Dissolving resolution Strategies are developed, negotiated and announced with much fanfare. Some negotiations among specialists, as in the case of the law of the sea, may have taken many years. Impassioned, moving speeches, and photo opportunities, celebrate their final approval and signature. Like New Year's resolutions the participants derive most of the positive benefits from the brief moment of pledging adherence to the strategic principles. The community bathes in consensus.
Constituencies are duly impressed.
Opponents are silenced. The future, like the colonized, is often highly reluctant to accept that burden. It may actively seek liberation from the burden by pursuing some alternative course of action. In the light of democratic principles, it may indeed be asked how legitimate is the authority of the past when those living in the present have not been consulted about the legitimacy of its control upon their lives. For a politician, a strategy from the past has decreasing value.