CSS NEWS

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) The Center for the Study of Statesmanship invites all interested parties to join us for “Fifteen Years After ‘Mission Accomplished’: The Iraq Invasion in Retrospect” on Wednesday, April 18, 2018.

The lecture will be given by Lawrence Wilkerson, our newly appointed Senior Visiting Fellow. Wilkerson served as Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005 and is currently Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government at William & Mary College.

The event will run from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Columbus School of Law (3600 John McCormack Road, Washington, DC 20064) on the campus of the Catholic University of America.

MEDIA: To schedule an interview or attend this event, contact the Office of Marketing and Communications at communications@cua.edu or 202-319-5600.

ABOUT: The Catholic University of America is the national university of the Catholic Church and the only higher education institution founded by the U.S. bishops. Established in 1887 as a papally chartered graduate and research center, the University comprises 12 schools and 26 research facilities and is home to 3,241 undergraduate and 2,835 graduate students.

CSS comes under the umbrella of Catholic University’s Institute for Human Ecology, which was established to take up Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home to study the relationships of human beings to one another and the world around them.

The Center promotes research, teaching, and public discussion about how statesmanship can defuse conflict and foster respectful foreign and domestic relations.

On November 16, the Charles Koch Foundation hosted a dinner and mini-conference at the W Hotel in Washington, D.C., featuring directors of CKF-supported centers and projects. In the audience were about 100 foreign policy-makers and experts and journalists. Claes Ryn spoke on the origin, mission and activities of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship. The other speakers were Barry Posen of MIT, Stephen Walt of Harvard, Monica Toft of Tufts, who is also a Visiting Senior Fellow at CSS, and William Ruger of the Koch Institute. Claes Ryn’s remarks are below:

The Center for the Study of Statesmanship at Catholic University came into being last spring. We have initiated programming, appointed visiting fellows and research assistants, given faculty research grants, and contributed to public debate through lectures and publications. We have a prominent council of advisors, which includes Andrew Bacevich, Chas Freeman, Tulsi Gabbard, Dennis Kucinich, and Walter McDougall. We hosted a launch event at the National Press Club in September. Our website has a very convenient address: css.cua.edu.

The Center promotes research, teaching and public discussion about the kind of prudence, foresight, restraint and concern for a larger good that we associate with statesmanship. How can statesmanship advance respectful, peaceful foreign and domestic relations? Of special interest is how the ethos of American constitutionalism, with its emphasis on deliberation, compromise, and limits on power, can be translated into foreign policy.

Let me try to explain what is distinctive to CSS’s intellectual orientation by being a little autobiographical. As a professor of politics I have always been interested in issues of foreign policy, international relations, and national security. That interest began to intensify in the late 1970s. An important reason was that I noticed certain dubious intellectual trends that I had reason to think would become more and more influential and eventually have substantial practical impact. As a student of political philosophy—Western political thought from Plato to the present—I had given special attention to certain questions of ethics and imagination, which had made me alert to the currents in question. By the mid 1980s it was apparent that a new ideology and a corresponding network of intellectual and political activists were forming. Having originated with university people, this emerging ideology had representatives in think tanks, magazines, publishing houses, and the press. Its influence extended to the media generally and to Capitol Hill. The movement advocated a highly abstract and ahistorical approach to politics and had a clearly utopian dimension. It had far-reaching practical implications that were markedly imperial and interventionist. The movement’s central ideological theme was that America was special by virtue of its universal principles and had a mission to bring democracy and freedom to countries around the world, starting in the Middle East. Aha, you say, he’s talking about the neoconservatives! Yes, I am. They were at the core of the movement that worried me. The trouble was that back in the 1980s almost no one seemed to notice that seemingly diverse writers and activists were congealing into a fast expanding intellectual and political force. Although it was evident that in time this movement would directly affect practical politics, especially American foreign policy, supposed experts in foreign policy, international relations, and national security were not closely examining these developments, although they were so obviously relevant to their fields. Why were they not picking up on the movement and the danger that it posed? The scholarly attention of these experts was, it seemed, turned in every other direction—specific issues of state action, alliances, trade, military affairs, etc. But policy views always imply and have their origin in basic views of human nature and the world, so that what is to come in practical politics is always foreshadowed by what is happening in the mind and the imagination. Whatever the reasons, the experts did not have their fingers on the pulse. They overlooked the ideological-political dynamic that would in time give a new and strongly interventionist edge to American foreign policy thinking. Perhaps they missed the salient characteristics of the movement because to some extent it blended with familiar Wilsonian and liberal humanitarian interventionism. The experts knew about particular advocates of the new ideology, but they did not discern the special ideological verve and pointed political agenda that connected them.

It was partly because of frustration with this neglect that in the 1980s I, who had never claimed to be an expert in those fields, veered more and more in that direction. Somebody had to point out what was happening.  I tried to explain the nature of the movement-in-the making and warned of its likely effect on policy. Some of you may have heard, for example, of a little book called The New Jacobinism, published in 1991, which pointed out the striking parallels between the representatives of the new ideology and the intellectual leaders of the French Revolution of 1789. Other books and articles criticizing the movement followed. It was spreading by leaps and bounds, piggy-backing on earlier American interventionist impulses, and yet alerting the foreign policy establishment proved difficult. When at long last it dawned on the more discerning among them that something new and important and disturbing had happened it was, in a sense, too late. Iraq had been invaded.

So, CSS is an attempt to help address what appears to be an acute need, to get to the bottom of trends that shape policy. The great delay in identifying and criticizing the ideology of American empire is just a particularly telling example of a serious intellectual deficiency. A central question for CSS is, how do views of human nature and the world inspire different types of leadership and political aspirations. The Center wants to explore the deeper origins of either sound or unsound foreign policy and domestic thinking. We want to assist in the development of a philosophically and morally based new “grand design” for international relations. Although the Center is going “up-stream” from policy debates, I want to suggest that in so doing it will be in some ways more practical than policy-oriented thinking that pays little attention to why policies evolve in the first place.

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) Which figures and organizations actually set the tone for American foreign policy? Do Congress and the executive still enjoy their constitutional powers, or has the authority of Madisonian institutions of government been eclipsed by the national security state?

The Center for the Study of Statesmanship, in conjunction with the John Quincy Adams Society, hosted a panel discussion entitled “America’s Double Government: The Hidden Agenda of the National Security State” on November 29, 2017.

Featured scholars included:

• Andrew Bacevich, a prominent author of several books on the American over-reliance on military intervention and professor emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University and a Visiting Senior Fellow at CSS.
• Michael Glennon, author of National Security and Double Government and professor of international law at Tufts University.
  
• Louis Fisher, who has served as a Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers at the Library of Congress and is a Visiting Senior Fellow at CSS.
  

The event ran from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in Keane Auditorium in McGivney Hall on the campus of the Catholic University of America, 620 Michigan Ave NE, Washington, DC.

MEDIA: To schedule an interview or attend this event, contact the Office of Marketing and Communications at communications@cua.edu or 202-319-5600.

ABOUT: The Catholic University of America is the national university of the Catholic Church and the only higher education institution founded by the U.S. bishops. Established in 1887 as a papally chartered graduate and research center, the University comprises 12 schools and 26 research facilities and is home to 3,241 undergraduate and 2,835 graduate students.

CSS comes under the umbrella of Catholic University’s Institute for Human Ecology, which was established to take up Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home to study the relationships of human beings to one another and the world around them.

The Center promotes research, teaching, and public discussion about how statesmanship can defuse conflict and foster respectful foreign and domestic relations.

With a mix of fanfare and gravitas, Catholic University formally launched the Center for the Study of Statesmanship (CSS) Sept. 13 at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, D.C.

Invited speakers and the center’s directors discussed the modern political and diplomatic climate and why the need for such an endeavor — one that places a premium on restraint and the decentralization of power in foreign affairs, as well as the questioning of assumptions that lead to conflict — is so very great today.

University President John Garvey, in his welcoming remarks, called the center “intellectually exciting and morally necessary,” both in the global context and as part of the University’s efforts to “form our students to become the next generation of virtuous leaders.”

A crowd of about 75 people watched a brief video about the CSS and listened as Doug Bandow, columnist for Forbes.com and a foreign policy scholar at the Cato Institute; Most Rev. Timothy Broglio, archbishop of the Military Services, USA, and a former Vatican diplomat; and Claes Ryn, professor of politics and CSS executive director, fielded questions from the center’s managing director and research fellow, William Smith.

Topics ranged from the treatment of Christians in the Middle East to the Trump administration’s game of nuclear brinksmanship with North Korea to the seemingly endless conflicts facing the United States.

Both Bandow and Archbishop Broglio decried the punishing toll of being a nation continually at war — for the last 16 years. “The cost is extraordinary,” said Bandow, “in lives, in money.” Archbishop Broglio offered a unique insight into the minds of those who serve in the military, whom he called “the community that’s most interested in peace, because they pay the price when war is the reality.”

Ryn eloquently traced the tradition of American statesmanship, going back to the Founding Fathers and the founding document, the U.S. Constitution, which he said “put a very heavy emphasis on the need to restrain human beings, because you can’t trust them with too much power.”

But that restraint has seemingly been lost, he lamented, with the rise of American exceptionalism, which posits that America is so virtuous by nature it has no need of self-discipline in its quest to remake the world, instead awarding itself vast new powers along the way. Only through the intervention of parents, church, and community can more admirable human traits, such as courage, courtesy, virtue, and modesty, be cultivated, he said.

“This is where Catholic tradition comes into play,” Ryn said, bringing the conversation back full circle to the center and why it’s so appropriately housed at Catholic University. “When the going gets rough, when the passion gets high, what’s going to avert war? In the end, the only people who can step back from the passions of the moment are the people with this kind of character who can recognize that human beings are on the other side.”

Archbishop Broglio, who has served the Vatican as a diplomat in Ivory Coast, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, and is also a member of the center’s council of advisors, agreed. “One of the most important things is the insertion of Catholic social teaching and Catholic philosophy into the realm of statesmanship and foreign affairs,” he said. “I think it’s very exciting.”

With a mission to employ research, teaching, and public discussion to “defuse conflict and foster respectful foreign and domestic relations,” the timing could hardly be better. Once the center is fully staffed with professors and visiting fellows, Smith envisions it becoming an important voice in the broader conversation, “a think tank within a university,” he said.

Specific areas of study will include diplomacy, military affairs, intelligence, and constitutionalism, among others. The center will offer faculty research grants and graduate study opportunities, and make its presence felt through conferences, seminars, speeches, and publications. Its 12-member council of advisors includes historians, current and former members of the U.S. Congress, and news media figures.

Calling the CSS “kissing cousins to some of our Libertarian colleagues” in terms of advocating American constitutionalism and the exercise of limited power, Smith was quick to note that the center would come at its positions “though a different philosophical perspective,” reaching its conclusions through a Christian and Catholic lens.

The center falls under Catholic University’s Institute for Human Ecology, which itself was created in response to Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home.

For more information on the Center for the Study of Statesmanship, visit css.cua.edu.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) President Donald Trump has adopted a tough line on North Korea and announced the deployment of more American troops to Afghanistan, actions that seem to signal a resumption of an interventionist and confrontational foreign policy. At that same time Catholic University is launching a Center for the Study of Statesmanship (CSS), whose purpose is to explore the sources and prospects for leadership in keeping with the spirit of restraint and compromise characteristic of American constitutionalism.

At an event at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Sept. 13, speakers will offer brief remarks about current American foreign policy challenges and the role that the center can play in enriching and redirecting public discussion.

Those who will offer remarks include:

• Most Rev. Timothy Broglio, archbishop for the Military Services, USA and a former Vatican diplomat who will discuss the impact of American interventionism upon Christians in the Middle East as well as the stresses and strains of U.S. interventionism upon the U.S. military and their families
• Doug Bandow, a columnist for Forbes.com and a foreign policy scholar at the Cato Institute who will discuss recent policy failures of U.S. interventions and the future of American foreign policy under President Trump
• Claes Ryn, professor of politics and executive director of CSS, who will discuss dubious assumptions behind interventionism and how a new U.S. foreign policy of restraint is in the American constitutional tradition.

Speakers will be available to the media following the brief program. The event runs from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The National Press Club is located on the 13th floor in the Fourth Estate Room at 529 14th St., NW, Washington, D.C.

CSS comes under the umbrella of Catholic University’s Institute for Human Ecology, which was established to take up Pope Francis’s call in Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home to study the relationships of human beings to one another and the world around them.

The center will promote research, teaching, and public discussion about how statesmanship can defuse conflict and foster respectful foreign and domestic relations. Ryn has written extensively on the dangers of abstract ideology in foreign and domestic affairs and about the moral and cultural preconditions of good relations among persons, peoples, and civilizations.

MEDIA: To schedule an interview or attend this event, contact the Office of Marketing and Communications at communications@cua.edu or 202-319-5600.

ABOUT: The Catholic University of America is the national university of the Catholic Church and the only higher education institution founded by the U.S. bishops. Established in 1887 as a papally chartered graduate and research center, the University comprises 12 schools and 26 research facilities and is home to 3,241 undergraduate and 2,835 graduate students.

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The Catholic University of America announced today the establishment of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship to promote research, teaching, and public discussion about how statesmanship can defuse conflict and foster respectful foreign and domestic relations.

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