Syria, Hayek, and the Puppeteers’ Fatal Conceit

Syria, Hayek, and the Puppeteers’ Fatal Conceit:

The Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek labeled this indefatigable arrogance in the economic realm a “Fatal Conceit,” arguing that “the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.” Or, as Ralph R. Reiland summarized it, ”the flawed concept…that one man or one group, one cabinet of commanding officials or one central committee, or one team of planners from Harvard and Yale, can gather and understand enough information in order to reshape the world around them according to their wishes, reshape human nature, and design” their own outcome.

The fatal conceit of the crafters of foreign policy is that, with their limited knowledge and nearly unlimited power, they can play marionette and pull the strings of the entire Middle East to shape it in their own cruel fashion, without adverse consequences. The history of misbegotten foreign policy schemes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the covert interventions preceding them that brought so much initial blowback, are enough to prove they still don’t know what they’re talking about in the case of Syria.