The view | chinese strategy vs us tactics. Guess who’s winning the tech war?

The debate over the difference between tactics and strategy is as rich as it is enduring. In his seminal 1996 article in the _Harvard Business Review_, Harvard’s Michael Porter tackled this

issue head on. While his focus was business, his arguments can be applied much more broadly – including to today’s Sino-American rivalry. Advertisement Porter differentiated between

“operational effectiveness” and strategy, arguing that nimble companies had become well practised in the former, but had dropped the ball on the latter. He also drew a sharp contrast between

tactical tools – such as benchmarking, re-engineering, and total quality management – and competitive strategies aimed at “choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of

value”. Notwithstanding Porter’s role in shaping the modern debate about strategy, today’s American body politic has little patience for long-term thinking. This was not always the case.

George Kennan, first as a diplomat and later as an academic, devised the containment strategy that the United States used against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Andrew Marshall, as

the head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, pushed the envelope on US military strategy. And Henry Kissinger, of course, was the ultimate practitioner of what has been dubbed “Grand

Strategy”. But these were exceptions, not the rule. Ever since former US president George H.W. Bush famously mocked “the vision thing” ahead of the 1988 presidential campaign, strategy has

been held in low regard in Washington. The real-time feedback of ever fickle focus-group polling has become the North Star of US policy decisions. Advertisement That is especially the case

in the Sino-American conflict, which over the past five years has morphed from a trade war to a tech war to the early stages of a new cold war. The US Trade Representative’s Section 301

report, published in March 2018, framed America’s tactical approach to its Chinese adversary, hinting at the tough actions that were soon to come.