SOUTH ASIA is studded with think tanks of all hues and varieties. Think tanks serve to throw up ideas within the country and provide for interaction with their counterparts in other countries. Seminars are held in which papers are read and books published for public edification.

What they have not done so far is to service Track Two diplomacy. This is because there is no Track Two diplomacy worth the name. What passes for Track Two is the back channel. It is authorised by governments to circumvent the foreign ministry or to ensure dispatch and the top leadership's direct control.

Henry Kissinger told the Soviet ambassador, the legendary Anatoly Dobrynin, at their very first meeting that he could contact him directly, through a prescribed route bypassing the State Department and its head William Rogers. As national security adviser, Kissinger distrusted 'bureaucrats' in that department. But the essence of Track Two is independence from state control though not isolation. It must share its insights with policymakers. So must think tanks.

Emulating the US Policy Planning Council set up in 1947, foreign ministries in our region opened departments to deal with policy planning. If they have made any worthwhile contribution in these years it remains their best-preserved secret. Policymakers, political and official, can with advantage consult think tanks whether on domestic or foreign policy. That assumes, of course, a certain degree of humility on their part. They try, instead, to co-opt non-state sectors as agents to promote their policies. That includes the willing in the media and academia.

This is short-sighted as well as subversive of democracy. A few years ago, Richard N. Haass, then director of policy and planning at the State Department, lauded think tanks for generating 'new thinking' among decision-makers. But we run into another problem here. In our region, intellectuals and persons in the media and academia are all supercharged 'patriots'. If dissent is at a discount and conformity is at a premium, how can 'new thinking' be generated? A distinguished Pakistani intellectual, himself a rare dissenter, lamented after one of those Indo-Pak Track-Two exercises that almost all spoke in the same vein as officials.

In the United States the policy research institute is nearly a century old. Research is first conducted, policy recommendations come next. In all this, interaction with officials can be helpful, provided that there is mutual respect for each other's integrity and commitment. The work is necessarily conducted outside the media spotlight.

Think tanks can affect policymakers in five distinct ways by generating original ideas and options for policy; by supplying a ready pool of experts for employment in government; by offering venues for high-level discussions; by educating citizens about the world; and by supplementing official efforts to mediate and resolve conflict.

They are a bridge between academia and the government; between the worlds of ideas and action. Early examples include the Institute for Government Research (1916), the forerunner of the Brookings Institution (1927). The first think tank devoted solely to foreign affairs was the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, founded in 1910 to investigate the causes of war and promote the pacific settlement of disputes which assumed urgency with the outbreak of the First World War.

During the winter of 1917-1918, Colonel Edward House, an adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, discretely assembled prominent scholars to explore options for the post-war peace. Known as The Inquiry, this group advised the US delegation at the Paris Peace Conference and, in 1921, joined prominent New York bankers, lawyers and academics to form the Council on Foreign Relations.Now more than 1,200 think tanks function in the US. Some confine their work to a particular region or field of specialisation. The idea factory has gone global, like the International Crisis Group which has analysts the world over. Properly worked think tanks can enrich public discourse. Original insights can alter conceptions of national interest, influence the ranking of priorities, provide road maps for action, mobilise political and bureaucratic coalitions, and shape the design of lasting institutions.

It is not easy to grab the attention of busy policymakers already immersed in information. Think tanks need to exploit multiple channels and marketing strategies — publishing articles, books and occasional papers; appearing regularly on television, op-ed pages and in newspaper interviews; and producing reader-friendly issue briefs, fact sheets and web pages. Unencumbered by official positions, think-tank scholars can give candid assessments of pressing challenges before the country.

In the US, some think tanks have become allied to the two major political parties; the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute are brazenly Republican. There are well identified 'advocacy think tanks'. Intellectuals are not gods and think tanks are not pantheons either. James A. Smith regretted, with his experience of both, the decline that set in.

“It has become barely possible to draw the line between the politically disinterested scholar — more accurately, the scholar wrestling honestly with the biases and preconceptions that inevitably cloud any research effort — and the intellectual advocate who earnestly marshals evidence to bolster an unshakeable political position,” he stated. “All research begins to look like advocacy, all experts begin to look like hired guns, and all think tanks seem to use their institutional resources to advance a point of view. The experts, far from limiting debate and innovation, have created an environment in which so many arguments contend that no consensus is possible.”

The expert does not enlighten. He spreads confusion. One must remember that knowledge does not guarantee wisdom. The intellectual must acquire the one virtue that eludes him most — humility. The policymaker must shed the arrogance of power. Their partnership can contribute a lot to the nation's well-being. Think tanks are indispensable in civil society. But they did not, could not, prevent the US from committing one blunder after another.

The writer is a lawyer and an author.