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The Fable of Foreign Policy

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Posted: December 3rd, 2015

By Carmen Medina

Carmen Medina is a former CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence. A 32-year veteran of the Intelligence Community, she is also the author of Rebels at Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within. 

The story of the Tortoise and the Hare is well-known across cultures. In some countries, the plot is adjusted and the animals change and become, for example, a grasshopper and an ant. But just about every society tells the cautionary tale of the Hare who runs quickly ahead, only to be beaten by the Tortoise with her plodding but unwavering pace.

There’s a lesson in this story for followers of national security issues. Most of the topics that grab our attention are like Hares: high velocity and showy. We pay attention to them because they’re impossible to ignore. And like hares and rabbits, there’s always plenty of them. Our recent history is littered with one mini-crisis after another. How many of us still think about the assassination of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov this February or even the ongoing conflict in Yemen?

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