Episode 11: The Memo Machine

Guests

Daniel Balke | fp21 Executive Board member

Daniel is a Ph.D. student in political science at Berkeley and a Strategy and Operations Officer in the Fragility, Conflict, and Violence Group at the World Bank Group in Washington, D.C. He previously worked as an assistant to former World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and as an international economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Aaron Faust | fp21 Strategy and Design

Aaron holds a Ph.D. in Middle East History and Statecraft and is the author of The Ba'thification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein's Totalitarianism. He has served in several positions at the State Department, working mainly on Iraq, Syria, and counter-ISIS issues. He is currently a Foreign Affairs Analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Transcript

Written by an error-loving robot.

Alex Bollfrass
This week, we are joined by Daniel Balke and Aaron Faust. Both are active founding volunteers of fp21 and have poured gallons of sweat equity into building the intellectual and organizational foundation of our young outfit. Our guests will introduce their background after they do that the conversation touches on the difference between training in foreign policy versus that in the military, possible ways of mobilizing outside expertise the possibility of bringing design thinking into the foreign policymaking process, especially when it comes to the design of decision memos. Finally, both Daniel and Aaron share their views on what constitutes success for fp21. As you listen to the conversation, please keep in mind that the views they expressed are their personal takes not those of the institutions that employ them.

Aaron Faust
My name is Aaron Foust. I am currently an Iraq analyst at the US Department of State. Before that, I worked in the Bureau of conflict and stabilization operations. So I have to provide a disclaimer that nothing I say today represents US government policy and is totally my own opinion based on my status as a volunteer with fp21. I have a PhD in Middle East history and statecraft from Boston University, and have lived in the Middle East for a number of years and wrote a book called The bad suffocation of Iraq. Saddam Hussein's totalitarianism.

Daniel Balke
My name is Daniel Balke. I am a strategy and Operations Officer at the World Bank in the fragility conflict and violence group. I've been at the bank for a few years in a few different roles. I previously worked in the Middle East in North Africa on refugee issues and post-conflict reconstruction issues. I started off at the bank working as a writer for President Jim Yong Kim, who is now former president of the bank. Before that, I spent a few years at the Treasury Department in the Office of International Affairs working primarily on Latin America issues. I'm also now pursuing my PhD in political science at the University of California Berkeley, I'm in my third year. What drew me to fp21 was my belief that utilizing evidence more systematically and more effectively in US foreign policymaking in Policymaking more broadly, will help to improve the lives and the welfare of billions of people policy that is enormously consequential for the lives of people across the globe, demanding that we draw on the incredible data information, analytical tools and approaches that are relied upon across several spheres of life, from business to sports to medicine can dramatically improve outcomes and policy and by extension, the lives in the welfare of those who policy affects.

Aaron Faust

The foreign policy realm, unlike in the military realm, or even in the intelligence community is based on ad hoc decision making is based on personal experience, and doesn't always go through a rigorous process whereby we check the evidence, challenge assumptions, and look for the best ideas and how to make those a reality as opposed to battling over turf representing what in DC we call equities of wherever we show up. And that to me leads to poor outcomes. Whereas the Department of Defense has doctrine up the wazoo, and you go to boot camp when you first get there, and you spend weeks and weeks doing these things. When my neighbor used to work on nuclear submarines, he had to spend six months in a course just learning about how to work on a nuclear submarine before they would let him set foot on it. When you join the Foreign Service. You spend a few weeks at a 100 when I joined the Foreign Service, I got no training and I was shipped out to a country to Do a mission. And it was awesome. But I had to learn on the fly. And I made a ton of mistakes. Because I had to do that we need to do better training, we need to design our processes and our policies a lot more thoughtfully, and based on rigorous processes and analysis and evidence. And that's what produces the integrity in the policy. There is a machine a State Department machine that produces reams and reams of paper for everybody to read before they go into meetings with that paper is not necessarily produced based on best standards and evidence that, for example, in what works in negotiation, or what works in peace processes, or how to end civil wars, or all the things that political scientists try to teach us. Even those good diplomats who know how to deliver the points and know how to extract concessions aren't necessarily doing it for the right reasons, we need to start treating diplomacy and foreign policymaking the same way we train our intelligence analysts or our military folks, we need to develop statecraft standards that are agreed upon standards through the community, about which there is rigorous evidence that shows that there are certain practices that work better than others so that we stop making the same mistakes over and over again, we send right now people to learn Arabic for two years. So they can then use it in post for a couple of years. That just shows at the State Department and our foreign policymaking establishment, what it's willing to invest in, but it's not really willing to invest in sending people to get degrees in data science or in analytics. As a result, I think we are falling behind. We need to start treating foreign policy and diplomacy, like the profession it is to marry the training, the experience, and the evidence is something that we really need to do you know, how do you do that? Obviously, we need more training at the beginning, we need more training in the middle. And we need more training when folks get into the senior Foreign Service. And the State Department really needs to value that. And they need to value expertise in particular topics. Sometimes folks don't want to admit that they don't know or they don't feel like they have time to ask. And so we need a repository of people who can provide those things, whether they're inside or outside the government on short basis, DOD has 11 federally funded research and development corporations, the State Department has none. Though there is an industry of quote unquote, beltway bandits that have built up around the humanitarian assistance and development industry. There really isn't one when it comes to diplomacy. The department needs people who are cleared but who don't necessarily work in the building to research the questions and find the answers from a longer-term strategic perspective that the department and that the NSC and that our diplomats want to know instead of having to pull from a god or USAID funded study or from something else, once we start to see diplomacy really is a technocratic profession that could use that kind of improvement. That's when we'll start to get somewhere.

Daniel Balke
What I'd love to see is big recruiting pushes for young academics in political science and related fields history that have the expertise that is sorely needed for our foreign policy. Looking at an academic job market that was already extremely difficult as universities have faced the fiscal crunch of COVID has gone to an even worse place. These are brilliant people who have much to offer many of them trained in international affairs issues, or in specific countries or regions that would be of extraordinary value to the process of US foreign policymaking, whether it be as members of faculty members or staffers at the State Department, Office of social science research that I've heard you talk about.

Aaron Faust
Another thing I would love to see more completely integrated into the department, State Department and into the NSC process is design thinking, design thinking can actually take you to a lot of these relatively simple what seemed like simple in the end fixes or improvements to processes and even policies, even just systematically thinking through processes or policies, recommendations and changing them as we test them and iterate and prototypes and all of that facilitation, people who are trained in techniques to lead conversations and move build teams build trust and move people most efficiently toward the best possible outcome. In addition to design, there are all kinds of different methodologies for thinking through problems, agile software development, all kinds of things like that has just become the normal way that the private sector business these days and the most successful companies that have the biggest return on investment use these technologies they use they use design thinking they use agile and we should to

Daniel Balke
A more practical tool that I’ve become quite enamored with. refining the humble decision memo, the simple two to three pager four pager that you send up to the senior official that sets out an issue gives some context and then sets out maybe two or three options and then recommends one.

Aaron Faust
The humble decision memo can be very powerful because it's the way people ingest information. And whether that's a memo, or whether that's graphic and data or charts or some kind of visualization of the evidence, we need to be producing the things that are going to be most impactful and successful and tailored to the leadership of the organizations and their preferences so that it meets their learning styles.

Daniel Balke
We can do a lot more with these, changing this format and template of decision memos on consequential issues to mandate that analysts or whomever was involved in drafting the memo set out the data and the evidence that they drew on to formulate their recommendation, the causal logic of their argument, what feeds into sort of the state of the world that you think your recommendation will produce? And how will we know it? When we see it? And when can we expect to start seeing it? How will we know when it's not going to happen? And when can we expect to see that? And how will you know the efficacy of the recommendation be monitored and evaluated? I think you can actually do a lot of that within memos by changing sort of the memo process. You can also magnify that to the level of fully fleshed out of policy proposals. Administrations should be really thinking about whenever a new big policy proposal is that they put 1/4 should feature all these things. What is the information that went into this decision stating this clearly? What is the causal logic we expect to happen? What does success look like? What does failure look like? When will we know? And how will we monitor having this conversation? I think with the public, obviously keeping sensitive information sensitive, but having a more transparent discussion with the public and with Congress, I think would help produce more robust policy, more trust in the integrity Aaron to use the word your word, which I think is absolutely correct, the more integrity for more integrates foreign policy and better outcomes, ultimately, rather than I think the superficial discussion that colors much of our foreign policy debate right now. Success for fp21 means that when the President strolls into the Oval Office and gives the solemn televised address to the nation at 10 o'clock eastern time on the crucial issue on the key foreign policy step that the President is about to have our country take that the presentation of that is based in the framework that fb 21 has articulated in its framework report, it is clear on what the policy is, it is clear on the just as we've discussed on the information that was gathered and used to formulate this policy clearly stipulates to the American public the causal logic in this step by step sequence of events that we anticipate will happen, what success looks like, what it will mean, when we know we're succeeding when we can expect that to happen, and crucially what what it will look like if we don't if you look back at some of our most well recognized foreign policy failures, a lot of its centers on people being able to make the case that it's not clear that this is not working, putting some constraints on what success is, which means that veering outside of that constitutes signs of failure, laying that out to the public to is something I would love to see the president do. And I would love for the President to in his address to the nation or her address to the nation make it very clear how progress is going to be monitored, and what will happen if success appears like it's being achieved or if we appear to be going off the course. I'm very animated by this notion of more transparent discussions between policy elite in the public NBC in policy policymakers in the executive branch and Congress, the situation I just laid out for the president addressing the nation. I would love that to be the basis of congressional testimony and discussions between executive branch witnesses and members of Congress,

Aaron Faust
we will see success when we fail. And we don't necessarily blame the people who are carrying out the policy. We re-examine the evidence, we see what we did wrong. And we try again a different way. We will also see success when we see the entire foreign policy establishment from the president to the NSC to Congress, to the State Department and to all the other agencies pulling in the same direction very effectively. Right now, these organizations or agencies go up to the hill and they try to provide as little information as possible to get through the hearing and justify the policy. See that has been made with relatively little input from Congress. So that Congress feels like it has to pass laws that in fact, restrict our options when we're making foreign policy provide onerous reporting requirements for these agencies sapping energy and researches US foreign policy has the ability to and whether it likes it or not, has a huge effect on the world. When it's done poorly. It affects a lot of people all over the globe, and it affects Americans to a significant degree.

Alex Bollfrass
If you had a chance to read this week's newsletter, you'll have seen that we're friendly, excited to have received our first grant from Carnegie Corporation. Until now fp21 has been an entirely volunteer effort. Even our theme composer Ronan McDermott, is still waiting on the bottle of whiskey I promised him. The good news is that this generosity from the Carnegie Corporation will help grow the community and get more people involved. Plans are underway. Speaking of money, we also have a donation button now, it's pretty, it's shiny, so it's inconceivable that you wouldn't want to click it, we would certainly deeply appreciate it. Another item you might have seen in the newsletter is that Ryan will be stepping back from his role as chief scribe to focus on his new government job. Congratulations, right. Another staff departure I'm sad to announce is our intern, Emma Johnson, who has done a lot of terrific work behind the scenes on this very podcast of the fruit of which will become apparent in the coming weeks. The item in the newsletter that caught my eye was from an article that Rosa Brooks wrote for the New York Times. She's the author of the terrific book, how everything became war, and the military became everything. She has also served as a policy advisor at the Pentagon. And as a Georgetown Law professor, her main argument is that we need to broaden our understanding of competence. It's of course worth reading and full. The element that I especially appreciated is that she calls out the need for competent citizenship. Here's a quote directly from the article. We need citizens who understand our political system, and who are capable of evaluating competing arguments, and we need leaders capable of developing and carrying out wise policies. That's it, to me really encapsulates much of the drive behind fp21. And its focus on process, you can almost call it the plumbing of foreign policy. It's our bet that injecting evidence processes into our government institutions will help leaders develop and carry out those wise policies. And just as importantly, help citizens evaluate competing arguments. If we can move closer to a culture that values articulating the reasons and evidence for one's policy positions. Whether that's inside the government or the way the executive branch explains its decisions to Congress or to the American people, we as citizens can if we so choose the much better informed about the kinds of leaders we wish to elect and to evaluate their work once they are in office. As Aaron and Daniel discussed, the state's government remains the most consequential organization for humanity. It doesn't just exert the most influence in shaping our present but creating the conditions for humanity's long-term future as well. So to me, working to improve the quality of American policymaking goes far beyond serving the American people's interests, although we want to do that well, too. So isn't that donation button enticing?