Limits
Political scientist Richard K. Betts has detailed some of the critiques regarding the feasibility and practicability of strategy, explaining "o skeptics, effective strategy is often an illusion because what happens in the gap between policy objectives and war outcomes it too complex and unpredictable to be manipulated to a specified end." Beyond the difficulty of organizing resources for effective grand strategy, Betts explores both the retrospective fallacy of coherence - the tendency to see the actions of states as more coherent and purposeful than they actually were or to assume particular actions and choices as more decisive in the outcome of events than they actually were - and the prospective fallacy of control - the tendency of policymakers to believe they can exert far greater influence over events than they can.
Read more about this topic: Grand Strategy
Famous quotes containing the word limits:
“As nature requires whirlwinds and cyclones to release its excessive force in a violent revolt against its own existence, so the spirit requires a demonic human being from time to time whose excessive strength rebels against the community of thought and the monotony of morality ... only by looking at those beyond its limits does humanity come to know its own utmost limits.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)