Philip C. Habib Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 4 of 6
I hear a very positive view...
Oh, I'm very positive about most things Harry. If you're a pessimist, you don't become a diplomat, because if you do, there's no way you're going to get ahead with the problems. You've got to be optimistic about the most ridiculous and difficult of problems.
But what I find very interesting in what you're saying is your positive view of the way democracies can have a positive ... because this has been an argument --
Oh, that's a bunch of academic nonsense. That gives people an opportunity to write something, you see. You can philosophize about the inadequacies of democracy, and it's difficulty when it faces authoritarian regimes where there's great continuity of foreign policy. Well, you can have continuity and a lousy policy, or you can have change when change is necessary. Continuity is not necessarily the only thing you look for in a foreign policy. There is a degree of continuity in [authoritarian regimes'] foreign policy, and there is in our administrations too. There's no lack of continuity in the United States national interests from regime to regime, from administration to administration. There may be differences in pursuing those interests. Generally, they're not drastic differences. From time to time you get drastic differences, you get major changes in policy with a change in administration. But generally speaking, the continuity of interests remains. And the method of dealing with them does not radically alter. We're a dynamic society, however, and change is part of a dynamic society. And I would be upset if all we had was rigidity. The characteristic of American thinking is pragmatism. If there's any American philosophy, as the philosophers had once told me, it is that we have a pragmatic approach, we deal with issues and problems with openness and flexibility. We take into account circumstances.
And at the electoral process, the process of movements in this country?
That's not a bad way to bring about change. If change is to be brought about, what better way than that it should be brought about by some manner of public debate, a choice? What better way? Do you have to wait for somebody to die to bring about change? No, not in a democratic system. You can vote him out of office if you don't like what he's doing. Or, you can vote him into office if you like what he proposes. That's one thing about foreign policy: it is a matter of constant debate in the body politic. That was not always true, you know. Foreign policy in the old days was the reserve of a few. It was then "foreigners" that we were dealing with. Now the "foreigners" are us, and foreign policy is not the preserve of an elite, just like the diplomatic service is not the preserve of the elite. And that's an important point. The diplomatic service in the United States represents the broadest possible cross-section of American strength and youth, and intelligence.
Some years ago, coming back to the diplomatic service, I was asked by the Secretary of State to chair a committee to review the recruitment and the examination of candidates for the career service. And I put together a very broad committee of professionals and then we called witnesses from all sorts of relevant organizations and points of view and departments, and we considered the desirability, for example, and the role of an affirmative action program. We considered the desirability and role of the examination procedures, themselves -- how well they were serving our purposes in producing the kind of people we wanted. The recruitment procedure has to produce the kind of candidates you want. The examination procedure has to give you a way of selecting the best of the candidates. We still were getting, and still are getting, between 10,000 and 15,000 applicants every year for the foreign service. And we choose, depending upon the budgetary requirements, anywhere between 100 and 250 in any one year. And that gives you a wide opportunity to chose from a wide spectrum of candidacies. Now that committee came to the conclusion that both the recruitment and examination procedures should seek to tap the widest possible range of American talent -- that it was not designed to produce an elite out of an elite, say, the university structure. That it was worthwhile to reach out all across the country, that what you wanted was a process which would allow you to draw on the multitude of strengths of the American nation, including its various elements -- whether in terms of male/female, or whether in terms of ethnic origin, and whether in terms of relative affluence.
Do you have trouble explaining this system to the foreign nationals that you deal with in diplomacy?
No, most of them know us quite well. The people you deal with in international diplomacy generally are fairly sophisticated about the world, in most cases. Now there are some new nations that come on the scene where they haven't had a tradition of involvement in foreign affairs, but that period is now passing. Most nations of the world now have a core of informed individuals who know a great deal about the world. And in most cases, most of them know a great deal about the United States -- either they served at the UN and have seen it in action, or they've actually served in Washington, or they may have studied in Washington, or they've had contact with the American scene. We're a very pervasive culture in the world today, you know. Even, to a certain extent, behind the Iron Curtain. Within the Soviet Bloc there are institutions of study of the United States that are well staffed, and they play a very important role in producing the kind of analysis and understanding of the United States that is necessary for them to make their choices. As a matter of fact, that's a good thing. You wouldn't want them to stumble by making a mistake either as to our purpose or our strength or our determination.
What about the other side of that equation? That is, American understanding of the world and of different peoples?
Oh yeah. You know, that old business that we don't know about, understand the world, that's nonsense. For the last 40 or 50 years, the United States has been a part of the outside world in a way that goes beyond any previous experience of any nation, in many ways. We've got a large group of people who have lived and studied abroad, or who have spent some time trying to understand other cultures and other peoples. In the State Department, for example, we have people who speak dozens of obscure languages, and who have lived all over the world, who have devoted not just a few years, but a lifetime of study of given cultures. We both specialize and we generalize in this regard. And then we draw on at various times the academic community, the media, the various interest groups.
For example, when I was Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, I had an advisory committee that met three or four times a year, and it consisted of people from those various communities whom we would clear, so they could come in. We would present our problems to them, and say "This is what we're working on, this is what we're thinking. What do you think?" We would try to produce for these meetings that expertise which would supplement our own expertise. Now if we wanted to be arrogant, we could have said, "Oh, we don't need them, we know all that we need to know." But you never know all that you need to know. So, as a result, I had this committee which for three days would sit in a very quite place, sometimes in Washington, sometimes out of Washington, and review what we were doing. As a matter of fact, one of the professors from this campus was member of that committee: Professor Scalapino was a member of that advisory group. He's an internationally respected authority on East Asia, and I can assure you that his thoughts were considered very carefully, as were the thoughts of all the others. We send our professionals out into the American university system, either as students in an in-service training program, or as diplomats in residence, or just as speech-makers. The fact that we do that indicates that we're trying to tap the larger pool of knowledge of what's going on in the world that exists in the university system, and that has, I think, served very well to increase our understanding.
Let's take an issue like human rights. Is it frustrating to reach a situation where the American people understand the limits of what we can do in countries that may be authoritarian but that are our allies? Countries whom we would like to see move in a direction more compatible with our values but, in the present situation that's hard to achieve?
Emphasis in that regard shifts and has shifted. That's well known, say, between the previous administration and the present administration. But that does not mean that the present administration has abandoned the consideration that human rights is something that the United States must take an interest in. I don't think any administration can abandon concern over that, because the American people want to stand for something, and the administration has to represent what the American people stand for. And there's no question that the American people do not stand for repression, brutality, torture, you name it. We have a concept. Now, on the other hand, the manner in which one tactically pursues the dedication to that at any given moment, and what differentiation you may make between immediate interests, longer-term interests, strategic interests versus interests of a principle importance in our general outlook, that's different. And there things do shift. And they shift, possibly, understandably.
But I think at the foundation of it, there's no doubt in my mind that a concern for human rights is not an eradicable element in American foreign policy, and that's already been demonstrated by what this administration has had to say about it, when people accused it of having abandoned human rights. The administration refused to accept that it had abandoned it as an element of policy. Now, what degree of priority you may attach in a particular circumstance, that's debatable. But it's part of the core element of American foreign policy, and I think it will continue to be so.
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