If you haven’t seen it yet, and are interested in the study of power, I would strongly encourage you to watch a documentary titled The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.  Filmmaker Errol Morris interviews McNamara about his experiences and reflections as one of the most powerful men in the United States government from 1961 to 1968. McNamara also served as head of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981. Whatever one thinks about his moral character, I think they would be hard pressed to argue against his brilliance.

In an extremely illuminating segment: “Lesson 1: Empathize with Your Enemy” McNamara contrasts the US’s ability to empathize with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile crisis and the failure to do so during the Vietnam War.

“We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions.”

And later…

“In the Cuban Missile Crisis, at the end, I think we did put ourselves in the skin of the Soviets. In the case of Vietnam, we didn’t know them well enough to empathize with them. There was total misunderstanding as a result. They believed…that we had simply replaced the French as a colonial power, and we were seeking to subject South and North Vietnam to our colonial interests - which was absolutely absurd! We saw Vietnam as an element of the Cold War, not what they saw it as; a civil war!”

Here’s the segment for your viewing pleasure (I invite you to take 8 minutes to watch it before moving on):

One of the reasons I found this documentary so enlightening was that you get an interesting insider’s view of what pivot points are available to someone in McNamara’s position – and by extension Rumsfeld, Gates, Cheney, Rice, Bush, etc.  They have many - but they have their own challenges cast by the fog of war.  In this way I think it is important to get inside the skin of the current US Administration, the Administration’s peers, and the intentions of the various players on the global scale - then insert what you know of chaos, complexity, and emergence.

Even with all of the unknowns that might complicate your understanding out there, you can still attempt to obtain the “correct” information to help you leverage critical strengths in your sphere of influence or chinks in the other’s armor; it’s all about seeing and using fulcrums, pressure points, and interference patterns. Recalling McNamara’s discussion on the Soviets and Vietnam as a case study, you can see these fulcrum points in action and inaction respectively. Tommy Thompson the former US Ambassador in Moscow held the Jenga-like support structure that allowed the US an out with the Soviets – thereby letting us watch The Road Warrior instead of living it.  In fact, they were able to create a non-zero situation because of it. For any people who’ve had experience in sales, understanding this non-zero sum element is an easy reach.

Conversely understanding the wrong thing (as in the case of our interpretation of the Vietnamese mindset) can be just as pivotal when examining the countless cost to us in Vietnam in blood and treasure. The direct study of these kinds of special points and feedback mechanisms is called system dynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_dynamics). System dynamics is another valuable tool in de-linearizing our normal way of thinking.

In a previously posted blog on conspiracy theories I suggested that to beat a conspiracy you had to quit playing the conspiracy game. I’d like to submit that there’s a lot that one can do to increase the signal-to-noise ratio that conspiracies naturally adversely distort by educating yourself with the appropriate information; empathy is one of these information amplifiers.

Who knows, there might be value in determining how much we’re defeating ourselves in the process of trying to defeat an enemy we don’t understand.

Tags: conspiracy, empathy, fog of war, Robert McNamara