The previous few years have created one thing of an existential disaster for the U.S. foreign-policy neighborhood. A sequence of huge blunders—the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, regime change in Libya—have led many Individuals to query the experience of U.S. foreign-policy practitioners. Some have argued that President Donald Trump’s two election victories in 2016 and 2024 had been populist vindications of the notion that presidents don’t must take heed to specialists as a lot as their guts.
However most worldwide relations students had been skeptical of the coverage miscues listed above—and stated so in public. In a single 2004 survey of U.S. lecturers, simply 15 p.c reported backing Washington’s transfer to go to battle in Iraq the yr prior—a stage of assist a lot decrease than among the many basic public. It was coverage practitioners who too usually ignored students’ warnings.
The previous few years have created one thing of an existential disaster for the U.S. foreign-policy neighborhood. A sequence of huge blunders—the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, regime change in Libya—have led many Individuals to query the experience of U.S. foreign-policy practitioners. Some have argued that President Donald Trump’s two election victories in 2016 and 2024 had been populist vindications of the notion that presidents don’t must take heed to specialists as a lot as their guts.
Contained in the Scenario Room: The Concept and Apply of Disaster Choice-Making, ed. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo, Oxford College Press, 512 pp., $29.99, September 2025
However most worldwide relations students had been skeptical of the coverage miscues listed above—and stated so in public. In a single 2004 survey of U.S. lecturers, simply 15 p.c reported backing Washington’s transfer to go to battle in Iraq the yr prior—a stage of assist a lot decrease than among the many basic public. It was coverage practitioners who too usually ignored students’ warnings.
The truth that students have failed to maneuver the U.S. policymaking needle highlights how desperately each communities should bridge the hole between them. Contained in the Scenario Room: The Concept and Apply of Disaster Choice-Making, edited by Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of Columbia College’s College of Worldwide and Public Affairs (SIPA), and former Secretary of State-turned-SIPA professor Hillary Rodham Clinton, is the newest try to get worldwide relations students and policymakers to speak to one another.
Of their introduction, Clinton and Yarhi-Milo promise that readers will higher perceive two key areas: “first, how the findings from the literature on disaster decision-making in worldwide relations can assist advance our understanding of current successes and failures in U.S. overseas coverage; and second, how the experiences of practitioners who’ve been concerned in disaster conditions can assist or problem theories in tutorial scholarship about how leaders suppose.”
Clinton and Yarhi-Milo assembled their contributors with care. The tutorial aspect contains chapters by among the brightest minds in worldwide relations—together with Rose McDermott on the position of feelings, Elizabeth Saunders and Jessica Weeks on public opinion, and Austin Carson on covert motion. All these chapters are accessible summaries of the educational state of information for these readers who want a refresher on important literature.
On the policymaker aspect, luminaries equivalent to British politician Catherine Ashton and U.S. diplomat Dennis Ross contribute chapters about their foreign-policy experiences. The practitioner roster is bipartisan, with Democratic stalwarts equivalent to Clinton and former Protection Secretary Leon Panetta contributing alongside Ambassador John J. Sullivan and Nationwide Safety Advisor Robert O’Brien, who provide views from their service within the first Trump administration.
U.S. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and members of the nationwide safety workforce obtain an replace on the mission towards Osama bin Laden within the White Home Scenario Room in Washington on Could 1, 2011.Pete Souza/The White Home by way of Getty Photographs
These coverage practitioners’ recounting of their nationwide safety best hits—negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal, planning for the Osama bin Laden raid, the killing of Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and the tried deterrence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—principally make for participating and considerate reads. There are additionally some spicy particulars; for instance, it appears clear from his contribution that O’Brien isn’t any fan of former Protection Secretary Mark Esper.
Contained in the Scenario Room is a noble effort at bridging the academic-policymaker hole, and the editors have recruited a wonderful set of contributors. Sadly, the ensuing e-book additionally highlights the absurdity of conducting this train proper now—and the challenges of doing it for the longer term.
Studying via the e-book’s chapters, it was troublesome to not conclude that the hole between students and practitioners nonetheless exists. As somebody who has edited multiple quantity in my day, I understand how troublesome it may be to get authors to include insights from different chapters. On this occasion, nonetheless, the shortage of engagement is a inform in and of itself.
For instance, Carson’s chapter on covert motion is beneficial, but it surely does probably not have interaction with both Panetta’s chapter on the hunt for bin Laden or O’Brien’s chapter on the killing of Baghdadi. Equally, neither Panetta nor O’Brien have interaction with Carson’s chapter. The identical is true when analyzing Saunders and Weeks’ scholarly chapter the position of public opinion and former Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s practitioner chapter on the identical subject. Whereas all these sections are value studying, the collaborating authors appear to be speaking previous one another.
This downside is exacerbated by the contradictions contained throughout the practitioner chapters. For instance, each Panetta and O’Brien acknowledge that they excluded the White Home chief of workers when planning their covert operations concentrating on bin Laden and Baghdadi, respectively. However this contradicts Nuland’s suggestion in her chapter that political advisors must be included in coverage deliberations. Sadly, not one of the extra tutorial chapters wrestle with this conundrum.
In a handout picture, U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and different advisors monitor updates on the killing of Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi within the White Home Scenario Room on Oct. 26, 2019.Shealah Craighead/The White Home by way of Getty Photographs
A specter is haunting this e-book—that of Robert Jervis, a legendary scholar and former SIPA professor who handed away practically 4 years in the past. Clinton and Yarhi-Milo acknowledge Jervis because the inspiration for Contained in the Scenario Room. Jervis was the uncommon scholar whom practitioners took critically; he was the particular person the CIA referred to as on to evaluate outstanding intelligence failures, equivalent to its failure to foresee the 1979 Iranian Revolution. By way of each his scholarship and his private community, Jervis was in a position to affect how policymakers framed their foreign-policy selections.
Mockingly, whereas most of the scholarly concepts contained in Contained in the Scenario Room have worth, their progenitors lack Jervis’s formidable fame. In the mean time, he has no successor.
There’s one other unstated bias within the subjects Clinton and Yarhi-Milo selected for this edited quantity: a bias for motion. Contained in the Scenario Room primarily covers proactive insurance policies by the US that formed the worldwide setting, equivalent to covert motion or high-stakes negotiations.
To make sure, acts of coercion, covert motion, backchannel diplomacy, and high-level summitry are essential parts of overseas coverage. All too usually, nonetheless, foreign-policy crises are workout routines in speedy response quite than preemption—cases through which one other actor in worldwide relations precipitates a scenario and U.S. officers don’t have any selection however to react in actual time.
It might have been fascinating for Clinton and Yarhi-Milo to incorporate chapters on the disaster response to the 2012 assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, for instance, or the follow-up to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, assaults on Israel. By their sins of omission, the editors fail to acknowledge that a big fraction of U.S. overseas coverage quantities to wreck management.
Sadly, studying Contained in the Scenario Room throughout the second Trump administration can be a merciless train in absurdity. For instance, Carson’s recommendation concerning the want for secrecy with respect for covert motion is sound—it’s simply too unhealthy that he failed to say the stupidity of utilizing Sign to speak operational army particulars. Nuland’s remarks concerning the want for the manager department to inform members of Congress throughout any army motion is grimly amusing given the present administration’s delays in briefing the legislative department on its airstrikes on alleged drug boats within the Caribbean.
The chapter by Jennifer Klein, Rebecca Turkington, Melanne Verveer, and Rachel Vogelstein emphasizing the need of together with girls in disaster decision-making is properly taken, however to this administration it can sound like an train in DEI and due to this fact be ignored. Reid Pauly and Jessica Chen Weiss’ chapter on coercion is chock stuffed with sharp recommendation for practitioners, serving as a pointed reminder that the Trump administration’s lack of fidelity renders it incapable of coercing its means out of a paper bag.
All of the chapters stress the necessity for the sober evaluation of actionable intelligence—which can come as a shock to an administration decided to politicize it. Watching the Trump administration bumble its means via numerous foreign-policy crises makes it painful to learn recommendation that, in additional competent arms, is perhaps put to good use.
Contained in the Scenario Room is not going to bridge the hole between students and policymakers throughout the second Trump administration. However aspiring policymakers ought to hold it available for when—or if—they get an opportunity to select up the foreign-policy items come January 2029.
