Today, Michael McFaul argues that the Iran war and recent peace deal amount to serious American foreign policy blunders; Matthew Turpin asks how the Trump administration’s decision-making processes enabled the Iranian regime to survive the war and score a “psychological victory”; and Peter Berkowitz draws on a recent papal encyclical to explore how liberal education and virtuous citizenship can endure in the age of AI.
War with Iran
“President Trump’s war with Iran and now peace with Iran—formally codified in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Iran and the United States signed by Trump on June 17 in Versailles, France—have deeply damaged American national interests,” Senior Fellow Michael McFaul begins this new essay at his Substack. McFaul argues that the war was unnecessary and “should rank among America’s greatest foreign policy disasters in decades.” He continues that Iran and its military “did not pose an imminent threat to the American homeland.” McFaul notes that the stated US war aims were: “(1) eliminate Iran’s nuclear program forever; (2) destroy Iran’s missile arsenal and limit future production; (3) end Iranian support for terrorist organizations; and (4) facilitate democratic regime change.” After months of fighting, the former US ambassador to Russia says, “Trump achieved none of his original war aims.” He goes on to argue that the “costs of this war vastly outweighed the benefits.” Read more here.
Also writing on the current state of the Iran deal, Visiting Fellow Matthew Turpin argues that the “conflict is probably best interpreted as an effort by the Trump administration to achieve a decisive outcome and when that failed, the president switched to waging a punitive campaign without fully appreciating that Tehran can wage a punitive campaign as well.” Turpin says the Trump administration “clearly believed that a knockout blow would enable them to achieve a decisive victory and that they could impose terms on Tehran.” The national security scholar then lays out questions he would, as a historian, like to investigate to determine why the war was launched. Turpin says it seems clear “that the president has created the conditions in which his subordinates are incentivized to tell him what he wants to hear,” and that in doing so, Trump “has created the perfect conditions to make terrible errors.” Read more here.
Artificial Intelligence and Higher Education
In his weekly column for RealClearPolitics, Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz reflects on the challenge for liberal education posed by the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence tools, particularly by students. “Whereas overdependence on AI—or, for that matter, on human authorities—weakens the moral imagination and atrophies the intellect, pondering and interpreting, talking and listening, and writing and rewriting help the mind grow supple and strong,” Berkowitz argues. The political philosopher warns that “American citizens will be ill-equipped to form responsible judgments about AI’s blessings and curses without sustained study of the principles and practice of free societies.” Berkowitz then turns to a discussion of Pope Leo XIV’s recently published encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas, “one purpose of which is to educate about the AI challenge.” Berkowitz praises the document for clarifying “how AI can degrade and subjugate human beings and how human beings can use AI to degrade and subjugate others,” but also notes it falls short in highlighting “the moral superiority of rights-protecting democracies even with their flaws to authoritarian nation-states that reject basic rights and fundamental freedoms.” Read more here.
Technology and Development
Can a phone be a cow? It could in 1990s Bangladesh. This was the insight of a small number of mobile phone market pioneers who helped catalyze the spread of the greatest technological revolution in human history. Listen as George Mason University economist Philip Auerswald speaks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how the extension of connectivity to traditionally excluded populations led to wide-scale transformations in productivity. They discuss the role of little-known entrepreneurs such as Iqbal Quadir and innovators like Claude Shannon in bringing the mobile phone to the entire world. Other topics include William Nordhaus’s paper on the cost of illumination as a powerful metric of human progress, Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of innovation as new combinations, and what Auerswald calls the most important question the field of economics can ask: how much of human progress is inevitable, and how much depends on the determination of remarkable individuals? Watch or listen here.
Monetary Policy
“In the next crisis, 2020 will replay at a larger scale,” Senior Fellow John Cochrane writes in this column on the challenges facing Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh. “The Treasury will want to borrow trillions for bailouts, stimulus, and likely military investment,” and the pressures on the Fed to cooperate via “[monetizing] government debt will be immense.” Cochrane argues that, in this scenario, the Fed should resist only to a point. “Tax, spending, and foreign policy, even if unwise, are far outside the Fed’s limited mandate,” the Grumpy Economist advises the new leader of the US central bank. “Great leaders are forged by their wisdom in the face of adversity,” Cochrane concludes, adding that “every time the president tweets his disapproval, Warsh’s reputation for independence will grow.” Read more here.
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