But if the scholar's role in foreign policy were only to ask the embarrassing questions, that would make it too easy. There is work to be done as well. And it is precisely the area of advising the busy foreign policy professional on the nature and content of foreign politics that the scholar can make his greatest substantive contribution. The professional diplomat is the man who knows where, in Paris or in Phnom Penh, in Bonn or in Bujumbura, to find the door to which diplomatic notes should be delivered. He has a pretty good idea of what will happen to the note after it is slipped through the mail slot in the door. But he cannot be expected to have a really deep understanding of the internal political and economic and social lines of force that converge on the men on the other side of the door. For that understanding he must turn to the scholar who has specialized in the politics and economics and social patterns of the area.

Passing the question of area vs. pure disciplinary specalization, what the scholar has to offer here is what the foreign policy professional needs. But even this happy situation does not guarantee a happy relationship between scholars and polciy makers. If this is indeed to be a marriage of true minds, both partners have to learn to respect each other's roles, and to accommodate themselves somewhat to the limiting conditions within which the other fellow works. The policy maker has to realize that he cannot demand and obtain instant scholarship; that objectivity and reflectiveness and depth of perception can only be had at the price of some loss in immediate relevance to the policy maker's current concerns; and that a good batting average for a successful scholar is probably a lot lower than it is for a major league ball-player.

A classic problem that policy makers have with their own bureaucracies is that bureaucrats are so problem oriented and so anxious to keep the machinery of government moving by solving problems, that they will not infrequently come up with a solution to a different problem than the one posed to them by the policy maker; since they can't find a solution to the problem that is put to them, they have to change the problem in order to get to a solution. This is commonly referred to in Washington as the street light syndrome, in honor of the drunk who told the policeman, puzzled by his posture on hands and knees under a street light, that he was looking for his door key. The policeman asked where he had dropped it, and the drunk replied, in his doorway. The policeman asked why he was looking under the street light, and the drunk pointed out that the light was better there....

Scholars, on the other hand, are by and large a good deal less problem-oriented than the policy makers who seek their advice....

But I am more concerned today, if only because we are in Cambridge rather than in Washington, with the accommodations that scholars need to make in order to perform a more useful role in the process of policy making....

There is nothing dishonorable or even inappropriate in the examination by scholars of policy problems, foreign or domestic. They can provide at least as much intrinsic interest as problems of theory or methodology. But if the scholar is to make a contribuiton to policy problems, he must be willing to address himself to the problems of the policy maker. He must be willing to help answer the policy maker's question. "What do you want me to do about it?" He may, and indeed he should try to stretch the limitations within which the policy maker works, but he cannot ignore them.

If foreign policy is really foreign politics, and if politics is the art of the possible, a major role for the scholar may be to advise the policy maker on what is indeed possible within the limitations of domestic politics in other continents and in other cultures. This is perhaps a reversal of the usual