If things keep going in Libya, and Gahdafi is finally vanquished, it would appear that Obama's Tao-esque "leading from behind" foreign policy, has worked. That's what Blake Hounshell argues in any event. And that's what the Daodejing tells us as well: leading by following produces better outcomes than does leading by imposing pre-conceived plans. This excerpt from passage 66, which I cited in April, still applies:
Oceans and rivers become emperors of the hundred valleys because they stay so perfectly below them. This alone makes them emperors of the hundred valleys.
So, wanting to rule over the people a sage speaks from below them, and wanting to lead the people he follows along behind them,
then he can reign above without weighing the people down and stay ahead without leading the people to ruin.
All beneath heaven rejoices in its tireless praise of such a sage. And because he's given up contention, nothing in all beneath heaven contends with him.
There is a consequentialist ring to this, even though Daoism is not really a consequentialist philosophy. My sense is that good outcomes are mentioned here to propagate, in the context of a hundred schools of thought contending in the Warring States period, the more detached and passive stance of Daoism. Doing little works! It's good for you! - which was a hard idea to validate in ancient China, just as it can be hard to validate today. But the relatively light touch (unless you have been on the business end of US airpower...) of Obama's intervention in Libya has done just that.
We can refine the point a bit by noticing that in DDJ 64 it is especially at the early stages of a process that relatively small actions can yield ultimately large effects:
It's easy to embrace the tranquil and easy to prevent trouble before omens appear. It's easy for the trifling to melt away and easy for the slight to scatter away.
Work at things before they've begun and establish order before confusion sets in,
for a tree you can barely reach around grows from the tiniest rootlet, a nine-tiered tower starts as a basket of dirt, a thousand mile journey begins with a single step....
Start small, with subtle interventions (a basket of dirt, a single step, a well placed smart bomb...) at the beginning of a moment of change, and larger positive effects will follow.
Of course, it is impossible to know what will ultimately transpire in Libya. I am not holding my breath for a smooth transition to democracy, especially given the hollowing out of state institutions under Gahdafi. But the crumblilng of the dictatorship is a remarkable transformation, and one that has been hastened by Obama's "leading from behind."
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