Faculty Spotlight: An Interview with Dennis Wilder
Dennis Wilder (G’79) is a senior fellow and former managing director for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues at Georgetown University. Wilder joined the initiative in 2016 after a nearly four decades-long career in government service, where he served in various senior positions at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Council (NSC). The initiative sat down with him to reflect on his distinguished career and current work promoting U.S.-China student-to-student exchanges at Georgetown.
From the CIA to the White House
Wilder began his career as a military analyst at the CIA before serving as the NSC director for China (2004-2005) and senior director for East Asian affairs (2005-2009) during the George W. Bush administration. He then went on to serve as senior editor of the President’s Daily Brief from 2009 to 2015 and the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific from 2015 to 2016.
You served as an intelligence officer tracking China's activities during a number of pivotal crises in U.S.-China relations. Walk us through the role intelligence plays in servicing the U.S. government during these critical moments.
The role of the intelligence analyst is to provide to policymakers the best possible insights into what is happening in a particular foreign policy situation. Those insights are based on expertise. The deeper the knowledge of the analyst in the overall situation of a nation and its leadership, the better you can do the job, the better you can inform. Now, I'm stressing inform, because CIA analysts are not policymakers. The people who make policy are the elected officials of the U.S. government, whether they be the president or the Congress. We provide them what we think they need to know, but we also provide them what they say they need to know. We try to paint a picture of what's going on that is as factual, unbiased, and objective as we can possibly make it.
Let's take the April 1, 2001 EP3 crisis when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was downed by a Chinese fighter in international waters over the South China Sea. The first question that the White House asked me was: "Are the Chinese testing us? Is this an attempt by the Chinese government to see how we will react?" Our job was to immediately get as much information together as possible and make the best call we could.
What we discovered as we quickly did our research and analysis was that this was a rogue pilot. He was a hot shot. We had seen him do this against reconnaissance flights before. He’d come in very, very close and do what we call a thumping maneuver under the front of the aircraft. This time he got too close and he died as a result of it, and the American plane went down.
The critical call we made at the beginning of that crisis that was correct was this was not a test by the Chinese government. This was an accident. This was a lone actor acting extremely recklessly. Therefore, the policymaker response was, "Well, then we should negotiate to get our crew back rather than escalating the situation."
Within 11 days, Secretary [of State Colin] Powell and our ambassador in Beijing were able to negotiate a solution. Had we given wrong information to the policymakers, this could have become a much bigger crisis. That is why I say giving them the truth as best we can discover the truth is so important, because they didn't know. They were brand new. The president had been just a few short months before the governor of Texas. He had three months on the job as a president, very little foreign policy experience. What did he know about whether or not this was a test? He needed help, and fortunately, we provided the right help and the right answers to the questions that they were asking.
During your time at the NSC, what were some of your most memorable experiences while serving as President Bush’s lead China hand?
I'm going to tell you a bit of a story here. In October of 2005, the decision was made that the president would go to China. The national security advisor called me into his office and said, "Dennis, the president wants to connect with the Chinese people. When we go to China, we have all this pomp and circumstance with the leadership, but we never get a chance to actually connect with the Chinese people. Find us a way to do this."
I knew this was not going to be simple. First of all, the Chinese aren't that crazy about these kinds of events. They love scripting. They love protocol. They love control. I knew that we were going to step outside of the comfort zone of the Chinese government, so my staff and I racked our brains. What could he do? We suddenly realized that the president was an expert mountain biker, that he loves to mountain bike, always did, and was very, very good at it. We said, "Could we design an event where he would mountain bike with somebody?"
The first thing I did was ask the CIA, "Can you tell me whether they've built a mountain bike facility for the 2008 Olympics yet?" The CIA came back and said, "We have good news and bad news. The good news is there is a place called Laoshan to the west of Beijing that will be the mountain bike track. The bad news is satellite photography shows it's not in any shape to be used yet."
I called our ambassador in Beijing and I said, "Ambassador Randt, I need your help. We know there's a mountain bike trail. It isn't completed. Any chance within the next month they could complete that?" Ambassador [Clark T.] Randt, who was always the most positive ambassador I ever dealt with, said, "No problem, Dennis. It'll be done."
Well, 10,000 Chinese PLA [People’s Liberation Army] soldiers later, a trail was developed. Trees were planted. It was one of those remarkable Chinese situations where they were able to just do the whole thing.
We went to Beijing, and we got out to the trail. The president was decked out. He had brought his $10,000 mountain bike. He had brought his best mountain biking uniform. What was wonderful was they brought out the Chinese Olympic team, and they were kids. They were kids with pink hair. They were real. I had been very worried that what I would get was a PLA unit out there in camouflage uniforms, which would not have made great pictures. Fortunately, the Chinese did it right. They were the perfect young people to go out on the trail with him. They did it beautifully. They crossed the finish line holding hands together. It was perfect.
I spoke to my taxi driver the next day, I asked him what he thought of it, and he said, "Your president is lihai (awesome)!" I thought we connected. We did what we wanted to do. I think people will say, "Well, that's kind of a trivial example,” but it isn't. It's the kind of thing that is memorable to the people of China and says something about America that's very different from what they get from the propaganda outlets, so I was always very proud of that event.
Finding Serendipity on the Hilltop
After retiring from government service, Wilder joined Georgetown University as an adjunct professor and founding managing director for the Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues. This would not be Wilder's first time on the Hilltop, however. Once a graduate student at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service in the late 1970s, Wilder cultivated a deep interest in China and the Chinese military under Rev. Joseph Sebes, S.J., founder of Georgetown’s East Asian Studies program and an authority on the Jesuit mission in China. In a stroke of serendipity, Wilder found his career path to the CIA just before graduating from the Master’s of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program.
What role did Georgetown play in your career, and what inspired you to come back to Georgetown after retiring from government service?
Georgetown was pivotal in my life. When I was graduating, I really didn't know what I was going to do. I'd actually interviewed with a bank in Chicago and received an offer to become a banker with a bank that no longer exists called First Chicago. But in the MSFS program we had a final exam, where you had to sit in front of practitioners and present and defend your thoughts.
Because of my national security emphasis, I got a national security team with former director of CIA, William Colby. I went through the orals process, and they passed me. But at the reception afterward, Colby came up to me and said, "What are you going to do with your life?" I proudly said, "I'm going to become a banker." He said, "Wrong answer. Let me introduce you to some people." He almost literally took me across the river to CIA headquarters and introduced me to what was then called the Office of Strategic Research, Eastern Forces Division, which was the unit responsible for dealing with Chinese military issues.
Had it not been for that very chance encounter with Colby, I might have been an international banker all my life and not a CIA officer and not worked in the White House.
I always think of that today. When students approach me about government careers and ask me questions, I'm always eager to help as a way to pay back for what was done for me by William Colby. It's part of why when Georgetown inquired whether I would want to come back and teach and do this program, it seemed very logical to take this part of my career as a moment to really give back to young people, to do what I could to help U.S.-China relations. It almost seemed fated to be this way, and so I'm incredibly grateful to Georgetown.
Giving Back
At Georgetown’s Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, Wilder co-convened the research group on managing strategic competition and has been leading the initiative’s student programs since 2016. Most recently, Wilder facilitated an in-person student exchange in Hong Kong between students from Georgetown University, the University of California, San Diego, Peking University, and Fudan University for the U.S.-China Student Dialogue in spring 2024.
Why do you think it’s important to continue promoting people-to-people ties, particularly amongst the younger generation?
I would argue that what we're trying to do is even more important today than when we started in 2016. In 2016, there were 14,000 American students studying in China. Today, generously, there may be some 850, and we're not going to get back up to 14,000. For various reasons, a lot of them having to do with restrictive Chinese policies, American students just aren't as interested in going to China.
Now, I think that's a danger for American policy, because it means that the number of young Americans who really understand China is going to go down. The number of young Americans available to the U.S. national security community with China expertise is going to go down. The number of young Americans with China expertise available to the business community is going to go down. This is the second-largest economy in the world and may overtake us at some point as the largest economy. This is the most consequential state in the world, and yet we're doing very little to create the next generation of American scholars and experts on China.
For us at Georgetown, I think it is vital that we meet the interest and need of our students in contact with China. We've done these series of Zoom dialogues with counterparts at Peking, Fudan, and Tsinghua universities, and we just did the face-to-face meeting in Hong Kong. The idea is to get our students some intense, substantive dialogue with Chinese counterparts. In some cases, we will stimulate students to do more. For example, one of the students we took to Hong Kong, I just read that she will go to Yenching in Beijing. I'm glad to see that. So, I think we can play a role. If you look around, we are one of the few universities in America who are doing this, because a lot of American schools are pulling back regrettably from China.