We find ourselves at the crossroads of peril and possibility. Rapid change feels imminent, yet its direction undetermined. The war machine seems fully charged, but the victors claim to be peacemakers. Americans clamor for change but a vision for the future is absent. Historian Gary Gerstle recently described our transit from the New Deal order – through the Cold War – into the Neoliberal political order, its collapse and the emergence of an order that is, as of now, yet-to-be-defined.
Obama failed to deliver “change we could believe in” in a society desperate for change. The positive populist energy that the Democratic Party rejected in 2016 and again in 2020 was absorbed into the negative populism of Trumpism. The DNC’s so-called “Resistance” of 2016 and attempts to marginalize Trumpism ultimately alienated potential allies. Resistance and outrage – and even Biden-Harris supposed competent normalcy – was not a replacement for a positive and enrolling vision for the future. And it was clearly no recipe for peace.
So what do change agents who have dedicated their lives to disarmament, human rights and environmental sustainability do now? The political alignments we’ve taken for granted seem to be unraveling. The activist tools we are accustomed to using may not provide the leverage we need. Paralysis, entrenchment or cynicism are not palatable options. As hard as it might be for some to fathom, might a grand strategy framework, updated from Sun Tzu’s Art of War, actually provide guidance to the peace and justice movement at this moment?
Bill Moyer is the co-founder and executive director of the Backbone Campaign. He has long promoted the use of the grand strategy framework of Col. John R. Boyd by change agents engaged in building nonviolent social movements. Backbone’s Artful Activism has drawn from the grand tactical and grand strategic ideas in Boyd’s framework. Principles of grand strategy are most clearly applied in its Solutionary Rail project, a campaign to put rail infrastructure in service of public goods and – perhaps more fundamentally – in service of building common cause amongst unlikely allies for a positive, populist vision for the future.
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