Brent Scowcroft
Born: March 19th, 1925
Died: August 6th, 2020
Brent Scowcroft, a pre-eminent foreign policy expert who helped shape America’s international and strategic decisions for decades as the national security adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush and as a counsellor to seven administrations, died at his home in Falls Church, Virginia on August 6th. He was 95.
Scowcroft wanted to be a fighter pilot after the second World War , but a plane crash changed the young man’s life and, as it turned out, gave the nation one of its most authoritative military intellectuals — a diplomat, linguist, tactician on nuclear arms and missile systems, and a scholar of global politics who became an influential voice in Washington for more than 40 years.
He accompanied President Richard Nixon to China in 1972, oversaw the Ford administration’s evacuation of Americans from Saigon in 1975, laid groundwork for President Jimmy Carter’s Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1979, evaluated the MX missile systems for President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and directed Bush’s strategy in the Persian Gulf War in 1991.
Scowcroft was a principal architect of US policy toward post-communist Russia, a leading Republican voice opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq after the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks and a voice in President Barack Obama’s selection of a national security team after the 2008 elections.
He also wrote books, taught at universities and counted among his many protégés Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates, both national security experts who became secretaries of state and defence for President George W Bush.
Moderate Republican
Most closely associated with moderate Republicans like Ford, Howard Baker and Colin Powell, Scowcroft (pronounced SKO-croft) was a self-effacing former US air force general who did not smoke or drink. He preferred working quietly in small groups.
In making foreign policy, a national security adviser coordinates the work of the national security council — the president, vice president, secretaries of state and defence and others, supported by a staff that writes papers and proposals — and makes sure the president hears all sides of the debate before making decisions.
Scowcroft called himself a traditionalist, who believed that the nation should work with allies and international organisations, as opposed to a “transformationalist,” like George W Bush, who argued that America should fight terrorism by spreading democracy in the world — by force if necessary — and should be free to act swiftly without relying on overly cautious allies or a cumbersome United Nations.
After leaving government in 1993, Scowcroft headed the Washington-based Scowcroft Group, a consulting firm for international businesses, and was chair of an advisory board that made policy recommendations to George W Bush.
Nevertheless, he was among the few prominent Republicans who challenged Bush in 2002 as the administration made its case to go to war in Iraq. The Iraq War, he told The New York Times in 2007, had undermined faith in America. “Historically, the world has always given us the benefit of the doubt because it believed we meant well,” Scowcroft said. “It no longer does. It is easy to lose trust, but it takes a lot of work to gain it. Can the sense of confidence in us be restored? Sure. But not easily.”
Obama liked Scowcroft and his restrained foreign policy, Jeffrey Goldberg noted in The Atlantic in 2016. “Obama, unlike liberal interventionists, is an admirer of the foreign-policy realism of President George HW Bush and, in particular, of Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft,” he wrote. “As Obama was writing his campaign manifesto, The Audacity of Hope, in 2006, Susan Rice, then an informal adviser, felt it necessary to remind him to include at least one line of praise for the foreign policy of President Bill Clinton, to partially balance the praise he showered on Bush and Scowcroft.”
Hillary endorsement
Long after his retirement, Scowcroft remained a pillar of the Republican national security establishment. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, he joined more than 120 other Republican foreign policy veterans who crossed party lines and endorsed Hillary Clinton. Scowcroft said she possessed “truly unique experience and perspective” to “lead our country at this critical time.” He did not mention Donald Trump in his endorsement.
But days after Trump’s election, the frail and ailing Scowcroft made an emotional appeal at an off-the-record Washington luncheon in his honour, calling on fellow Republicans, and Democrats, to put country above political party and accept posts in the incoming Trump administration, if asked to do so — even though, by some accounts, he remained concerned that Trump was ill-prepared and unsuited for the presidency.
“He needs you; your country needs you,” one attendee said, characterising Scowcroft’s message. His appeal for public service was a classic reminder of a less partisan age, when presidents often reached out to experienced talent, regardless of party loyalties.
Brent Scowcroft was born March 19th, 1925, in Ogden, Utah, the son of James and Lucile (Ballantyne) Scowcroft. He graduated from the US military academy at West Point in 1947, joined the air force and envisioned life as a fighter pilot. But on January 6th, 1949, his P-51 Mustang developed engine trouble after taking off from Grenier army air field in New Hampshire and crash-landed. His injuries were not critical, but he assumed he would never fly again and considered other military career options.
Scowcroft earned a master’s degree in international relations from Columbia University in 1953. He taught Russian history for four years at West Point, studied Slavic languages at Georgetown University in 1958 and, from 1959 to 1961, used his Serbo-Croatian skills as an assistant air attaché at the US Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In 1962-63, he taught political science at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.
He then joined the air force planning division in Washington, and in 1967 earned a doctorate in international relations at Columbia. Starting in 1968, he held various Pentagon posts. In 1972, by then a general, he became a military aide to Nixon.
In 1951, he married the former Marian Horner. She died in 1995. He is survived by their daughter, Karen Scowcroft, and a granddaughter.