Applied Smart Power by a SEAL

[Dayuhan]

Fearmongering made it easy to prop up tin-pots...and those decades have left us with a cumbersome alternate legacy to live down: that of a meddling, uncaring, manipulative power interested in taking and promising and never following through. The future of international interdependence is being revealed day-by-day. In the new reality such a reputation is a severe liability.

Fully agree on that. Of course we actually ended up cultivating that which we feared: in many places the only thing that kept the Communists in play was loathing for the dictator and lack of a peaceful alternative route to change. The perverse symbiosis between rebel and dictator has seldom been more obvious than it was during the cold war, but we didn't see it... because we didn't want to. Anyone who pointed out that we were propping up governments that any one of us would rebel against was dismissed as a sympathizer with evil.

I'm pro-intervention, at the right time for the right reasons...

Genuine smart power will always consider national best interests, but with more forthright and transparent (and, dare I say, humble?) efforts we can disentangle the snarl of this reputation while actually contributing to local improvements and corresponding, general Improvement.

This is where I start to worry. I don't disagree, but I have real doubts about our ability at any given point to reliably determine what is "right" and what is "smart". We have never consciously or intentionally used stupid power or intervened at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. At the times we acted, we believed that we were doing the smart thing and the right thing. We were often wrong. We can easily be wrong again.

Ultimately I think our ability to wisely choose how and when to act depends on both our ability to assess situations and, maybe more important, on our ability to assess ourselves: to cut through inertia, assumption, ideology, ego, and all the other blinders that convince us that wrong is right and stupid is smart. Can we do that? I hope so, but history holds few grounds for optimism.

I worry that once we declare something "smart", our ability to dispassionately assess that course of action will be impaired. That's no reason not to try, of course.