How hard is statescraft?

Read "Turning Points: A historian examines crucial decisions made during the Second World War" by Vince Rinehart, the Washington Post, Sunday, August 5, 2007. This is a review of FATEFUL CHOICES: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 by Ian Kershaw.

Fateful choices is described as a very good and well documented book that discusses ten decisions made during World War II that had great import. Apparently the British seriously considered approaching Hitler in 1940 to explore the possibility of a negotiated peace, and a "fateful decision" was not to do so (at that time). Describing Mussolini's orders to invade Greece:

"What passed for dictatorial decisiveness was in reality the merest veneer of half-baked assumptions, superficial observations, amateurish judgement and wholly uncritical assessment, all based upon the best-case scenario."

Japan's long path to the Tripartite Pact and war with the United States was

a watershed moment in a decades-old path toward great-power status and its own colonial empire, with a military that answered only to the emperor and was ruled as much by fanatical mid-rank officers as by its generals and admirals. It was trapped in a war in China and faced an uncompromising, rearming United States. Kershaw's portrait of Japanese leaders is almost poignant; all, including the emperor, were fatalistic about their chances of winning the war without an immediate knockout blow. At the same time, they were utterly convinced that the only alternative to war was national humiliation and subservience. The real choices here, as Kershaw notes, were made over decades, with the support of much of the Japanese public; by 1940, Japanese leaders were largely in a straitjacket not entirely of their own making.

Comment: Think about it, for a moment. These were difficult decisions. Ten of them, even if they were binary and they were not that, result in a thousand different outcomes. I suggest that no one could have accurately predicted the course of the war and the decisions that would have been made. Therefore, it seems to me that the statescraft depends on keeping options open and responding to the actions of ones allies and enemies, revising plans and decisions as needed. The important aspects of the war may well have been the openings and middle game strategy rather than the end game that we seem most to think about. By the time the end is evident, it is the opening of the next challenge to statecraft. JAD