“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the Decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.[1]
The ancient Greeks looked east and saw barbarians lapping at the shores of civilization.[2] Chinese emperors of antiquity assumed that, in keeping with the “all under heaven” framework, all the world belonged to them, Chinese or not.[3] Suleiman the Magnificent aspired to a universal monarchy, and for a time it seemed likely.[4] In each case, the powerful looked at a map of their dominion, all their dominion to be, and saw only a reflection of themselves. There springs a narcissism from becoming a great power. In his treatise on nationalism’s roots, Benedict Anderson describes this phenomenon: “All the great classical communities conceived of themselves in as cosmically central."[5] Their aspirations overshadowed those of the governed, conquered, or even of friendly states. At times, this could lead to exaggerated sense of power and influence.
When strategists can live in the skin of another through the means of storytelling, they can better calibrate policy that is feasible within the limits of state power.
The United States shares in this tradition of great power narcissism. That said, while the disease has no cure it is not fatal. In fact, it is probably an unavoidable, and perhaps even necessary condition for policy makers, but one that must be balanced with a heavy dose of empathetic analysis of adversaries and allies alike. The route to a more authentic understanding of the aims and likely reactions of other states, is through narrative appreciation. When strategists can live in the skin of another through the means of storytelling, they can better calibrate policy that is feasible within the limits of state power. The interests of the state must remain front and center, but informed by a deeply felt understanding of the fears and hopes of one’s friends and foes with a mind towards avoiding unintended provocation and building deeper trust with partner nations.
Miscalculation Between Narcissistic Powers
Moreover, when lingual and cultural differences run particularly deep, it increases the difficulty of anticipating an adversary’s intentions.
Current thought and literature about adversary states like Russia and China emphasizes fears about miscalculation leading to direct great power confrontation that neither party desires. The Thucydides Trap, China threat theory, and Russian nuclear blackmail are on the tongues of policy experts and strategists.[6] These concerns are legitimate, especially in view of the potential consequences of a miscalculation between nuclear-armed powers. Yet there are risks that exaggerated emphasis on a threat like China will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.[7] Moreover, when lingual and cultural differences run particularly deep, it increases the difficulty of anticipating an adversary’s intentions. Psychologists have found evidence that language and culture create measurable distinctions in thought patterns.[8] Psychologist Richard Nisbett concludes that “human cognition is not everywhere the same.”[9] But there does seem to be at least one universal human means of expression that could shed light on the ambitions and fears of very different states. Humans tell stories, and through them make sense of their past and signal intentions for their future.
The Functions of Narratives
The most distinctive feature of the human species—one that no other creature replicates—is the impulse to tell stories as a way of understanding its world and seeking to control it.[10] These narratives constitute a vessel into which citizens or subjects organize the facts that define their world—they add meaning to both the story and the audience. Individuals and nations press stories into service for a variety of projects, because they tap into some primordial need. As individuals, humans are prone to place themselves at the center of a story about them and use the narrative form to give meaning to the events unfolding around them.[11] Likewise, when one’s country is the protagonist in a story told about the world, it sets the terms of the discourse surrounding policy development and strategy. Because a people’s sense of belonging and identity have become intertwined with national stories and myths, their very happiness is connected to the foreign policy decisions of the state.[12]
Narratives can provide cohesion for domestic audiences, grist for grand strategy, and guardrails for decision-making.
States also employ narratives to change the thinking of others. With a suitably resonant story, states believe they can gain advantage over a competitor by shifting norms and expectations.[13] Such a contest of narrative flares up anytime the U.S. 7th Fleet passes a ship through the Taiwan Strait. Undergirding China's heavy investment in the developing world, is the narrative that China offers an anti-colonialist alternative for foreign engagement and regional leadership. This simultaneously strikes at the West's exploitative history with Africa and hopes to lay the groundwork for power projection beyond Chinese borders.
But state narratives must maintain a modicum of verisimilitude.[14] If, for instance, the plot of the state’s narrative emphatically denied a state of war existed, but battlefield reverses in a “special military operation” required major reinforcements, then a sudden surge in mobilization would seriously undermine the story being told to audiences at home or abroad.[15] It might pose real danger to regimes who, in their hubris, have grown dependent on flawed narratives to help preserve themselves. Thus narratives can provide cohesion for domestic audiences, grist for grand strategy, and guardrails for decision-making.
Escape from Narcissistic Strategy
If policymakers can become trapped within their own state-centered narratives, what is to be done to avoid catastrophic hubris? I propose that constructing narratives from the perspective of other states offers a solution. Because of a story’s ability to transport an audience outside their own reality, they enable a strategist to visualize a probable reaction to unfolding events from the perspective of another. Research by Michael Jones and Mark McBeth demonstrates that narratives are more persuasive—and more able to mobilize a people—than analytical arguments because they manage to transport the audience into a receptive state of mind.[16] This goes beyond red teaming. While useful in spotting holes in one’s own plans, red teaming does not transport the strategists because it lacks the deep context created by the narrative form.[17] That is the power of strategic storytelling. It removes the familiar trappings of one’s own perspective in a way that permits a more authentic visualization of a potential future. It alerts the strategist to the myriad of actors with choices available to them. The dangerously narcissistic state lacks imagination to anticipate how less powerful actors legitimately pursuing their own interests may spoil the best laid plans of great powers.
Adversary Narratives: The Case of China
Given the human predilection to accept stories as true, it is understandable and expected that adversary states, especially those with authoritarian rulers, traffic in narratives to preserve their regimes and influence external actors. Manjari Chatterjee Miller makes a convincing case that economic resources and military might alone are insufficient to become a great power. State elites must employ a narrative the domestic audience at least tacitly endorses and which theorizes the achievement of great power.[18] Certain narrative forms are more persuasive and compelling than others. States often employ themes of victimization coupled with “overcoming the monster” archetypes.[19] Chinese elites mobilize and nourish nationalist sentiment with the “century of humiliation” narrative. A range of subplots, such as “the backward will be beaten” and “National rejuvenation” fit within this larger narrative and help legitimate Chinese Communist Party aspirations.[20] Feng Zhang writes, “Scholars sometimes wonder whether the century of humiliation, which forms such a big part of China’s national psyche, is a myth constructed by twentieth-century nationalists or a political narrative used by the Party to legitimize its rule. Myth or not, it has exercised a powerful hold on Chinese conceptions of international order.”[21] More than that, it has inculcated in younger generations of Chinese a craving for a more muscular form of Chinese nationalism.[22]
Ruling elites might advance their state into a later stage of the story more quickly than some audiences expect or even modify the plot.
It is important to remember that these strategic narratives do not remain fixed.[23] Ruling elites might advance their state into a later stage of the story more quickly than some audiences expect or even modify the plot. China’s narrative of patience under Deng has not necessarily vanished. Xi Jinping believes China has reached the part of their story where they must become more assertive and seize what is rightfully theirs. As Shin Kawashima puts it, “China believes the tides are in its favor.”[24] Xi’s legacy, a point at which Taiwan’s defenses will make a forceful annexation too costly, and a rising nationalism are all plot devices in this strategic narrative contributing to a sense that China is nearing an event horizon with Taiwan.
Friends Like These—Understanding Allies Through Narratives
If appreciation of the enemy’s story is valuable, appreciation of allied or partnered state’s narratives might be indispensable. The current crisis in Eastern Europe ought to remove any doubt of that. Ukraine's strategic narrative that it is a culturally distinct nation from Russia that serves as a bulwark against authoritarian aggression has skillfully undermined Putin's claims as a pan-Slavic liberator. President Zelensky's career as a performer seems to have served him well. He has helped construct and give life to a credible and legitimate narrative that has animated determined resistance and defied all expectations. In the Pacific region, where Chinese and American narrative visions of the future compete, it would be easy to dismiss or marginalize the strategic narrative of neutral states or potential allies. Recent scholarship suggests that these states already worry about being forced to choose and have well-founded fears of loss of autonomy or abandonment.[25]
While some wring their hands at the apparent non-alignment of India, Manjari Miller’s explanation for Indian hesitancy carries the sting of truth.[26] India’s strategic narrative prioritizes complete autonomy and the perception of equality with partners. The U.S. has never been “perceived as an empathetic friend who would understand India’s security imperatives.”[27] With the deeper context and more authentic perspective offered by narrative analysis, U.S. policymakers could better calibrate policy to meet a partner where they are and regain their trust.
Strategic Narcissism in Action
Perhaps an example of failure to think outside one’s own narrative framework can illustrate the problem and suggest a solution. The 9-11 attacks created the conditions for understandably outraged elected officials to view the world from only the perspective of an unjustly attacked benevolent superpower. At this moment, the U.S. enjoyed considerable international goodwill and a domestic audience eager for a persuasive narrative that could mobilize resources towards ends that would serve U.S. interests abroad. But the righteous anger of George W. Bush and many in his cabinet blinded policymakers to the limits of American power and the unconsidered reactions of regional actors.
The failure to anticipate the reaction of thousands of lower-level Baathists to loss of status and employment or to see how a hostile Iran might fear for its own regime and seek opportunities to bog down the U.S. in Iraq seems quite foolish in retrospect.
The obsession with removing Saddam Hussein from power, which began without any clear evidence of weapons of mass destruction or of support to Bin Laden while apparently a positive step for the Iraqi people was only a short chapter in a longer story that included a variety of regional actors with interests of their own. The failure to anticipate the reaction of thousands of lower-level Baathists to loss of status and employment or to see how a hostile Iran might fear for its own regime and seek opportunities to bog down the U.S. in Iraq seems quite foolish in retrospect.
In the months and years that followed the 9-11 attacks, policy elites constructed a narrative of delivering a benighted place into the hand of western-liberal democracy. With such a persuasive, yet flawed story guiding the actions of policy elites and much of the voting population, the U.S. lurched from one part of the Middle East to another without advancing its vital interests and, even worse, destroying the unipolar moment and all possibilities to sustain its unchallenged global leadership in the process. Some 20 years later, that narrative is usually a punchline in a bad joke, but few are likely to admit how they had been transported by its allure in 2003.[28]
Conclusion
I do not assert that narratives alone provide sufficient predictive power on which to base foreign policy decisions. Philip Tetlock’s work convincingly points to limitations of a strictly narrative approach to strategic forecasting.[29] Likewise immutable facts of topography and limitations of resources and, of course, unknowable contingencies conspire to subdue human aspiration.[30] Yet without reference to human desires, fears, and values neither do they tell us much about how a nation or a people will interact with them.[31]
What I propose here is that U.S. strategists give greater respect to narratives in foreign policy formulation. They serve as both tools of states and analytical approaches and once they have learned how other societies construct them, strategists can more effectively influence others. Policy can then direct diplomacy in a direction more mutually acceptable to all parties. They might see how fears of overcommitting to the current superpower could seem imprudent, given the history of reversals in the foreign policies of democratic states. Narratives enable sense-making not just of a lived present, but of a possible future. It is for this purpose that a strategist must pursue the skill of storytelling to temper Oxymandias’ “sneer of cold command.”
Wesley Moerbe is an officer in the U.S. Army and a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies. He has experience as a planner at the tactical and operational level and his writing has appeared in several professional journals. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: Ramses II, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire Genève, Genève, Switzerland, 2019 (Daniela Turcanu).
Notes:
[1] Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Major Works: Including poetry, prose, and drama, (Oxford University Press, Oxford), 198.
[2] John V. A Fine, The Ancient Greeks : A Critical History, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 93 and 438.
[3] Gill Bates, Daring to Struggle : China's Global Ambitions Under Xi Jinping, (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2022), 49; John Keay, China: A History, (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 139.
[4] Andre Clot, Suleiman the Magnificent: The Man, His Life, His Epoch, (London: Saqi Books, 2012), 297-298.
[5] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities : Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso, 2016), 13
[6] Graham T Allison, Destined for War : Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), viii-ix; Emma V. Broomfield, "Perceptions of Danger: The China Threat Theory," Journal of Contemporary China 12, no. 35 (2003): 265-284, 265; Beverly Loke, “China’s Rise and U.S. Hegemony: Navigating Great-Power Management in East Asia,” Asia Policy, Vol 14, Number 3 July 2019, pp. 41-60, 56.
[7] Jessica Chen Weiss, "The China Trap." Foreign Affairs, August 18, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-trap-us-foreign-policy-zero-sum-competition.
[8] Richard E. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought : How Asians and Westerners Think Differently—and Why, (New York: Free Press, 2003), 161.
[9] Ibid, xvii.
[10] Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008), 6-8.
[11] Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots : Why We Tell Stories, (London: Bloomsbury Continuum Publishing, 2004), 697.
[12] David Campbell, Writing Security, (Manchester: University Press of Manchester, 1998), loc 470 of 4280. ; “A Report to the National Security Counsel - NSC 68,” April 12, 1950, Truman Library, https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/research-files/report-national-security-council-nsc-68?documentid=NA&pagenumber=11.
[13] Emile Simpson, War From the Ground Up: Twenty-First-Century Combat as Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 179.
[14] Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 621.
[15] Jack Detsch, “Putin’s Lies About the War Hobble Russia’s Offensive,” Foreign Policy, June 14, 2022.
[16] Elizabeth A Shanahan, Michael D. Jones, Mark K. McBeth, and Claudio M. Radaelli. "The narrative policy framework." In Theories of the policy process, pp. 173-213. (Routledge, 2018), 343.
[17] Micah Zenko, Red Team : How to Succeed by Thinking Like the Enemy, (New York: Basic Books, 2015), xxi-xxiv.
[18] Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power, (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2021), 149.
[19] Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots : Why We Tell Stories, (London: Bloomsbury Continuum Publishing, 2004), 584.
[20] Yi Wang, "‘The Backward Will Be Beaten’: Historical Lesson, Security, and Nationalism in China." Journal of Contemporary China 29, no. 126 (2020): 887-900, 893-896.
[21] Feng Zhang, “The Xi Jinping Doctrine of China's International Relations,” Asia Policy, Volume 14, Number 3, July 2019, pp. 7-23, 14.
[22] Jessica Chen Weiss, "How hawkish is the Chinese public? Another look at “rising nationalism” and Chinese foreign policy." Journal of Contemporary China 28, no. 119 (2019): 679-695, 690.
[23] Miller, Why Nations Rise, 150.
[24] Shin Kawashima, "Xi Jinping’s diplomatic philosophy and vision for international order: Continuity and change from the Hu Jintao era." Asia-Pacific Review 26, no. 1 (2019): 121-145, 138.
[25] Jessica Chen Weiss, “The China Trap,” Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 2022, Vol. 101 Issue 5, p40-58.; Evan S Medeiros, Keith Crane, Eric Heginbotham, Norman D. Levin, Julia F. Lowell, Angel Rabasa, and Somi Seong, Pacific Currents: The Responses of U.S. Allies and Security Partners in East Asia to China's Rise, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2008), https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG736.html, 246.
[26] Miller, Why Nations Rise, 140.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Gordon, Losing the Long Game, 142-143. ; Gordon, Cobra II : the Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, 19-26.
[29] Peter Scoblic and Philip E. Tetlock. "A Better Crystal Ball: The right way to think about the future." Foreign Affairs, 99 (2020): 10.
[30] Jakub J. Grygiel, Great Powers and Geopolitical Change (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 21-26.
[31] Ibid. 167.