The
psychological impact of a major foreign-policy move is generally felt right
away even if the kinetic impact takes much longer. The tyrannical trio of
geography, bureaucracy, and logistics means that even the most powerful leader
in the world (the U.S. president) must wait -- sometimes many months -- before
the actions he has ordered physically take effect. The psychological effects
start much sooner, however, and so some of the benefit of a policy change can
be realized in advance of the kinetics.

In a
well-designed strategy, the psychological and kinetic effects work in tandem
with the former multiplying the latter, perhaps even operating during the delay
between decision/announcement and full implementation. In a poorly designed
strategy, the psychological and kinetic effects are in tension, perhaps even
canceling each other out.

This
is Strategy 101, but it is often ignored when an administration is severely
cross-pressured. I fear that is happening to Barack Obama's administration right
now as it struggles to implement its recent change in policy regarding
providing small arms to the Syrian rebels.

The president
made his momentous decision last week, but even if the modest aid he has
promised could be decisive in a kinetic sense, it will be some time before the
arms actually arrive to change battle facts on the ground. Days after the White
House announcement, Gen. Salim Idris, the military leader who will supposedly
receive the help, was
reported to be saying that he had not yet even been contacted about the
aid. And nonlethal aid promised many months ago still has not been delivered,
according to FP's The
Cable.

These
delays are not necessarily the product of bureaucratic foot-dragging. The delay
in making the policy decision may well have been the result of foot-dragging
from a bureaucracy and political administration reluctant to intervene, but
implementation delays are just as often dictated by physics as by politics. It
just takes time to get things done.

In
the meantime, what is operating is any change in expectations that the decision
engendered, perhaps resulting in a changed strategic calculus among the key
actors. That is explicitly what the Obama administration is hoping for, since it
has said that the new lethal aid is meant to send a signal of U.S. (and
international) resolve to Bashar al-Assad's regime that the regime and its
allies should heed.

Is
that the likely psychological effect of the president's decision? Will Assad,
Hezbollah, and Iran conclude from the decision to supply some small arms, which
will arrive to influence tactical operations at some future date, that it marks
a major commitment on the part of the United States? Judging from the way the administration
made the announcement -- leaving it to the National Security Council's communications
director to announce while the president was at a local photo-op -- most
observers, including those quite sympathetic to the administration or to the
policy of greater involvement in Syria, have inferred a message of irresolution
and uncertain commitment. 

In
short, the immediate psychological effects may well be undercutting rather than
magnifying the eventual kinetic effects.

This
is not the first time the Obama administration has run afoul of good strategic
principles. Obama's Afghanistan surge was a textbook case of getting the
psychology and the kinetics out of sync. The announcement of the artificial
timeline for withdrawing the surge at the same time as announcing the surge
itself meant that for the first several months the chief effect of the new
policy was confusion about American resolve. The kinetic benefits of the
additional troops were delayed many months as the military logistics chain
slowly swung into action. I gather that the Obama White House was frustrated by
the slow pace of delivering the surge troops -- doubly so since the delay came
on the heels of months of delay during the strategic review itself -- but it
was no more of a kinetic delay than that which beset the Iraq surge. The
difference was that the psychological benefits of the Iraq surge kicked in
right away because the Iraq surge strategy was well-designed and the two
elements were synchronized. (One wonders whether Obama would have opted for the
self-defeating arbitrary timeline in Afghanistan if he had fully understood how
long it would take for the kinetic results to take effect.)

I
fear the administration is making the same mistake again. And whereas the
Afghanistan surge was at least in kinetic terms so substantial that it had a decent
hope of overcoming the damage done by the imposition of the arbitrary timeline,
the kinetic effect of the change in Syria policy is far less substantial. It
will take a lot of hope for this change to produce a better outcome -- and
there is very little time for it to do so.