#339: Strategic Ambiguity

What is going on in the world right now? Can we really tell what some leaders like Donald Trump are thinking? Let me introduce you to the idea of strategic ambiguity. If you like this kind of content, please like, subscribe, and leave a comment. Thank you.

So what is going on? We have the continuing war by Russia against Ukraine. We’ve seen Maduro targeted, Cuba threatened, and an almost full-scale war unleashed against Iran. All kinds of things are happening, and we are not getting the answers from our political leadership that we would like to be getting.

If asked why there is this attack against Iran, we get a variety of explanations — all of them not necessarily wrong. Iran has been destabilizing the region for decades. It has basically been in a state of war with us already. It has always said it wants to destroy Israel and America. None of that is new. It has supported Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and whatever destabilizing influence in the region there can be. It is an illegitimate dictatorship, very brutal. And if you believe that the people are the sovereign, the people actually asked Trump to intervene. So all of these reasons are there — but why aren’t we hearing about any concrete mission?

What is Trump’s play towards Putin? We see him always defending Putin, seeming to cozy up, trying to negotiate. What is going on?

Well, you need to remember what Trump said before the elections. He criticized American strategy as always saying what they’re about to do and then doing it — and argued that wouldn’t work. He has frequently said it in a variety of ways: don’t tell them what we’re about to do, just do it. Don’t let them be safe in their assumptions about what we are doing. This is what strategic ambiguity means.

We know that before the Normandy landings, there were detailed preparations to pretend an invasion of Norway was about to happen. One of the first rules in the military is to confuse the enemy — to hide your own intentions, to not let them know what you’re about to do.

Today’s problem is that we are confronting a World War II-ish constellation. If you expect this to unfold like World Wars One and Two, that is probably not going to happen. We have nuclear weapons — they are too powerful. It’s not going to happen like that. But we have had a concerted plan, executed by Russia and its allies, to attack the West. Russia’s allies have been Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and to a certain degree China and North Korea.

So Putin and Trump have seemed a little chummy together. Trump has been styling himself as the negotiator, and we know that all these negotiations have had no result. We know they can’t have a result, primarily because Putin does not want to negotiate. I’ve talked about this before. It is very clear he has maximalist ideas about both Ukraine and the West. He spelled it all out before the full-scale war: he basically wants to undo all of NATO’s expansion, drive America out of Europe, and create a zone of influence from Vladivostok to Lisbon. All of this has been stated very clearly by him and his propagandists.

So — I am not here trying to defend Donald Trump. Don’t make that mistake. I’m here to analyze what is happening and to make certain points that may have been overlooked. I’m also speaking here not really caring what is in people’s hearts. I don’t know what Donald Trump wants. I don’t think anybody can really know what any politician truly wants. I don’t even know whether we can reliably tell what people want in general. What I can do is look at what is happening, what people are doing, and how what they’re saying may play into that.

At the same time as Ukraine has to beg, sadly, for Western support day in and day out, we’ve had a Western politics that was very reluctant to support Ukraine — and this has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It precedes Donald Trump. We know that Joe Biden was very lackluster in supporting Ukraine winning the war. We’ve had parts of European governments being either completely against Ukraine or lukewarm in their support. German politics is deeply divided about it. French politics too. In Italy, it is a surprise that Meloni is more of a supporter of Ukraine. And we know that Viktor Orbán and his Slovak colleague Fico are very much focused on their own oil deliveries from Russia — let’s say it like that. There is not a clear picture here.

But at the same time as we see this wavering commitment to Ukraine, we see how Syria has fallen as Putin’s ally. Venezuela was targeted. Now Iran was attacked. Russian shadow fleet ships are being attacked. And Ukraine just yesterday bombed a factory in Bryansk with Storm Shadow rockets. And so that tells me that something is going on where the West has been avoiding a direct confrontation with Putin — for the reason that Putin may have weapons too dangerous to us. There is a certain level of fear involved, and also a certain level of responsibility. We don’t want to be seen as the ones who answer Putin’s escalation with escalations of our own.

What I would propose we’re seeing is some politicians talking one way but doing other things. We have seen this public spectacle of Trump treating Putin like royalty, while at the same time doing everything he can to take out Putin’s allies. I would suggest that this has to be seen together, read together — that it is a deliberate strategy of keeping the conversation going while actually limiting Putin’s reach.

Well, that may sound good, but there’s a problem with that. Not everybody understands this. I’m not even sure I’m correct in this — I may be a little too generous here. But I’m not one to speculate or accuse unnecessarily about people’s motivations. What I’m saying is: even if I give some leaders the benefit of the doubt, it’s still a risk to act this way, because populations in both the United States and Europe are really confused. They are not given the complete strategic picture.

We are repeating a pattern where democratically elected governments do not treat their populations as grown-ups. The lack of transparency is working to destabilize democracy. And the question is: how do you solve that problem if you can’t communicate things like these clearly? Because of the requirements of strategic ambiguity, you run the risk of delegitimizing your government. The other risk is that you undermine your own soft power.

I understand that soft power is difficult to grasp for those leaders who believe you have to posture and seem big and strong. Well, we already know that the US is big and strong — though perhaps there is an argument that the US needs to keep demonstrating it. But the strength of the United States militarily, as important as it may be, is only part of the equation.

You can be strong and seemingly indomitable, but that attitude has never worked out well in history. The Athenians thought they had to demonstrate their power when others did not want to submit to Athenian commands — and in the end, it didn’t work out well for Athens. The Romans thought they could dominate militarily. They were also rather good at soft power, economics, and engineering — I grant them that. But the unwillingness to coherently integrate immigrants considered barbarians destabilized Roman society and pitted those so-called barbarians against Rome. Rome probably wouldn’t have fallen had it had a more integrative domestic policy, and had the Pax Romana not been cynically perceived as a sugar coating over a system of slavery and exploitation.

What makes the West strong is its democracy, its rule of law, its insistence on human rights, and its diversity. Diversity is our strength. You may not understand this if you have never been in the United States or in cities like London and Paris. Every country in the world is basically represented through immigrants in the US as a whole and in some of the urban centers in Europe — which means you have such a wide cultural footprint when it comes to attracting people from all over the world. Your country or city becomes a destination of desire, of hope. And you are risking that if you act in the same cynical way — whether tactically or strategically necessary — you are posing and creating long-term damage to the attractiveness and strength of your country if this keeps on.

So at a certain point, it would be helpful to say: look, you saw what happened. Here’s why we were called in to help. There was clear and present danger. We had to act with a little bit of subterfuge, but it was for this and this and this aim — and we can prove it. That would go a long way.

It would also help if the US would abandon this idiotic posture of negotiating with Russia. A lot of mistakes result from that initial failed posture. The United States very obviously cannot let Russia take Ukraine. The United States very obviously needs its European allies. Yes, the European allies had to be convinced a little more to actually live up to their military commitments. And the US needs the alliance to work.

But you cannot — well, I don’t know what happens behind closed doors. Maybe behind closed doors the Americans are going to their allies and saying: look, we’re going to talk a certain way, it’s going to look bad, but here’s why. I hope that’s happening. I have no idea whether it is. We do know that the United States figured out that sending JD Vance last time was less productive than sending Marco Rubio, although the message was the same. It is one thing to have strategic ambiguity towards your enemies — but not towards your friends.

So that’s it. I’ll probably come back to this, but I just wanted to throw this out there — both as a way of understanding why there is such a difference between rhetoric and actions, and also pointing out that even if we don’t assume the worst, even then we have a problem. The best thing is always clarity: adhering to your values, to your stated values, and remaining a predictable force in the world. No one benefits if your country is under suspicion every time a different president is in office and no one knows where you stand.

Ceterum censeo Ucrainam esse defendam. Слава Україні!