How the Blob Stifles Debate

A new paper finds that many American foreign policy analysts are under professional and social pressure to pretend to be more hawkish on China than they really are.

A new paper from Michael Cerny and Rory Truex found that many American foreign policy analysts are under professional and social pressure to pretend to be more hawkish on China than they really are. The South China Morning Post reports:

They found that 21.8 per cent of respondents experienced social pressure to express certain views on US policy towards China and this disproportionately affected women and younger or non-white specialists.

“I think that as a young person and a liberal person and a woman in this field, there’s a pressure to overcompensate by being more hawkish,” one interviewee told them.

This is an interesting investigation into how pressure to conform drives people to mouth support for policies that are more aggressive and confrontational than they believe is warranted. It also calls attention to how many analysts fear “being perceived as naive or compromised by their views on, ties to, and experiences in China.” The good news is that there there is a wide range of views about China and what U.S. policy should be. The bad news is that many analysts believe they have to repeat conventional hawkish lines and feel compelled to censor themselves so that they are not marginalized. When critics of the foreign policy establishment talk about the groupthink of “the Blob,” this is the sort of thing we have in mind.