Before Strategizing, or “If You’re So Smart, What’s the Answer?”

Now, for the two remaining readers, we need to make clear some other articles of faith and risk losing the next 50%. Strategic choices by foreign opponents of the empire will greatly impact not only US policy, but also determine whether or not domestic opponents of the same empire (i.e. us)are empowered to mitigate and even defeat it. On this last point which is mostly beyond our control, I am not very hopeful, but this may be attributable to the information filters and my ignorance.

So, my last reader, you are treated to another assumption: there will never ever, ever be a single or even dominant strategy embraced by the all sectors of the antiwar movement. At the very best, there may be moments of tacit cooperation between mostly competing and sometimes complementary projects. Yes, “never ever!” Implication: the search for ultimate unity is doomed to fail; happily, however, it is not necessary.

Before getting into how we can generate strategy, let me state another assumption. The movement against the war in Vietnam won some important victories; it did not however secure a sovereign and peaceful future for the Vietnamese people. Indeed, within a few years of the last Hueys sputtering out of the future Ho Chi Minh City, the revolution in Vietnam was subject to external sabotage and invasion while the country’s northern infrastructure (and previously thriving egalitarian agricultural sector) never recuperated from Johnson’s carpet bombing. And while many trumpet the alleged and ensuing, “Vietnam Syndrome,” in less than a decade, a new “low intensity warfare” strategy coupled with its economic counterpart, “structural adjustment” was reaping havoc throughout the Global South, taking in its wake successful revolutions in Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua and aborting others those parts of the world. So, although we have a lot to learn from the 1960s, I prefer not to look at that antiwar movement as a model to be emulated.

With these perhaps overly pessimistic introductory paragraphs, surely you, my tortured reader must wonder, “How does he plan to clamber out of the hole he has dug so far?” Actually there is more digging to be done. As the title of this note betrays, I want to consider some of the preconditions for strategizing. In other words, what factors do we need to consider before we can engage in a conversation about strategy. And so, this third paragraph turns the note toward who we are and demands that we throw light on what it is about ourselves that allows us to engage in strategizing. But wait, there’s more digging to be done.

One respite: for us to engage in strategizing, we must at the very least believe that we can do something, i.e. it is our si se puede moment! Indeed, for that can-do portion of the antiwar movement with which I have been engaged for the last few years, the Stop the Wars Coalition, antiwar strategizing is something that should be open to every opponent of the war.  This too is something that I accept as an article of faith. Still, I must confess a great deal of trepidation here.*

As a movement at the periphery of a global society based on profit and ingrained institutional domination over workers, people of color, women and others whom history conspires to marginalize, we have to work  and think together with folks who have been systematically excluded and brutalized by these processes. This results in a rich mix of logics, ways of thinking, expression and creativity… And like a drink too sweet it is sometimes hard to savor and digest. Indeed, whatever the triumphs of postmodern thinking, we remain in a Cartesian world: we need to break down complex realities into simple concepts that can be manipulated and rearranged in order that we may strategize. Yes, after this teaser essay via a series of follow ups, I want to engage in the Cartesian exercise of sketching out some basic elements toward an antiwar strategy. But first, we must discern our weaknesses and deficits. One way to do this may be to see how folks with lots of power generate strategy.

Imagine, for example, folks at Microsoft planning to roll out a new computer operating system that will soon be an almost everyone’s fingertips challenging old and generating new habits and work patterns. At some level, high ranking teams of corporate bureaucrats will develop targets based on their existing market share, the anticipated growth, and scenarios for the future of the world economy and their target markets, the suppliers’ capacity, the resources they have on hand and anticipate for the future, the intelligence about potential competitors and regulators, etc. For each of these topics, different data sources and experts will be consulted, reports synthesizing the latest information and uncertainties will be presented. Where competing hypotheses exist, they will likely be compared against one another via debate, etc. Over days—if not months—set aside for just this kind of strategic thinking and planning, successive layers of the corporation will brainstorm, consider and develop plans and generate a grand strategy… Thereafter, it is likely that they will go through another loop figuring out the implementation of the strategy down to the minute tactical detail. Once adopted, a resolute bureaucracy will implement the plan with an automaton-like efficiency that a Prussian general would have envied. For a real-world example of the prowar strategy sessions, see Jim Lobe's, "Neo-Cons To Plot Iran Strategy Amid Caribbean Luxury."

As important as the process and unimaginable resources themselves, there are also the actual planners to consider.** It is not corporate philanthropy that gets six-figure salaries for upper-level corporate bureaucrats. Instead, trained, disciplined, rested minds secure in the everyday needs like rent, groceries, healthcare, transport and often leisure time are freed up to strategize. One should also forget the myth and stereotypes of brainwashed inside-the-box MBA types. These are folks, whatever their ambitions and selfish interests who are inculcated with upper middle class values of autonomy and team work. They are trained to think, they get paid to think. They think. To be sure they are also trained when to switch off their critical thinking faculties and fall in line with the corporate line… the patriotic line…***

Now consider your average after-work, antiwar coalition meeting! For the most privileged among us, we have likely just completed a full day of work for modest remuneration at a job that we must hold in order to pay rent or the mortgage next month. So we arrive at the church basement—or at encuentro 5 if you’re especially lucky. Maybe the bus ride over has allowed us to swallow a sandwich in lieu of dinner. Perhaps there’s time to look at the proposed agenda or that last article on the war that we printed at work. More likely we’re thinking about those of widgets the boss wanted to have us price and order, but that we forgot about as you were peaking at that article on Blackwater’s profits (or was it the one about Hogzilla?). Bottom line, today was about checking off tasks on a project checklist; we did not exercise our strategic faculties.

Now, let’s assume the meeting get’s going because everyone “needed” has wandered into the meeting room…

Part 2: Our Planning Meetings…

* Note to self: when you write an essay that includes words like “confess,” “trepidation,” and one that engages in little thought experiments and scenarios, you could be setting yourself up for an easy caricature. It gets worse when you consider a contradictory reality in which processes work against one another. Even a good faith interlocutor can quote you out of context and present your words about one aspect of reality as indicative of a larger world view… Oh, what the hell?! After all blogs can only lose lawsuits, get you fired or simply not hired… But then again, all us antiwar folk stick together, don't we?

**For a glimpse into the corporate strategists self image, read Bill Gates and Steve Jobs shooting the breeze, relaxing on their dollar-stuffed couches.

***This says nothing about the quality of the actual product that they market. About the same time that Microsoft was going through its most recent OS rollout, a free and open source software alternative was being released with much less marketing muscle. Even it was being underwritten by South African software tycoon Mark Shuttleworth.