Strategy (114 page)

The strategist has to accept that even when there is an obvious climax (a battle or an election), the story line will still be open-ended—what McKee calls a “miniplot”—leaving a number of issues to be resolved later. Even when the desired endpoint is reached, it is not really the end. The enemy may have surrendered, the election won, the target company taken over, the revolutionary opportunity seized, but that just means that there is now an occupied country to run, a new government to be formed, a whole new revolutionary order to be established, or distinctive sets of corporate activity to be merged. Here the dramatist can leave the next stage to the reader's imagination or pick up the story again after the passage of time, perhaps even with many new characters. Strategists have no such luxury. The transition is immediate and may well be conditional on how the original endpoint was reached. This takes us back to the observation that much strategy is about getting to the next stage rather than some ultimate destination. Rather than think of strategy as a three-act play, it is better to think of it as a soap opera with a continuing cast of characters and plot lines that unfold over a series of episodes. Each of these episodes will be self-contained and set up the subsequent episode. Unlike a play with a definite ending, there is no need for a soap opera to ever reach a conclusion, even though the central characters and their circumstances change.

The dramatist can use coincidences to move the plot along, to ensure that the main protagonist faces the hard choices at the right time. The strategist knows that there will be events which were never part of the plot and which disrupt its logic but cannot be sure when, where, and how. Boundaries will
be hard to maintain, and apparently irrelevant issues will intrude and complicate matters. The plot must therefore build in a certain freedom of action. The earlier definitive choices must be made, the greater the commitment to a particular course and the harder the adjustment when the actions of others or chance events deflect the protagonist from this course. The strategist cannot rely on the device of the
deus ex machina
, by which classical plays used divine intervention to sort out desperate situations at the last moment. Writers can allow a coincidence to turn an ending, acknowledges McKee, but this is the “writer's greatest sin” for it negates the value of the plot and allows the central characters to duck responsibility for their own actions. Aristotle also deplored the regular recourse to this device.

In ancient Greece, the most important distinction in plots was between comedy and tragedy. This was not a distinction between happy/sad or funny/miserable but between alternative ways of resolving conflicts.
³⁷
It may be that the conflict is not between opposing characters but between individuals and society. Comedy ends with a satisfactory resolution and the main characters looking forward positively to the future; tragedy ends with a negative prospect—especially for the main character, who is probably largely responsible for his own misfortune—even if society as a whole is restored to some sort of equilibrium. When a new and positive relationship has been forged between society and the main character that is comedy; when the main character's attempt to change the status quo has been defeated that is tragedy. The dramatist knows from the start whether she is writing comedy or a tragedy: the strategist aims for comedy but risks tragedy.

T
HE CONTRACT FOR
this book is dated 1994. The original commission came from Tim Barton, and I appreciate his extraordinary patience as I busied myself with other projects and made a number of false starts on this one. Once it did get underway, he guided me to the capable hands of David McBride, who has been an extraordinarily supportive editor. It is thanks to him, Cammy Richelli, and the rest of the team at Oxford University Press that this book is making an appearance.

The project, however, would not have even been re-started had it not been for James Gow's encouragement and seminar opportunities to develop my ideas. James, with Brad Robinson, pushed me into applying to the Research Councils UK under their Global Uncertainties program and helped me put together a successful submission. This joint ESRC/AHRC Fellowship provided me with space to research and write that would otherwise have been impossible. I was particularly fortunate in my coworkers on the grant. I have benefited from Jeff Michaels's own work on strategic ideas, as well as his sharp critiques of my own. While I was supposedly supervising Ben Wilkinson's thesis, he was in practice supervising me—especially when it came to the Classics.

The department of War Studies at King's College London has been a stimulating home to me for over three decades. Conversations with staff and students inform many parts of this book. I have been grateful for the support of successive department heads: Brian Holden Reid, Christopher Dandeker, and Mervyn Frost. Other colleagues have also given me advice on the manuscript, notably Theo Farrell, Jan Willem Honig, and John Stone, who was
a regular source of interesting references. Limor Simhony helped check my references, and Sarah Chukwudebe put in many corrections.

I have also benefited greatly from the advice of colleagues outside the department. Special mention must be made of two outstanding students of strategy, Beatrice Heuser and Bob Jervis, who provided detailed and meticulous annotations, far beyond the call of duty. Thanks for many useful comments are also due to Rob Ayson, Dick Betts, Stuart Croft, Pete Feaver, Azar Gat, Carl Levy, Albert Weale, and Nick Wheeler. Lastly, my son Sam was a source of good advice on structure and the title, and I was able to discuss the counterculture with my daughter-in-law Linda. I could mention many people with whom I have discussed the issues raised in this book—and a number of them appear in its pages—but two deserve special mention. The first is my teacher and mentor, Sir Michael Howard, who set me on this course and still inspires me to continue. The second is Colin Gray. Our careers have run in parallel, with many shared themes. Though our views have often diverged, the encounters have always been rewarding.

In all my books I have thanked my wife Judith for her forbearance. Once again she has had to cope with my “book daze,” during which I am oblivious to everything around me other than the manuscript. It struck me, as we approach our ruby wedding, that it is about time I dedicated one of these books to her.

1
.
Matthew Parris
, “What if the Turkeys Don't Vote for Christmas?”,
The Times
, May 12, 2012.

2
. The concept of strategy as being “concerned with ways to employ means to achieve ends” is comparatively recent but is now well established in military circles, although not in such a way as always to capture the dynamic interaction between these elements. Arthur F. Lykke, Jr., “Toward an Understanding of Military Strategy,”
Military Strategy: Theory and Application
(Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 1989), 3–8.

3
. Ecclesiastes 9:11.

4
. This can be tracked using Google's Ngram facility:
http://books.google.com/ngrams
/.

5
. Raymond Aron, “The Evolution of Modern Strategic Thought,” in Alastair Buchan, ed.,
Problems of Modern Strategy
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1970), 25.

6
. George Orwell, “Perfide Albion” (review, Liddell Hart's
British Way of Warfare), New Statesman and Nation
, November 21, 1942, 342–343.

1
. Frans B. M. de Waal, “A Century of Getting to Know the Chimpanzee,”
Nature
437, September 1, 2005, 56–59.

2
. De Waal,
Chimpanzee Politics
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998). First edition was in 1982.

3
. De Waal, “Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy,”
Annual Review Psychology
59 (2008): 279–300. See also Dario
Maestripieri,
Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

4
. Richard Byrne and Nadia Corp, “Neocortex Size Predicts Deception Rate in Primates,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London
271, no. 1549 (August 2004): 1693–1699.

5
. Richard Byrne and A. Whiten, eds.,
Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes and Humans
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988);
Machiavellian Intelligence II: Extensions and Evaluations
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). The idea is often traced back to Nicholas Humphrey, “The Social Function of Intellect,” in P. P. G. Bateson and R. A. Hinde, eds.
Growing Points in Ethology
, 303–317 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

6
. Bert Höllbroder and Edward O. Wilson,
Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 59. Cited in Bradley Thayer,
Darwin and International Relations: On the Evolutionary Origins of War and Ethnic Conflict
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 163.

7
. Jane Goodall,
The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).

8
. Richard Wrangham, “Evolution of Coalitionary Killing,”
Yearbook of Physical Anthropology
42, 1999, 12, 14, 2, 3.

9
. Goodall,
The Chimpanzees of Gombe
, p. 176, fn 101.

10
. Robert Bigelow,
Dawn Warriors
(New York: Little Brown, 1969).

11
. Lawerence H. Keeley,
War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 48.

12
. Azar Gat,
War in Human Civilization
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 115–117.

13
. Keeping in mind that these societies were relatively simple and social moves within them, including deception, would be less demanding than those in more complex human societies. Kim Sterelny, “Social Intelligence, Human Intelligence and Niche Construction,”
Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society
362, no. 1480 (2007): 719–730.

1
. Steven Brams,
Biblical Games: Game Theory and the Hebrew Bible
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003).

2
. Ibid., 12.

3
. Genesis 2:22, 23. All biblical references use the King James Version.

4
. Genesis 2:16, 17; 3:16, 17.

5
. Diana Lipton,
Longing for Egypt and Other Unexpected Biblical Tales
, Hebrew Bible Monographs 15 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2008).

6
. Exodus 9:13–17.

7
. Exodus 7:3–5.

8
. Exodus 10:1–2.

9
. Chaim Herzog and Mordechai Gichon,
Battles of the Bible
, revised ed. (London: Greenhill Books, 1997), 45.

10
. Joshua 9:1–26.

11
. Judges 6–8.

12
. 1 Samuel 17.

13
. Susan Niditch,
War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 110–111.

1
. Homer,
The Odyssey
, translated by M. Hammond (London: Duckworth, 2000), Book 9.19–20, Book 13.297–9.

2
. Virgil,
The Aeneid
(London: Penguin Classics, 2003).

3
. Homer,
The Iliad
, translated by Stephen Mitchell (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011), Chapter IX.310–311, Chapter IX.346–352, Chapter XVIII.243–314, Chapter XXII.226–240.

4
. Jenny Strauss Clay,
The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey
(New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1983), 96.

5
. As “ou” is interchangeable with “me,” this was linguistically equivalent to m
ē
tis.

6
.
The Odyssey
, Book 9.405–14.

7
.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Philoctetes.txt
.

8
. W. B. Stanford,
The Ulysses Theme: A Study in the Adaptability of the Traditional Hero
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), 24.

9
. Jeffrey Barnouw,
Odysseus, Hero of Practical Intelligence: Deliberation and Signs in Homer's Odyssey
(New York: University Press of America, 2004), 2–3, 33.

10
. Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant,
Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society
, translated from French by Janet Lloyd (Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1978), 13–14, 44–45.

11
. Barbara Tuchman,
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
(London: Michael Joseph, 1984), 46–49.

12
. The word
strat
ē
gos
was a compound of
stratos
, for an encamped army spread out over ground, and
agein
(to lead).

13
. Thucydides,
The History of the Peloponnesian War
, translated by Rex Warner (London: Penguin Classics, 1972), 5.26.

14
. The extent to which contemporary realist theories claim Thucydides as one of their own is discussed critically in Jonathan Monten, “Thucydides and Modern Realism,”
International Studies Quarterly
(2006) 50, 3–25, and David Welch, “Why International Relations Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides,”
Review of International Studies
29 (2003), 301–319.

15
. Thucydides, 1.75–76.

16
. Ibid., 5.89.

17
. Ibid., 1.23.5–6.