By Robert Farley
Deciding not to decide is a strategy that could suit the U.S. well.
Maybe the United States doesn’t need a strategy.
There have long been good reasons to favor a strategy of “muddling through.” The United States government, with its four year Presidential cycle and general public indifference to foreign affairs, has never been particularly well-suited to long-term strategic thinking. “Isolation” and even “containment” arguably resulted from the accretion of a series of small decisions, rather than from strategic forethought. And one event that most assuredly fell under into the definition of proactive grand strategy, the invasion of Iraq, is now widely believed to have been an expensive, destructive failure.
In the shadow of Iraq, “muddling through,” “retrenchment,” or “restraint” all look a bit more attractive. A recent post by Xavier Marquez gives some historical heft to the argument for strategic inscrutability by examining the career of Francisco Franco. Marquez suggests that Franco survived for such a long time because of the coalition he represented was “inherently contradictory, yet could only act through him.” Inscrutability, the capacity not to make a decision, or even to hint at what he really wanted, allowed Franco to manage internal divisions and external opponents.
Read the full story at The Diplomat