[alephnerd]

During Cold War 1.0, a lot of analysts and operatives were 1st and 2nd gen immigrants from Eastern Europe, and had ties and culture experience to help inform policy against the Warsaw Pact.

After the 2000s, the US began increasingly limiting those with ethnic or potential familial ties from working beats related to those countries. A Chinese American wouldn't pass the security clearance muster for the China role, nor a Jewish American for an Israel role.

There were attempts to potentially remediate this during the Biden admin, but it fell to the wayside [0][1]

Some white dude who went to high school in White Plains and college at Tufts just isn't going to have the domain or cultural experience or knowledge needed to really understand China or Iran, and it legitimately has caused a lot of IR Policy to become divorced from reality.

[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/16/state-department-di...

[1] - https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/18/asian-americans-sta...

[neilv]

Interesting. Do US colleges and US TV/movies provide sufficient cultural understanding of US to other countries' governments, without them needing US immigrants as staffers?

[alephnerd]

> Do US colleges and US TV/movies provide sufficient cultural understanding of US to other countries' governments

Do French/German/Italian/<insert country here>?

They don't, and whatever global media Americans do consume tends to be Asian (overwhelmingly Japanese and Korean) or Latin American.

This isn't the 20th century anymore when a lot of 1st and 2nd gen immigrants had European ties. American in the 21st century is now Asia and Latin America facing.

[ianburrell]

Also, other countries send lots of students to the US. Some become immigrants but lots go back home.

[alephnerd]

Also, US-Europe immigration is largely moribund, so familial and social ties to European states are much weaker now than 50 years ago.

Most immigration to the US now comes from Asian and LatAm states, so a lot of us Americans prioritize those problems and needs above Europe.

[maxwell]

This squares with Edward Luttwak's take:

https://unherd.com/2025/02/the-breakdown-of-the-cia