Interesting bit on the myths and failures and hubris of any attempt at grand strategy by Fabius Maximus (yes, I know it's hard to take people seriously when they insist on using pseudonyms and silly ones at that) at Defense and the National Interest.

Find it here: http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/fabius_myth_of_grand_strategy.htm.

It's serious writing whose only flaw is this assumption I run into time and time again: if it can't be done within a couple of years, then your grand strategy is obviously a failure. Notice his analysis of Iraq (the people essentially reject our system). I simply don't see that in Iraq. In fact, I think it's quite amazing how well they accept our system. The notion that accepting it will magically lead to no conflict is a bit naive. I wonder if Fabius remembers how nasty and unruly our system was for . . . oh . . . the first hundred years or so.

Grand strategy isn't about this fiscal quarter, or administration, or even this decade. It's about decades of pursuing the world you define as worth creating. It will not be linear, and every difficulty does not signal complete failure, just a tougher row to hoe.

And yeah, it does scare me that so many people you'd expect to think long term get so scared so quickly by the difficulty of actually doing what they preach--I.e., think grand strategic and then stick to your guns.

And then there is this weird assumption of the 4GWers at DNI in particular: if you name a nation as being in the Gap, then clearly you assume we must invade! Talk about your close reading. Yes, I do predict US invasions of Brazil and Argentina (Oops Fabius, I actually put those states in the Core! But no bother, we'll invade those too.).

There is something strangely literal about people at DNI. It's a bit like arguing with bible thumpers ("If it's in the book, then by God...).

How these criticisms kill the utility of grand strategy or mine in particular is beyond me. Do we agree that the states we worry about in this Global War on Terror are geographically concentrated in what I call the Gap? Do we want to shrink that Gap over time? Do we see a role in this for the military? Must we change the military to adapt itself better for this role? Will it be hard? But will we not also learn from mistakes over time and get better?

Do you have any alternative to this world view other than to say this is hard and our first effort was quite difficult?

The Fourth Generation Warfare types argue themselves out of the debate with this approach, and what they offer as long-term strategy would require an America that few Americans would care to live in, because it would look a bit too much like Israel. That's fine for the Martin van Creveld addicts, but for the rest of us, we'd like America to still look like America at the end of this process and yes! We actually do believe that America is a model for the world, one that will be filtered and reshaped the planet over just like Japan shaped it for Singapore shaped it for South Korea shaped it for China shaped it for Vietnam shaped it for ...

But you know what Fabius? It won't happen by Tuesday!

You know, it's not serious navigation aid to sit in the back seat whining, "Are we there yet?" all the time.

These guys need to look beyond their blood-and-guts view of history. They're missing all the good stuff.

Here's my "bold" prediction on Iraq: Every good 4GWer knows that the average insurgency takes a decent decade to kill. We went into Iraq, allowed one to flourish, dealt with it badly, and now we're getting a whole lot smarter (my upcoming article in March issue of Esquire. By 2010, Iraq won't have an insurgency worth mentioning. We'll clock in on this one at about 7 years, or three ahead of schedule.

But guess what? Many experts will call this an absolute failure, even many 4GWers, and they'll be completely wrongheaded to do so.

It's a sad thing when those who seem most open to long-term strategizing are the first to declare surrender every time the going gets tough.