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:
“You must confine yourself within the modest limits of order.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I shall have the veil withdrawn and be allowed to gaze unblinded on the narrow limits of my own possibilities.”
—Beatrice Potter Webb (1858–1943)
“The great ship, Balayne, lay frozen in the sea.
The one-foot stars were couriers of its death
To the wild limits of its habitation.
These were not tepid stars of torpid places
But bravest at midnight and in lonely spaces,
They looked back at Hans’ look with savage faces.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)