Larry D. Lauer

Strategy is defined as “a plan or set of maneuvers for obtaining a specific goal or result.” Tactics without strategy leaves people confused and feeling vulnerable. For some this may seem desirable. Keep them guessing, or as a colleague of mine once put it, “Don’t show your hand before you are ready to play it!”

This might work for a card game or short-term real estate games.  But in the game of world politics it can become very dangerous. Bold initiatives or tactics require context in order to be understood and trusted. Clear strategy provides context. Endless surprise initiatives do not. This is communication 101.

Allies and potential allies require knowing and sharing a set of governing strategies, having similar ideas about handling the big issues, and being able to trust commitments when the going gets rough. Playing the foreign policy game solely from the keep-them-guessing perspective eventually doesn’t work. Allies not only begin to feel uneasy, they may even soon begin to talk about erratic mental stability. Then, there is no rational basis for making crisis decisions.

And by the way, no lies please. This is also communication 101. Lies cannot remain hidden for long. And they inevitably signal someone with an insatiable ego, no consistent set of governing values, and eventually even the possibility of mental problems. One thing is for sure, constant lying never conveys superior intelligence and competitive cleverness, as every perpetrator wants you to believe. Rather it conveys a significant lack of knowledge and experience.

The bottom line is that allies need to know they can count on the leaders with whom they collaborate on serious matters. So far Mr. Trump continues to demonstrate a strong preference for throwing people off guard and tweeting off-the-wall comments. He might win a game of poker this way, but in the world of foreign policy he is on his way to having no set of informed ideas around which to bring allies together to address the world’s most pressing problems.

Be certain that nothing here has anything to do with politics or the Republican party. Everything here, however, has to do with fundamental communication dynamics and lessons learned from experience.