Hoover on Charles Hill and Hill on Grand Strategy
November 8th, 2011 by zen
Posted in 21st century, academia, America, ancient history, cultural intelligence, culture, DIME, diplomacy, Epistemology, foreign policy, geopolitics, government, history, ideas, intellectuals, islamic world, literature, myth, national security, politics, reading, revolution, society, strategist, strategy, Strategy and War, synthesis, teaching, theory | 5 comments
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M:
November 8th, 2011 at 8:45 pm
Paul Kennedy, not John Kennedy
Joseph Fouche:
November 8th, 2011 at 9:25 pm
When someone writes "There is no grand strategy in our time", I mentally strike out the passage and replace it with, "Americans are stupid for not pursuing my political agenda and they really, really, really should". Strategy is an expression of a political community’s elite’s effective consensus. The consensus strategy of American elites since the 80s has been co-option of foreign and domestic elites through the lure of invites to all the right parties and access to the enhanced looting possibilities of modern financial engineering. Gorby’s recent birthday party in London where the former leader of the world’s second most powerful country was paid off with a serenade by C-list Hollywood celebrities vindicates this strategy. The success of this strategy also shows up in its surprising resilience in the wake of the huge shock of the last three years. Despite that shock, so far the lights are still shining in Davos. That the only challenge to the power of the Davos consensus comes from groups whose strategic incompetence is even worse than its must be a huge relief.
J.ScottShipman:
November 9th, 2011 at 2:16 pm
Hi JF,
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Definitely understand your point, however Hill’s Grand Strategies doesn’t go down that path. I’m currently reading a narrative history of the Persian-Greek struggles, with Herodotus close-by since he and Thucydides wrote the book(s) and are frequently quoted by the author (Tom Holland). Darius and other Persian leaders used the methods you describe above, "the lure of invites…" Hill suggests that by reading history and corresponding literature, strategists will have better insight into how the world works, hopefully enough to make good choices.
zen:
November 9th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Hi M
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"Paul Kennedy, not John Kennedy"
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Thanks. I won’t change the text because it is a direct quote but I added an editorial notation.
Madhu:
November 11th, 2011 at 5:05 pm
How about Dickens and strategy? Or Dickens and the texture of our Washington culture?
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If you were required to write a Dickension description of Washington’s strategic "culture", how would you do it?
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I think that would be fun, sad, illuminating, and horrifying. What would be included?
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Defense contractors, procurement specialists, private security firms, Congressionals and staffers, globe-junket-traveling Senators, think-tankistan, media hangers-on, print journalists and cable news talking heads, GWU and other university students, CSPAN filming local events, the Pentagon, Langley, Foggy Botton, tourists in springtime, and museums and museums and museums, embassies/consulates, food trucks, glitzy Washintong Post reviewed restaurants, sports teams, retired military and governmental folk, local tailors and Brooks Brothers, the White House, lobbyists, comfortable suburbanites and long-suffering DC city dwellers in poorer neighborhoods – bereft of good governance even when surrounded by governing types of all stripes.
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Governing Types Of All Stripes. That’s what I might call my pseudo Dickension tome. I worry, zen and others, I tend to worry….