To Foreign Policy Veteran, the Real Danger Is at Home
The challenges at home have prompted a man who has spent his entire career as a policymaker and student of world affairs to turn his attention inward. Mr. Haass recently published a book called “The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens,” outlining ways Americans can help heal their own society, like “Be Informed,” “Remain Civil,” “Put Country First” — all admittedly bromides and yet somehow often elusive these days. In addition to consultant work, he wants to spend much of the next chapter of his life promoting the teaching of civics.
“My own trajectory has changed,” he observed during a pair of interviews summing up two decades at the council. “This new book is not something I would have predicted writing five or 10 years ago, but I actually think it’s almost a recasting of American democracy. Now it’s become a national security concern. And that’s different.”
By dint of position as well as temperament, Mr. Haass, 71, is a member in good standing of the establishment that has fallen into disfavor in the era of Donald J. Trump, a voice of the largely bipartisan “realist” consensus that for better or worse defined America’s place in the world for most of the three-quarters of a century since World War II. It is a clubby world, of course, one that invariably leads to charges of elitist groupthink or even conspiracy theories. For his final appearance as president of the council this past week, Mr. Haass interviewed Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken onstage and online, the 27th secretary of state to appear before the council.
“It’s hard to think of anyone who’s done more to make this institution what it is,” Mr. Blinken said, praising his host.
Source: The New York Times
