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News & Events

2009-11-05

Graduate Reflects on Service at Top Echelon of U.S. Foreign Policy

Prof. Eliot Cohen has returned to academia after two years serving at the highest echelon of American foreign policy. He says he emerged from government intact – “knowing who you are and what your values are” – thanks to his foundation at Maimonides School.

Prof. Cohen, a 1973 Maimonides graduate, is director of the strategic studies program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. During the last two years of the Bush Administration, he held the position of State Department counselor.

He talked of his experiences at an Oct. 31 program at his alma mater, sponsored by the Maimonides Alumni Council.

“I think the boss felt that I served her well,” Prof. Cohen said. “I think I helped move the ship of state a degree or two in the right direction.”

The "boss" was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, with whom he conferred daily and traveled every three months to Iraq and Afghanistan. Other areas of concentration ranged from Pakistan and Iran to Georgia and Somalian pirates.

Prof. Cohen recalled his high school days when rabbis would sit together at breakfast in the auditorium reading The New York Times. “You never know when you’re teaching, and those rabbis were teaching as they sat around that table,” Prof. Cohen declared. They exemplified the school’s philosophy of uncompromising observance and engagement with the world, he added.

Prof. Cohen said he excluded himself from one foreign policy area: the Arab-Israeli conflict. “I didn’t think it would be good for the U.S. government to have a prominent Jew involved in this,” he said. He also noted that he told Rice, “I don’t think this is going anywhere.”

But later in his remarks, while assessing the administration’s foreign policy record, Dr. Cohen asserted, “Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than George W. Bush.”

State Department counselor is a unique position, said Prof. Cohen: equivalent to an undersecretary, but without authority. He served as a liaison with the intelligence and defense officials, and handled a variety of special projects, including leading State’s response to the discovery of a nuclear reactor in Syria.

“One might think this was a pretty cool job – being able to give advice and not having any responsibility,” Dr. Cohen said wryly. But then there’s the realization that “the secretary of State may actually take your advice." Decisions at that level are usually 51-49, he added – and often lives are at stake.

One thing he learned, Prof. Cohen related, is that “the consequences of policy choices are frighteningly uncertain. One must act with as much integrity and responsibility as possible.”

Prof. Cohen said several components of the Bush foreign policy had positive outcomes, including relations with China, India and Japan. In Africa, the U.S. foreign aid program was very successful, he said. Failures he cited included Iran policy and omissions in Afghanistan.

Prof. Cohe, an early critic of the conduct of the war in Iraq, said that over the long haul, “we achieved something consequential, even if fragile. There really has been tremendous progress, and the war on terrorism has begun to pay dividends.”

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