Can doing nothing be a strategy?

Richard Hass,  President,
Council on Foreign Relations

Richard Hass asserted today on Fareed Zakaria's GPS show that what America needs is a strategy to defeat ISIL; which got me to wondering, first whether one always needs a strategy, and second whether a strategy can be to do nothing.

A strategy implies acting to change the course of events, with the intent of furthering the goals of the strategizing entity. Mintzberg calls this intended strategy.

The issue in the Middle East is that the problem, at least for American interests, is that the US is seen as an overbearing meddling foreign power, the "Great Satan". Regardless of the good intentions behind the strategy, intervention, in and of itself, creates resentment and fuels anti-American sentiment. So doing anything will, in all likelihood, exacerbate the problem (that is unless someone can suggest a way of meddling in another countries affairs that is not resented). Britain, with some history in the field of international meddling, could probably attest to the fact that this is very unlikely. For decades after the end of its colonial empire, its former colonies still harboured some ill will towards their former colonial master and occupier.

So, as antithetical as it is to the American 'can-do' attitude, doing nothing, at least militarily and unilaterally, may well be the best option. And as unappealing as it will be to see fanatical groups killing innocent bystanders as well as one another to gain influence for their particular brand of per-enlightenment ideology, American direct action will not only not stem the tide, it will embroil and implicate it as an enemy in the struggle.

The fanatics will only be beaten when the silent middle realizes that peace and security come from accommodation and tolerance, and ceases to allow, by action or inaction, the extremists to wage war. Once violence starts, the path to a solution changes irrevocably.

It is neither easy nor will it be quickly accomplished, as the peace process in Northern Ireland showed. But if one thing is clear from the province, it is that a military solution is not the answer.

So to answer my original question, yes it's probably better to have a strategy than to have none; inaction may well lead to more unexpected outcomes than some (but not all) courses of action. But what is implicit in most of the calls for 'a strategy' (including Hillary Clinton's critique that "don't do stupid stuff" isn't a strategy), particularity those coming from the trigger happy right, is an intervention  of a military nature, whether it's just the supply of weapons to boots on the ground. So any strategy with a chance of making things better in the Middle east should start with two axioms; first, that military force should be the last resort (indeed it may even be better to assert publicly that it isn't 'on the table' - much as Obama has done in stressing that there won't be American boots on the ground), and second that multilateral, rather than unilateral action is essential.

There are plenty of possibilities that might be pursued from this starting point, and if President Obama does deserve any criticisms it is that while his policy of no intervention is certainly a step in the right direction, he might have done more to build an alliance to work collectively on dealing with ISIL. But to criticize him for not giving weapons to one side or the other is folly. As he pointed out, giving arms to one group who we consider a potential partner doesn't guarantee them not ending up in the hands of those who will use them against us. The fact the ISIL is driving around in the latest US armored vehicles heavy artillery illustrates the point.

Regrettably, President Obama hasn't been able to articulate as clearly and a pithily as the 140 character sound byte driven media want the rational for what he is trying to do, leaving the airwaves open for the chattering classes to make up ill-informed nonsense that passes for policy prescription.