Defence & security, explained.
Javier Allegue Barros/Unsplash
Balancing power is no job for kitchen scales
Grand historical analogies feel reassuring, but they are no substitute for trustworthy leadership.
Defence & security, explained.
Javier Allegue Barros/Unsplash
Grand historical analogies feel reassuring, but they are no substitute for trustworthy leadership.
Subscribe to The Informer for monthly expert analysis, and to Events for advance notice of visiting world leaders and distinguished guests.
You may unsubscribe from Lowy Institute newsletters at any time. For information on our privacy practices and how to unsubscribe, see our Privacy Policy.
Balancing power is no job for kitchen scalesBalancing power is no job for kitchen scales
A few harsh reality checks have helped us see through some comforting delusions, ones like rules-based order, trickle-down economics, free trade or diplomatic norms.
We might now turn a seriously sceptical eye to the concept of strategy. Current events in the Gulf or in Ukraine, with North Korea and Taiwan, may well leave us wondering how strategic planning is working.
Dictionaries define strategy (Opens in new window), a word in currency now over four centuries, as a plan, scheme or course of action designed to achieve a long-term, overall aim. Doing something systematically or dealing with another big thing is the key. Managing that in an ostensibly considered and coherent way is a bonus. Attempts to abuse the term by stretching beyond its original military context – to, say, a selection criterion for jobs or an election platform – should be firmly resisted. Similarly, the word, strategy, should never be prefaced with “grand”.
Strategy is not an exclusive, hermetically sealed code, something like Sanskrit epics or pure mathematics.
In its pristine, military context, strategy makes obvious sense. Military objectives need to be defined and ranked if recruitment, procurement, industrial capacity, technological research, alliance management and foreign policy options are to be synchronised in support. Avoiding fighting the last war remains advisable, as does working out the opportunity cost of picking one weapon over another. Seeing farther ahead than the next election cycle or budget timetable is indisputably useful. Looking forwards and backwards at the same time, while considering the tugs of both history and geography, should be esteemed as an art in itself.
That said, few so-called strategists – and fewer still wearing uniforms – have ever called for a reduction in defence budgets. Many dress up statements of the obvious, but not many at all could adequately assess the sorts of technological leap-frog (like use of drones by Ukraine (Opens in new window)) in modern weapons development. A handful at best could compute the real impact of AI or climate change on strategies meant to last for decades.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance – and what else? When strategies fail, ordinary folk are conscripted into armies, mobilised into factories, rationed, shot and bombed. Strategy is not an exclusive, hermetically sealed code, something like Sanskrit epics or pure mathematics. Electorates should insist on knowing the risks and costs they may have to bear.
Here are five pointers for the voters.
At different phases in their history, Americans have been taught to avoid foreign entanglements (Washington (Opens in new window)), to lock up their hemisphere (Monroe (Opens in new window)), to fulfil a manifest destiny or keep a rendezvous with destiny (Franklin Roosevelt (Opens in new window)), to pursue isolationism (America First (Opens in new window)), to avoid a land war in Asia (Eisenhower (Opens in new window)) and to disseminate democracy through force (George W. Bush (Opens in new window)). Vestiges of those doctrines linger on, in ways which muddle and hobble clear thinking about new strategies.
Voting in Cardozo high school, Washington DC, 1964 (Original black and white negative Marion S. Trikosko, colourised Jordan J. Lloyd/Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)
The Great Wall of China, 21,000 kilometres of psychological intimidation, worked mainly (Opens in new window) against nomadic enemies on horses, equipped with bows and arrows. The British fortress at Singapore was attacked from behind, deprived of water and forced to surrender (Opens in new window) (1942). France’s Maginot line (Opens in new window), a mere 720 kilometres long, was outflanked and rendered superfluous (1940). Intellectual Maginot lines are more dangerous still, for they involve rigidly adhering to dated, static strategies. Standing still intellectually means losing.
The English have long prided themselves on the efficacy of the English Channel as a barrier to invasion, “as a moat defensive to a house (Opens in new window)”. Three attempts by invading to cross the Channel (those by Philip II of Spain, Napoleon and Hitler) were botched and poorly prepared. The Bayeux tapestry should remind visitors to the British Museum that a Channel crossing was never impossible. Now moats, like walls, can easily be vaulted. No country is an island anymore.
The strategic notion of balancing power, using coalitions to prevent any single state becoming predominant, was another comforting fiction. The balance of power never prevented powers (like Napoleon’s France, Britain with its Empire, or the Kaiser’s Germany) trying to unbalance the strategic equation. Nor did attempts at balancing preclude gang-ups, proxy wars elsewhere, arms races or bellicose threats.
In 1940, Churchill had no plausible strategy for winning the war against Germany. His only residual assets were squadrons of Spitfires, the English Channel and grit. Nonetheless, keeping calm and carrying on worked until the British army could be rescued, Germany’s attention diverted towards Russia, and until Hitler made an unfathomable mistake by declaring war on the United States.
Strategy-less improvising, pretending, bluffing and making do sufficed for Churchill, as for de Gaulle. Both men providentially reached the point, as Seamus Heaney would say, where “hope and history rhyme (Opens in new window)”. They teach us that, to work, strategies need to be explained and applied by leaders who inspire trust and who make both sacrifice and discipline seem worthwhile.
About the author
Mark Pierce
Mark Pierce was a diplomat and is now a writer who has spent years living in France and Germany.
The most-pressing world events explained by Lowy Institute experts and global contributors, in your inbox, every Thursday.
You may unsubscribe from The Interpreter at any time. For information on our privacy practices and how to unsubscribe, see our Privacy Policy.
