Stalin maintained that if Britain had the right to control the Suez canal regardless of what the Egyptians felt and likewise the United States had the right to control the Panama canal regardless of what the Panamanians felt, then so too did the Soviet Union have the right to control the Turkish straits regardless of what the Turks felt.
—from ‘The percentages agreement‘
In Krulak’s example, Marines may be required to conduct full scale military action, peacekeeping operations and humanitarian aid within the space of three contiguous city blocks.
The thrust of the concept is that modern militaries must be trained to operate in all three conditions simultaneously, and that to do so, leadership training at the lowest levels needs to be high. The latter condition caused Krulak to invoke what he called “strategic corporals”; low-level unit leaders able to take independent action and make major decisions
Physicists have long noted that observing some phenomena actually changes their nature. In finance, the equivalent is known as Goodhart’s law, after the British economist Charles Goodhart, who in 1975 argued that once a measure becomes a target, it loses the very properties that made it a good gauge to begin with.
—Robin Wigglesworth in the FT: ‘How a volatility virus infected Wall Street‘
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
Use my marker 