inclined to dismiss actually does remain a problem--Who Speaks for America? sits square in the tradition of the book that should be read precisely because it's full of material we think we do not need to read. Alterman has produced a volume that is well-written, vigorous, and perceptive. But has he made his case?

Anyone arguing for more democratization of foreign policy must first deal with...