Strategy discovers a situation’s critical factors and derives a coherent, simply presented approach to the objective. According to Rumelt, who does not address the interplay with tactics, it comprises diagnosis, setting a guiding policy, and identifying / specifying a coherent set of actions. The latter creates strength, which sets it apart from Rumelt’s examples of bad strategy, which amount to sloganeering and disconnecting activity. Good strategy is often unexpected – not necessarily complex – because (pace Drucker) it has identified what’s really (already) going on. The key to the policy is to make it participatory (i.e., shared leadership).
Month: December 2022
4. McChrystal, My Share of the Task (2 Jun 2013)
A military memoir sketching how General McChrystal reorganized practice and doctrine during America’s two anti-terrorist wars of the 2000s, Iraq and Afghanistan. The author’s command was primarily reactive and tactical: indeed, politics proved his undoing, as the Obama administration disliked both the Afghan theater and a McChrystal interview. Though highly praised, there seems little in the way or overarching approach; however, McChrystal’s extended record of sound decisions and execution is enviable.
6. Fukuyama, Origins of Political Order (10 Nov 2013)
Efficient apparatus, rule of law, and accountability are the pillars of effective government and thus political order. Bypassing the thinking of Ancient Greece, Fukuyama relies on anthropology to locate the modalities of government and simultaneously man’s tendency to underline structure through familial instincts. Premodern China, 13th-century Egypt, 16th-century Turkey, and the medieval Catholic Church provide leading case studies of statecraft and its demise. As ever, decline is an important theme: moral and cultural advancement suggest political decay. To paraphrase Chris Caldwell, in this taxonomy of political forms (up to the French Revolution), the author as political thinker considers what is best for man, and as political scientist what is best for government. As such, passages are dry and detached; however, the beginning each chapter helpfully limns its contents. Worth rereading.
7. Norman, Edmund Burke (29 Dec)
A short, dual-purpose treatment that competently sketches Burke’s life and career and deficiently maps his applicability to modern conservative politics. The profile’s achievement ironically stems from making the context of his political career accessible to 21st-century (British) readers. In an ahistorical, generalized setting, however, prescription without the counterbalance of opportunity costs and other risks loses rigor. Still, an impressive effort for a practicing politician.
1. Cox, Open Water Swimming Manual (5 Jan 2014)
Primarily comprises personal anecdotes from a distinguished career, observations from a Navy SEAL trainer on risk management, and lightweight marine life research. Forgettable.
2. LaCouture, DeGaule: Ruler (19 Jan 2014)
A biography of 20th-century France’s leading figure, authoritatively narrated by the foreign editor of
-
Le Monde
in the classical mode of synthesizing primary sources and interviews. This second volume ranges from de Gaulle’s efforts from August 1944 to restore France’s international status to his passing in 1970. The protagonist excelled in affairs of state, wherein the government must be preeminent (e.g., relations to the big 3, Algeria, the formation of Europe); whereas his endeavors to guide domestic politics without participating in them (styming communists in postwar elections, the 1962 constitution, the tumult of 1968-69) expose the authoritarian, arbitrary mnature of ‘Gaullism’ and the general’s egomania. De Gaulle was a warrior who parlayed close study of history into statesmanship, but he could not surmount politics as the French state is democratic. He also was a fine writer, thereby providing rich material for this study, which evinces a finely balanced dialectic treatment of core episodes while deftly using synthesis to energize the narrative. (Is it possible for an American to write in this style? It requires adjustment merely to read it.) However, the nuance of such an approach sometimes leaves one grasping for the author’s principal conclusions of the man.
3. Scuton, Modern Philosophy (5 May 2014)
Modernist philosophy, which since Descartes has sought to posit individuality (‘the self’) as naturally independent and transcendent, fails because ‘to be a self is simply to be a person’ – a member of the community. In the process of finding against existentialists, poststructuralists, and the like, Scruton surveys four centuries of thought by evaluating thinking about such concepts as truth, cause, and science. The thematic groupings also manage a rough chronological order, an impressive feat. Scruton’s hero is Kant for the categorical imperative: treat others as having inherent value, as ends not means. An excellent work.
4. Dudley, Understanding German Idealism (1 Jun 2014)
Surveys the trajectory of German philosophy 1780-1830, a formative period roughly from Kant’s setting out to prove reason trumps empirical determinism to the passing of Hegel. Kant, the protagonist, sought to establish a priori knowledge (what can I know? what should I do? what may I hope?), and concluded knowledge is bounded by the subject’s understanding of objects. His categorical imperative remains vital in modern society: treat fellow humans as you would yourself, and as ends not means. Subsequent German idealists challenged his principles of first knowledge, changing a critical understanding into absolute viewpoints. Hegel determined subject-object falsely limits understanding of appearances, and moved from knowing to being, thereby concluding man’s reconciliation with the natural world is the primary objective. Religion, art, and philosophy are the practices par excellence. Clear but difficult.
5. Ricks, Generals (14 Jun 2014)
A whirlwind study of US army leadership from the time of George Marshall. The military has all but abandoned the practice of rewarding officer success and treating failure by giving another a chance at command (and the relieved officer another chance elsewhere), thereby deferring personnel decisions to civilian oversight, which the army abhors for operational reasons. The trend began with McArthur and has persisted through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The army reached its quotidian / tactical nadir in Vietnam and then recovered, but has has yet to come to grips with a strategic doctrine for winning (i.e., ending) 21st-century, asymmetric conflict. This remaining gap, Ricks asserts, is attributable to conventional, insular career paths. A fine organizational study free of jargon.
26. Decker, Utah Politics (16 Dec 2022)
Utah’s exceptionalism stems from the Latter-day Saints’ deplorable opposition to the sexual revolution, animating its Republican affinities and consequently separation from the American mainstream. ‘Traditional morality conflicts with American ideals of freedom and equality’, Decker ventures (p. 343) without substantiation, not to mention why the GOP is beyond the pale. Further, as the author himself shows, the state’s strongly GOP character springs from resisting federal diktats. Preconceptions of normalcy trump the considerable evidence amassed: Decker is unwilling to grapple with civic purpose. The Mormon church and therefore Utah rely on ‘habit, culture, religion, which are hard to instill and not good tools for government’ (p. 347).
Having acquiesced to Washington’s animus against polygamy, Utah sought Washington’s favors over 1890-1940, particularly during the Depression – the only period of Democratic rule. Interestingly, this was also an era of net emigration. Then the postwar state eschewed economic growth for social alignment with the reactionary GOP. Notwithstanding the Salt Lake valley-rural dichotomy, the ‘Downwinder’ phenomenon described herein, and extensive opposition to US land and water management policies, propelled as they have been by unelected NGBs and bureaucrats as well as Democratic politics, for Decker religion is foremost: the LDS votes GOP, non-members Democrat, and thus the state is monocultural. (NB: per capita income in counties where the federal government owns most of the land is one-third lower than counties where the majority is otherwise.)
In the second part, the author shows state government evolved from corruption to integrity – save for the courts’ declining to follow the US Supreme Court’s progressive sociology and unaccountable education policy. More important, he reiterates the canard that one can’t (shouldn’t) legislate morality. There is also little effort to evaluate schools ‘outperform[ing] their poverty’ or other contrary metrics, not to mention his own observation that Utes are happy not angry. Surprisingly, Decker concludes quoting Strauss: neither Athens nor Jerusalem can triumph over the other. Yet the Hellenic city-state too sought not for modernity’s ‘low but solid’ goals but civic virtue.