America’s ‘Strong Commitment to Error’

Posted on Feb 3, 2009

By William Pfaff

John Kenneth Galbraith, the distinguished and irreverent Canadian-born but U.S.-nationalized economist, observer of American national mores, preconceptions and faults, and a sometime U.S. government official, wrote the following of his government experience in Washington and New Delhi in the 1960s.

He was not the only one, he said, who fell afoul “of a major feature of our foreign policy. That is its institutional rigidity, which holds it on course even when it is visibly wrong. So it was on Vietnam, as is now accepted. So it was on ... military alliances with the poor lands. ... So it was [and continues to be] on such matters as the enlargement of NATO or the continuing trade and travel sanctions on Cuba, or, as this is written [in 1999], on a sensible response to the more liberal tendencies now evident in Iran. ... [It is] a rigidity with its strong commitment to error.”