![]() We ask “what is?” instead of “what if?” But humans are arguably hard-wired to need creative tools and stories to access the parts of ourselves that cultivate the coup d’oeil. Fiction is a frivolity-unless it’s the scene-setter for a war game. Yet strangely, most scholars and practitioners exclusively study histories and think tank reports and technical pieces to guide our decisions. government’s failure to thwart those attacks to a “ failure of imagination.” Finely tuned intuitive and creative senses are essential to cultivating the coup d’oeil. The coup d’oeil’s absence was arguably what the 9/11 Commission was lamenting when it attributed the U.S. One key trick to getting over that perennial conundrum is in the coup d’oeil-the moment of strategic intuition and insight based on imagination, experience, learning, and observation that allows the decision-maker to comprehend his or her situation and determine the best path forward. Policymaking and statecraft have always been about making choices with imperfect information. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara painfully discerned, it is dangerous to apply these quantitative tools to problems that cannot be understood or solved through metrics. While quantitative analytic tools can prove useful, as U.S. Key information gaps, fogs, and frictions will always exist, and solving one of its effects creates another problem down the road. Statecraft is inherently a wicked problem it is made by living, breathing, unpredictable people, not a Rand spreadsheet. ![]() Today, we still seem to want to reduce the world to rational, quantifiable problems, but to do that, one needs fixed data. But those same tools proved wholly inappropriate to waging the Vietnam War. ![]() ![]() With the rise of the behavioral sciences in the 1950s, we learned to prioritize the quantitative toolkit we calculated battle damage assessments and streamlined defense programs and applauded the efficiencies we created by treating national security problems to rational choice economic analysis. Unfortunately, Athena appears to be absent we instead often turn to quantitative analyses to dissect the inherently unquantifiable. Given the vast challenge before us, it is curious that many in Washington seem to be apprehensive about using creative tools to think through contemporary challenges. We do not know how these issues will play out, much less how they might intersect and interact with each other, nor how the ramifications of COVID-19 might shake everything to the ground. Iran still wages its hybrid war in the Middle East against the United States and its partners in the Gulf. The Islamic State rose and in the process helped displace millions of Syrians and Iraqis before it collapsed-for the moment. North Korea and the United States grew eerily close to an all-out confrontation over Pyongyang’s burgeoning intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities. Russia waged globally disruptive disinformation campaigns as well as proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine. In just the past five years-the blink of an eye in strategic terms-China built islands in the South China Sea, put its Uighur population into detention camps, and promulgated its version of 5G technology globally. And we will need to use all the tools we can get in order to figure out our way forward while COVID-19 ravages an already complicated world. The long shadow of the Trojan War reminds us that creative methodologies are essential components of the national security and foreign-policy toolkit. As a result, the Greeks bested the Trojans, Athena humiliated Ares, and the whole episode underscored that militarism without strategy and creativity is a losing proposition. Through a combination of creativity and disinformation, the Greeks not only built a giant horse filled with soldiers they managed to convince the Trojans to bring the massive statue through Troy’s gates. But the Greeks, claiming as their patron Athena-the deity for strategy, art, and war-decided that conventional warfighting approaches would not turn the tide in their favor. The Trojans, who favored Ares-the god of war, tactics, and brutality-sat behind their walls and endured the siege. Two armies faced each other for 10 years without victory in sight. ![]()
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