From D to D, Chapter 6 (Continued): Grand Strategy

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery

None but ourselves can free our minds

Have no fear for atomic energy

'Cause none of them can stop the time

How long shall they kill our prophets,

while we stand aside and look?

Some say it's just a part of it, 

We've got to fulfill the book ...

Won't you help to sing

These songs of freedom?

'Cause all I ever have:

Redemption songs

Redemption songs

- Bob Marley, Redemption Song

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr. Gene Sharp. In this series of posts, I have shortened the title of the book to From D to D. As I have said in previous posts, the consideration of this book is highly relevant for these times, in which those who support the supremacy of the world's dominant peoples have created a world in which a select few get to Make Themselves Great by exploiting everyone else. The poor of the earth experience this exploitation as enslavement, discrimination, harassment, dispossession, and the threat of genocide. Many live as refugees. Theirs is an experience of apparent utter powerlessness in the face of an all-consuming, murderously abusive power.  Yet the poor of the earth do have at their disposal a "weapons system" and a strategic method which holds the promise to liberate them from their oppression if they dare to use it.  That means of liberation is strategic nonviolent resistance.

A key word in the phrase "strategic nonviolent resistance" is the word "strategic."  The success of this kind of resistance therefore depends heavily on the formulation of a wise collective strategy of liberation by the oppressed group.  What then makes for good strategy?  In Chapters 6 and 7 of From D to D, Gene Sharp seeks to answer this question.  In Chapter 6 therefore, Sharp starts by laying out the skeleton of strategic planning.  To do this, he defines the following four terms: grand strategy, strategy, tactic, and method.  Today's post will discuss what is meant by grand strategy.

What then is grand strategy?  In Chapter 6 of From D to D, Sharp defines it thus: 

Grand strategy is the conception that serves to coordinate and direct the use of all appropriate and available resources (economic, human, moral, political, organizational, etc.) of a group seeking to attain its objectives in a conflict.  Grand strategy, by focusing primary attention on the group’s objectives and resources in the conflict, determines the most appropriate technique of action (such as conventional military warfare or nonviolent struggle) to be employed in the conflict. In planning a grand strategy resistance leaders must evaluate and plan which pressures and influences are to be brought to bear upon the opponents.  Further, grand strategy will include decisions on the appropriate conditions and timing under which initial and subsequent resistance campaigns will be launched.

This definition draws heavily from the definition contained in B.H. Liddell-Hart's book The Strategy of Indirect Approach, in which Liddell-Hart says that

As tactics is an application of strategy on a lower plane, so strategy is an application on a lower plane of 'grand strategy'. If practically synonymous with the policy which governs the conduct of war, as distinct from the permanent policy which formulates its object, the term 'grand strategy' serves to bring out the sense of 'policy in execution'. For the role of grand strategy is to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation towards the attainment of the political object of the war - the goal defined by national policy.

These definitions serve to describe what grand strategy does; yet they may seem to fall short of describing what it actually is.  Liddell-Hart comes closer to the mark in saying that grand strategy is simply a higher plane of strategy in general.  And he offers a very concise definition of strategy as "the art of distributing military means to fulfill the ends of policy."

Since Liddell-Hart, others within the realms of governments have tried to create a concise and stable definition of "grand strategy."  Among these are Dr. Tami Davis Biddle, who quotes John Lewis Gaddis in describing grand strategy as “the calculated relationship of means to large ends. It’s about how one uses whatever one has to get to wherever it is one wants to go.”  Timothy Andrew Sayle quotes Jeremi Suri in writing that "grand strategy is the wisdom to make power serve useful purposes."  Peter Layton says that "Grand strategy is the art of developing and applying diverse forms of power in an effective and efficient way to try to purposefully change the relationship existing between two or more intelligent and adaptive entities."  Andrew Monaghan wrote that grand strategy is the art of “using all of the nation’s resources to promote the interests of the state, including securing it against enemies perceived and real.”

From these and other sources, we can conclude therefore that grand strategy is the art of arranging all the resources of a state or polity in order to achieve its goals.  (That's the TH in SoC definition!) Therefore, the ultimate goals of a nation direct its grand strategy.  And while sometimes those goals are rationally chosen and planned, it is also true that often the goals of a nation are an emergent product of the nation's culture, and thus not always consciously obvious even to the nation's leaders, as pointed out by Sayle, who provides the following quote from Edward Luttwak:

All states have a grand strategy, whether they know it or not. That is inevitable because grand strategy is simply the level at which knowledge and persuasion, or in modern terms intelligence and diplomacy, interact with military strength to determine outcomes in a world of other states with their own “grand strategies.

Here's the thing.  The only polities that can get away without an explicit, consciously planned grand strategy are those centers of empire that are at the height of their power.  And they can get away with this only for so long before there are consequences.  Most of the world's oppressed peoples are those whose oppression is a consequence of their own lack of a grand strategy.  If you don't make good plans for yourself and your people, be sure that other people - most of whom are very powerful and not very nice - will make plans for you.  Often those plans will involve things like roasting you over a slow fire and sticking you between two pieces of bread.

Careful readers will note that I pulled most of the definitions of grand strategy quoted above from thinkers and writers who are paid by governments to think and write.  And the relationship between governments of nations and grand strategy is that these governments usually employ people whose job in life is to carefully document the state's resources, both military and otherwise.  These record-keepers include census workers, tax collectors, and paid researchers.  A second characteristic of this relationship is that strong governments are usually able during emergencies to use their authority (backed by State force) to compel their citizens to give their resources for the support of the nation's grand strategy.  How does this compare to members of an oppressed people who are planning the nonviolent liberation of their people?

The first difference to note is that often those who are activized to start organizing their people won't have access to some detailed, nicely curated database of their people's resources, capabilities and weaknesses.  Nor will they have the wherewithal to create such a database - at least, not at first.  Therefore their knowledge of their people and of their collective situation will have to be gained during a long period of observation, of meeting people, of listening to their stories, of asking questions.  In other words, developing a grand strategy may well have to start with an extensive fact-finding phase.  Nor can this fact-finding be limited solely to learning about one's own people.  One must also learn to identify the strengths, weaknesses and resources of one's allies, potential competitors, and opponents.

There is a second difference between grand strategy as applied by a national government and grand strategy as applied by the organizers of a liberation struggle among an oppressed people.  That difference is that unlike the heads of a state, the organizers of a nonviolent liberation struggle can't compel or force people to give themselves and their resources to the organizers in order to fulfill the grand strategy of the organizers.  These leaders and organizers can't create draft boards to seize young men and put them into the organizers' services.  They can't condemn real estate or use eminent domain or levy taxes to seize the assets of their brothers and sisters.  Instead, they must ask and persuade; they must accept that resources will only be given voluntarily.  The question for the organizers then becomes how to persuade this voluntary giving.  This difficulty is real, yet not often as obvious as it should be to people like Derek Sivers who talk of movement-building as if it was as easy as a shirtless dancing guy on a beach getting everyone else on the beach to start dancing.

I therefore suggest that a process of creating a grand strategy of liberation for an oppressed people begins with crafting a "vision of tomorrow" - that is, by setting before one's people a concrete description of where we should all want to go and how we will try to get there.  Some necessary aspects of this vision of tomorrow:

• First, it must be a high-level description which lays out general goals and methods, and does not descend too deeply into specifics (avoiding "getting down into the weeds", as they say).  As Guy Kawasaki says, a mission statement with a couple of dozen points is very unwieldy!
• Second, it must be open to revision at first as the organizers engage in dialogue with the people whom they seek to organize.  For instance, the organizer may discover during the listening and asking questions phase of his or her work that there are things that are very important to the people being organized which were missed by the organizer in the first conception of the vision of tomorrow.
• Third, the vision of tomorrow must serve to motivate people to give of themselves and their resources to a cause which involves their entire people and not just the wishes of the organizers.

A few weeks ago I sketched out my own tentative version of a "Vision of Tomorrow" for the African-American people.  Here it is:

The goal: To organize the African-American people into a people who are:

• Self-sufficient, both individually and collectively (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12);
• Fully equipped to fulfill our ontogeny;
• Expert in producing beautifully good work to meet necessary needs (Titus 3:14);
• A people who can no longer be oppressed.

How we will get there: 

• We will organize our own mutual aid networks.  (A potluck, NOT a free lunch!)
• We will organize our own education.
• We will organize our own training to create experts in community organizing and strategic nonviolent resistance.
• We will begin to use our collective power strategically to deny our oppressors any payoff from their oppression.

This is what I intend to work for and how I intend to spend my time when I engage in organizing.  But it's only a start.  In order to get buy-in for this sort of vision, I need to hear what my brothers and sisters think about it and how and where they think it should be changed.  It may also need to be shortened and condensed to make it more punchy and memorable.

I will close by suggesting that readers study some of the more well-known successful nonviolent liberation struggles in recent history to see how grand strategy was conceived and evolved, and who did the strategizing.  Particularly, how did Gandhi do it?  Or how about the Reverend James Lawson or OTPOR! or Solidarnosc?  How did these craft a compelling "Vision of Tomorrow"?

A SUGGESTED READING LIST

• "Defining and Teaching Grand Strategy - Foreign Policy Research Institute", Timothy Andrews Sayle
• "Defining Grand Strategy," Peter Layton
• "Grand Strategy," Wikipedia
• "It Was Grand, But Was it Strategy? Revisiting the Origins Story of Grand Strategy", David Morgan-Owen
• "Strategy and Grand Strategy: What Students and Practitioners Need to Know", Tami Davis Biddle
• "What Is Grand Strategy? Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield", Rebecca Friedman Lissner