Aurelien published yet another provocative essay last week, The Long Run, in which he described the way planning horizons, and thus the ability to plan and execute long-term initiatives, had collapsed in the West. While he gave an astute description of how that was playing itself in the Ukraine conflict, with the US and NATO coming up with mad denials and lame schemes to hold back the inevitable recogniation that the Russian military was slowly, inevitably steamrollering not just Ukraine forces, but NATO standing as bulwark of the West’s sense of security and dominance.
I have to beg to differ with Aurelien as to how we got to this state of widespread decay of management and executive competence. In fairness, as a former senior British Foreign Office member, he is not in an advantaged position to see how this devolution took place. The sorry state of EU and UK political leadership and bureaucratic leadership, despite the considerable impact that has, is a reflection of habits, practices and most importantly models developed in the private sector, mainly in the US, and spread internationally and to the government sector. Those in combination have fed the human propensity to sloth, which here amounts to status-reinforcing busywork and the Potemkin-villagery known as “narrative” in lieu of even admitting to looming problems.
The very fact that sloth has become far and away the least discussed of the Seven Deadly Sins ought to tell you, like sex in Victorian England and Freud’s Vienna, how much of a secret driver of behavior it has become.
These are not, as Aurelien posits, the result of broad cultural developments like “instant gratification,” although they certainly helped grease the skids. A man who turned 100 was asked what the biggest change over his lifetime was. His answer: “How easy things have become.”
They were instead the result of the hollowing out of executive and management functions as a direct result of financialization, and that shift in perspective taking hold across Corporate America (and the UK) and propagated from there by everything from the explosion in MBA programs to the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation setting up capital markets in developing countries that would have been better served to have had capital controls.
Loss of manufacturing
At this pace, including the two years of design time before building began, the ship will be completed in a total of nine years—around twice as long as it took an Italian shipyard to build the vessels it is based on….
Making matters worse is the Pentagon’s proclivity for meddling in designs.
The Navy has made so many changes in the Constellation that a ship that was supposed to share 85% of the design of its Italian parent now has just 15% in common, according to Eric Labs, senior analyst for Naval Forces and Weapons at the Congressional Budget Office.
Magicked
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/warship-shows-why-u-s-navy-is-falling-behind-china-94cb9a87?mod=hp_lead_pos8
Great article!
Just to add my observations from inside the beast. It was our company strategy as a contractor to compromise government employees and eventually hire them to become our “advisors”, so continue the good relations for future sales. As long as the customer was willing to pay for modifications on a cost plus basis, no problem!
As my boss famously said, “we cannot get off the government teat”.
Regarding US military procurement, I highly recommend the movie “The Pentagon Wars” (1998) with Kelsey Grammer, based on a book by retired USAF Colonel James G. Burton about the development process of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The movie is funny, smart, and ultimately a sad indictment. It is little wonder that several decades later it has only gotten worse.
Yves,
Thank you for this topic – but did a section of your essay get dropped? Looking at the section “Loss of Manufacturing” it seems that something is missing. Additionally, I religiously read Aurelien and can’t find an essay entitled “The Long Run” – did it appear somewhere other than his substack? (last week’s substack was “Words of No Power”). This is a topic of my particular interest so I greatly want to savor your thoughts. Again, thanks!