The Impact of Books on Washington Policy

Last month, President Obama expressed unexpected admiration for the work of the neoconservative intellectual and Mitt Romney adviser Robert Kagan. In an excerpt from his book “The World America Made” that appeared in The New Republic, Kagan set out to debunk the popular idea that America’s power and influence are waning. For Obama, Kagan’s argument was a welcome rebuke to his opponents’ complaint that he was presiding over his country’s decline.

I saw the potency of books firsthand while serving recently on the State Department’s policy planning staff. Ideas that originated between covers often shaped conversations and found their way into major speeches or memos. Indeed, a book, by its mere existence, can lend legitimacy to an argument in a sound-bite-driven debate. “There are so many ideas flying around, it’s very important that some have been worked out more thoroughly and comprehensively,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, the State Department’s policy planning director from 2009 to 2011. “When I find an idea I’ll immediately go to the book to make sure that it’s serious, even if I don’t read the whole book.” The author Leslie Gelb acknowledges that his “Power Rules,”where he argued that G.D.P. matters more than military might, was more influential when reduced to articles. Still, he says, publishing a book “gets people talking about what you did.”

The administration’s bibliophiles include the national security adviser, Tom Donilon, who told me by e-mail that he recently read “George F. Kennan: An American Life,” by John Lewis Gaddis; “On China,” by Henry Kissinger; “Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia,” by Thant Myint-U; and “A Peace to End All Peace,” a history of the division of the Middle East after World War I by David Fromkin. “Having a sense of history is critical to sound policy-making,” Donilon says.

Other consequential books, like Robert Wright’s “Nonzero,” are less obviously related to questions of policy. “Nonzero” employs evolutionary biology and game theory to argue that life is not a zero-sum game with a clear winner and loser. “You operate within a much more horizontal setting, where you operate by connecting to others and mobilizing others in ways that advance common causes,” Slaughter says. “ ‘Nonzero’ basically spells out the logic of that.” This idea was reflected in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2010 Internet Freedom speech, which championed the “freedom to connect.” Slaughter, who was policy planning director at the time, says, “We were actively focused on a world in which the power to connect to others is essential.”

Derek Chollet, senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council, says Robert Kaplan’s “Monsoon” affected thinking across the Obama administration. Kaplan asserts that America’s ability to project power in the future requires an understanding of the dynamics of the greater Indian Ocean, in particular the rivalries and competition over trade routes among the United States, China, India, and countries like Indonesia and Vietnam. “There hasn’t been much written about the Indian Ocean that is accessible to the nonscholar. ‘Monsoon’ forced people to think differently. It put the Indian Ocean on the agenda,” Chollet says. In a speech in Chennai, India, last July, Hillary Clinton drew attention to the area’s strategic value.