[yeezyszn]

Fascinating - especially this quote about AdT: "Especially in matters Kennan understood well, he thought the public should have no say. His diaries show that he was a keen reader of Alexis de Tocqueville, and while he never mentions this specific point, his insistence that foreign policy be conducted by the well born and well educated, without interference from the masses, echoes the French nobleman’s argument that aristocracies are better than democracies at diplomacy. ... Yet at least Kennan was honest about his preference for expert rule; our present elites, by contrast, insist that their expert rule actually is democracy."

If you view the early 20th century as peak-institutionalism, it's clear the pendulum has swung to populism... but how much further can it continue to swing? What was the most populist period of our history? William Jennings Bryan comes to mind but I don't have a sense for that era of populism compares to now

[Animats]

> Especially in matters Kennan understood well, he thought the public should have no say. His diaries show that he was a keen reader of Alexis de Tocqueville, and while he never mentions this specific point, his insistence that foreign policy be conducted by the well born and well educated, without interference from the masses, echoes the French nobleman’s argument that aristocracies are better than democracies at diplomacy.

Well, in the WWI-WWII period, most of the national leaders in Europe knew each other. In the WWI period, when the old monarchies still had some life in them, many of those on opposite sides were related. That's over by the end of WWII.

Here's the "Long Telegram".[1]

"War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other." - Valéry.

[1] https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/george-kenn...

[earthboundkid]

> If you view the early 20th century as peak-institutionalism, it's clear the pendulum has swung to populism... but how much further can it continue to swing?

We aren’t anywhere near populism in foreign policy. The public has essentially no input into it. Trump tried to go in a direction the bureaucracy disapproved of, and they mostly just ignored him. Biden diverged from the consensus on Afghanistan and got crucified for it. But can anyone explain to the public why the US continues to support Saudi Arabia? Good luck to that.