Greer recaps the Yale Grand Strategy brouhaha where his bias is analysis not operations.

For Greer, the import of the class lies in that:

the course is still about the wise use of power. It still is unsatisfied with the positive description of social laws. It still asks students "What would you do?"

From the operations side, the bulk of the class readings use well-known histories, however the data backing them is quite poor. One of the two major benefits of Gage's curriculum changes is that they cover recent and comparatively data-rich situations. While they are heavily skewed towards the US, they are also cliometrically tractable.

Secondly, it's one thing for people to talk about the wise use of power, however to operations this is just an open feedback loop. Putting social movements and "People" on the discussion table closes that loop because there is no better gauge as to whether any Grand Strategy is working since plans and necks get yanked when approvals zero.

That said, getting analysts and operations people to play well together is a huge problem: note that (a) none of the new course readings close the feedback loop, and (b) Greer himself views operations as mere "technical wonkery". Therein lies a meta-lesson about getting people on the same team to play well together.¹

Bismarck famously remarked about die Kunst des Moglichen, where the import lies in moving the boundaries between what people think is possible and what seems unavoidable. Unfortunately for Grand Strategy, people are fighting old wars and they are being blind-sided by others who have moved the battleground to their advantage.