Jeff Huber (at-Largely): "the epitome of contemporary American think-tankery"

[laststeamtrain]

Another Krock of Krepinevich
Posted by Jeff Huber

“Strategy is fundamentally about identifying or creating asymmetric advantages that can be exploited to help achieve one’s ultimate objectives despite resource and other constraints.”

-- Andrew Krepinevich and Barry D. Watts, Regaining Strategic Competence, September 2009

The problem with retired Army colonel Andrew Krepinevich, the self-described “expert on US military strategy,” isn’t so much that he says silly things; it’s that people in positions of power take the silly things he says seriously. Krepinevich is perhaps the epitome of contemporary American think-tankery: an intellectual with Washington connections who can talk all day and get people to listen, but who couldn’t find the body part he sits on with both hands and a GPS receiver.

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To credit Reagan with strategic acumen is to liken Jessica Simpson to Beethoven. The Cold War was won before Reagan took office. All he had to do was look like a movie star and not flub his lines too badly. But, like Lincoln and Ike, he was a Republican and worth the praise of Krepinevich and Watts and the rest of the warmongery.

The authors make no mention of Democrat Franklin Roosevelt, the strategist president who not only won the biggest war in history but also pulled the world out of its worst economic depression. It’s telling as well that the authors identify their target audience as the “next administration,” making it clear that they don’t expect the moron Democrats in charge now to pay any attention them. Here’s hoping that the moron Republicans who replace the Barack Brigoon (the Petraeus/Palin Proletariat, perhaps?) don’t listen to Krepenivich and Watts either.

One could write volumes about the Aristotelian lapses in their logic, but this one stands out for me: a common pitfall of strategic performance, they tell us, is “mistaking strategic goals for strategy.” That’s like mistaking a sentence for its subject and predicate. Without goals, a strategy is merely a collection of wimp words and platitudes. If you need further evidence that the latest Krepinovich manifesto is a pile of day-old horse lunch, witness that David Petraeus hagiographer Thomas E. Ricks, who has lately shown himself to be dumber than Jessica Simpson and dirt mixed together, says that right now Regain Strategic Competence is his “subway reading.”

If that’s the best thing you have to read on your way to work, Tom, sharpen two pencils and shove them in your eyes.

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http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2009/09/another-krock-of-krepinevich.html