STRATEGY MAKES A DIFFERENCE -- ONE BIG ONE!

Sic vis pacem, para bellum

Throughout human history leaders who kept their eye on narrow domestic expediencies, and failed to appreciate the proverbial "forest" whose trees one must look not separately but as a whole, have invariably faltered -- and, along with them, their nations have similarly stumbled and fell. At the root of this malaise lies, almost without fail, the absence of strategy.

More than a year ago we asked on this very page the question of What Happened to Greek strategy? The disheartening answer, which has not changed since, was that Greece has simply left strategy by the wayside. Greek leaders, motivated by partisan politics and domestic wranglings, have had little time for strategy. To put it plainly, strategic thinking does not inform Greek governments.

The Greek "intelligentsia" is similarly divorced from the subject of strategy. Greek "academics" throw the term about with abandon, but have little, if any, real connection to Strategic Studies. The net result is that Greece lacks a clear outline of where she should be headed and under what conditions. And it is reaffirmed daily that the Greek political class prefers cafeteria "estimates" over any serious assessment of the country's real capabilities and potential (which would inevitably expose many crippling flaws and discommode those who have made their life's sole mission to exploit political power as the means to personal fortune)........

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