Public Diplomacy and National Security

[William F. Owen]

2. Change the framing narrative – from the hedgehog to the fox. The distinguished scholar Isaiah Berlin wrote famously that the hedgehog knows one big thing, the fox many things. U.S. leaders framed their response to the attacks of 9/11 overwhelmingly as one big thing – a “war on terror.” According to the U.S. National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, this war is a “battle of ideas” with an “ideology of terrorism,” an ideology in which “Islam has been twisted and made to serve an evil end.”ix

I was flicking through this document and this leapt off the page at me. I submit that the a "war on terror" is not an example of hedgehog thinking. Hedgehog thinking is not simplistic. It is simple, but a simplicity based on a deep and effective understanding.

The "war on an abstract noun Terror" like the war on drugs is a big complex immeasurable, end state free idea, requiring massive amounts of energy, resources and cunning. - It's pure Fox!

A hedgehog would address 9/11 by settling for Bin Laden, and his associates dead or in jail. That's it. Nothing else.

This may seem arcane and pedantic to those of you who are not philosophically "ציפדימ "(kipodeem) - hedgehogs, but it matters a lot to those of us who are!

[Ken White]

I'd also suggest that the coiner of the phrase 'War on Terror' had one thing in mind; he may not have said it very well but he understood that if the other guy thinks he's at war and you don't think (or act like) you are, that other guy has a tremendous advantage over you...

Wilf's right on the money with his hedgehog analogy -- as he says, the hedgehog reaction is "Get Bin Laden." That's an exercise in futility if there ever was one. Hedgehogs further say "...we took our eyes off Afghanistan." I'd hope so -- Afghanistan never was and never will be the center of gravity of terror emanating from the ME. Nor is Islam, per se, the issue. That is not to say the PR effort and the public pronouncements have been effective or accurate but public pronouncements rarely reflect the totality of thought or even most of the subtleties of strategic effort.

I agree with Bruce Gregory on most of the first 'lesson.' I disagree on the second for the reasons cited above. I submit that most of the world has been trying to implement his third 'lesson' for eons with partial success. Agree with his fourth 'lesson' but do wonder how we are going to destroy or significantly reduce our current national bureaucracy to enable that to occur (noting that no suggestion on how to accomplish this is offered); and agree with his fifth 'lesson.' Thus, I think he's got two right; two in the 'almost too hard' box -- good ideas but difficualt to implement -- and was quite wrong on his reading of the Fox and the Hedgehog.

I also think he, like many, fails to consider all the other aspects of the strategy that are on-going; the wars are, by design, big attention grabbers. The other stuff is below a lot of radar horizons...