Philip D. Zelikow led the congressionally chartered inquiry into the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Now, he is laying the groundwork for a national commission to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic and propose forward-looking policy recommendations.

This fine and lucid scholarship has the additional benefit of the eye of an experienced practitioner as Zelikow addresses the question of whether U.S. President Woodrow Wilson could have mediated a peace deal in 1916 or 1917 to end World War I before the United States joined the fray. 

[Subscription required] A new book about a forgotten attempt to resolve World War I sheds light on the struggles facing the West’s diplomats today.

The passing of Brent Scowcroft is an opportunity for a bit of reflection about the U.S. foreign policy elite and its attitude toward American military intervention in world affairs. There is a tendency, here and there, to think of such an elite as a “blob” with common views. There is no meaningful definition of the U.S. foreign policy elite between, say, 1980 and at least 2010, that would not have included Brent Scowcroft. Nor was he a marginal figure in that group.