URSABLOG: Hope And Blame Are Not Strategies

Hope is a wonderful thing, it is the thing with feathers and dies last. Blame is not so good: it is destructive and by trying to avoid it not only do we make mistakes, we also cannot take ownership of our actions, or worse, take responsibility for them. The blame game has no winners.

“Liberation Day”, President Trump’s long flagged and – at best – disruptive announcement of extensive (if not quite universal) tariffs was full of blame and hope. Blaming the rest of the world (including penguins) – “they’re ripping us off” – led him to impose these tariffs. Hoping that they will make America great again – in spite of overwhelming evidence that they will make things worse rather than better – will no doubt lead to further blame once the effects become apparent.

We live in a world of volatility – and according to Dominick Donald, speaking at the Second International Maritime Security Conference which I attended this week – it is volatility cubed. Volatility caused by profound changes in international policy by the US, causing others to change their policies in retaliation or reaction to them, which in turn affect all the other countries who have to deal with both the US’s and other countries’ new policies. This increases the reactivity to and frequency of change exponentially, whether the change is to trade, geopolitical or even domestic policy, because everyone is looking at everyone else, and their relationship with them. Volatility goes through the roof.

I want to talk to Athanasios Platias – who also spoke at the conference as Professor of Strategy, Department of International and European Studies at the University of Piraeus as well as being President of the Council for International Relationships – about those penguins. Included in the (almost) universal tariffs unleashed by the White House, 10% is being levied on the Heard and McDonald Islands, an uninhabited territory which sits 4,000 km south-west of Australia, only accessible via a seven-day boat trip from Perth and haven’t been visited by humans in almost a decade. In case you think this is just an administrative error, a tariff was also imposed on Norfolk Island, another Australian territory 1,400 km east of Australia, but they got whacked with 29%, probably because it is inhabited by people, 2,200 people in fact, and not just penguins and seals.

Professor Platias, who I have the pleasure of knowing personally, will probably tell me why – in the great scheme of things – the Heard and McDonald Islands have been included in the tariff blitz. And when I ask him what he really thinks, not what others say, he will probably give me a frank and humorous – if somewhat unscholarly – answer. That this will most likely take place over a glass of red wine will make it more agreeable, and certainly less unpalatable.

Punit Oza, who I also know in his role as International President of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers, gave his view of how shipping will fare. I agreed with his mostly optimistic opinion, even if I am less confident in my forecasts. If demand for trade is subject to exponential volatility, and the demand for shipping is derived from trade, then we are surely in the realm of unimaginable if unintended consequences. I agree that disruptions to trade flows – whatever the reason – in the short term at least usually result in rises to freight rates, and therefore beneficial to shipowners. But shipowners cannot simply hope for the best as a strategy to deal with the goodly and beauteous creatures they encounter in this Brave New World.

General Gordon R Sullivan – US Army Chief of Staff from 1991 to 1995, a man who knew a great deal about real life action – was not at the conference, but he was on my mind. He said: “Hope is not a strategy.” Neither, as far as I am concerned, is blame. Blame is a momentary pause to assess the situation. A strategy needs forethought and planning, analysis and facts. And then action.

It may be a reflection on the times that we live in, but I find my mind turning more to military strategists – as opposed to their political masters – these days. One that has influenced my thought a great deal in the past is Colonel John Boyd, a US Air Force fighter pilot in the Korean War, who came up with the OODA loop – which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act – a decision making framework to describe the rapid process undertaken when reacting to unfolding events. Note that neither ‘blame’ or ‘hope’ or even ‘think’, ‘ponder’ or ‘reflect’ come into it. Thinking is essential, but it depends – to coin a phrase – on whether you are thinking fast or slow. And overthinking, of course, obstructs action.

Thinking  – with a regrettable occasional tendency to overthink – is part of my make up, and sometimes prevents me from more positive action. Torn between all the things I have learnt and absorbed from my journey so far and reaching towards – pompous though it may sound – a better destiny, I find myself frustrated with not only what I didn’t do when I was younger – I was perennially and precociously too cool for school – but who I actually was. But in acknowledging this I have no wish to blame anyone, including myself.

The danger and irrationality of blame brings to mind a joke told soon after the First World War. An antisemite claimed that the Jews had caused the war; the reply was: Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists. Why the bicyclists? asks the one. Why the Jews? Asks the other. It would be funnier if the horror of the Second World War wasn’t the deadliest of final punchlines. Laughing at the irrationality of policies may make us feel better, and even morally superior, but it doesn’t stop bad – even evil things – happening if we are unwilling to do something, and just meekly accept the consequences as inevitable. They are not, otherwise those that are imposing their changes on the world would not try to make them.

And hoping for the best – something will come up – is also, for me, unacceptable. But by simply deciding to act is not very productive either, especially if we are unclear what to do. Very few of us, even Colonel John Boyd, are in a position to change the tide of history even if we are willing – and able – to do so. And I am suspicious of those people who have the answers for everything; none of us do, however charismatic or knowledgeable we are.

It must also be noted that the OODA loop is not a strategy either. I am wary of those who cling to seemingly beautiful and clever strategies, because they are most likely clinging to their beauty and cleverness, not their effectiveness, especially when the facts and situations change. Sticking too long to a fixed plan is a sure way of inviting failure. Indeed Boyd believed that strategies become obsolete, not only when they are completed, but when they are revealed, because what was previously hidden is now in plain sight, and reacted to. He also believed that rigid, top-down strategies often fail because they can’t adapt to rapidly evolving, unpredictable environments. Agility is the key.

To be sure, President Trump certainly does not stick to a strategy when it becomes unstuck, so rather than bemoaning his lack of consistency, we could at least admire his adaptability. Indeed he may be following Boyd’s other deep conviction: don’t cling to a plan, outmanoeuvre reality.  And it is in this context perhaps that we could better view his latest proclamation of ‘Independence Day’: he is using hope and blame as the labels, the justification for his strategy – not the end game of the policy – instinctively understanding how powerful emotions they are. And we, instinctively, are reacting using blame and hope as a self-defence mechanism, relying on both too heavily than is good for us, if we indeed really object so vehemently. Who, at the end of the day, are better at this game?

Michel Foucault, a philosopher not often cited in shipping or business blogs, let alone macroeconomic or geopolitical ones – an oversight perhaps – was deeply concerned with how power operates in society, especially through institutions, language and knowledge. He can be heavy going, but in an interview towards the end of his life, he said:

My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism.

Well, we have to get our motivation from somewhere, and this is as wise and realistic view of the world we live in today as I have come across recently. Life is not as we wish it, or even as we would hope it to be, maybe this is why we retreat into blame and hopelessness. Blame can be momentarily satisfactory, but is not constructive. Hope is not an action but an emotion that helps us to keep moving towards a better place. And when we get there, we will have to keep moving, because we never stop moving until we are dead. Better to be aware of the dangers along the road, and deal with them as best we can rather than blame the road, or hope it will be kind to us. We will always have something to do.

Simon Ward