China practices "strategy" while America merely does "tactics"? Given China's long history, why isn't China already controlling the planet? And for that matter, the solar system?
China will defeat America because of their long-term planning advantage?
Roughly 2,500 years earlier, Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu offered an equally profound perspective. In The Art of War, Sun wrote, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory,” stressing the complementarity of these two aspects of military decision-making. But Sun also counseled, “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” – an admonition not to fixate on short-termism.
The author says our long-term planning was once something we had:
George Kennan, first as a diplomat and later as an academic, devised the containment strategy that the United States used against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Andrew Marshall, as the head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, pushed the envelope on US military strategy. And Henry Kissinger, of course, was the ultimate practitioner of what has been dubbed “Grand Strategy.”My memory is that Kennan expected to need his strategy for a decade. Hardly long-term thinking. And Kissinger believed the USSR was going to win and he needed to lock in America's advantages to counter inevitable Soviet dominance. Hardly long-term vision.
I don't know enough about Marshall to judge his record on this issue. But when two out of three clearly don't meet the definition of long-term planning, I'm calling BS on that contrast. And when I read the linked article about Marshall--judged to bolster the author's claim--it's about his strength in analysis and not long-range planning. I say strike three on the ancient Chinese wisdom claim.
Yeah, that's what I get when I read that reference to China's long history. Stupid Americans and our "short-termism" focus on the next quarter!
And FFS, the author cites China's five-year plans as evidence! Didn't
the fate of the Soviet Union disabuse us of groveling before that alleged
form of planning brilliance? And furthermore, why don't the Chinese make five-decade plans?
And I hate to point this out (well okay, I embrace the opportunity),but despite China's 4,000-year-old civilization they are still trying to catch up with America's 250-year sprint.
So there's that.
Yet in the end, the author focuses on Marshsall's analytical abilities--which I endorse. I don't know why he polluted his argument with a digression into long-range planning.
Because I just don't buy that ancient Chinese secret myth. As I reacted when I read the material about modern China quoted in that post:
This. is. awesome.
Chinese rulers unable to think about the long term and simply focused on the short run? Say it ain't so! The culture! The history! The vaguely worded fortune cookie pronouncements! Patience and perspective are in their effing genes, aren't they?
Apparently not.
The Chinese are people, like anyone else. What a radical idea.
I mean, the Chinese didn't see the problems with a one-child policy way ahead of the apparent consequences?
Unless Chinese genes only recently mutated to internalize Sun Tzu's advice.
NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
