The Costanza doctrine

Seinfeld fans no doubt recall a 1994 episode called “The Opposite.” George Costanza realizes that life is filled with choices, and he always foolishly chooses the wrong one. It occurs to him that the answer to his problems, therefore, is to make a decision — then do the opposite. As Jerry tells his friend, “If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”

It’s surprisingly effective. George even comes up with a counterintuitive pick-up line — “My name is George. I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.” — which works.

Michael Fullilove writes in the Financial Times that “The Opposite” seems to serve as a model for the Bush administration’s foreign policy, particularly on Iraq, because “it is the opposite of every foreign policy the world has ever met. ”

The Costanza doctrine is most closely associated with President George W. Bush and his first-term confidants: the wild-eyed neo-cons and the dead-eyed ultra-cons. But there is a wider group, which includes most presidential candidates and many of Washington’s foreign policy elite, who are not fully paid-up subscribers to the doctrine but went along with it nonetheless. Allied governments in London, Madrid and Canberra also signed up.

In “The Opposite”, George breaches the most fundamental laws in his universe – for example, the age-old principle that “bald men with no jobs and no money, who live with their parents, don’t approach strange women”.

Similarly, in its geopolitical incarnation, adherents to the Costanza doctrine cast aside many of the fundamental tenets they learnt at staff college or graduate school.

The comparison holds up frighteningly well — except the doctrine was far more reliable on a fictional television show.

Fullilove runs down some of the tenets the administration has followed by doing the opposite of what a sensible foreign policy tells leaders to do.

First, military and diplomatic resources are finite and should be directed towards your greatest priority. An example of the opposite approach would be for a country that has been attacked by a non-state terrorist group to retaliate by removing a state regime that had nothing to do with the attack.

Second, take care not to weaken your intimidatory powers through poor military performance. Aim for short, sharp victories (such as that in the 1991 Gulf war) that get your adversaries worrying about the extent of US power. The opposite would be to launch a war of choice involving the drawn-out occupation of an Arab country – the kind of thing that gets your allies worrying about the limits of US power.

Third, you get by with help from friends. Although the powerful are sometimes tempted to go it alone, international support helps determine the perceived legitimacy of an action, which affects its risk and costs. Building this support requires discussion and compromise. The opposite would be to spurn real negotiations, slough off your allies, bin multilateral agreements you do not like and declare that you are not bound by the rules that govern everyone else.

Fourth, state-building is hard. Few of the international efforts at state-building since the cold war’s end have succeeded. Luckily there are numberless reports identifying lessons learnt. The alternative would be to do the opposite of what those reports recommend, for example by deploying insufficient troops and dismantling any extant national institutions such as the army.

Fifth, democracy is a blessing that requires patient nurturing. The opposite approach would be to seek to impose democracy by force of arms on a population traumatised by decades of vicious and totalitarian rule.

Sixth, politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If two dangerous states are struggling for dominance of a strategic region, maintaining a balance between them may be the least worst option. The opposite would be to emasculate one of them, thereby greatly increasing the relative power of the other.

Finally, historians often cite the need for prudence in international relations, quoting the physician’s dictum: “First, do no harm.” The opposite would be: “Don’t think too much, just chance your arm and see what happens!”

As I recall, George’s successful strategy was short-lived. Eventually, reality caught up with him and he lost the girlfriend, the job, and the apartment. He came to realize that rejecting knowledge, experience, and common sense, to intentionally pursue the opposite, could only work for so long before it all crashed.

When do you suppose the president will learn the same thing?

“When do you suppose the president will learn the same thing?”

Never. His string of failures as a leader have been pretty much been unbroken. As someone mentioned a week ago, “Look upon my works and despair!” sum him up best.

Of course, someone like my mom would sniff say, “Well he got elected.” True, but with his background, family, wealth and extremely powerful connections, he would have to really work extremely hard NOT to be prez.

  • I think if George the Moron Castanza was president, as idiotic and selfish as he is, we would be a lot better off.

    Luckily, George Bush’s stupidity is also going to have the opposite of his intended effect on the Republican’s long-term electoral success.

  • George W. Bush has never learned anything from his lifelong series of fuckups, and it is now too late for him to start doing so. He has never had to deal with failure – which is how one learns any of life’s lessons – because daddy and daddy’s friends have always been willing to bail him out of his latest crash-and-burn. This is why he has the mentality of a 4-year old.

    As with any4 year old caught with his hands in the cookie jar, he thinks that saying “no they aren’t!” will solve the problem.

  • This is really where the “Manchurian Candidate” aspect of these guys comes in. It’s like they’re on psychotic rails regardless of how ineffective or self defeating their methods are. And they can look at the most reeking results and see gold where poo resides.

    Even when accomplishing their own f’ed up goals would be better served by a sneakier and more nuanced approach, the whole ShrubCo cabal puts on their hardhats and breaks out the jackhammers every day, rain or shine, and crashes it’s way through the world. Their belligerency is really one of our saving graces. They’re so obvious in their over the top insult and destructo derby that once the shock and awe has petered out, there’s nothing left but a bunch of neked fools wearing only hardhats and sitting on the business end of their own jackhammers.

  • Bush is the plutocrat Cosatanza.
    Since the plutocrats have more power now than I can ever remember, perhaps this is an abject lesson in arrogance of that class.
    But then again, they are making more money than ever, have more power than ever, and are still trying to tell us that (despite what we know) that all of us are better off.
    30% of Americans buy this line of thought, which is tens of millions.
    Mission Accomplished, baby!

  • This president is incapable of learning anything; he’s still convinced that historians in the distant future will come to recognize his rightness. He is an ignorant, willful man-child with an unaddressed chemical dependency.

    But Bush was never really the focus of the forces that came to power in 2000. He was a figurehead, a convenient brand name to run under and take power. Those forces, exemplified most clearly by Dick Cheney, have done everything possible to convert the government to a plutocratic authoritarian dictatorship with window dressing to make it appear to still be a constitutional democracy. This project seems to be foundering, but it is still far from defeated.

  • “When do you suppose the president will learn …” — CB

    The president and those who think like him will never learn because they are intractably convinced that they’re right. If something goes awry, it’s someone else’s fault.

    I’d prefer the question, “when will Americans learn” that modern conservatism is intellectually contradictory, morally bankrupt, class-discriminating and authoritarian. Bush is but one among many who harbor this warped and cynical vision, and are determined to see it through if it takes destroying the country as we knew it. Strike that. Destroying the democracy we knew is part of the vision. So, when will the American public come to see all these pieces as part of a whole, and decide that modern republicans are not fit to stand as a political party much less lead?

  • We are talking about a segment of the population born with silver spoons in their mouths. These people honestly believe that they have earned their inheritance. When someone believes that, it’s not a stretch for them to believe that they have a right to rule others as they see fit. It’s classic psychopathic behaviour.

  • Early in Bush’s presidency it seemed that all of his decisions were based on the question “What would Clinton do?” and then doing the opposite. Examples: the Kyoto treaty, worrying about al Qaeda, putting competent people in charge of FEMA, DoJ, GSA, etc

  • I know that if you put enough monkeys in front of keyboards for long enough they could type out the complete works of Shakespeare. But it would take infinite patience to wait out that result.

    For the monkeys in the Bush administration to utterly and completely get everything wrong on foreign policy, among other areas, on the first try is just astounding. Getting everything wrong took a perfect storm of a cadre of incompetents in high places, absolute loyalty to a complete idiot, resentment of anything the preceding president did and many other things. But worst of all was the concept that foreign policy could be dealt with on an ad hoc basis by complete neophytes with the ultimate goal of being completely contradictory to the opposing domestic political party. The Repubs waged a foreign policy whose ultimate goal was to screw and confound Democrats at every turn, and that’s why we’re in this mess.

  • Reductio ad absurdum: Always choosing the opposite of what you would have chosen is also a choice, subject to the same fatal error.

    Bush is a spoiled psychotic monster, and the Bush Crime Family are all toadying liars and thieves. No getting around it.

  • I fear that the most accurate description is Ed’s.

    The whole lunatic bunch indulges constantly in, “If I say it often and loudly enough it will become true” form of magic thinking.

    Meanwhile, 3000+ dead soldiers, a ruined city, and tattered international reputation later…

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