Due to previous experience as an analyst, I know that the way we describe something often shapes the decisions made to affect it...whatever that 'something' is. I suppose that's not too different from 'framing' the issue, in a sense.
It goes beyond that, though, as well. There is a lot of white noise out there, so you have to pick and choose what's relevant. What's worth noting. And what isn't. Add to that the usual complexities of life (i.e. delayed responses, difficulty attaching outcomes to causes, etc) and sometimes it's a wonder we can predict anything.
On this, my second blog, I've been trying to keep my posts a bit more focused...and less meta. It's hard to do justice to the topics, though, since so much depends on my particular worldview and how I filtered things in the first place. If I skip all that, then I can write a simple and clear analysis that may disagree with someone else's analysis because I didn't go into the underlying assumptions.
I got onto the topic for a variety of reasons. First, because of where we are in history today. Can we "Make America Great Again"? Did we stop being great? Were we ever great? If we were great and aren't any more, then what caused us to stop being great? (As analysis often drives the conclusion...that's a pretty key question. I think most people know what Donald Trump's answer to this is. Even if you agree with him that America was great and is not any more, you can disagree on why or how that happened and come up with a completely different solution.)
Second - well, pinpointing how or why something occurred in human history is notoriously difficult. Just look at all the books that discuss the fall of the Roman Empire. Or The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and other books in a similar vein. It's hard to do analysis like this on historical events, it's even harder to do in the present time. Particularly because people have reasons for pushing one particular cause over another, and nobody knows what the end result will be.
I kind of wanted to add something here, as well. Sometimes the side that 'wins' does so because they made fewer mistakes. It doesn't mean that they had the perfect strategy...and sometimes they can mistake the real reason for their success. I think of that, in particular, when I consider why dictators take power (and the lessons their offspring all too often learn about how to keep power). A strongman may seem like a blessing when you've lived through a devastating civil war, and many people seem to think the brutality of a dictator is what allowed them to end the devastation. Yet I think Caligula shows that brutality in and of itself isn't enough, at least if your Praetorian Guard decides to do away with you.
So anyways. With regards to foreign policy, there are a variety of theories on war, international affairs, etc. There's the concept of realpolitik, there are realists, idealists, etc. The policies you prescribe often have to do with what your underlying assumptions are, and those schools of thought have a lot to do with that.
This also gets at the hidden transcripts I talked about earlier. Some of the people making these decisions believe they're making the ugly but necessary calls, the ones that look horrible in the light of day...yet they feel that's the way it has to be done. And has always been done. That any criticism shows you're too idealistic and should never see the hidden (ugly) inner workings that lead to such decisions. Sort of like the famous quote that "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."
So there can be a couple of competing narratives, two of which seem particularly relevant to America for the past fifty years or so.
In one, the people can not understand the reasons for decisions that look wrong on the face of it, and so must be sheltered and protected from the dirty work.
In the other, the elite are trying to hide their corrupt and self-serving decisions from the light of day. Whether it was justified or not, doing so maintains their own control (and at the expense of the people.)
I said the last fifty years or so because these competing narratives seem to play out with the Vietnam War. That is, you have some people who justify all sorts of things in order to fight Communism. I am going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and say that they truly did think Communism was a tremendous threat that needed to be fought with every tool at their disposal. These are the ones, then, who feel practically betrayed when the public so directly turned against them. They aren't willing to question the decisions they made, to consider whether they were truly the best options at hand. You see a more recent version of this with George W. Bush's argument that we needed to "stay the course" in Iraq. In this worldview, the right decisions are being made and the right things are being done...ugly though they may sometimes appear...and we just need to stick with it and see it through. (This is not helped by the fact that sometimes sheer perseverance really does win the day. I would argue, however, that anyone who is horrified at Mao's willingness to lose 300 million Chinese should understand that perseverance can be a devastating way to 'win' and should probably not be your sole strategy.)
On the flip side, you have an entire generation that grew to distrust their government (because of Vietnam, and more)...and see repeated attempts to hide information less as a a necessary part of the business and more as a sign that we are no longer a true democracy. That our government doesn't really respond to the will of the people, so much as to that secretive cabal of government, business and military interests.
It goes beyond that, though, as well. There is a lot of white noise out there, so you have to pick and choose what's relevant. What's worth noting. And what isn't. Add to that the usual complexities of life (i.e. delayed responses, difficulty attaching outcomes to causes, etc) and sometimes it's a wonder we can predict anything.
On this, my second blog, I've been trying to keep my posts a bit more focused...and less meta. It's hard to do justice to the topics, though, since so much depends on my particular worldview and how I filtered things in the first place. If I skip all that, then I can write a simple and clear analysis that may disagree with someone else's analysis because I didn't go into the underlying assumptions.
I got onto the topic for a variety of reasons. First, because of where we are in history today. Can we "Make America Great Again"? Did we stop being great? Were we ever great? If we were great and aren't any more, then what caused us to stop being great? (As analysis often drives the conclusion...that's a pretty key question. I think most people know what Donald Trump's answer to this is. Even if you agree with him that America was great and is not any more, you can disagree on why or how that happened and come up with a completely different solution.)
Second - well, pinpointing how or why something occurred in human history is notoriously difficult. Just look at all the books that discuss the fall of the Roman Empire. Or The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and other books in a similar vein. It's hard to do analysis like this on historical events, it's even harder to do in the present time. Particularly because people have reasons for pushing one particular cause over another, and nobody knows what the end result will be.
I kind of wanted to add something here, as well. Sometimes the side that 'wins' does so because they made fewer mistakes. It doesn't mean that they had the perfect strategy...and sometimes they can mistake the real reason for their success. I think of that, in particular, when I consider why dictators take power (and the lessons their offspring all too often learn about how to keep power). A strongman may seem like a blessing when you've lived through a devastating civil war, and many people seem to think the brutality of a dictator is what allowed them to end the devastation. Yet I think Caligula shows that brutality in and of itself isn't enough, at least if your Praetorian Guard decides to do away with you.
So anyways. With regards to foreign policy, there are a variety of theories on war, international affairs, etc. There's the concept of realpolitik, there are realists, idealists, etc. The policies you prescribe often have to do with what your underlying assumptions are, and those schools of thought have a lot to do with that.
This also gets at the hidden transcripts I talked about earlier. Some of the people making these decisions believe they're making the ugly but necessary calls, the ones that look horrible in the light of day...yet they feel that's the way it has to be done. And has always been done. That any criticism shows you're too idealistic and should never see the hidden (ugly) inner workings that lead to such decisions. Sort of like the famous quote that "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made."
So there can be a couple of competing narratives, two of which seem particularly relevant to America for the past fifty years or so.
In one, the people can not understand the reasons for decisions that look wrong on the face of it, and so must be sheltered and protected from the dirty work.
In the other, the elite are trying to hide their corrupt and self-serving decisions from the light of day. Whether it was justified or not, doing so maintains their own control (and at the expense of the people.)
I said the last fifty years or so because these competing narratives seem to play out with the Vietnam War. That is, you have some people who justify all sorts of things in order to fight Communism. I am going to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and say that they truly did think Communism was a tremendous threat that needed to be fought with every tool at their disposal. These are the ones, then, who feel practically betrayed when the public so directly turned against them. They aren't willing to question the decisions they made, to consider whether they were truly the best options at hand. You see a more recent version of this with George W. Bush's argument that we needed to "stay the course" in Iraq. In this worldview, the right decisions are being made and the right things are being done...ugly though they may sometimes appear...and we just need to stick with it and see it through. (This is not helped by the fact that sometimes sheer perseverance really does win the day. I would argue, however, that anyone who is horrified at Mao's willingness to lose 300 million Chinese should understand that perseverance can be a devastating way to 'win' and should probably not be your sole strategy.)
On the flip side, you have an entire generation that grew to distrust their government (because of Vietnam, and more)...and see repeated attempts to hide information less as a a necessary part of the business and more as a sign that we are no longer a true democracy. That our government doesn't really respond to the will of the people, so much as to that secretive cabal of government, business and military interests.
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