</a>Considering all the options

Considering All the Strategic Options (Part #2)

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When it is stated so categorically, by Holbrooke or Clinton, that "all the options" have been considered, it is typically far from clear:

• what other options were considered
• where they are identified
• what were considered to be the "pros and cons"
• by whom "pros" or "cons" were identified with respect to particular options
• how such options were collected for consideration
• how "option" was defined for the purpose of this process

The obvious response to such questions is that these all touch on matters of "national security" and are therefore the subject of the highest confidentiality. In this light:

• the population at large is expected to have every confidence that the highest level of expertise has been brought to bear on these considerations (despite the extreme loss of credibility of such expertise as demonstrated with respect to the financial crisis of 2008)
• no account is to be taken of the official recognition of the disastrously faulty "intelligence failure" and "lack of imagination" associated with the use of this expertise in relation to the "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq
• no account is to be taken of the complicity of official thinking and (in)action in processing intelligence in relation to the instabilities of the financial system -- despite the disaster to which these led
• the possibility of groupthink on the part of those involved in the process of considering "all the options" is not to be considered
• the possibility of deliberate duplicity on the part of the highest authorities is to be considered ridiculous (if not insulting), despite the prime example of this in the case made for the invasion of Iraq through the solemn assertions of Colin Powell to the UN Security Council in 2003 -- which might be held to be analogous to those made by Richard Holbrooke in the presence of David Petraeus

It is especially intriguing in the case of Afghanistan, following failure of a current strategic there, when the exercise is repeated -- again asserting that "all the options have been considered". What was not considered on the previous occasion with equivalent expertise that enables such an assertion then to be made so confidently? How many times can the situation in Afghanistan be reassessed -- thereby questioning the process of previous assessments -- without recognizing that there is some assumption in the pattern of assessment which is fundamentally flawed?

What is wrong with the associated learning process? A remarkable account of the challenge is provided by the Studies Coordinator in the Lessons Learned Center (Office of the US Director of National Intelligence) Josh Kerbel, Lost for Words: the Intelligence Community's struggle to find its voice, US Army War College Quarterly, Parameters, Summer 2008). Kerbel introduces his commentary as follows:

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq intervention, most of the national security components of the US government have had some -- mostly overdue -- introspective moments. Such reviews can only be considered healthy. For as Sun Tzu, the Chinese military and intelligence theorist, said, Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. The fact is, however, that many of those governmental components did not necessarily like what they saw looking back at them from the mirror. This result was particularly true of the intelligence community, which found its own self-identity issues staring back with an unnerving intensity. To be blunt, the intelligence community, which for the purposes of this article refers mainly to the analytic component, still does not 'know itself.'

As he notes:

For the intelligence community, the linear mechanical metaphor remains the dominant linguistic and consequently mental model; it is the default setting.

Hence the exploration elsewhere of Engaging with Globality -- through cognitive lines, circlets, crowns or holes (2009).

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