Lawrence Freedman: Strategy, a History Reviewed

Vincent J. Curtis

 

8 May 14 

 

 

 

Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman is a tour de force of erudition and a powerful demonstration of his breadth of knowledge and reading.

 

Dr. Freedman has a terrific ability to summarize clearly and accurately the main lines of thought of other theorists.

 

I’m glad it was recommended to me by someone whose opinion I hold in high regard.  If he had not, I would likely have tossed Lawrence’s book aside after the first chapter and most certainly by the end of the first section.  I would have missed much of the book.

 

As a history, it is lacking in the philosophy department.  It is more of a survey of the uses of a word, accounted for in chronological order of occurrence.  Dr. Freedman never gives a proper definition of strategy (more on that later), and most of the uses he accounts for are not strategies as a military man would conceive them.  Since he does not hold to an essential meaning or definition of strategy, he frequently lapses into holding that a strategic end and the tactics to get to it are strategy.  If you put an end and the tactics to gain it together into a whole, then that whole might be a strategy, but not strategy as such.

 

In the course of his critique of strategies found in business, and their alleged derivation from Clausewitz, Jomini, or Sun Tzu, he points out the fallaciousness of trying to correlate business practices with military strategy.  I agree with that assessment.  However, he didn’t apply that observation to his own work!  The consequence then is a very detailed philology of a term, and the term was not always used by those allegedly employing strategy.  Consequently, somewhere, in the back of his mind, is a sense of what strategy is; but Freedman never really gives it.  He eliminated material from consideration on the basis of this vague notion of what strategy is, and so this work must be what he thinks strategy is.  But the book is supposed to be a history of a thing, not an account of what the thing is.

 

A strategy is a plan for the attainment of an object.  Since strategy is a kind of plan, then the thing strategizing must be capable of conceptual thought.  Moreover, since the plan is for the attainment of an object, the attainment of that object constitutes the end of the strategy.  It must be a terminal end, because the attainment of it occurs at a moment in time.  A strategy cannot be used to attain a normative end because a normative end is not attainable at one moment in time.  A military strategy is a plan for the attainment of a military object, and is quintessentially an example of strategy as such.

 

Consequently, the effort to attain normative ends, such as enduring success in business, cannot not have a strategy.  A strategy can be used to get to a certain point of success, and from one point of success to another point of success, each point being a terminal end.  But the normative end of enduring success is not attainable by a strategy.

 

This same analysis applies to political normative ends, the ends of the state.  The end conceived of by Marx and Engels was not a terminal end, and so the so-called strategy to attain it was a strategic end combined with tactics to get there.  They climbed a hill to reach the edge of the plateau at the top.  But being on the plateau is a normative end.  Getting to the edge was a strategic end, and revolution was the tactic to get there.  The munificence of the plateau, and the matter of staying on it, Marx and Engels apparently never really contemplated – like Moses leading the Israelites to the promised land, he had no idea what to do once they got there and he died just before they got there.

 

Because strategy requires in the strategizer the power of conceptual thought, Freedman’s account of the origins of strategy is unnecessary bunkum.  There was no need to impute strategic thinking to chimps.  They are not capable of conceptual thought; only man is.  What behaviorologists do is anthropomorphize apes by imputing strategic thinking to them to account for observed behavior.  It may help man to understand apes, but it goes too far to impute to them a power they lack, the power of conceptual thought.  In addition, the accounts of the strategy to defeat God’s will (which also occurs in the first section) are not history because we have no evidence of it occurring as a matter of historical fact.

 

The book provided ample evidence that economics and sociology remain subject matters and not sciences.

 

All that said, I am glad to have read the entire book.  It informed me on matters I had vague knowledge about, and this work concisely filled me in on the important outlines.  The only section of the book directly useful to the military man is the section on military strategy.

 

Let me now take up the matter of Freedman offering an alleged definition of strategy, though not a proper one.

 

I observed that Freedman never gave a definition of what strategy was, and as a result he wandered all over the place in his history of it.  On page 607 of his book, he states that he offered “the art of creating power” as his “short definition”, though he never offers another.

 

A criticism I made of his work was that, as a history, it was weak in the philosophy department.  His proffered “short definition” of strategy is another example of that weakness.  The problem with that formulation is that it fails the basic test of a definition.  It cannot be a definition.  A statement of definition must be convertible.  A statement of definition has to say the same thing when the terms are reversed in order.

 

But: “Strategy is the art of creating power” and “The art of creating power is strategy” do not say the same thing, and therefore cannot be a definition.  Disregarding the obscurity of the phrase “creating power,” the first statement has the form of a definition, but the second statement seems to be the assignment of a handy name-word to substitute for a longer formulation.  The obscure expression, ‘creating power’ is not the essence of strategy - it is not what strategy is essentially about - but creating power may be an accidental consequence of it, sometimes.  A real definition is founded upon the essence of the thing being defined, and is a phrase which contains a genus and a differentia.  Freedman’s formulation would hold that the genus of strategy is art and ‘creating power’ is its differentia, or essence.

 

In contrast, consider the following: “A strategy is a plan for the attainment of an object,” and “A plan for the attainment of an object is a strategy.”  These statements are convertible, for they say the same thing forwards and backwards.  The formulation passes a basic test of a definition, with ‘plan’ being the genus and ‘for the attainment of an object’ being the differentia of strategy, that which differentiates it from all other kinds of plans.  In addition, ‘for the attainment of an object’ seems to be the essence of strategy, while the creation of power is simply too obscure to say that it is the essence of anything.  The terms of a definition must be better known than the thing being defined, for the less well-known is defined in terms of things better-known.  The first sentence in Freedman’s book is: “Everyone needs a strategy.”  Substituting his proffered definition, the sentence reads: “Everyone needs an art of creating power,” which makes no sense, and is certainly a more obscure sentence than the first.

 

Because Freedman founded his idea of what strategy was upon an obscure and accidental attribute (creating power), and that he admittedly does not always adhere to it (cf pg 608), his history consists of accounts of things unrelated to each other in their essences.  Freedman picks among random things and holds them before the reader as examples of strategy.  Collectively, these things show no development in strategy through historical experience, as one might expect to observe historical development in a history of the fine art of painting, for example.  This is why the book as a whole is so unfocussed.

 

I cannot take away from the erudition of Dr. Freedman, or that demonstrated in his book, but the philosophical failings result in a work that does not hold together.

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Progressive ideology in education

Vincent J. Curtis

22 April 2014

Over the last week, the newspaper of my hometown has run a series of articles on so-called EQAO testing.  (Education Quality Accountability Office.)  It is a set of standardized tests run across the province to evaluated the educational attainments of students.  The newspaper report focused on the differences in performance generally between inner city schools, and those of the affluent suburbs.  In general, the tone of the articles was non-ideological.  However,, those individuals quoted in the articles did have an ideological bias, namely the unwarranted belief that educational outcomes ought to be the same.  Since they are not the same, something is wrong and they are ready to apply their nostrums to fix the alleged problem.

Below is a missive on the subject.

 

There is no question that each child is a special, unique, and different individual, with their own set of gifts.

 

When these unique individuals are put through the same education system, it should not be surprising that the outcome from each individual will be different.  Call these differences gaps, if you will.

 

To say that these gaps should not exist is to substitute an ideological position for a logical deduction.

 

It may seem progressive to insist that the educational outcomes of different individuals should be measurably identical, but think about what that ideological position means.

 

In order to obtain identical educational outcomes from different individuals it would require that the education each individual received be specifically tailored to enable that individual to achieve the standard, and no more.  It will also require that education be denied high achieving individuals so that they do not exceed the standard, lest that detested gap reappear.  I doubt that the educational authorities possess the knowledge necessary to put together such a program, nor would the morality of it be accepted once it became evident.  Thus we have the naked claim that different individuals ought to perform the same on the basis of nothing but ideological predilections.

 

Instead of trying to teach each child to become a good economic unit, children should be taught to be good citizens.

 

In the end, society, Ontario, and Canada will belong to the generation said presently to be suffering from educational gaps.  So long as they pay our pensions, that problem will be theirs to solve as adults, as we did.

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There is Stupid, and then there is Fanatic

Vincent J. Curtis

10 April 2014

 

Over the last several months, a circle of writers who are or were employed by the public school system of my hometown have been writing letters to the editor of the local paper calling for the abolishment of the Separate School system.  The Separate School system is the Catholic run school system that has operated in Ontario since the 1840s, i.e. before there even was an Ontario.  The right of Catholics in Ontario to have their school system funded by the provincial government was guaranteed in Section 93 of the British North America Act of 1867, and was most recently ratified in the Constitution Act of 1982.  All this right amounts to is the taxes paid by Catholics for schools in Ontario be directed towards the Separate system while all others have their taxes directed towards the public system.  Both systems are, in effect, public.  There has always been resentment in some quarters to this arrangement, which some have unfairly put down to anti-Catholic animus.  This resentment has become vocal as the mis-management of the public school system in the area of my hometown has become quite evident.  In addition to the mismanagement, parents feel that their children are not getting as good an education in the public system as they could get in the Separate system.

 

Chairman of the Separate School Board Patrick Daly had an Op-Ed piece published in the newpaper the other week addressing the deficiencies in the arguments made by the circle of writers, and offered an olive branch of co-operation.  He did not neglect to mention the constitutional matters involved in revoking a black-letter right of a religious minority.  That article still did not quiet the circle.  Below are my comments, some of which are actually constructive.

 

On a side note, people do not discuss matters that are settled.  That the local newspaper continues to publish the letters from the circle of writers means that the editors of the newpaper themselves would like to see the matter re-opened.

The definition of a fanatic is a person who won’t change their mind and won’t change the subject.  The Op-Ed piece by Separate School Board Chairman Pat Daly ought to have been the last word on the subject of destroying the Separate School system, but apparently not.

 

In their facts and in their tone, the circle of people who have written on this subject have revealed their motives.  The amount of money that will be saved the taxpayer through eliminating the Separate School system has finally been revealed, and amounts to a rounding error in the Ontario budget.

 

It is not the money that will be saved, but it is the sense of injustice that motivates this circle of writers.  They observe that the Separate School system is better managed and provides a better education than the public system does.  Since the Separate School system was established to provide for the education of Catholic children, it is unjust to those who are not Catholic to have to attend a system which is poorer in quality.

 

Rather than try to solve the problems in the Public system and provide a better education for the children of Ontario, this circle wants the better system eliminated.

 

The reason why, at this period in Ontario’s history, that the Separate Schools are better managed and provide a better education is not hard to state, but will be very hard for the Public Schools to overcome.  The reason is the superior intellectual and moral discipline combined with equal funding in the Separate system.  And the reason for the intellectual and moral discipline in the Separate system is that the system must reflect the values of the Roman Catholic Church.  Being concerned with the eternal truths, the Roman Catholic Church is inherently conservative.

 

The Public system and Ontario politics used to be animated by a Protestant ethic, which is not a bad thing.  But over the last fifty years, people lost confidence in the old Protestant ethic, and the dominant ethic in public affairs became humanist.  Humanism represents a slackening of intellectual and moral discipline.  While it may be impossible for Ontario ever to return to its old Protestant roots, it is possible by reaching further back to regain intellectual and moral discipline in the Public system.

 

The answer is to turn to the intellectual tradition of ancient Greece.  Plato and Aristotle knew a thing or two about educating youth, and were quite able to educate in a spirit of intellectual and moral discipline without a Church to back them up.  There are a few examples in North America in existence of a return to this style and spirit of educating youth.

 

When the focus and the touchstone of the Public system becomes education of youth, instead of becoming the refuse pit and receptacle of every social, moral, and intellectual fashion of the day, then the gap in quality which the circle of writers acknowledges exists will disappear.  The cause of the injustice which this circle feels will be gone with it.

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Pro-abortion folks want it both ways

Vincent J. Curtis

8 April 2014

Margaret Shkimba is a part time columnist for my local newspaper.  I rarely read her.  However, today I slipped up and did read her column of today.  It was the story of how she was transformed from a pro-life person full of righteousness to a pro-abortion person full of righteousness.  Her beef today concerned the depiction of aborted babies on large signs from the bridges over a local highway.  To morally implicate abortion mills, apparently, is morally wrong.



Margaret Shkimba may rest assured that she has lost none of her youthful righteousness nor her youthful powers of reason.

Her numerous errors of fact and reason are only surpassed by the thunderous self-contradiction of argument.

She drags out a parade of horribles: of the women who died or were maimed as a result of abortionist butchery.  She makes quite clear that the conditions which led to such atrocities no longer obtain, yet she nevertheless sticks to her conclusion!

We are supposed to be horrified by the blood of women who died terrible, gruesome deaths as the result of a botched abortion, but we are not supposed to be horrified by terrible, gruesome death of the baby in an unbotched abortion.

While it may be that no one of us has a right to tell a woman what to do with her own body, it remains a compelling state interest to regulate and minimize abortion. The state has a responsibility to ensure its own existence and the prospect of killing off the next generation is anathema to that goal.

Margaret Shkimba ought to address herself to the case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, who ran an abortuary in Philadelphia for decades.  Gosnell was one of those sort of doctors that Shkimba would praise: he provided all sorts of abortion services even to the poor.  No public official bothered to inspect his clinic for fear that the Margaret Shkimba's of the world would raise the cry that the state was trying to intimidate and shut down abortion mills, to the detriment of women's health.

The very savagery which Shkimba condemns actually happened in Gosnell’s clinic under the current regime of abortion on demand.  Gosnell escaped the death penalty but is now doing life in prison for murder.  And Gosnell’s clinic is only the most famous of its kind; it is not the only one.

Not a shred of Shkimba’s argument holds together.  If Shkimba detests bloody death, she ought to oppose abortion not support it.
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Pointing the Finger of Racism

Vincent J. Curtis


20 March 2014

E.M. is a columnist for my hometown newspaper who has made a living accusing others of racism.  That, I could live with if there was some substance to her charges.  But she has gotten lazy.  In addition, she has failed to recognize the tremendous strides we have made in Canada to put an end to racism.  Perfection is the enemy of the good, and after a while the demand for perfection begins to work against the accomplishment of the good.

She also fails to recognize real racism that exists in Canada officially and by preference, namely the treatment of Aboriginal people and specifically the Indian Act.  It would not be politically correct for her, however, to call for the abolition of special treatment for Indians.  And, if she recognizes it at all, she doesn't.

What is also a little annoying is that E.M. does not seem to be a native born Canadian, but an immigrant from another country.  So here we have a immigrant telling us native borns what is wrong with our country.  Academically, I can accept this if the argument is sincere and well-put.  I don't sense genuine sincerity in the criticisms of E.M. and her arguments are not well put.  If Canada were all that bad, why did she immigrate here, and why is she staying here?

Thus a response to an opinion piece in my hometown newspaper.

E. M. needs to understand that when she points an accusing finger of racism at someone, three fingers point accusingly back at her.

 

Without investigating the facts herself, on the basis of hearsay she accuses citizens of the town of Morris, Manitoba, of racism and homophobia.

 

She complains about the near invisible existence of “systemic racism” in Canada.  But the word “systemic” means “of the system,” and of the system would mean the existence of Jim Crow laws in Canada, or certain covenants that once existed in property deeds.  She couldn’t identify a single one.  But here’s one: The Indian Act.

 

She complains about “cultural assumptions about the dominant group are the norm” and these “regularly and systematically advantage some ethnic and cultural groups and disadvantages and marginalizes others.”

 

Here’s a news flash: anywhere you go in the world, there are going to be assumptions about culture and norms, and the people who were born into that ethnic group and that culture will have the inside track over someone who was not born into that culture and that ethnic group.  Try living in Japan.  Having norms and assumptions about some things is how a society organizes itself so that it can function.  If Ms. M. were to live in Africa or Asia, she would find simply another set of cultural norms and assumptions, most of which are far more hostile to her point of view than she finds in this wretched country.

 

In my view, racial hatred is not ended but provoked by false accusations and by demanding impossible standards be met.  How about accepting some of these cultural assumptions and norms of Canada?  How about trying to fit in?  That would certainly help end suspicion and distrust, at least in this country.

 

The perfect is the enemy of the good.  If Jamaica was all that wonderful a place to begin with, T. M. would never have risked going to Morris, Manitoba, in the first place.

 

If Canada is not good enough, try Russia.

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A Doozy of an Editorial Section

Vincent J. Curtis

22 Feb 2014

 

My hometown newspaper sure had a doozy of an editorial section in Saturday’s edition.  Where to begin?

 

A. V. was taken in by the artist, Gabriel Parniak.  Painters are not kind to title readers.  The content and meaning of a painting is found in the painting, not in the caption or title given to it.  This is true of any work of art: the meaning of any work of art is found in the work itself; and in the case of non-verbal art media that meaning is not verbalizable.  The meaning of a painting cannot be put into words, any more than the meaning of a piece of music can be put into words.

 

By giving a deliberately provocative and highly ambiguous title to a painting of a coffee cup, artist Gabriel Parkiak sucks title-readers like Mr. V. into idle speculation about his meaning in the painting.  The secondary meaning of the painting is the joke pulled by the artist in the ambiguous title.

 

The “Squandering science to honour ideology” editorial, excerpted from the St. John’s Telegram, is another case of Arts majors pretending to know more about science than real scientists do.  If you substitute “National Defense” for “science” and “soldiers” for “scientists” you get the argument that the government doesn’t care about National Defense because it is getting rid of soldiers, which it is.  Well, in neither case does the conclusion follow from the premises.  As for the ideological basis for getting rid of scientists, or soldiers, apparently budget reasons or changing government requirements never entered the minds of the editors of the Telegram.  The editors must believe they have the inside track to the minds of government ministers.  The editors are hiding behind the dodge that they are merely quoting a report from an obviously self-interested group; but they wouldn’t have published the editorial if they didn’t believe the cause worth advocating.

 

D. P. proved once again that not only has she the mind of a vicious adolescent, but so do all her friends.  If I were Ms. Horwath, I’d look to hire a body-guard.

Finally, the LRT editorial by the Spectator’s own editor-in-chief, “LRT is about much more than transit.”  It repeats all the non-demonstratable and non-disprovable arguments in favor of the LRT.  Apparently, the overt purpose of the thing, the obvious need to move people, is not advanced as an argument in favor of it.

 

I’ve seen the ‘sun and moon’ and then ‘the stars’ argument made before in the service of many other causes.  That style of argument, i.e the benefits of the secondary effects or the unintended consequences of the thing, is the tip-off that there is something wrong with the basic sales pitch of the thing itself.  When the bill comes due, I wonder if Mr. B. will still be working at the newspaper.

 

Like I said, a doozy of editorial section.

 

Just keeping the mental knife sharpened.....

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Giving the wackos an airing

Vincent J. Curtis

 

31 March 2014

 

 

My hometown newspaper is once again on a tear.  It is indulging the habit of airing opinions that are transparently and obviously absurd.

 

Perhaps, letting some people and some groups bay and the moon is a good thing.  Steam is let off that would otherwise build in pressure until something exploded violently.  However, it is also often useful to review the argumentation employed by these wackos, if nothing more than to keep our own mental knives sharp.

 

The first article was written by D.C. who is a poobah in the groups “Environment Hamilton” and “Hamilton 350.”  The first group “seeks to inspire people to protect and enhance the environment” while the second is a global warming doomsday cult.

 

Briefly, D.C. rehearses the usual arguments that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and to prove his case cites one of the usual suspects: a “NASA sponsored” study (read: Jim Hanson).  Apparently, industrial civilization is going to collapse on the grounds that Rev. Malthus would recognize and, in fact, first employed himself some two centuries ago, when the earth had fewer than one billion of human population.  Presently, the earth has over seven billion and that number continues to grow.

 

D.C.’s solution to the problem of the imminent collapse of world civilization as we know it is to collapse the world civilization and the world economy as we know it.  So, catastrophe awaits human civilization regardless.

 

Those who are familiar with Gaia and with deep ecology will recognize the proposed solution: to reduce the size of the human herd to manageable proportions.  But D.C. generously thinks it should be done in a “graceful” way.  Other things which will prevent global catastrophe are to have a maximum wage as well as a minimum wage to reduce income inequality.  He calls for monetary reform, but fails to propose anything.  He wants economic measures such as GDP to be abolished because they promote the wrong thing.  And, of course, work sharing.

 

He concludes with “if this seems like idealistic claptrap, remember that the economy is a sub-set of the environment.”  Well, the economy being a “sub-set of the environment” is claptrap as well, so in an argument full of claptrap, D.C.,  you may as well end with a resounding example of it!

 

The Gaia people believe that a sustainable world human population is around one billion people.  That means that over the next generation or two, to meet their expectations, the human herd has to be reduced by six-sevenths, or by 85.7 %.  That is a die-off of a species not seen since the last asteroid hit the earth.  And if we don’t do this, something even worse is going to happen!!  What this is I’m not sure, but I think I, my children, and my grandchildren would rather take their chances with the other thing.

 

A human die-off of 85.7 % would certainly do a number on the world GDP.  Now that would be a good reason not to look at those numbers anymore.

 

What ought to be most worrisome is that these folks chant the following incantation: Think Globally, Act Locally.  What this means for us is, that it is the Western economies and the Western populations that are intended to take the hits.  If India, China, and Brazil don’t cut back on their economic growth and their population growth, there is no point about Canada, the United States, and Europe cutting back on theirs, because the world will go to hell simply on the growth of those three countries.

 

Getting India, China, and Brazil to go along with Environment Hamilton and Hamilton 350 is a matter D.C. fails to address.

 

The second wacko is K.D.  This guy rehearses the usual arguments about the abolishment of Separate Schools in Ontario.  The right of Roman Catholics to have a fully funded Separate School system in Ontario is a black-letter right that was put into the original British North America Act of 1867, and remains there in the current Constitution Act, 1982.  To abolish Separate Schools in Ontario would require that the Constitution Act be amended in the teeth of Roman Catholic opposition.  This niggly little problem, K.D. utterly fails to address.

 

What he complains about simultaneously are: Public Schools are failing because of mismanagement by the school boards, while Separate Schools are doing just fine, thank you.  But not due to the superior management by the Separate Boards, it is because the playing field is not level!  And it is high time for a little equity, he argues.

 

To bring about equity, the funding for Separate Boards needs to be ended entirely!  All students need to be treated equally (equally stupidly, he means.)  We need to eliminate duplication of services.  A government duopoly will not do, we need a government monopoly.  K.D. would not be aware that the public boards were failing without the Separate Boards to compare them to.

 

Nevertheless, we need to have one system that would benefit all students in Ontario.  Milk and honey would flow in abundant quantities, sufficient for all if this came to pass.

 

K.D. has been a high school teacher for 28 years.  He used the statement “there are equally the same frustrating issues that come from dealing with hundreds of teenagers in one place.” Equally the same.

 

Wow.

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