Locking Down the Left-Field

Locking down the left-field is a phrase that first surfaced among some neocon defence strategists in the period after 9/11. As with so many other fresh ideas and approaches, it fell into disuse after the invasion of Iraq as the emphasis of foreign policy strategy shifted.

Intriguingly, now that the Iraq War is winding down (at least from the point of UK and US involvement), the phrase “locking down the left-field” is once again being bandied about.

The original meaning of the phrase was along similar lines to that of thinking the unthinkable. Until 9/11 it hadn’t been unthinkable that terrorists would try to bring down the twin towers of the World Trade Center (indeed, they’d already tried) but it had been unthinkable that they would do so by flying passenger aircraft into them.

In the months following, the FBI and CIA attempted to ensure that every scenario, even the most unlikely, was not only anticipated, but that plans were in place to prevent it happening. To do this, they even asked writers and film-makers to produce prospective terrorist scenarios. This became known as locking down the left-field and it was at this point that neocon defence strategists started applying the phrase more widely.

Their argument was that if terrorists could act in such an unexpected way, so global events could develop in a way that was impossible to predict based on current information and expectations. They argued that for the USA to protect its position in the future, it had to imagine every conceivable threat and ensure that a plan was in place to counteract it.

There are some similarities here to ring-fence theory (see below), but whereas that is primarily a defensive policy, locking down the left-field is proactive. The argument is that America should seek to neutralize, economically or militarily, all potential future threats. Critics argue in response that this was the sort of imperialist policy that paved the way for the 9/11 attacks in the first place, and some of the people using the phrase now have clearly stated that you can only lock down the left-field by building bridges, not by trying to stamp out all those who disagree with you.

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