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Chandigarh: The term ‘strategic’ has become the tadka, or heavily spiced seasoning, of modern discourse. It is liberally sprinkled across everything from diplomatic statements and military briefings to corporate presentations, think-tank papers, university lectures, classrooms, television debates, LinkedIn posts, start-up pitches, media commentary, bureaucratic paperwork and much else besides.

It’s almost as though the mere invocation of ‘strategic’ masterfully elevates the mundane into something grave and consequential, but in the process, strategic’ ends up rarely clarifying anything meaningful. Instead, it seems to dictate that what follows must be unilaterally accepted, rather than examined too closely for detail.

Diplomats lean on ‘strategic’; military officers shelter behind it; corporate executives weaponise it; and think tanks monetise it. Likewise, bureaucrats bury failures under it, consultants bill by the hour through it, television anchors endlessly invoke it, while shouting over one another in prime-time confusion and start-ups scatter ‘strategic’ over otherwise unremarkable and pedestrian policies, projects and proposals.

So much so that presently ‘strategic’ has become virtually omnipresent, drifting across public life with the authority of sacred doctrine. Office reshuffles become ‘strategic restructuring’, bureaucratic paralysis turns into ‘strategic patience’ and delayed projects acquire the dignity of ‘long-term strategic planning’. Universities invoke ‘strategic vision’, corporations celebrate ‘strategic transformation’ and even incompetence is routinely repackaged as “strategic recalibration” – as though the label alone can make ineptitude sound impressive.

Across all these multiple contexts and settings, ‘strategic’ performs a consistent function: establishing ambiguity and dignifying uncertainty with almost supernatural flexibility.

Thus, confusion becomes ‘strategic ambiguity’, indecision turns into ‘strategic caution’ and retreat or withdrawal – military, political, diplomatic or any other- is recast as ‘strategic realignment’.

In all these chameleon-like avatars, ‘strategic’ no longer even pretends or purports to explain outcomes accurately or honestly, serving instead as an alibi for failure, confusion and misjudgement in grandiose language.  At this point, “strategic” has become elastic enough to mean almost anything –........

© The Wire