Popular opinion has it that Washington, D.C., is filled with amoral, self-interested people who don’t really believe in anything save their own professional advancement. Of course, such people do exist. But their influence is short-lived. They come and go.
Real influence comes from those who gain a reputation for their honesty, thoughtfulness, and selflessness. Those who quietly and sometimes not-so-quietly toil to advance the causes that they believe in.
Shoshana Bryen, who died on July 16, 2016, after a long battle with cancer, was precisely that sort of person.
Bryen was a leading figure in foreign policy debates for more than four decades. Her legacy and what she embodied deserve to be remarked upon. Not only because it’s considerable, but because it’s valuable to future generations of aspiring foreign policy practitioners.
For more than a dozen years, Bryen was the senior director for the Jewish Policy Center. Previously, she worked for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, for more than 30 years, serving in several positions, including as executive director.
Bryen was a leading specialist in U.S. defense policy and Middle Eastern affairs. While much of her life’s work was focused on the U.S.-Israel relationship, the scope and scale of her knowledge were vast. She was capable of informed analysis of everywhere from Mali to Moscow and beyond.
She worked with the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, and lectured at the National Defense University.
For more than three decades, Bryen organized and led trips to the Middle East for more than 450 U.S. military officers. She planned and ran national security-related programs, conferences, and symposiums in the United States, Jordan, Israel, Taiwan, and elsewhere.
But Bryen was arguably best known for her facility with the written word.
The celebrated American journalist Edward R. Murrow famously said that Winston Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Bryen marshaled entire fleets, writing for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, Newsweek, the Daily Caller, the New York Sun, Asia Times, among many, many others.
At the JPC, Bryen served as editor of the center’s inFOCUS Quarterly, a flagship foreign and domestic-policy journal whose various contributors included members of Congress, generals, admirals, diplomats, and veterans of presidential administrations stretching back decades.
She was astonishingly prolific and wrote dozens of columns a year. This pattern continued, unbroken, as she fought cancer. In her final months alone, she wrote numerous articles, hosted podcasts, and continued to be active and engaged in debates about America’s past, present, and future.
More importantly, these were items of real substance. And that, it must be lamented, is a very rare thing nowadays.
We live in an era of “hot takes,” in which everyone posits themselves as an “expert” on everything and where actual experts are, more often than not, wrong. There is precious little humility and plenty of self-importance in the social media age.
Bryen was the antithesis of this trend. Her work was informed and guided by both history and a keen strategic sense. She was inquisitive and was unafraid to be the sole person in the room to fearlessly challenge conventional wisdom. Indeed, she excelled at doing precisely that.
And, having known her myself for more than a decade, I can honestly say that the only time I heard her brag was about her husband of 48 years, Steve, a former U.S. deputy undersecretary of defense and pioneering thinker on national security issues, and their children, Gabrielle, Arie, Mollie, and Sarah.
For a woman whose knowledge and contacts were justly well-regarded, I can’t recall a single bit of braggadocio. I do recall, however, hearing about her children’s professional accomplishments (even if I’d never met them). This, it can fairly be said, is the mark of a good person. It certainly made an impression on me.
For all of her professional accomplishments, another one should be added: mentor. Bryen mentored a generation of foreign policy thinkers, analysts, and writers. In a world where the idea of community is becoming passe, this is no small thing.
Lawyers must pass the bar. Doctors must pass their boards. But there is no licensing and no set career path for becoming a foreign policy commentator or practitioner.
For those hoping to come to Washington, D.C., and become involved in matters of state, the real answer is simple: have something to say, say it well, and defend it with all your heart. And do so with humility. After all, you might be wrong. Odds are that you will be at some point.
But above all: don’t be indifferent. Stake your claim. Do not be a “cold and timid soul who knows neither victory nor defeat,” as Teddy Roosevelt famously railed against in his 1910 speech at the Sorbonne. After all, such individuals are not who built this country. They will not be what sustains it.
No one could accuse Shoshana Bryen of indifference. Since her death, a number of tributes have poured in, often employing similar adjectives. Perhaps the most common one was “formidable.” I myself can’t think of a better one-word summary.