What You Get When You Have No Strategy

In an interview in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that, in the words of the Journal, “the real problem with U.S. policy [in the Middle East and with respect to ISIS] has been the absence of any clear strategy like the one that guided the U.S. in the Cold War.”  Mr. Gates continued:

“‘We all implicitly accepted [George] Kennan’s view that if we contained the Soviets long enough, their internal contradictions would finally lead to their collapse, even if nobody had any idea when.

‘If you accept the premise that we face a generation-long period of turbulence and violence in the Middle East, the lack of an overarching strategy for how you react to a region in flames is a problem.  Are there fires we should just let burn out?  Who are our friends?  Who should we support?’”

As if to prove Secretary Gates’ point, the Journal reported on Friday (as did others):

“President Barack Obama assembled his top national security advisers Thursday to talk about stepping up military operations against Islamic State, including the possibility of an expanded fight in Libya, where the extremist group is quickly gaining a foothold, the White House said.

Following the meeting, top officials said that while no decisions had been made, advisers were increasingly concerned.  The Pentagon has said Islamic State is “metastasizing” to other areas, including Libya.

‘We’re watching the situation very carefully, and there’s a lot going on there right now,’ Defense Secretary Ash Carter told reporters at the Pentagon after the White House meeting.  ‘But we haven’t made any decisions to take military action there.’”

Actually, in spite of what Secretary Gates said, I think we do have a policy, or at least a semblance of one, in the Middle East.  The problem is that the policy seems to be to do as little as possible.  If we can do nothing, that is best.  But if we have to do something, do the least.

So what we wind up with is meetings like the one on Thursday.  When things get so bad that it’s hard to do nothing, we have meetings to see if we really do have to do something.  And, if we have to, to figure out the minimum we can get away with.

But that means there is nothing connecting what we do in one place with what we do somewhere else.  Every action is just a reaction that we have to do because we can’t do nothing.

Which means our policy is a collection of individual reactions we are forced into when we have no other choice.  And you wonder why it’s not working.