In Grand Strategies, former diplomat and Yale professor Charles Hill argues that the quality and skill of foreign policy have deteriorated as the classical education has been displaced by the social and behavioral sciences.
Hill discusses his book on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson. The interview is in five chapters: 1 2 3 4 5.
NerveAgent calls it good reading and shares these excerpts:
Of all the arts and sciences, only literature is substantially and methodologically unbounded. Literature’s freedom to explore endless or exquisite details, portray the thoughts of imaginary characters, and dramatize large themes through intricate plots brings it closest to the reality of “how the world really works.” This dimension of fiction is indispensible to the strategist who cannot, by the nature of the craft, know all of the facts, considerations, and potential consequences of a situation at the time a decision must be made, ready or not. Literature lives in the realm strategy requires, beyond rational calculations, in acts of the imagination. (p. 6)
To be more specific about why literary insight is essential for statecraft, both endeavors are concerned with important questions that are only partly accessible to rational thought. Such matters as how a people begins to identify itself as a nation, the nature of trust between political actors or between a government and its people, how a nation commits itself to a more humane course of governance — all these and many more topics dealt with in this book — can’t be understood without some “grasp of the ungraspable” emotional and moral weight they bear. A purely rational or technocratic approach is likely to lead one astray. (p. 7)
Not clear why this would be specific to foreign policy. If the argument works, seems like it would work for domestic policy as well — also, to at least some extent, to corporate governance.
I agree that Hill’s point does not seem strictly specific to foreign policy; it’s just that foreign policy is the venue for the grandest of grand strategies.
A more subtle point is that politicians in our modern democracy often arrive on the global stage with little applicable experience. Their preparation comes almost entirely from their elite education — which no longer trains them for leadership and diplomacy.
Hill specifically mentions, in one of the later chapters, that business leaders have a better grasp of global consequences than our political leaders. I assume that’s because they’ve come up through a system that regularly deals with global issues — their work isn’t purely domestic before they reach CEO — and because their business-school education is more like Hill’s recommendation, with an emphasis on business cases and not just on the semi-scientific application of statistics.