Harlequin Goes to War: The Slapstick Strategy

The Masks that Nations Wear

Young Alexander conquered India, Just he?

Caesar beat the Gauls. Didn’t he at least have a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his Armada went down. Did no one else?

Bertolt Brecht, “In the City”

Years ago, I read a story about a magical African wooden mask that took over the minds of the people wearing it, turning them into murderers. The gist of the story was that, after several characters were killed, someone discovered that the mask was just a cheap plastic toy made in Japan.

We are the mask we wear, and we all wear one. Good or bad, the mask is a quick way to define what kind of person we are. The very term “person” comes from the Latin word persona, which indicated the mask worn by actors on stage. It not only helped the public to identify the characters, but it also amplified their voice. It came from per sonare, to create sound. This is what we do on the stage of life. We are the sound we create.

Sometimes, there is truly nothing behind the mask, as in the Italian “Commedia dell’Arte,” the “Comedy of the Art,” popular during the 16th and 18th centuries. In these theatrical representations, masked actors played fixed roles, often improvising without a script. Harlequin (“Arlecchino”) is still widely recognizable today, with his motley costume made of irregular patches of cloth, playing the role of a light-hearted, nimble, and astute servant. We also remember Columbine, Pantaloon, Pierrot, and others. The Comedy was not different from our superhero stories, where characters are almost always masked and wearing a recognizable costume: Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and the others. Among other things, the Comedy gave us the concept of “slapstick,” a device consisting of two flexible pieces of wood joined together at one end. It could produce a loud noise when used to hit someone on stage, without causing any harm.

Masks are not used only for theatrical characters. States are disembodied creatures existing only because of the mask they show to the world. History books see them as creatures having a will of their own. We read, for instance, that “Austria attacked Serbia in 1914,” or “Germany attacked Russia in 1941,” as if they were comedy characters fighting each other. You can read a fascinating account of the personalized entities that clashed against each other during WWI in the “Ballet of the Nations” by Vernon Lee (1915).

Sometimes we tend to see the personality of states in the form of a single person, a homunculus that inflates to gigantic proportions to assume the form and the functions of a whole country. We say that “Napoleon attacked Russia” or "Putin invaded Ukraine.” Yet, this masked homunculus is a mere reflection of the larger mask that turns millions of different people, with different ideas, different goals, and different likes and dislikes, into a single egregore that moves onward, pushed by forces that nobody can control.

This idea of states as masks has led to terrible disasters throughout history. Lev Tolstoy wondered how it was possible that during the invasion of Russia in 1812, “Millions of men set out to inflict on one another untold evils – deception, treachery, robbery, forgery, counterfeiting, theft, arson and murder – on a scale unheard of in the annals of law-courts down the centuries and all over the world.” Yet, that happened because they identified themselves with a specific mask in the form of one or another state, France, Russia, or others.

It is no less dangerous today, when the personification of states is common in political and strategic discussions. Let me give you an example taken from the site War on the Rocks. At a cursory glance, just from the title, you would think that this site is a joke with its claim of “National security. For insiders. By insiders.” and “Join War on the Rocks and gain access to content trusted by policymakers, military leaders, and strategic thinkers worldwide.” But if you listen to what our leaders say in public, you’ll see that this style of thinking and speaking informs the discussion.

Let’s quote from an article by Nick Damby, published on October 2, 2025, on the War on the Rocks site.

“America faces three adversaries: Iran, the persistent destabilizer, determined to develop nuclear weapons; Russia, the acute threat, invading Ukraine and threatening NATO; and China, the pacing challenge, attempting to topple America’s international leadership.”

This sentence reads like the blurb for a superhero adventure movie. The masked characters are all in place. The hero, America, faces three bad guys, Iran, Russia, and China, each with specific evil goals.

So, how would Mr. Damby advise the hero to perform his quest? Here it is how (he considers that Iran has already been defeated):

How do you deter and, if necessary, defeat China and Russia simultaneously without exhausting your nation’s resources, power, and attention? You don’t. Instead, you sequence the threats.

This guy is a genius. If you can’t fight your enemies together, you fight them separately, one by one. How was it that nobody had thought of that? Of course, the enemies would need to collaborate, patiently waiting for their turn to be defeated. But that’s a minor problem, don’t you think so?

And then:

Sequencing logic demands weakening one remaining competitor before risking an unwinnable two-front war. But which competitor? Russia is the obvious choice. Moscow is weaker and moved first by invading Ukraine; it should be punished first.

Mr Damby seems to think that he is a God, or at least God’s envoy, to suggest how punishments should be meted out. Then, after having punished Russia,

… America may finally concentrate its resources and attention on countering its great rival this century: China.

You would think it is all a joke, a fantasy, a historical fiction plot, but it is not. Or, at least, plenty of people take this approach seriously, as you can note in many public statements on these matters. And you can learn from history how leaders tend to reason in this way.

Ask why Napoleon decided to invade Russia, and you’ll see that kind of reasoning at work. His advisor, Armand de Caulaincourt, reports that Napoleon told him: ‘In less than two months I shall be in Moscow, in three months I shall have peace, and in two years I shall be master of the world!’ (Mémoires du général de Caulaincourt, duc de Vicence). In other reports, we note that Napoleon was impatient to “finish the business” with Russia, afraid that the Russians would ally with Sweden and Britain. So, he was playing the sequencing game. Too bad that the Russians didn’t cooperate.

As things stand, it seems that we are in the hands of masked characters performing on the world’s stage. We don’t know the plot, nor how the comedy will end, and not even whether it will turn into a tragedy. What we know is that the actors are not armed just with harmless slapsticks.

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