Astonishing Short-Sightedness — the Problem of Focusing on a Tree, rather than the Forest in American Foreign Affairs — too-Early Pronouncements of Success in Post-Qaddafi Libya

© 2011 Peter Free

 

21 October 2011

 

 

The shallow quality of American strategic thinking is revealed at every turn — Are we really this stupid?

 

With Muamar Qadaffi’s death yesterday, virtually everyone in the public eye is directly or left-handedly pronouncing President Obama’s NATO participation there a success.  According to these fog-bound folk, the bad man dictator is gone, and that, apparently, is the end of the tale.

 

I comment about this intellectually astonishing phenomenon because nothing so illuminates our penchant for strategic short-sightedness as does shallow thinking of this kind.

 

It is as if prominent Americans are too bound to the minute to consider the fact that there is a future beyond tomorrow and virtually all of it is unknown.

 

 

Point One — American strategic interests in Libya were minimal, now there’s considerably more on the line, and that might not be good

 

I addressed the lack of pre-existing significant strategic interests in Libya here, here and here.

 

With Qaddafi’s fall, the United States is now in a position in which further economic or peace-keeping interventions may be required, simply to continue to carry the public-opinion burden that the United States voluntarily took on, when it first encouraged and then participated in the NATO-assisted civil war to topple him.

 

Leaving Libyans to founder — if that turns out to be the result of the collapse of Qaddafi’s regime — is obviously not going to fly gracefully in the theater of Mid-East opinion.  Which means that the United States (having intervened where it did not have to) is in the unenviable post-Qaddafi position of having strategically more of the line than before the dictator was toppled.

 

Putting more on the line than one has to is certainly an odd way to play the game of international strategic chess.  Especially so when the United States is already woefully strapped, due to its severe economic downturn and its military over-extendedness around the world.

 

 

Point Two — the U.S. strategic picture is global — foolishly concentrating on scattered pieces of it, without considering the effects of interventions on the Whole, is dumb

 

Strategy is most wisely pursued, when outcomes are reasonably predictable.

 

In Libya’s case, the ultimate outcome is completely unpredictable.  Consequently, the “strategy” of intervention there simply added to the burden of international uncertainty that the United States will have to carry in the future.

 

Adding to our uncertainty burden in the form of Libyan intervention was not wise.  The United States is:

 

(a) still mired in Iraq and Afghanistan,

 

(b) foolishly provoking Pakistan (potentially initiating yet another unwinnable war),

 

(c) pursuing unquestionably provocative drone attacks in multiple other nations,

 

and

 

(d) stepping into Africa via the same “advisor” mechanism that began the Vietnam War.

 

This is not strategy.

 

It’s drawn-out national suicide.

 

 

Point Three — rational strategic thinking requires the ability to remember way backward and forecast intelligently far forward

 

A strategist has a long and fact-supported timeline.  An idiot goes short on both.

 

 

The moral? — it’s the idiots who are speaking prematurely about success in Libya today

 

Anyone who pronounces success on something as complex as the Libyan situation — in the instant after a dramatically personalized event occurs (Qadaffi’s death) — is not paying attention to the requirements of rational thinking.

 

We Americans (generally speaking) seem to delight in over-personalizing History’s actors, without recognizing that these celebrities are generally riding long-term historical forces.  Characteristically focusing on persons and celebrity, we miss the more meaning-filled currents of History that we should be accurately seeing (and more wisely forecasting) instead.

 

With our short-sighted vision on the wrong strategic elements, it is no wonder that America is at the economically and militarily scary crossroads that it is.

 

In sum, anyone who today announces success in Libya has framed American strategy far too narrowly to augur well for the American future.

 

With short-sighted leaders like ours in power, the United States is doomed to being drained of all that which made us a vitally constructive force of History in the past.

 

Let’s put our brains (and our humility) back into gear.