The Illusion of Strategy
Why a search for a "plan" in Iran misses the point.
You might remember my piece from a couple of weeks ago on Anthropic and how AI accelerates and scales the process of moral disengagement, the process of absolving or distancing oneself from guilt or shame for engaging in harmful conduct.
Well, I am now in the weeds of the larger field of which the idea of moral disengagement is a part called social cognitive theory, which explains how belief, behavior, and environment interact. I have to say, the literature has been incredibly helpful in illuminating some of the deeper problems underlying the issues we are seeing unfold in our political scene, particularly with regard to the cluster*** in Iran.
Specifically, I’ve been homing in on the “social cognitive theory of human agency,”1 which concerns how people exercise influence over their circumstances and the course of events through their behavior. Agency underlies accountability: We hold people responsible because they have the ability to choose their course of action.
Here is the part that got me interested. Agency, according to social cognitive theory, is manifested through forethought, self-reaction, and self-reflection, which are defined as the following:
Forethought: Having a vision or goal for the future that serves as a guide and motivator for present behavior
Self-reaction: The ability to evaluate your actions against standards of conduct (that you have adopted), and to judge whether they meet these standards
Self-reflectiveness: The ability to reflect on the meaning and morality of your thoughts and actions, and address conflicts that might arise between competing values in alternative courses of actions
The three agentic factors above are all grounded in self-efficacy, which is an individual’s belief that they can produce desired outcomes (like their vision or goal), through their actions. People with high self-efficacy can deal with obstacles and difficulties, course correct in the face of them, and persevere towards their goal. People with low self-efficacy give up trying when challenges come up.
It’s weird, I realized that I have actually worked under someone who lacked these “agentic functions.” It was a nightmare. Some behaviors I noticed:
Lots of ad hoc decisions/projects that didn’t seem to be connected to any larger goal or strategy
No ability to articulate how “success” is measured
No follow up or interest after assigning big projects that were supposedly super important in the moment — even if they used a lot of resources or set long-term processes in motion
Demand for immediacy between Action A and Outcome B — a real lack of understanding of how variables X, Y, and Z might affect or delay the desired outcome (despite having it explained REPEATEDLY)
When Outcome B didn’t immediately manifest, tendency to immediately blame others or demand that someone magically “fix it”
Boredom and lack of interest in any attempt to think through strategy, game out variables, or plan contingencies
Reprising “old hits” as a way to recreate “success” (i.e., generating new versions of previous decisions that were seen as “successful” — backwards-looking and zero creativity)
Revising the past (refuting or misremembering facts or things that were said) and making up data to justify present decisions
Hmmm. Sound familiar?
Which brings us to Trump. I think it’s pretty obvious that Trump is not self-reactive in the sense that he has any self-imposed standard of conduct, moral or otherwise (except, perhaps, the very simple yardstick of whether or not he is “winning,” assessed by how many people are kissing his ass at any given time). And I also seriously doubt that Trump possesses the metacognitive skills to engage in any meaningful self-reflection of his thoughts and actions — he is about as ego-attached as you can get, in that there is no daylight between him and his self-identity and beliefs. Lets’ be real: this man doesn’t have a subscription to Headspace.
But I hadn’t put those together with Trump’s lack of vision. He is so prone to self-puffery and hyperbole that you can easily get Jedi mind-tricked into believing he has some grand, forward-looking plan — and the media sort of treats him like he does. But he doesn’t, at all. And without a vision for the future, there is really no way to explain the reasons for doing what you’re doing now: You’re basically just always reacting to the present moment, and trying to control it (remember the claim (hope?) that COVID would just “disappear”) — which must be kind of terrifying because you literally have no ability to create a plan of how to get from A to B. It’s like being a bug perpetually flipped on its back, kind of desperately flailing but not going anywhere.
All of this, I think, helps explains the lack of coherence on wtf we are doing in Iran, the demand that other countries bail us out, and bizarre out-of-left-field ideas like “taking” Cuba (this is the “reprise of old hits” tactic).
The agentic features seem similar to the ideas of fixed vs. growth mindsets as articulated by Dr. Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Basically, growth mindset people see setbacks and failures — a failed test, a failed relationship, I dunno…a failed election — as a learning opportunity to do better next time. In other words, there’s an underlying assumption that by mastering new skills or habits or knowledge, one can get a different outcome. In this mindset, Dweck writes, “the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.” By contrast, fixed mindset people see any setback or failure as a referendum on their finite abilities, “a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character.” You can see how in such a mindset, the outcome can feel existential — (which could create the impulse to relitigate or manufacture them).
This site has a handy diagram of the difference:
I haven’t yet found anything making a direct connection, but as you can see, the growth vs. fixed mindset, like the agent factors in social cognitive theory, is all about agency: whether and how we can change, especially in challenging circumstances. It seems pretty clear that in this paradigm too, Trump is a fixed mindset person.
All of this is to say that there is endless analysis of what the endgame is with Iran (or any other policy) and I think that is really trying to manufacture a method to the madness. There’s no method. It’s just madness. For the rest of us, we need to channel our human agency/growth mindset and really think about what we are going to learn from this and change when this is over — since we clearly didn’t do that the first time around.
Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live With Themselves, Macmillan (2016)
Yep-—no forethought, no self-reaction, no self-reflection. Just perpetual present-moment flailing. Former FSO here, spent years watching leaders with actual strategic frameworks operate across South Asia and the Gulf. Trump’s the opposite: zero vision, zero ability to connect action to consequence weeks later, fixed mindset treating every setback as existential.
Iran proves it. Ignored warnings Hormuz would close, acts shocked it closed, demands allies clean up, threatens “taking Cuba” when trapped. No method, just madness. The search for hidden strategy was always doomed….there’s no 4D chess when you can’t think past the current stimulus-response cycle.
The real question:
what do WE learn from this? Because he won’t.
Growth mindset means building alternatives that don’t depend on his capacity for self-reflection magically appearing. Pattern visible, trajectory locked.
—Johan
Another brilliant analysis, Asha. Thank you. I especially appreciate your last admonition to us: "For the rest of us, we need to channel our human agency/growth mindset and really think about what we are going to learn from this and change when this is over — since we clearly didn’t do that the first time around." I yearn the day when we no longer have to deal with this president's neuroses and the daily bad news.