CIAO DATE: 05/2012
June 2011
An odd document tiptoed onto the stage in early April 2011, surprisingly unnoticed, considering the radical shifts in U.S. policy for which it was arguing. Called A National Strategic Narrative, the fifteen-page booklet was put out by the Woodrow Wilson Center, and claimed to be authored by “Mr. Y”—although, unlike the mysterious “Mr. X” to whom the “Mr. Y” pseudonym refers (eventually revealed to be George Kennan, author of the famous “Long Telegram” of 1946, which argued for the policy that became known as “containment”), these authors are named in the pamphlet itself—Navy Captain Wayne Porter and Marine Colonel Mark Mykleby, both special strategic assistants to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen. Reaction to the pamphlet was slow, and somewhat stumbling, because the program put forward by the two looks like a fundamental departure from current military doctrine and indeed from foreign policy. “Mr. Y” argues, for example, that the United States must move from “containment to sustainment,” swaying the world not by our ability to “control,” but rather because of our “credibility,” which other nations will wish to emulate. We must, the authors argue, shift our investments to education, “sustainable security,” and, only third, to the means necessary to ensure continued access to the resources of the world marketplace. We need this last because, “Mr. Y” says, we must move from “deterrence” to “fair competition,” in order to help shape our “strategic ecology” in the “global system.” Such commentary as there has been so far ranges from genuinely hostile, through puzzled, to cautiously positive, to quite positive . . . but maybe still a bit puzzled.
Resource link: And Ye Shall Know Your Story, and Stick to It [PDF] - 389K