This is Democracy – Episode 230: Art of Strategy

Jeremi: Welcome to our new episode of This Is Democracy.

Today we are going to discuss a fascinating, uh, difficult but super important topic, the influence of literature and art on high policy making on some of the hardest policy making around military and strategic affairs. That’s a field where people, uh, tend to assume that you need to read very sophisticated academic intellectual work to come up with good ideas.

Our guest today has written. Book and spent years thinking about the influence and importance not of statistics and [00:01:00] economic regressions, but instead of literature and the arts on some of the most difficult strategic policy discussions. Uh, this is, uh, Ben Griffin, who’s with us here in the studio. Ben, it’s so good to have you

Ben: on.

Thanks, Jeremy. It’s great to be here. And, you know, I, I should know before we get to, to this, I, I am an active duty Army officer and it’s a privilege for me to teach univers, uh, United States Military Academy. Uh, but I do need to acknowledge that any opinions I express, uh, are my own, and not that the government d o d, uh, the Army or West Point.

Jeremi: Great. Great. Thank you, uh, Ben for sharing that and sharing also that important caveat, which frees you up then to share exactly your opinions on everything. Benjamin Griffin is the chief of the military history division. In the history department at the United States Military Academy at West Point. So if there’s anyone who thinks about military history, it’s Ben.

Uh, but then the connection between that military history and literature and the arts, that’s really what he brings that I think is quite unique to his book and to our discussion today. Um, he’s a major in the US Army and, uh, I’m happy to say that Ben holds a PhD in history from the [00:02:00] University of Texas in Austin.

He was one of my many great students, uh, really a wonderful student to work with. His book was originally the dissertation that he wrote, uh, here, and the title of his book that I. Everyone to read. It’s really a fun read and insightful in so many ways, Reagan’s war stories, a Cold War presidency. Before we have our discussion with Ben, of course we have, uh, Mr.

Zachary Siri scene setting poem. What’s the title of your poem? Zachary? Tall Tale of a Short Man. Wow, I love it. Let’s hear it.

Zachary: A major met with Bonaparte before his deaths to ask the man if he had any wishes left not knowing quite exactly where he was right then. Napoleon asked if his men had seized the Glen at the house of Longwood.

They whisked the dark coffee, black curtains on windows watching over the sea. While in the rafters of a hut in Brit, a peasant slept and thought of he who wrestled the stars. A major met with Bonna apart, busy dying, [00:03:00] and asked the great man in his fatal sighs, if he might have a word for them, who gallivant at his very hem and sought a glorious end at this.

In glorious end, the man rose up from his old straw bed and in a voice rasp and hurry, he said In his dying breath. Tell them a story. Mm.

Jeremi: I love it. Zachary, why did you focus on Napoleon? Well, I

Zachary: think that he is a fascinating, uh, figure, um, short man, a

Jeremi: fascinating short man.

Zachary: Exactly. , uh, because he has left such a mark on our literature and our culture.

Um, despite the fact that he was in many ways a failed military leader. Um, and I think the, the root of that, um, mark and that legacy is, is his ability to tell a story and to motivate his men. Um, and, and. , even those who who suffered, um, under his, uh, his violence, uh, found themselves also, um, admiring his leadership.

And I think that, that, that is something [00:04:00] that, um, that a sort of paradox that I think many people, um, find compelling. Um, but also I think it’s very revealing about the power of storytelling. In leadership.

Jeremi: Sure. And, and Kaon Kravitz, who’s written one of the most significant books on strategy contrasts Napoleon as the artist with his Prussian counterparts.

Who are the scientists? Uh, what, what do you think are the advantages the artist has? Well, I think

Zachary: the artist, uh, has the ability to, um, to even when the odds are, are, are against him or her, and the. The supplies, munitions, et cetera, aren’t necessarily in their favor. They have the power of motivation, which I think often can, can be even more powerful than, than those other two things.

Jeremi: And, and of course, Ben, this is a line you use a few times in your book that fiction is a powerful tool. How do you think about this?

Ben: I think Zach is very much on the mark there, right? We’re, you know, fiction and storytelling and imagination can do a lot of things for you. Right? So, uh, you know, in the poem there and your comments after [00:05:00] Zach talking about, you know, using the story as a motivating factor, right?

And one of the things that Reagan did a great job of was, Wrapping up his beliefs, his policy, into a really relatable retell and entertaining story. All right? And so that way people would then go and spread his word, uh, his ideas broadly thinking they were telling something humorous or something memorable.

But then also the role of fiction, uh, as sort of this imaginative plane and space, uh, to think through things. Right? I think strategy is in its essence a form of writing fiction. Mm-hmm. Because what you’re doing is you. Thinking about a near future world that you want to achieve. It’s a fictional world that doesn’t exist.

And then your strategy becomes how do you achieve that? That’s a story of how you get there. And I think that’s something that Reagan, in many cases, excelled at, was having a vision of what the future could be. You know, in contrast to his, you know, to his vice president, George h w Bush, who said he struggled with the whole vision thing.

Right? And despite, you know, the new world order, the thousand points of light, [00:06:00] It just didn’t quite fit, uh, in a way that it does for Reagan. I think.

Jeremi: And, and to me, Ben, this is really one of the exciting parts about your book. Uh, others have written about how Reagan and other politicians use stories to persuade people use stories to create a following.

But you go a step further in here, you have a number of chapters where you really dig deep and you show how, for example, uh, red Storm Rising, one of Tom Clancy’s, uh, most popular books, how that book helped Reagan think through. The rivalry and potential for conflict with the Soviet Union. Uh, tell us

Ben: more about that.

Yeah, so Red Storm Rising is Tom Clancy’s second novel. Uh, so he writes this with Larry Bond following up on the success of the Hunt for October. And it’s one of the few clients films that’s not part of the Jack Ryan universe. Uh, instead it’s a whole new setting. Uh, it basically is World War III between NATO and the Warsaw Hack.

Critically in this book, uh, NATO wins and they win entirely conventionally, uh, which is not necessarily what’s [00:07:00] the planners of the time. The’s time were thinking was necessary. They viewed the great advantage in terms of sheer numbers of the Warsaw Act and conventional forces and tanks and soldiers, uh, and that sort of thing as something that NATO would have to use, nukes then to balance out.

That’d the only way they could possibly win. Is that they used nuclear weapons and in fact, airland battle doctrine calls for tactical nuclear strikes across the death of Soviet formations. So this is deeply integrated into the planning, uh, of the US army, of the US military and our natal partners, allies at that time.

And so Reagan reads Red Storm Rising in August of 1986. Two months later, he is flying out to Revi for one of the iconic summits he has with Gorbachev. And so he is flying there on Air Force One. He goes to the back of the plane and he sits down with his advisors and George Schultz is there. Secretary of State can Adelman is lead negotiator is there.

So you think it’s the time to get serious and to really talk about the prep for the summit. It’s something Reagan like doing anyway, . Um, and so he’s [00:08:00] not inclined to talk about throw weights or nuclear yields or missile numbers or any aspect, um, of the actual nuts and bolts and negotiation. He’s not a technocrat right?

Not a technocrat at all. Yeah, he’s definitely not a down in the detail type of guy. Instead he is, wants to talk about the book he just read Red Storm Rising. He calls it research cuz part of it takes place in Iceland where you have the whole scene about Ke Lake Air Force Base and it’s control over the shipping routes to the Atlantic.

Staff all laugh. Oh, that’s a good joke, Mr. President. Very. , but he wasn’t joking. Uh, and so you get to the summit, and very famously, he and Gobi have almost agreed to eliminate all nuclear weapons within a 10 year period. Uh, a stunning, you know, announcement. Shocking. People weren’t really expecting much outta the summit, had been thrown together very hastily, uh, very short notice.

Uh, List almost come out of it was incredible. Uh, it only falls apart because Reagan won’t give up. The Street Defense Initiative, the Star Wars program confined to the laboratory. Uh, and so it falls apart there, but does set the stage for the I N F, uh, and then later on with the start. And so this is [00:09:00] really the first major clear step towards arms control.

So Reagan comes back to DC and Margaret Thatcher calls him up and she is not particularly pleased with the way this summit has unfolded. She believes

Jeremi: in traditional nuclear deterrents. Right. That we should keep our nuclear weapons. Cuz in, in Margaret Thatcher’s eyes, it’s our nuclear deterrence that keeps the Soviet Union out of Western

Ben: Europe.

Yes, exactly. It’s very much that traditional framework that these weapons are essential to the security of the western world. And she thinks that Reagan was rather reckless. Mm-hmm. and perhaps considering getting rid of them. So she calls up on the phone to tell him this like, Hey, Great job, except when you almost destabilize all of Western Europe,

Uh, and if you could have left that

Jeremi: part out, please, .

Ben: Yeah, exactly. You just gotta be kind of careful. Like he’s close ally, you know, she can’t anger him too much, but it’s like he has to get the point across. Uh, and Reagan says, well, you know, uh, you should read Red Storm Rising. I think it gives a really clear picture of where we’re at right now.

And so again, you have the sitting president of the United States telling the sitting prime Minister of the United Kingdom that she needs to read this book [00:10:00] by someone who two years prior, was an insurance agent, uh, working in the small town of Maryland. Mm-hmm. , uh, and that is what she needs to know to understand.

What’s really happening in the Cold War? So, so

Jeremi: Ben, why isn’t this irresponsible? Right. Some would, would read this story, some of Reagan’s critics at the time when they learned about these kinds of stories, because this happens frequently on many policy issues. People come in to brief him in a way that they’re taught to brief in a public policy school.

And they’re taught to brief in their military education and he instead wants to talk about a book he’s read or a movie he’s watched or some, someone he’s talked to and that’s often seen as his being unprepared and irresponsible. You see it a different way.

Ben: So it wasn’t that that was the only source that he had that was going for him.

Right. So if you look at the reports are coming outta National Security Council, what’s coming in his meetings with a joint chat joint chief of staff, when he is walking around talking to his advisors, they’re pinning. Relatively similar story about the growth in US military capability in the eighties and it’s improvement from where it was when he first [00:11:00] entered into office.

And so it’s not in the vacuum. And Clancy also was pretty deliberate in his research, right? Mm-hmm. . So he got a lot of access to people coming off the success of Hunt for October, you know, so he is going out, he is riding on submarines, he’s sitting in Langley and say headquarters, he is riding a tank out at ntc.

Than talking and what he calls the, the great chain to these officers and the officers clubs and, you know, enlisted clubs and bars and you know, paying with drinks to get information, that kind of stuff. So there’s a level of realism to it. Um, and so I also think that Reagan wasn’t necessarily saying that in 1986, if it came to conventional war between the Soviet Union and US and nato, that that’s how it would’ve played out.

But I think Reagan believed within the 10 year window. That would’ve been the case. That is where that was, is there was a pivot point there where he could play on a relative advantage to do something he’d long wanted to do, and that is abolish nuclear weapons. Mm. So you’ve talked about how literature,

Zachary: in particular popular novels, uh, influenced Reagan’s foreign [00:12:00] policy.

How do you think it influenced his rhetoric to the public, how he spoke to the public about these issues?

Ben: Yeah, so this is, uh, I think the core of who Reagan is, right? The idea of him being the great communicator, it’s that he learned from a very young age the importance of telling a story. And telling it.

Well, it basically makes him who he is. Uh, and the story I use in the book is actually was an excuse for me to work in the Chicago Cub. It’s my favorite baseball team, , uh, cause he’s working with them as a radio broadcaster in the 1930s, but he’s not calling games from Chicago. He’s not calling games from Wrigley Field.

Uh, he’s covering games from W H O Des Moines. Right. And so you have Dutch Reagan on the radio. And the way the call comes in though, is he gets a little telegraph tape, a little three sequence code. Uh, and he spins that then into a. , right? Because you can’t say two BC curveball strike. It doesn’t make for compelling radio or compelling podcast listening.

Instead, he’s describing everything from the pictures wind up. Deliver the pitch, what the batter does, and he tells a story about what happens when the feed goes out, uh, where [00:13:00] he then has to go through and call a sequence of about a dozen foul balls. And each foul ball is different, right? So one has a redheaded kid going after its, uh, in the stands and trium holding the ball over his head.

Victoriously one would’ve been a homer, but just squirts the left of the foul ball pole, right? This really compelling narrative. That is entirely made up. The tape comes back on and it turns out in the very first pitch of this sequence, Alan hit a dizzy dean, pitch shallow in the left field for an out.

And so a listener to Reagan on, you know, w h o would be able to say what happened in the game. He recreate the box score in terms of the hits the outs, the runs the foul thing. But the way that story happened was entirely made up. And so if you had watched that game in rugby field, You talked about an entirely different game.

He went out to Iowa and talked to your friend who lived in Des Moines. You would not be talking about the same thing, but that’s Reagan and storytelling. He realized that the important thing was the final score. Everything else was about entertaining the audience. And then he built on that as an actor in Hollywood.

He built on [00:14:00] that in his early play career, where he would pick stories that had very questionable providence, uh, in a lot of cases, and ones where he knew it were flat out not true, uh, but they captured some aspect of truth to him and made them a better story than, than what the actual facts were. It was for him and Sir as that higher truth and his purpose of communicating in that way.

And so that’s again, how he came to view stories as the essential way to talk to the American people. And it really marked his political career all the way back from when he was the president of the SAG in the 1950s through his death. And the SAG

Jeremi: is the Screen Actor’s Guild in Hollywood. Yes. You, it, it, of course, there’s a, there’s a very powerful point in what you’re saying, right, which is, Uh, what draws us into an argument is often the color of the story and the way we identify and see ourselves.

The foul balls hit into the stands, and there’s a redheaded girl running after it. We imagine our daughter being that person. We feel connected to that, but there’s also a problem with that, right? Because it is departing from a fact base, and we live in a world now where we, quite frankly, there are people intentionally for mendacious reasons, [00:15:00] making up facts, making up stories to not get to a deeper truth.

Mm. But to actually distort our understanding and to fool us. How do we, how do we reconcile what you’re advocating with

Ben: that? And that was a huge problem for me as I was approaching this book. And it was a question that, that you asked me and other people asked me, how do you reconcile the fact that he is lying?

I mean, if you wanna take a illian that you compare that to, uh, any number of talking heads today who, Actively taking things to create a very different narrative, uh, that suits their own purposes. People, for

Jeremi: instance, pretending that January 6th was not an insurrection, but instead tourists visiting the capitol.

That that’s a lie. Yes, that’s a distortion of the facts. Uh, it’s a story that might be interesting to some people, but I would find that abhorrent, right?

Ben: So Right. And it, it’s Carries. a scary amount of weight with people as well. Right? Right. So you can see an ill effect to this narrative. And, and so with Reagan, that is a problem to, to reckon with.

And where I said a lot in the book is that Reagan was always trying to show his [00:16:00] true self with it. He is remarkably consistent with his message, right? He’s using the same stories for the same purposes in his speeches, uh, at William Woods College in all women’s college in Missouri that he uses as part of his 19.

Uh, 64 address in favor of very Goldwater, right? Mm-hmm. the speech that all the Reagan people talk about and the same stories he uses, uh, in his remarks about US service members in the 1980s. And so you see these same things used the same way. And so yes, the, the color around it is. fictional, but the core of it is truth because it is Reagan trying to show his honest self.

And where I would criticize a lot of, again, the people who are shaping January 6th, is that they’re not doing it out of a genuine belief that it is just tourist. It’s to serve their own ends and their own power. And if it was flipped, they’d be the first ones to cry it. And so I think that there is, , it matters how you want to use this information, how you want to use it, and what your purpose are.

[00:17:00] And I know that’s a really tough line to threaten, I think, because

Jeremi: you could believe something that’s wrong. Yes, you could actually believe it. And then what you’re arguing could, in theory, provide license to make things up.

Zachary: H how do you handle it? Also, when, when, as I, I think it, it’s easier to understand Reagan as a communic.

Communicator, sorry. Maybe as a, as a campaigner more or as a a, as a local politician, but how do we understand Reagan as president when his interaction, when, as someone whose communication, whose rhetoric, whose policy was so shaped by personal interaction isn’t necessarily having the same personal interactions he would have as on the campaign.

Ben: So certainly access is gonna be an important thing, right? Uh, about this. And you see a lot of stories about, you know, who wants to get to Reagan and what story they’re telling, right? So one of the, the big kind of narratives you see in the Reagan historiography is about the switch, right? When Reagan goes from being super anti-Soviet to actually maybe peace possible.

And a lot of people frame this, so, you know, you had Richard Pipes in there and you had, uh, Hagan [00:18:00] there. And so they were just whispering these foul things to Reagan and making him want war. Uh, but. You get Schultz in, right? And then you have a meeting, Suzanne Massey and these people who are like, no, it’s okay.

Right? You’re Matt Locks of the world. And that narrative doesn’t really hold up though. I, I don’t think, uh, because yes, you still have the importance of that personal interaction with Reagan, but he was always trying to get to. some level of story at all levels of career, right? Some level of way to, to get this across.

And I think, you know, the, the Anna Navon speech is a really famous and really good example of this where people see a switch that I’m not sure is entirely there. Uh, but it goes to how Reagan actually wants always to take these big geopolitical issues and boil them down to the impact. Uh, on the individual.

And for him, I think the core is that, you know, he believed that freedom at its best was experienced at the individual level and that shapes all sorts of both his domestic and his international affairs and the views. Um, and he is, Not always successful [00:19:00] in balancing his belief in that with his actions.

Jeremi: Right. And, and just, uh, to clarify, right. The Yvonne and Anya speech that you’re referring to is January, 1984 when Reagan, uh, tells a story of Yvonne and Anya meeting Jim and Sally. Yep. And he tries to say that basically this longstanding conflict wouldn’t actually look that way if two. Parents met each other and started to talk to one another that we could actually get through these differences.

So he, he tells a different story of the Cold War in that, in that moment. Um, what’s really interesting to me about your work, Ben, is on the one hand, you capture a set of insights, what you call imagination, which is a key word for most strategists, right? For klauss, vitz in particular, particular, you capture how fiction stimulates.

I think that’s the verb. You use Reagan’s imagination and allows him to stimulate the imagination of those around him as leader, which is one of the core. Uh, responsibilities for a leader, but you also show because you’re an honest scholar, you also show the ways in which his stories and his understanding of fiction limit his view.

You talk about the cowboy [00:20:00] yarns and how this gives him what Edward Saeed and other literature scholars would call an orientalist view of much of the rest of the world, a very condescending view. Tell us more about,

Ben: Yeah, so I mean, Reagan is famously a huge fan of westerns, right? So when he is recovering the hospital, he’s reading Louis Lamar novels.

His friends are getting them, uh, works by Jubal early. And so the, the Western. It’s something that Reagan actively shaped his enemy around Cowboys and Indians basically. Absolutely. Yes. And and the problem he had with that is where in cases where he is looking at policy with the Soviet Union, there’s some depth to what he’s reading and looking at in other places.

He has this view of the Cold War as this really simple. The monistic black hat, white hat struggle, and the US cannot possibly anything other than the white hats. And this is most evidence, uh, in its policy in Latin America. Uh, but also stands out in its policy towards the apartheid state in South Africa, where he then expects in South Africa the, you know, black Souths to.

Put their own desires for re for Freedom [00:21:00] below his view of ending the Cold War. Right. That they need to, you know, so Soviet themselves to this objective of beating the Soviets. And then we’ll deal with the apartheid thing in Latin America. You know, he’s coming in early as the office talking about how we’ve gotta, you know, stop holding our noses about this and support some of these.

Not great people that are down there, uh, and then do whatever it takes in order to do this. And he keeps talking about wanting a Marshall Cane policy. Uh, and so this is a reference to the Western High Noon Yes. Uh, great movie where, you know, the main character, uh, is the sole figure who’s standing up to these bandits, is all the towns builders to tell him, please go.

We don’t want this fight. They’re here for you. If you leave, it’ll be okay. Uh, and he insists on. Uh, out, uh, he’s able to win as his pacifist wife at the very end of it helps him eliminate the last bad guy, uh, the town. People come out and say thank you, and he just drops his star on the ground and disgusted and walks away.

And to Reagan, that’s the perfect role for the US is to go in town, do the right thing when it’s all done. You walk away not [00:22:00] looking praise, not looking for praise, not looking for glory. But there’s a lot of problems, particularly with this exact use of media here, because the screenwriter for High Noon was someone that was blacklisted by Hollywood.

Uh, and he believed as he’s working on the project, that it’s his last one before his movie career is done. And so it’s allegorical about McCarthyism, about, uh, Nixon’s Huac, uh, which Reagan was a friendly witness to. And so in that story, Reagan is. Marshall Cain, he’s at best, one of the townspeople and perhaps part of the criminal gang, depending on who you’re looking at.

Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . John Wayne saw that movie and said it was the most unAmerican thing he’d ever seen because of the Stan scene of Gary Cooper throwing a star down on the ground. And so that’s where you get into then these competing interpretations of media. So a strength of fiction is that it can be a common language.

We can all read it, and if we’re pulling the same things all the same way, it becomes a shorthand, but, I’m viewing this as this great tale of a hero sheriff doing the right thing and you’re reading it as, uh, this allegorical story about [00:23:00] the witch hunt of communist in Hollywood and you know there’s any other arbitrations.

Then it becomes prob cause we’re talking passage there then. And that happens where people in here at Reagan says, uh, he doesn’t understand deeply enough in the first. And then take his policy in very different directions. Right, right.

Jeremi: And to me, the example that always stands out in addition to South Africa is of course, Nicaragua.

Mm-hmm. , uh, and other areas in Central America where Reagan has this, this very powerful phrase he uses. But it’s, it’s such a, it, it’s such a distorted fiction, right. That the thugs we’re supporting. Are the moral equivalent of the founding fathers, right. When they, they couldn’t be more distant from that, right?

Yeah, but I think it fits his John Wayne vision, right? That we are somehow supporting these John Wayne characters he believes, who are saving Central America from these more popular. socialist leaders,

Ben: right? Yeah. It’s like you’re walking into the saloon and the Western and Yeah. They’re not necessarily the cleanest figures, but by the end of the movie, man, it’s the magnificent seven.

Right. You got all men there. Exactly. Uh, and despite their flaws, they all come together. [00:24:00] And, and the reality is, is that the Contras weren’t good people. Right. But neither were the Sandinistas. But saying that the Contras were less bad than the Sandis doesn’t really hold up particularly well. And the victim then is the people of Nicaragua who precisely are caught between these two forces in ways that are horrible a

Jeremi: and.

Now that you’ve painted this picture of Reagan in a sophisticated, thoughtful way, the connections between his policies good and bad, or we should say effective and ineffective and fiction, how do you bring that to the military officers that you educate? Uh, I often spend a lot of time talking to leaders and encouraging them to read more fiction, but.

How do we want them to read it? We clearly don’t want them to take their, the condescending view toward other peoples that Reagan took from some of the literature. We want them to have more of that creative, uh, open-minded view that Reagan might have had with regard to the Soviet Union, thanks to Tom Clancy.

Right. So how do we do this? What, what does it mean to effectively use fiction as a business or political or military leader?

Ben: Yeah. I think it starts with the need [00:25:00] to, to try and read broadly and that’s. Good device just in general, you’re looking at multiple genres, multiple perspectives from this, and then you’ll be taking things out that are very valuable, you know, so one of the exercises I do in my history of the military art class, which covers, you know, the period from the Franco Prussian war up to the present day, uh, is look at some of the World War I poets, uh, and look at how the.

The language of the poetry’s changed from ones that written at the start of the war. Uh, you know, sort of if I, you know, die, then there’s a part. It’s forever England to, you know, things like Robert Graves writing at the end of the war that are much darker, you know, and descriptions of the combat there.

And so, Using that to take out what is the experience of the soldier? What is the experience of nationalism, what’s the experience of pride and honor, uh, in ways that I think are, are lead to very good discussion. And so I think, you know, when you’re looking at this as an educator, what I try to do is a situate whatever work of fiction I’m reading into the context of it, right?

And so in that case, the context is World War I, uh, there’s another great trilogy recommend people read, and it’s the, um, Earth’s Remembrance Trilogy, [00:26:00] uh, by Si and Lou, who was a Chinese science fiction author, uh, first book in this series is a three body problem. Uh, and much of the work is vested in Chinese history.

Uh, it starts with the great culture wars in the 1960s, uh, where, you know, again, mal almost falls to the thing that he almost started, um, you know, the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Uh, and it kind of takes that force ways, but it’s got a very firm Chinese perspective in that. And so again, we’re looking at talking about the Chinese military.

Understanding that approach, which again, is largely based off of campaign in there. Uh, it has ing thoughts about deterrence in there. Uh, and the titular metaphor of the second novel, I think is one of the best ways of describing modern warfare. Uh, and I’ll, I’ll put a spoiler nose, like, you know, fast forward 20, 25 seconds, you wanna hear it, but the, the book’s called The Dark Forest, uh, and, and it’s basically they’re describing space as a dark forest full of predators of different aliens.

And as soon as one of ’em sees another one, they kill it. And so the goal is to not be seen. And to shoot first, you know? And so again, you’re talking about then what does modern warfare [00:27:00] look like? Well, part of it is, is how do I make sure my enemy can’t see me with modern technology? Well, I see them and then I shoot them.

And so thinking through some of those problems with fiction is helpful. And the other one I would say is, you know, war gaming actually is really important and war gaming. Well, uh, because again, I think it goes back to what’s about. Very early on in this is anything that puts you into either a book and a plot or into a game where you’re making decisions becomes very important because those lessons get internalized I think much more quickly.

So

Jeremi: how, how do you prevent the misuse though of fiction? Uh, a lot of people read fiction that reinforces their, um, preexisting beliefs, right? So if I’m someone who thinks that the United States is the greatest nation, I’m drawn. to this kind of Tom Clancy, rah rah. Mm-hmm. kind of fiction. Right. And, and you’re talking in, in your book, by the way, and in what you’re describing here, some of what you’re referring to as highbrow.

Mm-hmm. , uh, the, the war poets. But a lot of it, you call it in your book, middle Brow, the stuff that we read on a day-to-day basis, which is important, right? It [00:28:00] shapes our lives, as you point out. Right? So how do we protect ourselves from reinforcing preexisting

Ben: beliefs? I think it takes a lot of conscious effort and a lot of work then.

Deliberateness in how you put together your reading list and what you’re looking for and actively seeking out works that might disagree with your worldview. Uh, works from, you know, authors of backgrounds and perspectives that aren’t your own. I think this all goes back to what the core value of diversity is, and we talk about this, right?

And you know, it’s that you get the benefits of experience from a variety of perspectives. Uh, and so the more you can take that in, More rounded and I think the better your approach be, it’s not a panacea, it’s not a guarantee because some people are just gonna read that and just as much as trash because it came from that perspective or because it’s too challenging to their worldview and they won’t get anything out of it.

And you know, there’s not a lot that you can do for that, I don’t think. But people who are willing to challenge themselves, who are willing to go outside what they’re comfortable reading. We’ll get some benefits for it. How

Zachary: do you avoid as a, as a reader and, and as a, as a leader, a [00:29:00] reader leader, if you will,

Um, what the criticism that I think is levied, uh, often, uh, particularly by those on the left at, at Reagan, which is that he made policy based on the story, instead of using the story to explain policy, how do you avoid that trap of believing that the narrative of fiction, as you describe it, the narrative of, of a Western matches the world, whereas the world might not.

The

Ben: Western. That’s why I think it’s what we do is, you know, good historian will do. Right, right. It’s pulling in from that variety of sources. Um, you know, I’m an intelligence officer and so I talk to my cadets. I describe how closely my work as an MI officer relates to what I do as a historian, because as a story, when I’m trying to tell this narrative the past, I’m going back through sources.

I’m looking at letters and diaries, newspapers, all, all this stuff. And they all have biases. They all have different opinions, and I’ve gotta weave that into something that’s coherent. When I do intelligence work, I am looking at human intelligence, signals, intelligence, you know, intercepted communications, imagery, intelligence, uh, all these different s that we have, and.

They [00:30:00] don’t agree. They, they never tell the same story. And, and so it’s not about how do you weave that together to, to tell coherent one. So I think, you know, when we were looking at Reagan in particular, where he succeeds, he does take in a lot of different sources. Mm-hmm. and information. Mm-hmm. . And again, I think that’s, that’s where that narrative of the change comes into it.

Is that people perceived a change in the people who were around him and their direction. Right. You know, Haggan Schultz are very, very different People. Pipes and Matt Locke are very, very different people in how they’re viewing the Soviet Union in the Cold War. And so people see. That kind of line change in the administration timed with what looks like significant softening in public statements and go, oh, well the, the voices are different now, as opposed to, to not seeing that, you know, Reagan is weighing these sources pretty carefully throughout the entirety of his early presidency.

But those multitude of sources are always there for him in the Soviet Union. They’re not there for him, uh, in West Rest World because he doesn’t show the curiosity that you would expect. And this goes back to his time, you know, as governor goes [00:31:00] back to his time, uh, in the 1970s. And his radio shows the things he’s saying on his radio shows about, uh, what was Zen Rhodesia is now his Zimbabwe are.

Very similar way of saying about South Africa and don’t really hold up well, right. His call to Richard Nixon when African nations vote to kick Taiwan out of the un uh, take in China is pretty horrific in, in the way it describes the African people or people in Africa, uh, you know, as having just left huts and started wearing shoes and all this kind of stuff because,

He doesn’t have a death of knowledge. He’s not pulling variety sources and he’s letting these tropes that he’s taken in many ways from books he’s read, like, uh, Edgar Rice Burrows, John Carter of Mars, uh, and Tarzan and all that, uh, kind of informed the way he’s looking at the world. He hasn’t

Jeremi: read any of their fiction.

Right. He’s only read the fiction of white imperialists. Yes. Right. And so, When he’s thinking about the Soviet Union, he’s actually reading fiction that’s more true to and informed by the European and Russian experience. And, and many of us have been exposed to that, the stories of [00:32:00] dusky told story, et cetera.

But when he’s reading the, uh, stories about Africa, there’s stories by white Imperials about Yeah.

Ben: And who, even who referenced, told story in his speech at, uh, Moscow State University, uh, talking about, you know, the author being buried in the tree and all that. And so again, he has, he has access to and is interested in that.

Cultural heritage in a way that he is just not interested in the heritage, uh, of the global

Jeremi: south. It seems to me that one of the key points you’re making is that, uh, especially in our current world when we might not read as many novels as we’d like to, and we might not spend as much time in art museums.

Uh, and we might not spend, if we’re not around Zachary enough time listening to poetry as we should, uh, that we are surrounded even. Cerebral individuals in the most elite positions, we are surrounded by images, ideas, and stories that are influencing us and are probably influencing us more than the briefing papers, more than the financial balance sheets we’re reading and things like that.

And I read your work in a certain way, Ben is saying, first of all, we should be self-conscious of that. Let’s not pretend that [00:33:00] the data around us is actually driving us. It’s our stories that we’re bringing to the data. A, let’s be conscious of that. B, let’s examine which stories are driving us. Let’s think self critically about those stories and let’s expose ourselves to more stories.

Is is that a fair way of defining what you’re talking about?

Ben: Absolutely. I, I think that’s, it’s really important because, uh, again, Humans are emotional. Uh, and certainly there is a irrational scientific side, but it’s foolish to think that that’s the only thing that that drives us, or even that necessarily inspires us in a way that I think fiction can do a lot better job with.

And so when we’re aware of what we’re taking in, we’re gonna. Be better prep for that and then recognize blind spots and be able pull that in and fill those, fill those up in ways that are more positive, more valuable. Zachary, Ben

Jeremi: has a, a really, I think, compelling paragraph toward the end. I want to read it.

I think it summarizes a lot of what he said. And I’m curious how you and your peers, uh, younger. Leaders in the making how you think about this because so much of what we read is [00:34:00] about how young people now want pre-professional courses and they want things that are gonna tell them exactly how to operate the institutions and complexity of our society.

Ben’s going in a different direction. He closes the book. This is near the end, he says, I think this is just a wonderful, compelling way of describing what your research shows. Fiction is a powerful tool. It sparks imagination and creates lasting. Permanent impressions, well told stories, and I would say well-read poems like yours.

Offer vicarious experiences with and of unfamiliar people, places, and systems. Ideally, a good narrative can build empathy and understanding in reader, in readers, and help them frame complex issues and impressive story or an immersive story can make an issue seem real just as a dramatic photo or video.

For policy makers, it can yield to benefit similar to that of a well run war game or tabletop exercise. Both varieties of synthetic experience attempts to arm leaders with [00:35:00] foreknowledge of decisions they may need one day to make and of their consequences. My guess, Zachary, is that you agree with that.

Uh, if you do, how do you think we can convey that to young people who seem to be so driven instead toward pre-professional? Well, I think

Zachary: there’s a, there’s a clear lesson from our whole, whole discussion here, which is that the fiction we consume, uh, needs to, in, in its own way, mirror, or at least comment on the reality that we face or the reality that someone faces.

And I think that that, that we need to frame fiction, not just as in exercise, in sort of aesthetic aesthetics. Or in sort of literary genius, if you will, but as a way of, of better understanding the reality of someone else’s world or of your own world. Um, I think the power o of Reagan’s reading and his, his storytelling was that he had a better grasp of the real.

State of US Soviet relations and the people involved in [00:36:00] that relationship than he ever had from his westerns trying to understand Latin America. And I, so, so I think the point is, is not that we need to read fiction in a vacuum, but that we need to be conscious of what perspective and, and what story are.

Is telling us. So

Jeremi: I’ll, I’ll ask you this question and then we’ll close with the same question for Ben. What does that mean for a Western canon? It, it, it means that we need to have certain literature we read, but it sounds to me a little different from just a traditional Western canon. Well, I think

Zachary: that’s, that’s sort of a different discussion.

I mean, I think that there is value in trying to encapsulate a broad, broader. Longer cultural experience that it goes beyond generation or location. And I think that’s the effort of, of a canon. But I think what we’re talking about here is not just having a cultural understanding, but using fiction for a political and social understanding.

And I think in that case, one needs to ground oneself in the [00:37:00] reality that one’s dealing with. Mm-hmm. . So whether that is Latin American policy, you need to read the litera. Of Latin America, not just literature about, or tangentially related to Latin America. So I think that fiction for that purpose needs to be read in a, in a, in a, in, in a way more tethered to reality.

Jeremi: Right? So you need Plato, but you also need Gabrielle Garcia Marquez if you’re thinking about Latin America. Yes.

Zachary: Right. And I would ar I mean, both are aesthetically interesting, but you need to, you need to be able to, to think abstractly. But then I think what we’re talking about here, Using fiction to think concretely about the world that we live in.

And I think that is one of the, the, the most powerful aspects of fiction that’s often overlooked by policy makers, by

Jeremi: young people. Right. And so Ben, I think this is a perfect place for us to close with your experience and wisdom. I mean, you’re asked all the time, I’m sure, for your students, for military leaders, for people above you in the chain of command to suggest reading, and I’m sure they come to you to ask for fiction, not just to ask for non-fiction.

How do you, when you think [00:38:00] about assembling a

Ben: list, how do you. So a lot of things kind of go into that. A, it depends on, on who the person is, uh, kind of what level. Um, they’re working at what the, the purpose of the reading is because, you know, a lot of times too, I’m cognizant of, you know, if a senior leader ask me a question, they don’t have time.

And so then I’ve gotta get something that’s direct to the point, and then I’m less likely to recommend fiction, uh, because in many cases than a history book is gonna be a bit more direct into the point. Um, and there was a lot of that last year when. I was at Fort Riley, one id, and we were looking at the war in Ukraine.

It’s okay, how do I get smart on Ukraine history? Well, uh, read some story ploy, right? Mm-hmm. Gates of Europe is a great book to start with from there. Mm-hmm. a wonderful historian of Ukraine. Yeah. Yeah. When I’m talking to my cadets, you know, I am talking about the idea and the need to, to kind of read broadly and so, you know, usually we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about what their interests are and I’ll be able to identify a couple of books off of that, that’ll start them in a direction and then hopefully, You know, some rabbit holes basically, uh, where they’ll then dig deeper and, and get more experience going through that.

And so it’s, you know, I don’t have [00:39:00] a single list of like, you know, these are the 20 books that you need. This is the can that you need to have. Because I mean, part of this too, I think what’s really important is, you know, I’m talking about this idea of perspective and experience matters here as well. And so that then will determine a, what interests you, but then.

Where some of the things are that you might have gap that needed to be filled. Uh, and so think doing it more on a personal one-to-one counseling basis is, is more beneficial. And I do like what you were saying there, talking about this idea of the abstract versus the concrete. Because you know, I think in relation to that and to what you were saying earlier, Jeremy, I, is that we are often prisoners to this idea of utility.

Yeah. Right. The everything we have to do has to have a concrete, quantifiable purpose. Uh, Hey, that’s boring. Um, you know, and that’s also why I changed topics, which, you know, you know, when I first got here I was gonna write something entirely different. Yes, I remember. And decided it was dull. Uh, and so when this was much more fun, but there, there’s value.

I remember I

Jeremi: had to convince you that you could do this.

Ben: Yes, yes, you did. because Yeah, I was, I was all said I was gonna write about the role of the [00:40:00] army in post-conflict operations because it was something that mattered. I’m, I’m

Jeremi: sleeping already over here. Exactly. .

Ben: Um, And so thank you for that. Right? So this is, this is a long way from, you know, young Captain Griffin, uh, sending an email to a random professor.

Hey, I come down and talk to you a little bit about this whole grad school thing, . Um, but you know, the idea that something has to be. Clearly identifiably useful in a way that is obvious, uh, I think is almost like trying to cheat. Yeah. Because in reality, the things that tend to be most valuable ones, you have to sit and ponder and figure out where it fits into right to your thought process and this.

Jeremi: Beautifully connects to where we started with Zachary’s poem about the small man, about Napoleon. Because one of the defining things about Napoleon was that yeah, he was, he was such a renegade in the way he thought about leadership, right? And he, of course, in the end failed. But what Napoleon was able to do was entirely change the way people thought about warfare because he thought, The phrase we’d use today is outside the box, right?

He thought about different kinds of soldiers, different kinds of tactics, and he thought about a [00:41:00] different set of strategic games. That’s not to say he was correct, but it is to say that he was a true game changer in that way and, and I think what we’re talking about here is that fundamentally strategy is about pushing the bonds or.

Pushing the bounds of the possible, imagining different worlds that we could live in, and you can’t imagine if you don’t escape your own world to some extent. So, uh, Ben, thank you for, uh, for a book and for a discussion today that really opens all of our minds in

Ben: this direction. Well, Jeremy, Zach, thank you very much for having me.

It was, uh, it was a pleasure being on here,

Jeremi: Zachary. Thank you for your inspiring poem as always. And thank you, most of all, to our loyal listeners for joining us for this week of this. Democracy.

Ben: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Its Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris Kini. Stay tuned for a new [00:42:00] episode every week. You can find this is Democracy on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

See you next time.