Iran
On the idea of bombing Iran to stop them from acquiring nuclear weapons:
One of the most elusive questions in global strategy is "How far into the future should we look?" 1 year, 5 years, 20 years...100 years? Surely not 1000, and surely not 1 month.
Of course, limits in knowledge cause uncertainty to exponentially increase as you broaden your sights; thus, a more closely circumscribed strategy is oftentimes most practical. And yet, overall advantage accrues to the player whose paradigm enables over-the-horizon clarity in vision. A player who can accurately foresee the probability matrices that define the future is best positioned to make correct decisions now, so long as his topographical understanding of the causal landscape is relatively precise. If, somehow, one is lucky enough to understand the world well enough to forecast beyond the capacity of one's opponents, all one needs to win THE GAME are a set of fundamental, clearly defined objectives and a compass.
One way of describing a 5 year strategic window is "modesty in the face of an uncertain world." The idea here is to hedge against marginal risks, husband resources, and pursue near-term objectives that, because our sight is diminished, must be defined as "goods-in-themselves." Let me give an example of how this might shake out. A pinched strategic window led us to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan by proxy. Had we, in 1979, had a 25 year understanding of the world thereafter, we might have thought twice about coopting jihad to accomplish our near-term goal. Afghanistan was probably going to be a poisoned pill for the Soviets no matter what we did. Perhaps, then, we should have abstained from shoving jihad into modernity. Maybe we could have avoided 9/11 and all this mess after.
Or maybe not. I suppose the point is that there are always externalities, unknown unknowns, that, given enough time, can mature into substantial system deviations. Any big move in a complex system is dangerous, especially a big move without a powerful flashlight to point into the darkness of the future. The upshot is that you may eliminate the near-term problem only to find yourself drowning in a causal riptide later on -- a causal riptide of your own making.
What I find increasingly frustrating is the refusal of both sides of the "war on terror" debate to contemplate past the near-term in their analyses. One side sees War With Iran as Justice, forgetting that in this GAME the moral instinct can oftentimes lead astray. Another side, overlapping but not coextensive with the first, sees Precluding Iranian Nukes as a good-in-itself, or, alternatively, as a means to an end which is a good-in-itself. The cadres of the Left have even less-well-supported positions, and equally large blind-spots.
Overall Objectives: Preconditions of Strategy
Question: What should our goals be as individuals, as groups, as nations and as human beings?
Short Answer: Our goals toward which we strive should be 1) indefinite survival (robustness vis-a-vis the set of all possible environments, fecundity, adaptability, etc.), 2) optimal independence (in action and from fate), 3) prosperity on these terms (vitality, health), and 4) happiness in the world (too complicated to define here).
As with a journey -- which is not an inapt way of describing it -- the better you understand the landscape the more likely you are to reach your destination. Whereas on a real journey we have useful metrics to describe the realities we might face -- time and space measures, caloric intake, etc. -- we seem to be at a loss when it comes to describing the human landscape. Because we don't have the measurements, we oftentimes can't discern a mountain from a hill, or a stream from an ocean. Thus we sometimes find ourselves climbing the highest peaks or wading across bottomless seas, when a better topographical map would have steered us toward more modest inclines and shallower waters. A good example of this is, perhaps, Iraq. Like the Mongol fleets in 1274 and 1281, we set sail in Iraq unaware of the stormy chaos brewing over the horizon. Unlike the Mongols, we may still make it across. However, if we do succeed in making it to the other side it's only because of the ingenuity, tenacity and honor of the American military -- a deus ex machina our politicians won't deserve, a lifeline on which we can't always depend.
And now we have Iran, and you have an opinion. Therefore, I need to ask:
1) How well do you understand the landscape?
2) What happens to the ecosystem of states when the dominant player eschews all fig leaves which give modesty to power -- not once, but twice. How might that change the behaviors of the other players? What kind of nested feedback mechanisms will activate in response to the centrifugal actions of the hyperpower, and how will these emergent dynamics affect the pursuit of our Overall Strategic Objectives?
3) Are there not easier paths through the mountains? Knowing everything there is to know about how humans process information in general, knowing everything we know about how specific groups process the world in particular, mightn't there be a more elegant way to overcome obstacles when they arise?
4) What incentive structures might emerge if we do nothing? What incentive structures might emerge if we do something?
5) How accurate is our understanding of the Set of Plausible Alternatives? How comprehensive is our Set of Possible Consequences, how well do we understand their probabilities, etc.?
6) How much do you trust our leaders to carry out Big Moves in the complex world of geo-political strategy?
7) Where should our red-lines be?
8) Are we ever going to be able to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle?
9) If not, how do we work toward the softest landing possible? What will that look like?
A collection of quotes to think about:
"The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed." Gibbon, Decline and Fall...
"Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude." Id.
"[In biology] you can look at a signal and infer its honesty based on the cost of expression." Marc Hauser, Harvard.
"Fools! They know not how much more the half is than the whole, nor what great advantage there is in mallow and asphodel." Hesiod, Works and Days.
"The everlasting battle stripped from us care of our own lives or of others'. We had ropes about our necks, and on our heads prices which showed that the enemy intended hideous tortures for us if we were caught. Each day some of us passed; and the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage: indeed, our taskmaster was merciless, merciless, so long as our bruised feet could stagger forward on the road. The weak envied those tired enough to die; for success looked so remote, and failure a near and certain, if sharp, release from toil. We lived always in the stretch or sag of nerves, either on the crest or in the trough of waves of feeling. This impotency was bitter to us, and made us live only for the seen horizon, reckless what spite we inflicted or endured, since physical sensation showed itself meanly transient. Gusts of cruelty, perversions, lusts ran lightly over the surface without troubling us; for the moral laws which had seemed to hedge about these silly accidents must be yet fainter words. We had learned that there were pangs too sharp, griefs too deep, ecstasies too high for our finite selves to register. When emotion reached this pitch the mind choked; and memory went white till the circumstances were humdrum once more." T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
"As one commentator has observed, 'Certainly had Saddam Hussein been possessed of a working nuclear arsenal, the United States would have been far less willing to station half a million troops, a sizable fraction of its air forces, and a large naval armada within easy reach of Iraq's borders,' an observation that will not be lost on most world leaders. The consequence of this development for the projection of conventional forces is profound. It's not so much that nuclear weapons render the promise of security to the citizens of the nation-state unbelievable per se; rather it is that only the possession of weapons of mass-destruction can hope to validate that promise, with the unavoidable result that no nation-state can afford to be without the protection of such weapons, because their conventional forces are utterly vulnerable to threats from the states that do possess these weapons. With the Long War ended, once the nuclear umbrella of the United States ceases to be extended to cover Japan, Germany, and other states against attack, the drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction will become irresistible." Philip Bobbitt, Shield of Achilles.
"Law develops out of society's need to minimize the collateral consequences of taking revenge." Oliver Wendell Holmes.
One of the most elusive questions in global strategy is "How far into the future should we look?" 1 year, 5 years, 20 years...100 years? Surely not 1000, and surely not 1 month.
Of course, limits in knowledge cause uncertainty to exponentially increase as you broaden your sights; thus, a more closely circumscribed strategy is oftentimes most practical. And yet, overall advantage accrues to the player whose paradigm enables over-the-horizon clarity in vision. A player who can accurately foresee the probability matrices that define the future is best positioned to make correct decisions now, so long as his topographical understanding of the causal landscape is relatively precise. If, somehow, one is lucky enough to understand the world well enough to forecast beyond the capacity of one's opponents, all one needs to win THE GAME are a set of fundamental, clearly defined objectives and a compass.
One way of describing a 5 year strategic window is "modesty in the face of an uncertain world." The idea here is to hedge against marginal risks, husband resources, and pursue near-term objectives that, because our sight is diminished, must be defined as "goods-in-themselves." Let me give an example of how this might shake out. A pinched strategic window led us to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan by proxy. Had we, in 1979, had a 25 year understanding of the world thereafter, we might have thought twice about coopting jihad to accomplish our near-term goal. Afghanistan was probably going to be a poisoned pill for the Soviets no matter what we did. Perhaps, then, we should have abstained from shoving jihad into modernity. Maybe we could have avoided 9/11 and all this mess after.
Or maybe not. I suppose the point is that there are always externalities, unknown unknowns, that, given enough time, can mature into substantial system deviations. Any big move in a complex system is dangerous, especially a big move without a powerful flashlight to point into the darkness of the future. The upshot is that you may eliminate the near-term problem only to find yourself drowning in a causal riptide later on -- a causal riptide of your own making.
What I find increasingly frustrating is the refusal of both sides of the "war on terror" debate to contemplate past the near-term in their analyses. One side sees War With Iran as Justice, forgetting that in this GAME the moral instinct can oftentimes lead astray. Another side, overlapping but not coextensive with the first, sees Precluding Iranian Nukes as a good-in-itself, or, alternatively, as a means to an end which is a good-in-itself. The cadres of the Left have even less-well-supported positions, and equally large blind-spots.
Overall Objectives: Preconditions of Strategy
Question: What should our goals be as individuals, as groups, as nations and as human beings?
Short Answer: Our goals toward which we strive should be 1) indefinite survival (robustness vis-a-vis the set of all possible environments, fecundity, adaptability, etc.), 2) optimal independence (in action and from fate), 3) prosperity on these terms (vitality, health), and 4) happiness in the world (too complicated to define here).
As with a journey -- which is not an inapt way of describing it -- the better you understand the landscape the more likely you are to reach your destination. Whereas on a real journey we have useful metrics to describe the realities we might face -- time and space measures, caloric intake, etc. -- we seem to be at a loss when it comes to describing the human landscape. Because we don't have the measurements, we oftentimes can't discern a mountain from a hill, or a stream from an ocean. Thus we sometimes find ourselves climbing the highest peaks or wading across bottomless seas, when a better topographical map would have steered us toward more modest inclines and shallower waters. A good example of this is, perhaps, Iraq. Like the Mongol fleets in 1274 and 1281, we set sail in Iraq unaware of the stormy chaos brewing over the horizon. Unlike the Mongols, we may still make it across. However, if we do succeed in making it to the other side it's only because of the ingenuity, tenacity and honor of the American military -- a deus ex machina our politicians won't deserve, a lifeline on which we can't always depend.
And now we have Iran, and you have an opinion. Therefore, I need to ask:
1) How well do you understand the landscape?
2) What happens to the ecosystem of states when the dominant player eschews all fig leaves which give modesty to power -- not once, but twice. How might that change the behaviors of the other players? What kind of nested feedback mechanisms will activate in response to the centrifugal actions of the hyperpower, and how will these emergent dynamics affect the pursuit of our Overall Strategic Objectives?
3) Are there not easier paths through the mountains? Knowing everything there is to know about how humans process information in general, knowing everything we know about how specific groups process the world in particular, mightn't there be a more elegant way to overcome obstacles when they arise?
4) What incentive structures might emerge if we do nothing? What incentive structures might emerge if we do something?
5) How accurate is our understanding of the Set of Plausible Alternatives? How comprehensive is our Set of Possible Consequences, how well do we understand their probabilities, etc.?
6) How much do you trust our leaders to carry out Big Moves in the complex world of geo-political strategy?
7) Where should our red-lines be?
8) Are we ever going to be able to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle?
9) If not, how do we work toward the softest landing possible? What will that look like?
A collection of quotes to think about:
"The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed." Gibbon, Decline and Fall...
"Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude." Id.
"[In biology] you can look at a signal and infer its honesty based on the cost of expression." Marc Hauser, Harvard.
"Fools! They know not how much more the half is than the whole, nor what great advantage there is in mallow and asphodel." Hesiod, Works and Days.
"The everlasting battle stripped from us care of our own lives or of others'. We had ropes about our necks, and on our heads prices which showed that the enemy intended hideous tortures for us if we were caught. Each day some of us passed; and the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage: indeed, our taskmaster was merciless, merciless, so long as our bruised feet could stagger forward on the road. The weak envied those tired enough to die; for success looked so remote, and failure a near and certain, if sharp, release from toil. We lived always in the stretch or sag of nerves, either on the crest or in the trough of waves of feeling. This impotency was bitter to us, and made us live only for the seen horizon, reckless what spite we inflicted or endured, since physical sensation showed itself meanly transient. Gusts of cruelty, perversions, lusts ran lightly over the surface without troubling us; for the moral laws which had seemed to hedge about these silly accidents must be yet fainter words. We had learned that there were pangs too sharp, griefs too deep, ecstasies too high for our finite selves to register. When emotion reached this pitch the mind choked; and memory went white till the circumstances were humdrum once more." T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
"As one commentator has observed, 'Certainly had Saddam Hussein been possessed of a working nuclear arsenal, the United States would have been far less willing to station half a million troops, a sizable fraction of its air forces, and a large naval armada within easy reach of Iraq's borders,' an observation that will not be lost on most world leaders. The consequence of this development for the projection of conventional forces is profound. It's not so much that nuclear weapons render the promise of security to the citizens of the nation-state unbelievable per se; rather it is that only the possession of weapons of mass-destruction can hope to validate that promise, with the unavoidable result that no nation-state can afford to be without the protection of such weapons, because their conventional forces are utterly vulnerable to threats from the states that do possess these weapons. With the Long War ended, once the nuclear umbrella of the United States ceases to be extended to cover Japan, Germany, and other states against attack, the drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction will become irresistible." Philip Bobbitt, Shield of Achilles.
"Law develops out of society's need to minimize the collateral consequences of taking revenge." Oliver Wendell Holmes.
posted by John Aristides at 11/16/2007 01:21:00 PM
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