“No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” said the German war strategist Moltke.
He should have known. He was the mastermind behind the Schlieffen Plan, Germany’s strategy at the start of WW I to quickly overrun France, which banked on Britain remaining neutral when Belgium was invaded.
The gamble didn’t pay off. Instead a war that “would be over by Christmas,” lasted four years, cost at least nine million soldiers’ lives and changed the globe irrevocably.
During COVID, Moltke’s observation keeps coming back to me. He miscalculated. Germany thought it knew how a geopolitical actor would react. Regarding COVID, we keep falling into the trap of thinking we know what’s around the corner. But what COVID has taught us time and again is that we really haven’t a clue.
The “enemy” keeps changing course and we’re left scrambling to come up with a new plan of attack.
While I give a pass to government officials on the coronavirus per se, I can’t do the same for the chaotic vaccine rollout. This is where a plan should have worked. Governments were caught underfoot by COVID, but they have had months to come up with a vaccine plan. It’s deeply disappointing to see failure by both state and federal authorities.
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A tangent to Moltke’s truism, one borne out by COVID: It’s amazing how the unpredictable can turn everything you think you know on its head. Before COVID, we were told:
• Urban density is the way of the future. Single family homes are bad.
• Public transport is the way of the future. Cars are bad.
• Open plan offices are the way of the future. Cubicles or private offices are bad.
Yet, during COVID, people in single family homes with cars are in a far superior situation, able to spend time out of doors and to commute without risking additional exposures.
At the IJN, our office can remain open, in a limited way, because each staff member has his or her own office and can social distance.
This is not to judge density, public transport or office configurations. But it is to say — no plan survives first contact with the enemy. We never know what’s going to come along to shake up our certainties. We know what we have experienced — but can only guess the unknown.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com
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