World-class chess players know the difference between strategy and tactics better than politicians do. To win in chess you need to start with a strategy — a long-term plan that gets you to a position of superiority. Then you close in with a sequence of tactical moves. As Max Euwe, the Dutch chess grandmaster of the 1930s, once observed: “Strategy requires thought. Tactics require observation.”
The West is all tactics. The East is mostly strategy. You need both because even the most brilliant short-term moves do not add up to a strategy. Just look at the history of US military intervention since World War II. Each of them had their short-term rationale, even Iraq. But has it made the US safer? Has it made the world safer? Has it brought democracy? Has anyone become more civilised as a result?
Israel’s strike against Iran is a classic case of a trade-off where a short-term tactical manoeuvre is bought at the expense of a weaker strategic position in the long run. I am not the first commentator to observe that Israel’s attack against Iran will succeed tactically, possibly with sensational success, but it will not stop Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. Any future Iranian strategic planner will logically conclude from the last series of attacks that Iran absolutely needs the bomb. Other countries in the region might too. Ukraine’s biggest regret is having agreed to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons. Had the country kept them, Putin would never have attacked.
Lack of strategic thinking plays an important part in the decline of the West. The biggest strategic own-goal of all has been to drive China and Russia closer together — and Iran closer to both. These countries do not form an alliance in the Western sense. What they have in common is an overriding strategic goal: to become independent of Western coercion.
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