Balancing power is no job for kitchen scales

The Great Wall of China, 21,000 kilometres of psychological intimidation, worked mainly (Opens in new window) against nomadic enemies on horses, equipped with bows and arrows. The British fortress at Singapore was attacked from behind, deprived of water and forced to surrender (Opens in new window) (1942). France’s Maginot line (Opens in new window), a mere 720 kilometres long, was outflanked and rendered superfluous (1940). Intellectual Maginot lines are more dangerous still, for they involve rigidly adhering to dated, static strategies. Standing still intellectually means losing.

The English have long prided themselves on the efficacy of the English Channel as a barrier to invasion, “as a moat defensive to a house (Opens in new window)”. Three attempts by invading to cross the Channel (those by Philip II of Spain, Napoleon and Hitler) were botched and poorly prepared. The Bayeux tapestry should remind visitors to the British Museum that a Channel crossing was never impossible. Now moats, like walls, can easily be vaulted. No country is an island anymore.

The strategic notion of balancing power, using coalitions to prevent any single state becoming predominant, was another comforting fiction. The balance of power never prevented powers (like Napoleon’s France, Britain with its Empire, or the Kaiser’s Germany) trying to unbalance the strategic equation. Nor did attempts at balancing preclude gang-ups, proxy wars elsewhere, arms races or bellicose threats.

In 1940, Churchill had no plausible strategy for winning the war against Germany. His only residual assets were squadrons of Spitfires, the English Channel and grit. Nonetheless, keeping calm and carrying on worked until the British army could be rescued, Germany’s attention diverted towards Russia, and until Hitler made an unfathomable mistake by declaring war on the United States.

Strategy-less improvising, pretending, bluffing and making do sufficed for Churchill, as for de Gaulle. Both men providentially reached the point, as Seamus Heaney would say, where “hope and history rhyme (Opens in new window)”. They teach us that, to work, strategies need to be explained and applied by leaders who inspire trust and who make both sacrifice and discipline seem worthwhile.