An exercise in brevity

During late May 1940, as the German Army was overrunning France and the British Expeditionary Force fled home from Dunkirk in an improvised fleet of fishing boats, it looked like Adolph Hitler had successfully redrawn the map of Europe for generations to come. The Third Reich had become the sole superpower of Europe: Italy was a satellite, France defeated, the Soviet Union cowed into a non-aggression pact, and Great Britain's forces expelled from the continent. In the grand, patriotic master narrative of history, the story usually concentrates on the gritty Winston Churchill assuming the reins of power, scowling defiantly across the English Channel (looking over his shoulder for FDR and the USA, to be sure), and proclaiming, "This was our finest hour!" as Great Britain carried on the war, virtually alone.


In the Mediterranean Theater, General (soon to be Field Marshal) Archibald Wavell sat down and reviewed the prospects of his command, which stretched from Gibraltar to Iraq, and which was outnumbered and outgunned by just the Italian armed forces, to say nothing of the Wehrmacht that would soon invade Yugoslavia and Greece, capture Crete in an audacious airborne attack, and send Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox," almost as far as the Suez Canal.

Far from gloomy, however, Wavell was optimistic, and he based his optimism on a very simple military "appreciation" that he wrote to put the whole war into perspective. It is such an elegant piece of writing, that at least part of it deserves to be rescued from obscurity.

Remember, as you read this, he was writing at a time when his nation faced total defeat:

1. Oil, shipping, air power, sea power are the keys to this war, and they are interdependent.
Air power and naval power cannot function without oil.
Oil, except very limited quantities, cannot be brought to its destination without shipping.
Shipping requires the protection of naval power and air power.

2. We have access to practically all the world's supply of oil.
We have most of the shipping.
We have naval power.
We have potentially the greatest air power, when fully developed.

Therefore we are bound to win this war.

There was more, details on how to keep Germany from getting access to that oil, but this simple string of declarative sentences has amazing power.

I wonder how it could be applied to something like the war on terror, global warming, or American interventionist foreign policy.

For example:

1. The worst-case scenario for global warming suggests that seas will rise to threaten coastal areas, agricultural yields will decrease, and traditional energy sources will become increasingly unavailable.
Nations with large populations in coastal areas will have to be flexible enough to disperse people, commerce, and industry to safer locations.
Nations whose agricultural production is threatened by increasing aridity must develop new methods of food production in a short period of time.
Nations whose access to fossil fuels is threatened must develop alternative sources of energy.

2. We have a highly mobile population, sufficient inland territory, and the organizational flexibility to move people, commerce, and industry as needed.
We have the most efficient agricultural production methods in the world, and the world's best organized capacity for agricultural research.
We possess sufficient internal reserves of fossil fuels to carry us through a changeover period, the capital to invest in new technologies for energy production, and the research capacity to develop such technologies into feasible, large-scale producers.

Therefore, the United States possesses all the resources necessary to deal with global warming, as long as Americans do not tie themselves up into costly interventionist foreign policies, indulge in "bread and circuses" politics of maintaining the status quo, and avoid tying the hands of the people, institutions, and organizations most capable of meeting these challenges.

Yeah, yeah, so I'm not Wavell. But it's an interesting exercise: can you take a major issue or problem and break it down to a few declarative sentences.

(Note: remember that Wavell, in the midst of a war that seemed to be going quite badly, had no time to indulge himself in cute ideological posturing. Just the facts.)

Try it.