What George Shultz Could Learn From Don Corleone

Tom Bethell

The United States has largely entrusted its foreign policy to a Mandarin class of Foreign Service Officers who are professionally inclined to look upon the creeds and manifestos of foreigners with genial disbelief. Characteristically, within this class, ignorance masquerades as tolerance, gullibility as worldly wisdom. “Khomeini? He couldn’t possibly believe all the nonsense he spouts!” “Communism? Outmoded ideology. No one believes in it any more!”