Geopolitical, military & economic strategy is an art, not a science. Which means it is significantly more difficult to teach even if qualified experts were available.
In Western hemisphere countries, usually representative democracies, strategic thinking is not rewarded at the ballot box.
Benefits are long term, but politics are by definition short term.
Sunday papers, television, a poor quality of state educational systems, shallow tabloid journalism, unmotivated & unmonitored public sector administrators.
Add to the mix a morally bankrupt corporate institutional ethos.
A post Great War economic system based on debt facilitated by the 1913 US Central Bank sometimes referred to as welfare/warfare. In Europe just welfare as Keynesian economic theory took hold of the something for nothing post 1919 generations.
The mix has been made more toxic recently in Western Europe by World Economic Forum sponsored mass immigration from alien cultures which have no interest in assimilation.
Mass migration to North America in the second half of the 19th century was based on a commitment to the New World, its law, family values, constitution, common language & pursuance of personal independence.
All this anchored in non denominational Christianity.
This fostered an astonishing dynamism which built in just one hundred & fifty years the most powerful economy on earth.
Ironically strategic political economic state thinking was not a great part of this success.
A liberal constitution*, laissez faire capitalism & respect for the individual in society gave birth to that ephemeral concept ‘The American Dream’.
North America is rich in natural wealth, which is always a strong growth catalyst for a young country.
*Liberal in the Gladstonian/Jefferson sense.
Other global economies prospered over the last thousand years with systems pragmatically & organically developed.
Arguably the Western hemisphere found different commercial & social success depending largely on the legal system.
Great Britain led the industrial revolution with jurisprudence evolved by Common Law & parliamentary statute law developed over one thousand years.
Mainland Europe was hamstrung with Corpus Juris cvilis, much less friendly to commercial expansion & individual freedom. The problem today is unresolved with the advance of enabling acts & regulatory constraints under both systems.
Some societies respond to alternative political & legal systems.
Japan & Germany are historically ordered societies. This marginally benefits manufacturing & associated industries.
North America & Anglo American socio-economic systems play comfortable host to financial service innovation, oxygen to fledging industries.
Not mutually exclusive of course but a sound starting point.
In order to build a framework for debate in the field of strategy it helps perhaps to just examine some features easily understood by the layman & suppress subjective sometimes emotional reaction.
Two important debates are growing in Western cultures exponentially at the time of writing.
War & immigration. Emotive topics both.
Let us take a Socratic lookalike strategy in the field of immigration.
In the United Kingdom Britain has benefited from European migration over the centuries. Let us observe voluntary migration for ease of assessment.
Religious oppression triggered in Europe a thirst for intellectual freedom, the English Toleration Acts 1688/9 gave such people a beacon of hope where none shone at home.
Notwithstanding that the skills they brought were of immense value, Huguenots with precious metals experience & Dutch (not fleeing oppression) with land land development expertise & many others searching for an entrepreneurial platform.
The key to immigration success is assimilation, over generations it becomes established .
Latter-day economic migration includes the erstwhile Warsaw Pact countries. Many Poles & Czechs who brought artisan & medical skills in short supply in late 90s to Western Europe. Many unpronounceable names adorn the football shirts of top players whose antecedents settled in North America & the United Kingdom.
Welcome all surely?
However the planned mass immigration from the Asian subcontinent & Africa sponsored by the World Economic Forum in the last twenty years has not been thought through strategically by those local political sponsors. More dangerous is the illegality of entry, manifesting itself in western European crime statistics.
No consideration has been given to eventual assimilation, without which future social conflict is virtually inevitable.
Perhaps part of a plan?
For hundreds of years migrants have brought their expertise & an ambition to adopt their chosen country.
Yet not thankfully subsume their traditions, music & folklore which usually permeates the generations, Britain, the United States & Canada are classic examples of this phenomenon. It enriches the host nation.
Ponder what is a third world assimilation probability to small islands (Britain & Ireland) population circa 68 millions of Christian, beer & wine appreciating, English speaking, dog loving & emancipated women content under Common Law? There is a fundamental religious hostility to these values from millions of incomers.
Animal welfare is a concept almost unknown in the Third World.
Of course small numbers are of very little concern. But the current annually expanding 8% of the host population who are actually intellectually, socially & emotionally hostile to all these things.
France, Germany, Spain, Holland, Ireland & Sweden are similarly paying a heavy economic, cultural & social price.
Immigrant ghettos are an anathema to a free society.
By the by this has nothing to do with skin colour, Sikhs, Hindus & West Indians are deeply embedded fruitfully in Anglo American society.
The lack of strategic thinking has already taken a heavy toll.
Military Strategy
Let us ponder some disastrous geopolitical military policies history has to offer.
Strategy was once explained pithily if vulgarly by General Patton, somewhat dated but so clear to the laymen to whom it was directed.
“How a soldier persuades a young lady to accompany him to the back row of the local cinema & is strategy, what he then does are tactics”
The view was promulgated to officer cadets at RMA Sandhurst until relatively recently.
Strategy is about the longer term in military thinking.
Here are just a few examples of geopolitical military strategic blunders over the centuries.
Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812
Anglo-French Crimean expedition 1857
The British invasion of The Transvaal in 1899
The British entry in to the European War 1914
The Maginot Line 1940
Hitler’s invasion of Russia 1941
The British defence of Crete 1941
Every post WWII United States war military adventure of choice.
Four of these have led to the long term demise of Empires.
War hardly ever works. Military societies almost always eventually fail.
Ponder the Roman Empire which failed eventually because it over expanded, could not control its borders & degraded its currency.
Yet strategic contemplation could have avoided millions of lives, economic & social misery beyond imagination.
It seems there is no end in view.
Moreover the body politic never seems to contemplate long wars, short wars seem to take everybody by surprise. “It will be over by Christmas”
Strategy demands in warfare a clear mission statement & exit strategy. This obvious requirement is almost never enacted. Senior Military personnel never study it seems SunTsu or Clauswich, so mistakes are repeated ad nauseum.
Prussia of the 1890s was a military society. Its economy & social infrastructure was fine tuned for conflict. Culminating in a disastrous European war which came in two phases, 1914-18 & 1939-45.
No European country won in any real sense of the word.
The United States post WWII has more in common now with the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II or even perhaps Zululand or Japan of the 1700/1800s.
Military societies consume wealth & foster social disorder.
Geopolitical military economic & philosophical long term strategy comes more naturally to the Eastern hemisphere.
Consequently the coming millenia will belong there if only by default.
The Welfare Trap
More controversially the West has succumbed to indiscriminate welfare.
Electoral systems that enfranchise citizens only on the basis of age & place of birth are totally contrary to the original concept of Athenian democracy. It was never envisaged as simply a head count voting red or blue. Indeed the idea is obviously absurd.
The wonderful American expression ‘skin in the game’ manifested two thousand years later than the Greek system.
Social or medical socialized welfare, a seed planted in the Germany of Bismark in the 1890s, adopted by the British government of Lloyd George in 1911 institutionalised in 1943 for a British socialist post war government has been a disaster because it lacked strategic assessment.
The concept of universal welfare has been developed in Western democracies by a mutated form of philanthropy.
Indeed State Philanthropy is an oxymoron.
In Britain Friendly Societies, sometimes religiously sponsored started in the early 1700s. For over 200 years the concept was self help. A few pence a week as protection for those whom had fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. A noble & practical ideal.
In Britain, 1943 mid war, a political idea took route. It took the form of the Beveridge report. The scheme was a compulsory weekly stamp to pay for health care & modest pension administered by the Government. An understandably attractive idea to a war worn electorate which endorsed it overwhelmingly in the 1945 ‘khaki’ election. Similar ideas were manifesting themselves in western Europe.
It was populism of the most suicidal form.
In 1953 the link between stamp contribution & benefit was severed.
The system sponsored come one come all, including foreigners!
Moreover it is handsomely documented now that in many western countries work is now a lifestyle choice. Working class un or semi skilled workers with children can have socially sponsored incomes significantly higher their working neighbours.
This under a system designed as a safety net for the unfortunate. No good deed goes unpunished.
Eventually taxation could not cover costs, the gold standard was abandoned in 1971 & the western economies turned to debt.
This maniacal policy became the norm in Western Europe & eventually the United States. Academics label this as Modern Monetary Theory (ie. Debt Doesn’t Matter)
Literally manna from heaven for journeymen politicians who love to buy votes with the electorate’s own money.
Bread & circuses?
Of course fiat currencies degrade interest rates soar, the system collapses & war then seems a better option for those leaders not be called to go personally.
Again those whom have worked in the east are familiar with the astonishment that this greets.
Explain if you can a system that pays healthy young men & women to stay at home when litter & potholes abound.
© Godfrey Bloom 2026 – Godfrey Bloom Online
