Strategic thinking

 Rear Adm. J.C. Wylie Jr. wrote Military Strategy, a short book that made people change the way they thought about war.

We tend to see strategy as sequential. People who study battles describe them as a series of troop movements and actions. People who study chess games describe them in the same way.

In military history, these actions are relentlessly painted as heroic. Young people — cadets and recruits alike — are trained to act heroically. They tend to see strategy as sequential.

Wylie pointed out that strategy can also be seen in terms of cumulative effects. In both world wars, German U-boats came close to starving the British. There is nothing heroic about sinking a merchant ship carrying tons of fuel or food. But the cumulative effects of doing that can wreck an economy, bring another nation to collapse.

Wylie’s point was that if you’re looking at strategy only as a series of sequential actions, you’re missing at least half of the story — and probably the most important part.

It seems to me that there is a similar problem with the strategic thinking of people who are trying to oppose the attack on democratic institutions in the United States. I hear a lot about heroic efforts — phone banks in the next election, raising money to fight the next court case. I hear less about the slow, plodding work of persuasion — the unheroic task of persuading your neighbor to set a different course.