What They Think
A Survey of the Views of
Foreign Leaders and Diplomats (2014)

“An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every government for two reasons: the one is, that, independently of the merits of any particular plan or measure, it is desirable, on various accounts, that it should appear to other nations as the offspring of a wise and honorable policy; the second is, that in doubtful cases, particularly where the national councils may be warped by some strong passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed.

What has not America lost by her want of character with foreign nations; and how many errors and follies would she not have avoided, if the justice and propriety of her measures had, in every instance, been previously tried by the light in which they would probably appear to the unbiased part of mankind?”

—James Madison, Federalist No. 63, March 1, 1788

A Statement of Purpose

It is one of the peculiarities of modern reporting on international relations that the speeches of foreign leaders (presidents, prime ministers, foreign secretaries) seldom garner much attention in the news media. It would be possible to study intensively the Syrian crisis, for instance, and never actually have the benefit of reading (apart from a brief comment here and there) what the Syrian foreign minister says about the civil war in his country. When the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, became intimately involved in the plan to rid Syria of its chemical weapons, the New York Times ran an article on Lavrov and noted his importance in diplomatic circles, but the if the Times has ever run an extended transcript of a speech by Lavrov it has escaped my attention. (It might have happened, but it's rare. The Times once did this sort of thing much more regularly). The NSA bugged the phones of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, for over ten years, beginning in 2002; but it is a safe bet that the geniuses running our intelligence establishment often don’t pay attention to her public speeches. It takes a lot of man hours to decipher all that babble from cell phone chatter; why bother reading a carefully considered statement?

This blog proceeds on the assumption that “what others think” is a useful thing for us to know. What they say publicly, it may be further ventured, is frequently a very good guide to what they think in private. It was said of Woodrow Wilson that he was far more intimate when speaking to a crowd than in a tête-à-tête. In the former setting, he was expansive and revealed his true thoughts; in the latter, he was withdrawn and often unresponsive. Wilson was unusual in that regard, perhaps, but the point remains. In trying to understand what others think, a necessary but often neglected aspect of that inquiry is to read what they have actually said. This may seem obvious (perhaps because it is obvious), but the point is often neglected by major media outlets. That what foreign leaders say seldom reveals the entirety of their thinking is doubtless true, and we should always be on the lookout for deceptions and omissions. So, too, things said by diplomats tend to be put diplomatically, and may require additional investigation to determine what they really mean. But we proceed on the assumption that what they have to say is worth hearing.

David Hendrickson
February 21, 2014

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