One of the Spring 2016 Fellows at the Harvard Institute of Politics, Christopher Smart has spent the last six years as a senior policymaker for international economic affairs in the Obama Administration. He also worked as an advisor to the Russian government following the collapse of the Soviet Union and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Treasury between 2009 and 2013. Throughout his career as an investor, scholar, and journalist, he has tackled issues of financial policy across Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.
Harvard Political Review: How does your experience as a journalist and investigator influence your career as a policymaker?
Christopher Smart: I think journalism is an extraordinary career, but it’s also a wonderful training ground for so many different paths anyone wants to take – a very good training in how you can gather information, a very good training in learning how to write, and a very good training in learning to communicate quickly with people. That is something that I think I have drawn on throughout my career, whether it was in academia, in government, or in the investment world.
HPR: In 1993, you served as Moscow Director of the Macroeconomic and Finance Unit and greatly influenced Russian market reform after the collapse of Soviet Union. Looking back, how do you evaluate Russian market reform at that time? How has that experience shaped future decisions in your career?
CS: That time of Russia was really an extraordinary period. The Soviet Union had fallen apart after seventy-some years in existence. The country was getting rid of Communist central planning ideology that had organized its thinking and everything from domestic policies to international relations. It was an exciting time as younger Russians, in particular, were trying to import global ideas to the country that had been isolated for a long time. I can say that I had been very disappointed for the last few years about the deterioration of U.S. relations with Russia, in the path that Russia itself has chosen for its economic and political organization. I think, still in retrospect, things turned out better for Russia over the last twenty years than we were concerned about in 1993…. It is a better place than the Soviet Union was before, both for its people and for its neighbors.
HPR: Would you mind describing how you first became involved with this role? What exactly prompted you to take this position?
CS: I was always interested in international relations and international politics. But I got some advice when I was in College that if you want to study international relations, you should have some specialization, whether it’s regional or functional, whether you are an expert in human rights and development or an expert in the Middle East or Asia. At the time, in the early 1980s, the thing that defined global politics more than anything else was U.S.-Soviet relationships. So, I set out to learn Russian, spent a lot of time studying Russian history and Soviet systems, thinking that I would grow up and become a foreign correspondent or maybe join the State Department. I took a different path, as it happens, but managed to incorporate learning Russian and bring that to a very important part of my career.
HPR: If you could recommend one book, movie, or TV series that could introduce college students to the realm of international finance and help them understand the basic principals behind this area, what would that be?
CS: …[T]here are a number of memoirs by Treasury secretaries and other U.S. Treasury officials that I think are very interesting and to me, at least, inspirational about how financial policies can really improve people’s lives if they are well organized and well thought-out. Most recently, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has come out with a memoir about his time in government during the financial crisis. It was a very dramatic and exciting time, and I think he has told that story well. Then, if I am going to go back many decades, if you can get a hold of John Maynard Keynes describing his involvement in the Bretton Woods Conference, which was held after World War II and established the IMF (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank, and lots of international cooperative mechanisms that we put in place. He is an excellent writer and tells the story very well.
HPR: You have more than 15 years of work and study abroad experience, and you speak two foreign languages fluently. What is your advice to students who aspire to work in government, especially international relations or global finance?
CS: I think whether you are working in international relations, global finance, or any roles in government, the most important skill that you will have is your communication skills. So, if you are a good writer, learn to be a better writer; if you are a bad writer, learn to be a good writer. If you are a good writer, also learn to be a good oral communicator, because so much of what is done in government is communicating difficult ideas quickly, with focus, and to people who have very little time or attention for your issue.
HPR: What do you see as the biggest challenges faced by young politicians and political economists today?
CS: I think our biggest issue, as a world, is probably still income inequality…. We made great progress in the last two decades, and much of it came from countries like China and a little from India, but I think we need to really think through how we can use our technology and our ideas to help provide wide opportunities for very poor people and bring them out of what seems like a grounding existence. Some of those opportunities, a lot of them, have to do with better policies in those countries, better administration, better court systems, better education and health systems, etc… There is a whole lot of work, research, and exciting ideas that are in development right now, and I hope that students and experts thinking through those things will be able to start putting them into place.
HPR: What are some observations, thoughts, or reflections from your experience as an IOP fellow, thus far, that you would like to share with us?
CS: It has been a wonderful experience to be here. It’s very different from what I did before in Washington, and it’s very different from what I intend to do next, which is going back to the investment world. But it’s an exciting place to be with students who are interested in public policy, with colleagues who are also fellows, and also with professors at the Kennedy School, who are dong some exciting work. It’s very interesting and, in some ways, humbling, to tell the story of the period that I lived through.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Image source: Harvard Institute of Politics