Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser under both Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, died on Thursday. He was a great American. He served in the Air Force, taught, and worked in a variety of mostly defense-related posts as he advanced through the bureaucracy. Daniel DePetris is right that when it came to actually running things, Scowcroft set the standard. He welcomed internal debate, acted as a neutral arbiter, and gave the president a range of options.
Many eulogizers celebrated Scowcroft’s realism. “With Scowcroft now gone, foreign policy realists have lost their beloved dean,” DePetris wrote. He lauds the realist school of thought that Scowcroft embraced, “constantly on guard against hubris showing its ugly face and cognizant of America’s strengths as well as its limitations.”
Where the paeans to Scowcroft go wrong, however, is in the assessment of Scowcroft’s foreign policy vision. Simply put, time and time again, Scowcroft’s trust in diplomacy and willingness to kick problems down the road empowered America’s enemies and forced the far greater defense and security investments that he and his supporters subsequently warned against.
Consider Scowcroft’s constant opposition to sanctions on Iran. The 2003 National Intelligence Estimate and subsequent International Atomic Energy Agency reporting show that, at least prior to that year, the Islamic Republic of Iran did operate a covert nuclear weapons program. And yet, while Iran’s nuclear program was continuing apace, Scowcroft repeatedly advocated for lifting sanctions on Tehran. In a 1997 Foreign Affairs article, Scowcroft and Carter-era national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski argued, “There seems little justification for the treatment the United States currently accords Iran because of its nuclear program.” In a 2001 study group report for the Atlantic Council, Scowcroft and Lee Hamilton (an Indiana congressman who, during his 34-year tenure, led both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Intelligence Committee) signed on to the statement that “the U.S. sanctions are the main obstacle preventing the United States from pursuing its complete range of interests with Iran.”
Scowcroft consistently sought rapprochement with Iran at almost any price. After Iranian President Mohammad Khatami called for a “dialogue of civilizations,” Scowcroft criticized the Clinton administration for failing to engage immediately with the Iranian president. But Clinton’s caution was prudent. Not only did Khatami have no control over the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s then-covert nuclear program, but years later, top Khatami aide Abdollah Ramezanzadeh acknowledged Tehran’s lack of sincerity. “We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building,” he explained, “and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities.” Influential Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi elaborated in his memoirs. “The most advanced weapons must be produced inside our country even if our enemies don’t like it,” he wrote.
While realists praise Scowcroft’s opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Scowcroft also signed off on an Atlantic Council report that argued that the U.S. should consider Saddam Hussein’s Iraq rather than Iran to be the greatest state sponsor of terrorism.
Nor was his blind spot toward Iran an outlier. Scowcroft was as credulous about the power of diplomacy with North Korea. At the end of his final tenure as national security adviser, he signed off on the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear missiles from South Korea in order to cement a denuclearization deal with Pyongyang. Initially, it looked like Scowcroft had found the magic formula. On Dec. 18, 1991, South Korean President Roh Tae-woo announced that U.S. forces had completed the removal of its tactical nuclear arsenal from Korean territory. Just over a week later, North Korea agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Safeguards Agreement and permit inspections of Yongbyon nuclear complex. Over the next several weeks, North and South Korean officials signed a North-South Denuclearization Declaration in which the two Koreas forswore plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment and agreed not to test, manufacture, produce, possess, deploy, or use nuclear weapons. Both sides also agreed to inspections by a joint commission.
In hindsight, the removal of U.S. nuclear arms from Korea and the subsequent agreement to cancel its military exercises with South Korea in 1992 were mistakes. By the end of the year, all signs of progress had evaporated. Channels between the Koreas froze, and Pyongyang again blocked inspections. The chief thing inspectors had learned was that North Korea was on pace to produce more plutonium than the Americans had earlier estimated. Talks between North Korean and U.S. diplomats petered out. North Korea had never actually ceased work on Yongbyon. As Bush prepared to leave office, the depth of North Korean duplicity became clear. Appeasement failed. Kim Il Sung had played Scowcroft and Secretary of State James Baker for fools.
The list goes on. As the U.S. sought to isolate Hamas, Scowcroft urged Washington to engage the terrorist group. Just months prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Scowcroft signed onto a study group report arguing that the State Department’s definition of terrorism unfairly targeted only “one strand of the whole spectrum of politically motivated violence” and that terrorism was really little different from asymmetrical warfare.
Scowcroft may have been a good manager, and he considered himself a superior judge of policy ideas. “I don’t automatically think of good, new ideas. What I do better is pick out good ideas from bad ideas,” Scowcroft once told the Washington Post. “It is comforting to be doing things that make a difference. In the end, it’s the job that’s more important.”
Scowcroft did make a difference, but it was not always for the good. While he served his country in the way he thought best, his real legacy was to empower American adversaries and erode U.S. national security. He famously opposed the 2003 Iraq War, but he never considered how his counsel that Iraq posed a greater threat to the U.S. than Iran might have colored the opinion of those in George W. Bush’s inner circle, who were for the war before they were against it. Scowcroft served his country to the best of his ability — but if he is the dean of the realists, then he has shown just how unrealistic those modeling themselves after him can be.
Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.
