If the linkages above are unclear, look at last year’s blogs (July, Sep and Oct) or read Strategia. My point is simple: If you don’t understand these connections, then you may believe that your tactical victory (in battle, in business, in a relationship) is actually strategic. There will a strategic outcome to your tactical move; but it may not be what you expected.

The best modern example of this miscalculation is Pearl Harbor 7 Dec 1942. The Japanese came within a hair’s breadth of destroying the entire American Pacific Fleet. Japan’s aim was to destroy the fleet to cause America to consider what it would cost them to wage war against them. They miscalculated. The Americans never gave it a second thought. On 8 Dec, with the dead not yet buried, America committed itself to punishing the Japanese —irrespective of the cost.

In his brilliant dissertation on the Vietnam War, On Strategy, Colonel Harry G. Summers, USA explains what happens when militaries lose sight of these connections and many remember the opening conversation, in Hanoi in 1975, from that seminal book:

“You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.” said the American colonel. The north Vietnamese colonel pondered his remark a moment. “That may be so,” he replied, “but it is also irrelevant.”

Not long after the Japanese were celebrating in the streets of Tokyo, the Germans were filling Berlin cafes jubilant that their Führer had brought France and Eastern Europe to their knees. Flash forward three years. Japanese, Germans and Italians were on their knees grubbing through rubble looking for something to eat amidst the ruins of their once “imperial” capitals.

We live in an era of instant gratification, but not everyone is blind to the linkages necessary to gain strategic goals. None of this is new. This wisdom is as old as written language. Sun Tzu’s Art of War warns that if you put an opponent in a position where there is nothing left to lose, if defeat brings unimaginable consequences, then that enemy will fight to the death.

Practically every European country awoke to the realization last month that the American president had a blind desire to disembowel an organization that had given them all almost a century of peaceful coexistence. In his incoherent rambling speech, he made it clear that the NATO alliance meant nothing to him, so long as he could face a camera somewhere and boast that he had won something. Exactly what he won remains unclear but to him, that was unimportant. He could claim another victory, see another headline, boast about his strength one more time. Consequences? He neither understood, knew, nor cared.

The current American president is not a strategic thinker. He does not understand that his embrace of the concept of regional hegemons is a strategy of weakness. What America previously imposed upon the world — an insistence that it could go anywhere and do anything — was a strategy of strength. Voluntarily abrogating that strategy demonstrates weakness. And it invites adversaries to fill any voids left by that departure.

The situation is far from hopeless. Europe is strong and growing stronger by the day. NATO’s been overly reliant on America, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t survive with less US support, or even with none. It may be a diminished entity, but then, whom are they going to fight? The world’s third largest military budgets/capita are now in Europe.

NATO was formed to allay fears of Soviet domination. The Soviets have been relegated to the dustbin of history, and the Russian Federation is working hard to join them there. Likewise, the America we are watching disintegrate before our eyes will rebuild itself and I am confident that the innate goodness in what used to be called the Silent Majority will once more come to the fore. For the immediate future, NATO’s future is in the hands of the Europeans, and Canadians. The U.S. has already given up some command positions. Whether the alliance sets a new course for itself is moot. Perhaps more important is whether leaders will learn — yet again — what happens when political appeasement that brings a tactical victory is worth the strategic costs incurred, whether in policy, trade or international relations.