Cold Warrior No More
Sept. 11 opened the world's eyes to previously unimaginable threats. As deputy director of the Transnational Threats Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Tom Sanderson '92 has his eyes on the horizon.
Tom Sanderson '92 marks the major events of his adolescence with Cold War skirmishes. He reels them off with dates, locations and players: Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 1979; the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics, 1980; Leonid Brezhnev's death in 1982; the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut and the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983; and so on. By the time he reached middle school, Tom, whose father served in the U.S. Air Force, could identify the silhouette of every U.S. and Soviet aircraft from any angle. He gathered that the world was a dangerous place. And he knew, from deep inside, that he had to be a part of that action.
And he has been. As the smoke cleared and the shock slowly dissipated following the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, calls echoed through the corridors of the Capitol for more defense funding, more human intelligence, and loosening of restrictions on the CIA. The event has already changed many Americans≠ views of what behavior is acceptable in opposing terrorism. The more difficult question may be: What kind of action is effective? Tom Sanderson is among the men and women who will try to sort that out over the next several years.
Sanderson grew up in Concord, N.H., fifth in an active brood of six siblings. Concord, like much of New Hampshire, is politically conservative by habit and conviction. Tucked into the Merrimack River valley, the town is insulated somehow from the frantic pace that grips so much of the Northeast. "The pace is different, people have time to care,'" says Sanderson. None of his friends, indeed none of his classmates that he knows of, were children of divorce.
A self-confessed news junkie, Sanderson devoured what the Concord library had to offer on foreign relations and international security. When he hit high school, he encountered the first significant challenge to his understanding of the world. For the first time, adults engaged him one-on-one, took him seriously and played devil's advocate with him. "I was this little cold warrior," he recalls, when his Spanish teacher suggested that Nicaraguan Contras might have their own reasons for overthrowing an authoritarian right-wing government, and not simply be communist pawns.
The content of the argument took root slowly--Sanderson was still an ardent supporter of the Contras when he sat in on the Iran-Contra hearings as part of a Close-Up Foundation trip to Washington in 1986--but he began to recognize immediately the wisdom of seeing through another's eyes.
Wheaton professor of political science Darlene Boroviak taught the mini-seminar on missile defense that drew Sanderson to the college. On visiting day and the following fall, his participation--eager, curious and respectful--set the tone for the whole class. "College really was a process of discovery for him," says Boroviak. "He wanted to master new knowledge, and college really opened the door for him to the fact that there was a lot of new knowledge."
Some of that new knowledge had to do with when to bite his tongue, forgo the easy answer and listen to others' experience. He confesses a bit of embarrassment for his younger self as he recounts one discussion of the takeover of the American embassy in Iran. He glibly dismissed Iranian revolutionaries as "crazy." Boroviak and some of the international students gently, but firmly suggested to him that United States' transgressions had fertilized a growing resentment there.
Never shy about voicing his opinions, Sanderson signed on as foreign affairs editor when his boyhood friend John Hayes started up the Wheaton Patriot, a conservative campus newspaper. Though the two got along famously, they never quite saw eye to eye on editorial content. By the beginning of Sanderson's junior year, their viewpoints had diverged so far that he resigned his role at the Patriot and took the time to buckle down and study. A new world was taking shape outside Wheaton and Sanderson knew he would need to get into graduate school if he was to play the role he wanted.
As Sanderson entered his senior year, the Soviet Union was crumbling, and European nations were realigning like the blocks of a Rubik's cube. The silhouettes of the Cold War were being replaced by deeply textured and nuanced relationships. He wanted a voice in this shifting landscape, but knew enough to realize that his knowledge and experience didn't yet match his ambitions.
With a degree in international relations, but little foreign experience, he took a job with Counterpart International, shortly after graduation. His task there was to foster a nonprofit sector in nations of the recently dissolved former Soviet Union (FSU).
"I felt two ways about the job," he says, "It wasn't what I wanted to do, but it was a great opportunity. Fifteen countries had just been created out of one." He began identifying tiny clusters of citizens in the republics of the FSU that wanted to influence emerging policy in some way. Then he would hook them up with a U.S. nonprofit working in the same arena.
Citizens interested in environmental issues would get advice and encouragement from Sierra Club leaders; those serving disabled children might have a March of Dimes mentor. Nurtured by Sanderson's work, and that of many others, a vigorous civil society quickly took root across central Asia and the FSU. By the time Sanderson left Counterpart in 1996, he was creating high-level internships for its leaders inside major U.S. nonprofits.
Counterpart also provided him with his first sustained international travel. Two years into his tenure there, Counterpart's accountants realized that they owed Sanderson time and a half for all his overtime. He set out immediately for a three-month European adventure, traveling throughout northern Europe, engaging people he met along the way, hiking the Alps, staying in strangers' homes, giving his perspective, and hearing theirs.
Returning to Washington, he began planning the next step: graduate school at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a training ground for senior government officials and international policy makers. Sanderson thought he was lucky to get in, and says he felt outclassed there in many areas. He took the experience as an opportunity to stretch.
"You don't want to play tennis against someone who stinks," he says. "You want to play against someone who'll challenge you."
Through contacts from Fletcher and longtime friends who had landed in the military, he began a campaign to get as much unofficial military experience as he could to complement what he learned in the classroom. He arranged to participate in live-fire exercises with the U.S. Marines in Quantico; joined in marksmanship exercises with the Special Forces in Rhode Island; landed on, and got flung off an aircraft carrier; and even took a turn at the National Training Center in the Mojave Desert. Exercises at the training center pit raw U.S. troops against a brigade of trained soldiers using Soviet equipment and tactics.
"It was unbelievably exciting," he says. "We woke up covered in snow, with a column of Russian tanks coming toward us."
His time at Fletcher expanded Sanderson's knowledge, his perspective and his confidence. After finishing his master's in international security policy, he began doing defense analysis for Science Applications International Corporation, a Defense Department contractor. During the last three years, he has helped develop a series of tools for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency to allow analysts to identify and track groups likely to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Sanderson now studies the influences that might lead a particular group or individual to develop and use weapons of mass destruction. To effectively study the question, an analyst must be able to step out of a familiar mind-set and into one that is completely foreign.
Sanderson tried on a different mind-set last fall. A fellowship from the Stimson Center took him to Shanghai and Beijing for three months, where he interviewed Chinese officials, academics and journalists about their reactions to U.S. missile defense plans.
In his interviews, he had a chance to plumb the entire range of reactions. Many Chinese experts, like many U.S. experts, simply don't believe that missile defense will work the way it is now envisioned. They are even more dubious about theater missile defense--the mobile system of missiles and launchers intended to protect specific areas from attacks launched nearby. But their doubts about the effectiveness of the system don't diminish their opposition and their desire to find ways to circumvent it. Were the U.S. to deploy an effective missile defense shield in Taiwan, it would give the island freedom to flout China≠s claim on the territory with impunity, according to Sanderson.
That would imply a loss of face that China simply couldn't allow. The experts that Sanderson spoke with floated a number of possible responses to U.S. implementation of a star wars-style missile defense shield. The least expensive--in terms of China≠s budget and global stability--would be the addition of decoys with any missile launch. Perhaps more threatening would be the pursuit of mobile launchers, submarine launchers and multiplying the number of warheads per missile. The sentiment that came through most clearly, though, was surprise that the U.S. views them as a threat at all.
"They are dumbfounded by the U.S. posture toward them," says Sanderson, citing statistics that put the U.S. arms budget at nearly 10 times Chinese defense spending. Besides, he says, there are "thousands of children of party leaders in every U.S. city."
Sanderson was impressed by China's natural beauty and by the openness and hospitality of the Chinese people. The extended international experience also helps to prepare him for the Ph.D. in international relations that he hopes to pursue. It's already helped land him a new job as deputy director of the Transnational Threats Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington, D.C., organization that advises world leaders on current and emerging global issues in technology and public policy, international trade and finance, and energy.
The gravest failing of modern intelligence analysis, as Sanderson sees it, is the penchant many analysts have for staying rooted in their own viewpoint. Whatever he can do to shake himself loose from that comfortable perspective--whether it is travel, study, or participating in army maneuvers--will make him a better analyst. Besides, the process of finding personal friendships and starting international dialogue is more than good policy; it's just plain fun.
Web editor's note: Tom Sanderson was festured in the Washington Post on June 10, 2002, as an expert on so-called 'dirty bombs.'
