Dialectic of the Hollow State Part II

"In a culture such as ours...it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that....the medium is the message."

-Marshall McLuhan

"I'm at the fountain, with my troops/I start screamin at em like Patton, we gattin at you fools!"

-Ice Cube

The first part of this series looked at the financial crisis and the problem of the government's mind-body divide. This post will examine the problem of Grand Strategy.

The chaos on the global markets, the re-assertion of Russian power, and the continuing power struggles in Iraq and Afghanistan will undoubtedly give rise to Washington’s most popular parlor game—coming up with immaculately constructed foreign policies. These unitary theories of political, military, and economic power are rooted in their supposed lack of partisan content. If politics are the debased day-to-day reality of the world of senses, grand strategy is the Platonic form that bipartisan foreign policy thinkers aspire to.

Against Grand Strategy

But most grand strategies are at best imperfect creatures of their time, and at worst rigidly mechanistic creatures built on hubris. For every George Kennan figure guiding his nation to world hegemony, there are ten Napoleons willing to gamble it all.

Current mainstream ideas about grand strategy in America are not based on rational calculations of national interest. Instead, they are elaborate narratives that function more as stories that we tell about ourselves. The Cold War, for example, is seen in retrospect as a kind of morality play in which democracy inevitably triumphed over communism to win the “End of History.” The ill-defined entity known as the “War on Terror” is, depending on who you talk to, a clash of civilizations, a quest to eradicate “Islamo-fascism,” a liberal crusade to bring justice and modernity to the Muslim world, or an imperialistic putsch for oil.

Granted, “national interest” is a loaded term that most realists have not adequately defined. But one doesn’t have to be a died-in-the-wool Kissengerian to see that grand strategies could more accurately be described as grand narratives. A postmodern age, as French philosopher Francois Lyotard wrote, is distinguished by skepticism for master narratives that claim to be all-encompassing truths. But such skepticism often takes the form of swapping one master narrative from another. As we are not coldly rational creatures, we cannot do away with narrative—it helps us both to understand the world and brave its dizzying complications. But we must understand the devices that help us formulate these strategies will not help us brave tomorrow’s challenges.

We live in a world that is vastly more complex than that of our fathers. Where nation-states once ruled, we instead have a confusing multiplicity of national, sub national, and transnational actors each competing for dominance. Mercantilism has been replaced by a series of global economic networks of baffling size. Network forms of organization are omnipresent from the boardrooms of Silicon Valley to the counterinsurgency battlefield. New and old identities assert themselves, causing chaos. Disruptive technologies may alter the political/military balance and—in the case of biotech, change what it means to be human. The state itself becomes progressively hollowed. Such a randomized world, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes in his book The Black Swan, defies the rational, linear logic of the Enlightenment—a logic that grand strategy takes wholly for granted.

The Pleasure of the Text

As a start, we should stop seeing grand strategy as an impartial, unitary narrative that springs from Zeus’ brow. Like any other narrative text, it has multiple voices---voices that sometimes conflict with each other. It may represent not the impartial judgment of a Washington class of philosopher-kings, but a dominant ideology, aesthetic, or meme whose premises and assumptions are submerged within seemingly logical technocrat-speak. And its meaning may change over time, as it clashes with other ideas and interests and is modified by its readers. Many of these points are obvious—but not acknowledged in popular discussion of grand strategy.

A better starting point to view—and construct—grand strategy is not the unitary theory but a series of narrative frames. John Boyd’s collective corpus are not so much a unitary device for military grand strategy but a series of ideas that can be individually rejected, modified, and changed. He does not prescribe any set of specific geopolitical action, but his theories can judge grand strategy. It is more important to focus on creating a series of building blocks that can be swapped and arranged to fit changing times than an overarching narrative.

The goal of grand strategy should not to be to force unitary effects. The problem with effects-based operations and NCW is the idea that we have the knowledge and foresight to manipulate a complex system ourselves. The system shock that we force may boomerang and end up hurting us. Rather, we should aim to transform the relationships that govern the system through our influence.

Lastly, if we conceive of grand strategy as narrative text, we should not expect to wholly control its shape and form. Some of the most popular and successful creative creations—such as Star Wars, Batman, and the Matrix—are endlessly dissected, re-arranged, and played with by communities of fans. New meanings, possibilities, and outcomes are created—sometimes in wholesale defiance of the original creator’s vision. It is common to see these classic tales reinterpreted in local context. What it has achieved is the extending of those cultural forms’ dominance. Think, for example, of the Star Wars Expanded Universe---a huge mass of content that is only partly created by Lucas and Co, the rest dreamed up by a series of licensed authors. Or World of Warcraft, a giant collaborative world built and inhabited by a diverse community that is growing with frightening speed. 

We need to make our grand strategy/narrative an open text, not a closed one. At home, it means that networked think-tank 2.0 outfits can help brainstorm ideas—giving voice to original ideas beyond the Beltway. We need to turn decision-making into a kind of policy MMORPG--a collaborative, networked environment geared towards building new meanings.   And abroad it means crafting our grand strategy into a kind of text that once again appeals to the world enough that they can take ownership of it themselves. We must pay attention to the ways that they modify, reject, create, and add to it.  Only then can we have hope of competing in the “Post-American World.”

Comments

[YT]

"For our study of this wisdom text to be fruitful, it has to become more than just picking up another set of tools, another way to seperate ourselves from the interconnected world, create special territory for ourselves, and gain power over others. There is too much at stake. Accumulating another set of tools may be helpful, but that in itself won't lead to actions skillful and effective enough to deal with the ubiquitous violence and aggresion plaguing our world. Carving out a special place for ourselves and aggresively defending it won't work as the world gets smaller and smaller. The Art of War starts from the point of view that conflict, chaos, and aggresion are unavoidable aspects of life, but it offers a way to engage and work with them creatively and effectively." : The Rules of Victory
How to Transform Chaos and Conflict--Strategies from "The Art of War"
Written by James Gimian and Barry Boyce

[YT]

Gentlemen, may I suggest we start thinkin' along the logic of Weiqi (Go) instead of the rules suggested in chess or checkers. INFLUENCE (even if subtle) works better than naked force. Creates less enemies. MHO.

[fabius.maximus.cunctator]

AE

"We live in a world that is vastly more complex than that of our fathers."

I heard that one before but I doubt that. Take the 30yrs war as a comparison. I am used to fairly complicated contexts professionally yet any fairly comprehensive account of this period is challenge.

Unfortunately my reading about this period is in German: Golo Mann, CJ Burckhardt and Hellmuth Diwald so I guess I can`t refer you to them as I do not know whether translations are available at all (I suppose not).

The "Fronde" in pre-Richelieu France or the history of Rennaissance Italy might also serve as examples.

Speed of travel and information wd be the difference IMO.

[A.E.]

I'll check those authors out.

-Adam