Washington, DC
There is a longstanding practice among U.S. officials to invest great faith - let alone money, weapons and unrealistic hopes - in "our man" in whatever hot spots arise. We historically buy into dubious personal narratives and even manufacture some of them ourselves to position somebody as our trusted tough guy.
We have cast our lot over the years with Chiang Kai-shek in Tapei, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, Shah Reza Pahlavi in Tehran, Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad, Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon and Syngman Rhee in Seoul, let alone enough Latin American generals throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to populate a Gilbert & Sullivan production. Sometimes these alliances are necessary, however, as was FDR's choice to work with Stalin during World War Two. He once explained the uneasy relationship with the unspeakable evil of a man he lightly called "Uncle Joe" as holding hands with the devil in order to cross the bridge. The devil, indeed!
In his account of The Korean War, The Coldest Winter, the late David Halberstam suggests that the American-educated Syngman Rhee was a manipulator of the highest order. Like all of the characters above, he knew when to play the anti-communism card or, in other contexts more recently, the anti-terrorism card to induce the reflex on our part to pour weapons, money and political support into his cause.
One painful example of the risks associated with simplistic narratives is that of Ahmed Chalabi. He reinvented himself many times and, together, we reinvented him yet again as the purported embodiment of a free and democratic Iraq. Remember that in 2002 and 2003 some neoconservatives dubbed Chalabi "the George Washington of Iraq." We both bought and sold a personal narrative that bore little relationship to reality, using it as a key storyline in our run-up to Iraq. For more on this history, read Aram Roston's book, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi.
The trouble in all these cases is that we exhibit what in The Black Swan Nassim Taleb calls "the dangerous compression of narrative." After all, it is much easier to buy into a simple "good versus evil" story line with readily identifiable good guys and evildoers. "Our men" are always the good guys, of course, until they almost always prove otherwise. The problem with creating and enabling simplistic narratives that align our short-term interests with the wrong guy, however, is that we miss the long-term strategic benefits. Perhaps limited by our own ontologies and ideologies, we fail to work with the complexity that defines actual reality, unable to see embryonic democratic movements stirring beneath most any dictatorship. Eventually we find ourselves on the wrong side of the equation, which is precisely our dilemma in Pakistan right now as it will be in Saudi Arabia some day perilously soon.
Complexity leadership theorists tell us that nations, organizations and individuals exist in complex adaptive systems. These systems are marked by dynamism, interactivity, non-linearity and unpredictability, carrying with them the potential for small, unforeseen events to manifest out of proportion to their scale and in ways that obliterate the large-scale story lines otherwise intended. Indeed, it is very difficult to achieve a simple, linear story arc in highly complex environments and trying to do so can actually make matters worse. The complexity folks tell us that these systems are less dependent on the one leader, per se, and much more engaged in constantly shifting patterns of leadership and followership undertaken by many actors - a much tougher story to tell. Yes, politicians and the media often want to create simple stories with clear beginnings and endings, identifiable antagonists and protagonists, and grand, compelling plots. We love these stories. They're called fiction.
p.s. What a wonderfully rousing version of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony Kurt Masur and the Orchestre National de France delivered last Sunday at Boston's Symphony Hall. And a diamond of a very different kind is the new Nationals Stadium in Washington's Anacostia District. It is a very nice building, but lacks the class and intimacy of parks in Baltimore, Cleveland, San Diego, Philadelphia and elsewhere. What happened?
There is a longstanding practice among U.S. officials to invest great faith - let alone money, weapons and unrealistic hopes - in "our man" in whatever hot spots arise. We historically buy into dubious personal narratives and even manufacture some of them ourselves to position somebody as our trusted tough guy.
We have cast our lot over the years with Chiang Kai-shek in Tapei, Ferdinand Marcos in Manila, Shah Reza Pahlavi in Tehran, Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad, Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon and Syngman Rhee in Seoul, let alone enough Latin American generals throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to populate a Gilbert & Sullivan production. Sometimes these alliances are necessary, however, as was FDR's choice to work with Stalin during World War Two. He once explained the uneasy relationship with the unspeakable evil of a man he lightly called "Uncle Joe" as holding hands with the devil in order to cross the bridge. The devil, indeed!
In his account of The Korean War, The Coldest Winter, the late David Halberstam suggests that the American-educated Syngman Rhee was a manipulator of the highest order. Like all of the characters above, he knew when to play the anti-communism card or, in other contexts more recently, the anti-terrorism card to induce the reflex on our part to pour weapons, money and political support into his cause.
One painful example of the risks associated with simplistic narratives is that of Ahmed Chalabi. He reinvented himself many times and, together, we reinvented him yet again as the purported embodiment of a free and democratic Iraq. Remember that in 2002 and 2003 some neoconservatives dubbed Chalabi "the George Washington of Iraq." We both bought and sold a personal narrative that bore little relationship to reality, using it as a key storyline in our run-up to Iraq. For more on this history, read Aram Roston's book, The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi.
The trouble in all these cases is that we exhibit what in The Black Swan Nassim Taleb calls "the dangerous compression of narrative." After all, it is much easier to buy into a simple "good versus evil" story line with readily identifiable good guys and evildoers. "Our men" are always the good guys, of course, until they almost always prove otherwise. The problem with creating and enabling simplistic narratives that align our short-term interests with the wrong guy, however, is that we miss the long-term strategic benefits. Perhaps limited by our own ontologies and ideologies, we fail to work with the complexity that defines actual reality, unable to see embryonic democratic movements stirring beneath most any dictatorship. Eventually we find ourselves on the wrong side of the equation, which is precisely our dilemma in Pakistan right now as it will be in Saudi Arabia some day perilously soon.
Complexity leadership theorists tell us that nations, organizations and individuals exist in complex adaptive systems. These systems are marked by dynamism, interactivity, non-linearity and unpredictability, carrying with them the potential for small, unforeseen events to manifest out of proportion to their scale and in ways that obliterate the large-scale story lines otherwise intended. Indeed, it is very difficult to achieve a simple, linear story arc in highly complex environments and trying to do so can actually make matters worse. The complexity folks tell us that these systems are less dependent on the one leader, per se, and much more engaged in constantly shifting patterns of leadership and followership undertaken by many actors - a much tougher story to tell. Yes, politicians and the media often want to create simple stories with clear beginnings and endings, identifiable antagonists and protagonists, and grand, compelling plots. We love these stories. They're called fiction.
p.s. What a wonderfully rousing version of Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony Kurt Masur and the Orchestre National de France delivered last Sunday at Boston's Symphony Hall. And a diamond of a very different kind is the new Nationals Stadium in Washington's Anacostia District. It is a very nice building, but lacks the class and intimacy of parks in Baltimore, Cleveland, San Diego, Philadelphia and elsewhere. What happened?