Think! Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye. By Michael R. LeGault. New York, 2006: Threshold Editions (Imprint of Simon & Schuster). ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-2378-9; ISBN-10: 1-4165-2378-2. 355pp, hardcover. $24.95.

Reviewed by Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS. Underlying all assessments of national strategic capability must be an understanding of how cultures and social structures impact the decision making, efficiency, unity, and flexibility of the country under study. And such understandings, applied to one's own society, are critical in determining viable approaches to population planning to ensure the achievement of overarching grand strategic goals.

Intelligence which merely addresses visible, primary indicators - economic markers, force strength, and the like - clearly misses the more discreet, but seismic, underlying tendencies reflected in population attitudes which foretell the prospect of cohesion and vigor, or disunity and apathy.

Michael LeGault's Think! Why Crucial Decisions Can't Be Made in the Blink of an Eye was clearly conceived as a response to the disturbingly populist, feel-good book, Blink! The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by M. Gladwell, published in 2005. But Think! emerged as a much more strategically important study than Blink!, which was an imperfectly thought-through book built around the sole notion that reliance on intuition allows for sound decision making without reliance on critical analysis. Think! effectively dispels Gladwell's pop-art notion, but goes further to highlight the signs of decline in critical thinking in the United States and the Western world.

LeGault goes to the heart of the historical success of the United States as a power: its creation of a new philosophical framework, built around pragmatism and empiricism. He cites British colonial statesman Thomas Pownall who, in 1783, noted: "The genuine liberty on which America is founded is totally and entirely a New System of things." While giving the reader a refreshing reminder of the importance of the intellectual underpinnings of the practicality of the new US philosophy - created as the American colonies developed the long-considered rationale for the US Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights - LeGault also highlights the destruction of this crucial base in the post-Cold War US society. Pragmatism and empiricism have been replaced by intuition, illiteracy, and ignorance, with profound implications for future US economic and strategic performance.

LeGault's easily read style may make it easier for the book to have an impact on a culture, which increasingly focuses on political correctness, and the unidimensional intellectual vacuity of television. But Think! is neither another carping criticism of the US by the America-loathing left nor an indignant counter-attack by the conservative religious right. Indeed, it uses empiricism and pragmatism to highlight the decline in literacy, general educational standards, and practical innovative skills, which have been the hallmark of the rise of US, power.

Underlying LeGault's analysis is that US society has become risk-averse and fearful of, literally, the "thought police" approach of political correctness. The implications for creative debate, the motivation and success associated with the US' traditional risk/reward culture, and the ability of the US to compete in all senses globally, are clear. LeGault does not specifically address the relevance to other cultures of the strategic impasse underway in the US as a result of the collapse of empiricism and pragmatism, but they will be clear to readers nonetheless.

Much of the cohesion of Western society in the 20th Century resulted from the export of US philosophy to revolutionize and revitalize modern society globally. It was for this reason, not so much the export of material goods and the projection of strategic power, that the 20th Century became known as "the American Century". Indeed, the rise of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is due substantially in the post Mao Zedong era to the intrinsic acceptance of the US philosophical culture of pragmatism, empiricism, and risk/reward decision making models, and it is increasingly true also of India.

It was not the export of identifiable forms and structures of democracy, which projected US authority and credibility, but, rather, the philosophy and ethos, which inspired societies abroad to emulate and admire the US. The present hostility toward the US in many parts of the world is, significantly, tied not to the attributes which were the hallmark of Americanism, but the successful attempts by the politically-correct in the US to destroy the pragmatism and empiricism which had made the country admirable to the world, replacing it with emotionalism and short-termism.

I specifically addressed this phenomenon in one of my regular reports on psychological strategy in May 2005, dealing with what I called "emotional warfare" as a phenomenon of the new strategic framework, noting, among other things:

Decisions about the fate of nations are today rarely being made on the basis of clinical evaluations of the physical: whether the physical balance of forces and true measures of security interests, or on the calculations of economic wealth. Neither are they being based on persuasive argument nor imagery, whether or not that argument is or imagery is manipulated by professional psychological operators.

Rather, because of sensory and information overload, and because of disorientation, decisions are being made - in the political, military, intelligence, and commercial realms - by a reversion to pure emotion.

Emotion has always been a recognized element in psychological strategy and psywar. Through most periods of history, the intellect governs, moderates, and ultimately channels emotion. Today, emotions more dramatically dominate intellects, even in educated, structured societies.¹

LeGault's reasoned analysis, with which this reviewer had only minor disagreements, provides the kind of easily-read thinking which can profoundly jar the serious reader into action. From the perspective of the US political and defense community the book is essential reading, but no less is it vital to all those policymakers who must consider and understand the US political dynamic, and their own approach to population strategy. Do not ignore this book.