1 Boring Old Man

In modern business parlance, there’s much talk of strategic planning, lots of buzz-words and lingo, many meetings. Sitting in an airport waiting area, there was what looked like a couple across the aisle, except that the travel clothes were way too pressed, the light luggage was plenty expensive, and there was none of the chemistry of a personal relationship. The P.D.A.’s and cell phones were in constant sight. They weren’t a couple, they were a "team," colleagues returning from a "business" something or another. They were in a high state of arrousal, talking loudly in in the language of business-speak. The man made several calls to a secretary, talking about "running" something "by" someone to get a "take on" the [unintelligible initials].  Whatever they were talking about, they were certainly pleased with it, and clearly the fun was in the planning itself and the strange talk. I didn’t have any choice about being an audience, so I occuppied myself trying to guess what their business was about. I failed, but I was convinced they were good at it.

The word strategy literally means lead an army. And strategic planning, in the case of the military, is crucial to the outcome. The danger is in the saying, "we won the battle, but we lost the war." The secret is in having the ultimate goal of a military action always in front of you, always informing the short term battle tactics along the way. I suppose the translation of this set of military metaphors into the business world is a pretty good way to go about things, even though it sounds foreign to me.

World War I is a classic bad example of military strategy. The waning kings of Europe were fighting each other over who knows what. They’d been doing it so long, had built up so many resentments over previous terrirorial disputes, had so many confusing alliances, that they just threw themselves into the fire as soon as a spark went off. They fought to a deadlock. The real point of the war was that they were at the end of the line with monarchies, but hadn’t figured it out yet. In comes America and the war was won by the allies, sort of. In the aftermath, the punishment levied on the losers was so outrageous that it created the climate for the far more destructive second world war. So the whole war was just the first battle of the next war.

The story of Mohammed may contain a similar situation. Mohammed’s religion aimed to unite the nomadic Arab tribes who were in constant turmoil. Mohammed and his followers were seen as dangerous, and fled Mecca to Medina [the Hegira] to escape sure attack. But they grew in strength in exile, so the powers that be in Mecca sent an army to dispense with them. Mohammed met them with a rag-tag army of zealots, many elderly, risking everything on the single battle. He won, impressing the surrounding tribes who joined up with him and he returned to Mecca, triumphant, ultimately uniting the tribes. Thus the "holy warrior" that we now know more about than we used to. But after Mohammed’s death, there was a schism about succession and clergy – Sunni vs Shia – that we also now know a lot more about than we used to. So the unification of the tribes wasn’t quite so successful as Mohammed planned after all, and they’ve been making holy war on each other ever since. Flawed strategic Plan? Maybe. Or maybe people just like to fight.

Like good generals, good businessmen need to plan for the aftermath of their campaigns. A dealmaker in business is, of course, out to get the most for his company, but he needs to plan for a win-win situation. If he justs plays to maximize his own take, he may gain the day, but destroy any possibility of future business – losing the client in the long run. In military terms, again, "winning the battle, but losing the war."

We’ve got an odd version of this story going right now. Businessmen using military metaphors, directing a Military Campaign. Apparently, the businessmen in the oil industry became hopelessly bogged down trying to do business with Saddam Hussein who ruled Iraq which sits on top of the world’s most lucritive oil deposits. They had the same problem with the Taliban in Afghanistan whose pipeline would carry that to oil to the West. We don’t yet know all the details, but we do know that the oil industry’s executives teamed up with the Neoconservatives advocating war with the Taliban and Iraqis to get to those valuable oil reserves, with neophyte businessman, veteran politician, Dick Cheney, leading the enterprise.

The Goal: Opening up the Oil Markets in Iraq to American Energy Companies and gaining access to the Afghani pipelies to move the Oil from Iraq to the Western Markets.

The Strategy: Depose Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan with American Military Intervention, setting up governments that would deal favorably with American Oil Companies.

The Strategic Plan: Put together a political force that could win control of the U.S. Government [the Project for the New American Century. Dick Cheney, Oil Company C.E.O. as Vice President and multiple P.N.A.C. and A.E.I. official staffing the White House]. Attack the Taliban and Hussein on the grounds that they were dangerous to American Security. 

I’m not so rabid a Conspiracy Theorist as some. I don’t think the Neoconservatives were in on Bin Laden’s attack. But I’m not convinced that the White House didn’t actively ignore Al Qaeda’s build-up, knowing that an Arab Terrorist attack would be ample provocation to sell a war on Iraq and the Taliban [though I suspect the attack on the World Trade Towers was more than they bargained for]. Then all they had to do was convince everyone that Afghanistan and Iraq were in on the treachery. That done, Military Victory would be a piece of cake.

Only, it didn’t work…