We know that politicians are reluctant to admit that they were wrong, but what about those of us who study world politics, comment on current events, and sometimes give advice on what we think should be done? We are all infallible, so anyone making predictions and recommendations will occasionally be wrong. If the expert is unlucky (or perhaps just committed to a lot of questionable beliefs about world politics), then their advice can backfire if key officials take it. When that happens, what should they do?
In my last column, I suggested that US President Donald Trump, the US as a whole, and the world would be better off if Trump would just admit that he made a huge mistake when he started the war with Iran. But what about the people who put it base for the mistake of repeatedly calling for war and suggesting that it would be quick, cheap, and of great benefit? My goal is not to embarrass them further—events do that without any help from me—but to think of different ways one might react after getting a strategic issue wrong.
We know that politicians are reluctant to admit that they were wrong, but what about those of us who study world politics, comment on current events, and sometimes give advice on what we think should be done? We are all infallible, so anyone making predictions and recommendations will occasionally be wrong. If the expert is unlucky (or perhaps just committed to a lot of questionable beliefs about world politics), then their advice can backfire if key officials take it. When that happens, what should they do?
In my last column, I suggested that US President Donald Trump, the US as a whole, and the world would be better off if Trump would just admit that he made a huge mistake when he started the war with Iran. But what about the people who put it base for the mistake of repeatedly calling for war and suggesting that it would be quick, cheap, and of great benefit? My goal is not to embarrass them further—events do that without any help from me—but to think of different ways one might react after getting a strategic issue wrong.
Of course, the most straightforward response to being proven wrong is to openly admit the mistake and try to learn from it. I have ever he tried to do so up several event in the pastbut I leave it to the readers to judge how successful I have been in admitting mistakes. I am not alone in this matter: for example, journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote a long list how wrong he was to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the former editor-in-chief of New York TimesBill Keller, finally released something of a my fault for coverage of the war campaign center, as well. So did Anne-Marie Slaughter, a prominent “liberal hawk” who later admitted that those of us who warned that the raid was unnecessary and unwise should have been more careful.
Admitting someone’s mistakes has many positive qualities: It preserves your integrity, helps others learn from your mistakes, and may even earn you more respect because it shows that you are honest and genuine. Given these benefits, it’s puzzling that more pundits and political analysts don’t go this way when events don’t match their expectations. Instead, they rely on one or more of my top five ways to avoid being blamed for giving bad advice.
1: “It’s Not My Fault; I Was Misled.”
If you made a mistake that can’t be hidden but you don’t want to admit that you lied to yourself, the obvious approach is to blame it on the negative information provided by others. A case in point is the many people who blamed their support for the invasion of Iraq on fallacious reasoning, such as the claim that Iraq had numerous weapons of mass destruction and was actively pursuing nuclear weapons. This popular line of defense is usually ineffective, however, as it were great evidence that pre-war intelligence on Iraq was being cooked up to justify the war. If you chose to believe it, that’s up to you. I haven’t seen anyone make such claims about war with Iran yet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time.
2: “My Good Plan Didn’t Go Well.”
Another common way to avoid accountability is to claim that one’s recommendations were correct, but management failed to implement them properly. The alibi has a long history, as shown in the opinion of the President of the United States John F. Kennedy that “victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan.” Indeed, defeat is often followed by a search for a scapegoat, with those who supported the war offering their pet theories on how it would have been won. And because it’s based on unprovable fallacies—that is, claims that a smarter commander, a different strategy, or better luck would have brought success—there’s no way to completely disprove it. No wonder this alibi is so popular.
3: “History Will Defend Me.”
Another time-honored way of shirking responsibility is to claim that what is seen as nonsense today will eventually be hailed as civilized thinking. As with the second approach above, such claims are popular because they are hard to disprove: If you wait long enough, the situation will eventually improve and then the architects of the disaster can claim credit and insist that they were right all along. The current regime in Iran will not last forever, for example, and if it changes for the better in the future, then the people who clamored for the current war (if there are still any), will no doubt argue that it would not have happened if we had not taken their advice.
A variation on this theme is to argue that no matter how bad things are today, they would be worse if we did nothing. You see this line of reasoning in the frequent refrain that absent the current war, Iran would have (eventually) acquired a nuclear weapon. It doesn’t matter that U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly concluded that Tehran has not had a nuclear weapons program for two decades, that its path to a bomb was greatly reduced by the nuclear deal that Trump left behind in 2018, or that, for 30 years, Israeli leaders have warned that Iran was close to getting a bomb and still hasn’t gotten it right.
4: “I’m not wrong; We need to fight harder!”
If you argued for war and it didn’t go well, you might as well stick to your guns (literally), double down, and insist that all we need to do is step up, stay resolved, and stay the course. This is how Russian President Vladimir Putin responded when the previous invasion of Ukraine failed, and so did prowar columnists like Bret Stephens. keep talking about Iran today. Cooperation is the assertion that even if the initial decision of war is not recommended, our credibility is at stake, and we must do whatever is necessary to win. Those who follow this line of thinking usually rely on the same arguments they used to justify the original decision to go to war, claiming that conceding defeat would be wrong, that the enemy is on the ropes, and that a little more time and more pressure will bring about a glorious victory. And so, ladies and gentlemen, that is how the eternal war happens.
5: “Never Complain, Never Explain, Never Mention It Again.”
Finally, egg-faced professionals can follow the advice often attributed to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “Never complain, never explain.” Instead of owning up to one’s mistakes or making a contrived excuse, one might as well pretend it never happened, ignore all the naysayers, and just move on. If you have a secure position in some academic or publishing institution (or even tenure at a good university), then there is little need to admit you got it wrong or spend too much time worrying about it. To be sure, boldly refusing to acknowledge one’s past mistakes is not a very pleasant position, and it does not help the rest of us to know how great a mistake was made. But given how short public memory is these days, accounting for collective amnesia can help fallible commentators (and former officials) retain their status and influence regardless of how their advice was implemented.
Despite him incompletenessI still believe that a stable “marketplace of ideas”—where competing ideas can be freely expressed—is better than a forced ideology. For this reason, I want many different people to think hard about foreign policy and submit their ideas for our consideration. The process will work better, however, if we can also evaluate the quality of these contributions over time and identify who tends to give correct and useful advice and whose instructions tend to make things worse. Even if flawed analysts are reluctant to admit their mistakes, this list can help you see through the dust-up activities people use to protect their reputations after making a mistake and help you decide whose advice to embrace.
As for my advice to those of you who also work to dictate your country’s foreign policy, I suggest owning one’s mistakes. In the wise words of Mark Twain: “Do the right thing. It will please some people and surprise others.”
