Carys
Evans
on
America’s
Hide-and-Seek
Operation
and
the
Geopolitics
of
Being
Briefly
Unfindable
Diary
of
Carys
Evans,
Prat.uk
|
Current
affairs
analysis
via
Bohiney
Magazine
Tuesday:
Hide,
Seek,
and
the
Problem
of
Being
a
Global
Superpower
I
read
this
morning
about
America’s
Hide-and-Seek
Search
Operation
and
I
need
a
moment
to
appreciate
the
fact
that
we
have
reached
a
geopolitical
moment
where
a
legitimate
satirical
headline
about
the
world’s
largest
military
can
be
structured
as
a
children’s
playground
game
and
nobody
is
entirely
sure
it
is
wrong.
The
premise:
America
is
simultaneously
conducting
operations
that
it
cannot
fully
explain,
seeking
things
it
has
not
fully
described,
and
hiding
things
it
has
not
fully
disclosed.
This
is
not
new.
But
calling
it
Hide-and-Seek
is
new
and
I
find
it
clarifying.
A
Political
Scientist’s
Analysis
of
Playground
Diplomacy
Hide-and-Seek,
as
a
governance
metaphor,
has
structural
advantages.
The
seeker
believes
themselves
to
be
the
active
party.
The
hidden
party
has
plausible
deniability.
Nobody
has
to
agree
on
what
is
being
sought.
BBC
Americas
coverage
has
been
describing
American
foreign
policy
in
more
technical
terms
for
years,
but
I
am
not
sure
the
technical
terms
have
been
more
illuminating
than
the
playground
metaphor.
Britain
is
watching
with
the
polite
interest
of
a
nation
that
is
checking
its
sofa
for
GDP
and
cannot
quite
afford
to
have
opinions
about
other
people’s
strategic
clarity.
We
are,
in
the
metaphor,
hiding
behind
the
shed
and
hoping
nobody
counts
us
in.
SOURCE:
https://bohiney.com/
More
geopolitical
games
at
The
Daily
Mash
