Getting the big idea wrong |
Both politicians and military leaders get their opportunities to make history. Politics is why war breaks out, but the performance of the military leadership on the battlefield is why the war ends in a victory or loss. General David Petraeus, a retired American general who also served as the Director of CIA, advocates that leaders, both politicians and soldiers, must be able to master four essential tasks – get the big ideas right; be able to effectively communicate those ideas; supervise implementation of the ideas; and have a good feedback loop attached to these ideas to refine and improve them if need be.
The world has a long history of how politics took nations to war and how millions of people died because the politician or the military leader failed to get their big ideas right. The biggest lesson of history is that we don't learn from history, and while over the years military warfare has considerably evolved, what hasn't evolved is our consistent disregard to learn from history. When World War Two ended at the enormous cost of over 60 million deaths, the world seemed determined to put an end to the military madness of fighting wars, and the creation of the UN seemed to be the one phenomenal event which the world hoped would provide a global platform to create global peace and stability and put a lid on the gutter of warmongers. That didn't happen. What I want to write about is the short story of three nations and their leadership, in how they got their big ideas wrong and how they all contributed to the evolution of warfare right in the aftermath of World War Two. The........