The last three decades of U.S. foreign policy have seen dramatic failures like the invasion of Iraq and the nationbuilding project in Afghanistan. However, policy change has been hard to come by, and those who championed failed policies remain in good standing in the foreign policy community. This has led to talk of a “blob” in foreign policy – a cross-partisan elite that favors hawkish policies, looks out for its own, and excludes alternative viewpoints from the debate. Stephen M. Walt, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a columnist for Foreign Policy, holds that “the Blob” indeed exists and, in his book The Hell of Good Intentions: America's Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy he offers an account of how that elite operates and how to challenge it.