Forging an American 

Grand Strategy:

Securing a Path Through 

a Complex Future

Selected Presentations From a Symposium 

at the National Defense University

Sheila R. Ronis

Editor

Carlisle Barracks, PA and

UNITED STATES 

ARMY WAR COLLEGE

PRESS

Visit our website for other free publication 

downloads

http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/

To rate this publication click here.
The United States Army War College

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

CENTER for

STRATEGIC

LEADERSHIP and

DEVELOPMENT

The United States Army War College educates and develops leaders for service 

at the strategic level while advancing knowledge in the global application 

of Landpower.

The purpose of the United States Army War College is to produce graduates 

who are skilled critical thinkers and complex problem solvers. Concurrently, 

it is our duty to the U.S. Army to also act as a “think factory” for commanders 

and civilian leaders at the strategic level worldwide and routinely engage 

in discourse and debate concerning the role of ground forces in achieving 

national security objectives.

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes national 

security and strategic research and analysis to influence 

policy debate and bridge the gap between military 

and academia.

The Center for Strategic Leadership and Development 

contributes to the education of world class senior 

leaders, develops expert knowledge, and provides 

solutions to strategic Army issues affecting the national 

security community.

The Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute 

provides subject matter expertise, technical review, 

and writing expertise to agencies that develop stability 

operations concepts and doctrines.

The Senior Leader Development and Resiliency program 

supports the United States Army War College’s lines of 

effort to educate strategic leaders and provide well-being 

education and support by developing self-awareness 

through leader feedback and leader resiliency.

The School of Strategic Landpower develops strategic 

leaders by providing a strong foundation of wisdom 

grounded in mastery of the profession of arms, and 

by serving as a crucible for educating future leaders in 

the analysis, evaluation, and refinement of professional 

expertise in war, strategy, operations, national security, 

resource management, and responsible command.

The U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center acquires, 

conserves, and exhibits historical materials for use 

to support the U.S. Army, educate an international 

audience, and honor soldiers—past and present.

U.S. Army War College

Senior Leader Development and Resiliency

SLDR
Strategic Studies Institute

and

U.S. Army War College Press

FORGING AN AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY: 

SECURING A PATH 

THROUGH A COMPLEX FUTURE

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS 

FROM A SYMPOSIUM AT THE 

NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY

Sheila R. Ronis

Editor

October 2013

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and 

do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the 

Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. 

Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) and 

U.S. Army War College (USAWC) Press publications enjoy full 

academic freedom, provided they do not disclose classified 

information, jeopardize operations security, or misrepresent 

official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers them to 

offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the interest of furthering debate on key issues. This report is cleared for 

public release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

This publication is subject to Title 17, United States Code, 

Sections 101 and 105. It is in the public domain and may not be 

copyrighted.
ii

*****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should

be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute and the U.S. 

Army War College Press, U.S. Army War College, 47 Ashburn 

Drive, Carlisle, PA 17013-5010. 

*****

All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) and U.S. Army War

College (USAWC) Press publications may be downloaded free 

of charge from the SSI website. Hard copies of this report may 

also be obtained free of charge while supplies last by placing 

an order on the SSI website. SSI publications may be quoted 

or reprinted in part or in full with permission and appropriate 

credit given to the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. 

Army War College Press, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA. 

Contact SSI by visiting our website at the following address: 

www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil.

*****

The Strategic Studies Institute and USAWC Press

publishes a monthly email newsletter to update the national 

security community on the research of our analysts, recent and 

forthcoming publications, and upcoming conferences sponsored 

by the Institute. Each newsletter also provides a strategic commentary by one of our research analysts. If you are interested in 

receiving this newsletter, please subscribe on the SSI website at 

www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/newsletter.

*****

The NDU conference could not have taken place without

the extraordinary efforts of many people. I want to thank my 

keynote speakers, Professor Leon Fuerth, The Honorable Michèle Flournoy, Dr. Michael Mandelbaum, Dr. Thomas Fingar, 

Dr. David Abshire, and Dr. Peter Feaver, three of whom have 

chapters in this book. I also want to thank all our Panel Chairs 

and Panelists.

I want to thank President Stephanie Bergeron and Dr. David

Shields at Walsh College, whose continued support of my work 
iii

has been essential and to whom I am very grateful. I cannot adequately thank Jerry Faber for all of his support and faith in this 

topic, as well as Admiral Ann Rondeau, who gave me the opportunity to organize this conference and continue this work.

Finally, I want to thank Professor Douglas C. Lovelace and

Dr. James G. Pierce of the Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. 

Army War College Press at the U.S. Army War College for publishing this effort.

ISBN 1-58487-595-X

v

CONTENTS

Foreword ..................................................................vii

1. Introduction ............................................................1

 Dr. Sheila R. Ronis

2. Grand Strategy .......................................................9

Professor Leon S. Fuerth 

3. Educating Strategists: Some Discomforting 

 Contradictions.......................................................19

 Dr. Cynthia A. Watson

4. Eight Myths about American Grand 

 Strategy ................................................................. 37

 Dr. Peter D. Feaver

5. Department of Homeland Security Approach 

 to Strategy .............................................................45

 Dr. Allen S. Miller

6. Forging Grand Strategy: The President’s 

 Role ........................................................................51

 Dr. David M. Abshire

7. Grand Strategy and Human Thinking ..............71

 Evan M. H. Faber

8. Designing the U.S. President’s Ability to 

 Make Strategy ...................................................... 77 

 Dr. Robert B. Polk
9. The Need for Grand Strategy Development:

 Lessons from the Project on National 

 Security Reform and Singapore ......................91

 Dr. Sheila R. Ronis

10. Postscript .......................................................... 123

Dr. Sheila R. Ronis

About the Contributors......................................... 125

vi
vii

FOREWORD

On November 8-9, 2011, the National Defense 

University held a symposium entitled “Forging an 

American Grand Strategy: Securing a Path Through 

a Complex Future,” at Fort Lesley J. McNair in 

Washington, DC. This book represents a compilation 

of several papers delivered at that conference. The 

topics discussed are relevant to the audiences of the 

Strategic Studies Institute, and the U.S. Army in general, 

students, faculty, developers of strategy, and 

policymakers.

Joint professional military education requires the 

teaching of grand strategy and the assistance such a 

strategy makes to the development and articulation of 

the National Security Strategy. This is the focus of much 

of the curriculum at all the war colleges within the Pentagon. The conference began a conversation that needs 

to continue because the Nation is struggling with where 

we are going and how we need to get there. 

What is the country’s grand strategy? Do we need 

one? If one does not exist, then in a world of complexity 

and globalization, what is the context that we will use to 

make decisions in the absence of a grand strategy that 

guides? How can the Nation plan in a proactive sense to 

be ready for the future, let alone shape one, without such 

a framework? The papers presented at this conference 

represent a sampling of the diversity of opinions on this 

topic. We hope that it will give the reader some issues 

to consider.

 

 

 DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

 Director

 Strategic Studies Institute and

 U.S. Army War College Press

1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Dr. Sheila R. Ronis

On November 8-9, 2011, the National Defense University (NDU), Washington, DC, held a conference 

entitled “Forging an American Grand Strategy: Securing a Path Through a Complex Future,” which I had 

the privilege of chairing. For more than 2 decades, I 

have been studying the mechanisms and methods we 

use as a nation to develop and conduct grand strategy. 

The conversation that began at that conference needs 

to be further developed and continued. More importantly, we, as a nation, need to explore together the 

path ahead and answer questions regarding how and 

why we struggle with grand strategies. If developed 

and executed with a systemic orientation, grand strategies could help us shape our future in an ever changing and complex world. 

This volume represents a compilation of some 

of the presentations given at the NDU conference. 

It also represents the great diversity of opinions regarding this subject. For more than 2 decades, it has 

been evident to many that the United States needs a 

new framework for a grand strategy, especially since 

the “containment” strategy of George F. Kennan that 

shaped U.S. policy during the Cold War is no longer 

relevant. But, what kind of framework do we need? 

Most commonly, grand strategy is framed in the 

context of warfare, or at least conflict among nations. 

There have been exceptions, and the focus of this symposium was not on warfare or preparation for war. Our 

intent was to promote a discussion about the elements 

of and prospect for a grand strategy for America.
2

Over the millennia, grand strategies have evolved 

as the complexities of the known world grew. Rulers 

have created and executed grand strategies for their 

nations through modern times. It is possible that a 21st 

century grand strategy will be very different than past 

models since our understanding of the world has and 

will change our understanding of how complex systems, including nations, behave. The empowerment 

of individuals or small groups with new technologies 

and communication tools can extend beyond anything 

imagined outside the realm of science fiction. Other 

factors may come into play as well. Some would also 

argue that, in a democracy, it is not possible to attain 

the necessary consensus to craft and implement a national grand strategy in the absence of an existential 

threat. Recent political discourse lends some credence 

to that line of reasoning.

Many of us believe that an American grand strategy is not only possible, but also critical to the future 

of the Nation. A common strategic vision can do much 

to focus the attention and energies of the Nation toward a common good. In a recently published article, 

Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, formerly the Director of 

Policy Planning at the Department of State, succinctly 

described the need for a grand strategy or, to use her 

terminology, a national strategic narrative to serve as 

a guide to the future. As Dr. Slaughter says: 

We need a story with a beginning, middle, and projected happy ending that will transcend our political 

divisions, orient us as a nation, and give us both a 

common direction and the confidence and commitment to get to our destination.
3

During recent years, the U.S. Government has 

generated a plethora of strategies and strategic plans, 

with most aimed at some aspect of security—national, 

economic, space, cyber, energy—the list continues to 

expand. It appears clear that none of these strategies, 

whether separately or combined, gets to the objective 

succinctly identified by Dr. Slaughter—“a story with 

a beginning, middle, and projected happy ending that 

will transcend our political divisions, orient us as a 

nation. . . .” That storyline, with associated ways and 

means, is the basis for an American grand strategy. 

Our goals with this symposium were to help illuminate that path to the future and, along the way, pose 

and answer a range of fundamental questions.

• What is grand strategy?

• What lessons does history offer to today’s

strategists?

• Is a national grand strategy possible in today’s 

world of complexity and divisive political 

turmoil?

• What is the appropriate role of the President,

the Congress, the Departments of State and 

Defense, and the private sector in developing, 

supporting, and sustaining America’s grand 

strategy?

• What system or processes are necessary to produce a U.S. grand strategy?

• What is the role of strategic foresight in developing and implementing grand strategy?

• What are the requirements for intelligence to

serve national grand strategy?

• How should we educate today’s and tomorrow’s leaders to think strategically and to 

develop the necessary skills to develop and execute grand strategy?
4

• What are, or should be, the connections

between an American grand strategy and the 

various national defense and security strategy documents? How can we improve those 

connections?

In my work with the Project on National Security Reform, I chaired the Vision Working Group. 

We found a need to establish a grand strategy development capability within the Executive Office of 

the President.

The National Security Strategy is the closest published document that represents a comprehensive 

discussion of where the country is going and what it 

wants to accomplish. Published by The White House 

from time to time, it is neither sufficiently long term 

nor a true strategy that links resources with objectives 

over time. It represents, at best, a list of aspirational 

goals by an administration. In a world of increasing 

complexity, the United States should consider longterm, whole-of-government thinking and planning. 

Other countries have established such a set of capabilities within the heart of their governments at the 

highest levels, so why not the United States in the 

White House? 

My journey began about 20 years ago when, as a 

strategic management consultant to the private sector, 

I had an opportunity to work with the U.S. Army War 

College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. When I read the U.S. 

National Security Strategy for the first time, I assumed 

it was a subset of a larger national “grand strategy.” 

But, I was wrong. That summer, I realized for the first 

time that the United States was not developing longterm, whole-of-government grand strategies at all.
5

As a strategic management professor and a practitioner, I thought it was very odd that, for decades, the 

private sector has routinely used management tools 

such as forecasting, scenario based planning, strategic visioning, political and economic risk assessments, 

and so on, but the U.S. Government, especially in a 

whole-of-government way, rarely, if ever, uses such 

tools, though sometimes those tools are used in pockets—in specific agencies or departments. 

The complex systems of the world need to have 

their characteristics identified, discussed, and used 

as a framework for the development of grand strategy. Probably the most important characteristic is that 

complex systems cannot be controlled—at best, they 

can be influenced. The systems can only be influenced 

if understood intimately. 

A White House Center needs to be formed as a 

learning organization to support whatever national 

security structure is in place in the United States. The 

Center would be created to learn, analyze, assess, and 

synthesize risk, foresight, and the development of 

“grand strategy” across the government. 

One of the Vision Working Group findings included the need to synthesize “all of government” 

solutions to complex system issues and problems, and 

sometimes “all of society.” The only successful way to 

do that is to learn about the system issues and couple 

those with foresight tools such as Delphi techniques 

and risk assessment. These enable the development 

of scenarios for planning and ultimately the ability 

to develop “grand strategies.” We also found that the 

United States needs to systematically use these tools 

and processes to improve decisionmaking and create 

mechanisms for that to happen at the whole-of-government level—at the level of the President—and that 
6

requires context and synthesis. It also requires breaking down the stovepipes of government so they can 

work together effectively. 

Questions asked should be: What mechanisms 

should the U.S. Government develop to improve the 

Nation’s ability to plan in a whole-of-government 

way for its future—to be better prepared for a future 

that will be very different from its past? What kinds 

of grand strategies need to be developed? Perhaps we 

should answer such questions as 

• How do we get out of debt? 

• How do we develop energy strategies to move 

away from fossil fuels that keep us dependent 

on unstable places in the world? 

• How will we find the clean energy sources for a 

world of seven billion people that will stop and 

reverse global warming?

• How do we establish true peace in the Middle 

East? 

• How do we engage permanent solutions 

for problematic countries, from Iraq and 

Afghanistan to North Korea? 

• How do we stem the cyber security threats 

and acts of war in cyberspace from China 

and Russia?

These are the kinds of questions that were explored 

and, in the future, will need to be answered as the Nation learns to think about grand strategy capability in 

the world of the 21st century.

The NDU conference proceedings included Panel 

One, chaired by Dr. Nicholas Rostow, which discussed, “What is Grand Strategy? How Should We 

Develop It? What Should It Look Like?” Panels members included Ambassador Robin Raphel, Dr. Steven 
7

Meyer, Colonel Mark “Puck” Mykleby, and Captain 

Wayne Porter. Panel Two, chaired by Dr. Audrey 

Kurth Cronin, explored the “Historical Grand Strategies and Lessons for Today.” Sitting on the panel 

were Dr. Williamson Murray, Dr. Benjamin Franklin 

Cooling, and Professor Hew Strachan. Panel Three explored the question, “What is the Role of Intelligence 

in Supporting a Successful Grand Strategy?” Chaired 

by Dr. Roger George, the panel consisted of Rear Admiral Elizabeth Train, Mr. Paul Batchelor, and Dr. 

Matthew J. Burrows. Panel Four consisted of Dr. Hans 

Binnendijk and Mr. Frank Hoffman, who commented 

on “Strategy Overviews.” Panel Four, chaired by Dr. 

Warren Fishbein, discussed “Grand Strategy Needs 

Foresight and Vision.” Panel Four members were 

Mr. Jerome Glenn, Ms. Patricia (Patti) Morrissey, Dr. 

Allen Miller, and Colonel Christopher Holshek. Dr. 

Miller’s remarks are included in this work. Panel Five, 

“Educating Strategists,” was chaired by Colonel Greg 

Schultz and included Dr. Cynthia Watson, Dr. Richard Immerman, and Dr. Matthew Connelly. Finally, 

Panel Six, chaired by Dr. Louise Diamond, included 

Dr. Kristin Lord, Mr. Robert Polk, Mr. Patrick Doherty 

and Mr. Evan Faber. Both Bob Polk and Evan Faber’s 

comments are included.

 

 Sheila R. Ronis, Conference Chair

 Walsh College, Troy, Michigan

 May 14, 2013

9

CHAPTER 2

GRAND STRATEGY

Professor Leon S. Fuerth

My views presented here represent my personal opinion and 

do not represent the views of the National Defense University, the 

George Washington University, or the MacArthur Foundation. 

Using complexity as a guide for thinking, this is 

my definition of strategy: “Any strategy is a plan for 

imposing a predetermined outcome on a complex system.” It would be interesting to debate whether that 

definition is sufficient to be both precise and also sufficiently elastic to take care of all the “for instances” 

and practical examples, but I think it is.

A strategy has certain characteristics. It needs to 

be comprehensive, meaning that it purports to solve 

the problems of an entire set of issues. It needs to be 

durable enough to last until completion. It should not 

be susceptible to disastrous failure, in the almost certain event that it encounters conditions not foreseen in 

its premises.

The modifier “grand” is extremely vague, but it 

does convey a sense that grand strategy sits at the 

apex of all other plans and tactics, which should be 

regarded as tributary. That means that it will encompass the entire range of actions that may be required 

for execution: from maneuvers to tactics to battles to 

campaigns and upwards. Grand strategy is more than 

the sum of parts. It is the high ground from which all 

of the parts and all of their interactions can be thought 

through and employed as overall guidance for action.
10

It is not clear that grand strategies are really available. Complexity theory raises some interesting questions about this at a basic level, since we know that 

any action designed to solve a problem in a complex 

system simply causes the problem to mutate. So anyone who thinks that a grand strategy ends with a victory march needs to re-read history: to see it as a continuum in which every victory march leads on to the 

next set of problems with which we have to deal.

Grand strategy is definitely a narrative shared in 

the minds of those who lead and those who follow. 

The problem with that description is that it does not 

go far enough. Fairy tales are also narratives, and we 

have had rather a lot of fairy tales masquerading as 

grand strategies, in which the common denominator 

is “something for nothing.” Allow me to name a few: 

J-curves; Laffer curves; self-correcting stock markets; 

eliminating the national debt by slashing taxes; growing jobs by handing out free money; revenue neutrality; the compatibility of free trade with growth strategies as practiced in Japan and China; the guaranteed 

existence of the American middle class; globalization 

lifts all ships; debt does not matter; manufacturing 

does not count; the trade deficit is irrelevant; subprime 

mortgages are secure stores of value; risk has been 

conquered; derivatives are safe; and the prize specimen: American exceptionalism—the attitude that the 

Creator is cutting us some slack because we are better than anybody else and deserve it, and that we are 

therefore immune from paying the consequences for 

things we ought to do for ourselves but, for some reason, have not. 

Grand strategy requires time to be played out, 

and we are an impatient people, with political institutions to match. There cannot be any such thing as a 
11

fully operational grand strategy in a 2-year period. If a 

presidential term is 4 years, the first year is spent getting settled, and the final year is spent obsessing about 

being re-elected, which leaves 2 years in the middle 

where everyone is more or less organized around 

what they have found to be the central themes of the 

administration, which may or may not be the themes 

that got the administration elected in the first place. 

Moreover, there cannot be a grand strategy without the capacity for strategic behavior; there can be no 

capacity for strategic behavior without foresight; and 

there can be no useful foresight without the discipline 

of constant reference to the facts as they materialize, 

rather than the facts as they were once imagined. So, 

finally, we come to our present predicament. I was recently at a conference put on by the U.S. Agency for 

International Development (USAID) to look at foresight and planning. I listened to the USAID personnel 

talk about what they wanted to do in the world, and 

finally had to remind them that, in our own country, 

we are presently unable to do for ourselves what they 

would recommend for others.

Nevertheless, the United States actually does have 

a grand strategy, framed by the Founding Fathers, no 

less. The American grand strategy was and is to have 

a republic ruled by its citizens through representative 

institutions. That is the strategy. Its objective is for 

citizens to remain free, rather than to default to subordination by entitled and inherited power, which—as 

the Founders well understood—had been the lot of all 

peoples throughout all history in all places previously. 

You may remember Benjamin Franklin’s response 

to a question that was put to him as he emerged from 

one of the discussions at the Constitutional Convention. The question was: “What have we got?” His an-
12

swer was: “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Everything 

else in American history is a continuing response to 

that open-ended challenge. This—the struggle to 

keep a republic—is the imperative behind the decisions we have made about the wars that we have 

fought. It is a constant factor in the organization of our 

domestic politics.

Right now, in the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, 

that question is again present. We may have disagreements about the rights of demonstrators to occupy 

public spaces and displace normal street traffic indefinitely, but the issue these people are raising goes to the 

heart of the American grand strategy. They are asking 

whether the 99 percent can consider themselves masters of a country mainly owned by the 1 percent. It is 

not a problem to design a country where 99 percent 

of the people are governed to suit the preferences of 

the remaining 1 percent. That has been done over and 

over again. The point of the American Revolution was 

that it accepted the unique challenge of designing a 

system that could sustain itself the other way around. 

This raises the question of the tactical battles that 

need to be fought and won to ensure America’s grand 

strategy continues to be operational. Let me identify a 

few of the push-pins in that battle map:

• We have to find a way to put politics back into 

proportion with the needs of the country.

• We have to cut the big banks down to size. No

more masters of the universe.

• We have to cut the media empires down to size.

• We have to cut campaign spending down to

size.

• We have to learn how to educate the public for

engaged citizenship.
13

• We have to prepare our citizens with skills 

suited for an exceedingly competitive and essentially remorseless economic world.

• We have to fix our infrastructure. It is more important than buying our beer, our lawn furniture, and our cosmetics; it is even more important than buying computer games. It is more 

important than the totality of all the frivolous 

things that we have wasted resources on for almost 50 years now.

• We have to address climate change.

• We have to restore the concept of social burden

sharing as a working principle in government.

American grand strategy inescapably includes 

moral values. I know that grand strategy, as taught by 

theoreticians, is likely to be reduced to its “scientific 

foundations.” I have been around for a long time now, 

and I do not think it is possible to have an American 

grand strategy that is merely a theoretical construct. 

It needs to be an assertion of a moral principle that 

Americans can get behind and support, no matter 

how difficult that may be, given our diversity.

You might ask: “Where is national defense in this 

expanded concept of national security and grand strategy?” National defense is always fundamental, and it 

depends upon an honest (not a wishful) appraisal of 

the kind of world that we actually live in and of the 

kind of enemies with which we actually deal. But national security is a much larger concept than national 

defense in narrowly defined, physical terms. When 

you are talking about a grand strategy for America, 

national security only begins at the level of physical 

survival but does not end there. It extends to the preservation of our way of life, for ourselves in our own 

time, and then for posterity. 
14

Moreover, especially in our time, grand strategy is 

acquiring even larger dimensions. The physical and 

moral survival of our Nation has become intertwined 

with the physical and moral survival of the civilization in which we exist, and beyond that, it even becomes a question of the survival of the human species. 

What does the idea of a “global” civilization mean? Is 

there really a civilization that is the common property 

of all of us? There is no better starting place for defining the civilizational dimension of grand strategy than 

the Four Freedoms articulated in the Atlantic Charter: 

freedom of speech; freedom of worship; freedom from 

want; and freedom from fear. Win and keep these, and 

everything else you might add to that list follows. Lose 

them, and all else that you might think of that needs to 

be on that list will also be lost.

We should remember that the Four Freedoms were 

not produced in a vacuum: they were produced in 

the middle of a titanic struggle, where the issues of 

national survival and of our ability to shape our own 

future were in doubt. One of the interesting features 

of our particular moment in time is that we can actually accomplish the objectives of the Four Freedoms. 

For the first time in human history, these things are 

not utopian or merely aspirational. They are organizational; they are the ongoing and prospective products 

of technologies that are already here or almost already 

here. They are also responses to an inextinguishable 

will among all peoples: a spirit that is manifesting itself right at this moment in the form of demands in 

every part of the globe for dignity and freedom. 

This takes us back to the starting point: the capacity of the United States itself to manage its own grand 

strategy—a strategy of self-government by a free people in the presence of extremely complex economic, 
15

security, and political issues. Here, in addition to the 

questions posed by substantive solutions, I think you 

are still left with another that is under-recognized: the 

challenge of assuring competent response by the institutions of representative government.

If you look at the systems that we rely upon to 

move government forward, you find that the Constitution itself is as solid a rock as ever. However, the 

institutions and practices that we have built over the 

last several centuries need to be reexamined because 

they are very severely challenged in our time by the 

accelerating velocity and complexity of life. We cannot adequately deal with today’s problems because 

our existing institutions demand that complex challenges be fragmented and oversimplified. We cannot assemble information fast enough and coherently 

enough. We cannot design complex policy options 

to deal with complex issues on the ground. We 

cannot execute such options coherently across 

the government. 

The good news, however, is that we can design 

practical methods to improve the capacity of governance. I, like others here today, am particularly focused on ways to do this. My approaches are called 

Forward Engagement and Anticipatory Governance. I 

have spent a decade developing these methods. These 

ideas, like those developed by my colleagues, begin 

with the idea that we need to—and we can—blend 

long-range foresight into the policy process. 

There is nothing magical about foresight: it is a 

stream of a specific kind of information that can be encouraged and organized. There is no reason why there 

should be a continued gap between those who think 

in long-range terms and those who make policy decisions. While you cannot transform long-range thinkers 
16

into political operatives and you cannot make political 

operatives into long-range thinkers, you can certainly 

find ways to introduce them to each other, and you 

can find ways to cross-influence their perspectives on 

the world. It does not require rocket science to figure 

out how to do it.

We also need to find ways to meld available resources so that they can be effectively brought to bear 

on our goals. The Department of Defense (DoD) has 

been moving ahead for decades to integrate, mesh, 

and make coherent the total effect of the weapons, 

strategies, and means of operations we have at our 

disposal. We need to carry that effort over into the 

civilian branch of government and begin to think in 

terms of what is often called “whole-of-government” 

operations. No matter how the debt “crisis” works 

out, American policy will be operating in straightened circumstances. No agency of government can 

carry out its mission in isolation. Reality demands 

that the use of our resources be orchestrated across 

the full range of government, regardless of formal, 

institutional boundaries. The means exist to improve 

our capacity to operate in this more seamless, more 

networked fashion.

We need to start applying some form of systematic 

feedback to give us the ability to monitor the consequences of the actions we take. We need to identify, 

as part of every policy, what its characteristics in operation are supposed to be and we need a system to 

follow that up with regular assessments, in order to 

generate opportunities to adapt our practices in light 

of experience. We have no such system. Any policy—

even one that might be perfect at the time it is promulgated—inevitably loses traction. We too often learn of 

this only after there has been a disaster or a terrible 
17

loss of some kind, and only then do we try to diagnose 

what went wrong. Typically, what went wrong is that 

we were not auditing the policy for results. 

We can improve the ability of government to think 

long range, to act comprehensively across jurisdictional lines, to keep track of the consequences of its 

actions, and to modify what it does in the light of 

the actual facts. I believe that it is within the power 

of a sitting President—without new law, without 

new appropriations, using customary authorities—

to improve the way the system works in the White 

House, and from there to have an impact on the way 

in which the entire executive branch operates. I have 

vetted these ideas repeatedly in private discussions 

and working groups, drawing upon the expertise of 

seasoned veterans of the policy world and of outside 

experts. This process convinces me that it is feasible 

to upgrade critical systems in the executive branch by 

means of initiatives that can be implemented swiftly 

and efficiently, using existing presidential authorities. 

I also believe it is possible to come up with a parallel form of discourse for the Congress. The form we 

now have is the line-item budget. It is the language 

of the counting room, where the subject is the balance 

sheet. The form of discourse we need is “management 

to mission,” in which the budget can be understood in 

terms of the effects it is supposed to produce, and in 

which the effects are measured across the capacities 

of government, rather than tested for each and every 

one of a myriad number of government activities by 

a correspondingly myriad number of congressional 

oversight committees. That, of course, is a shift of approach that only the Congress can accept for itself, but 

it is do-able: far more a question of political will, than 

of design.
18

Finally, I want to loop back to the question of the 

moral dimension of grand strategy. Recently, Chinese 

authorities decided that one of China’s leading dissidents (and poets) is a tax evader. They presented him 

with an enormous tax bill (about the equivalent of $2.4 

million) and ordered him to pay it within 15 days or 

go back to prison. Imagine the surprise of the security 

apparatus when, within 1 week, 18,829 persons spontaneously contributed money to pay the fine. Funds 

flooded in by mail order, and even after the artist’s 

micro-blog was shut down, people began traveling to 

his studio and throwing money over the walls. We can 

call that Tiananmen, Mod 2.

What this demonstrates, taken in the context of 

what we are seeing in the Middle East and what we 

see practically everywhere else in the world, is that 

the desire for freedom is as irresistible a force as running water. You can block water, but it will find its 

way out. “Realists” and others debate whether democracy is a necessary component of American strategy. I 

think the issue works out as follows: If we decide that 

advocacy and action for freedom is discretionary, and 

even exceptional, then we basically pull away from 

where the world is actually attempting to go. Democracy is an inalienable part of American grand strategy. 

It is, moreover, a winning strategy, providing we do 

not lose our own way. Any grand strategy combines 

both plan and intent. American grand strategy must 

include not only a goal designed for ourselves, but 

also an intent to represent and to work for a future 

that galvanizes the hopes of myriads of others.
19

CHAPTER 3

EDUCATING STRATEGISTS:

SOME DISCOMFORTING CONTRADICTIONS

Dr. Cynthia A. Watson

This analysis is solely that of the author and should not 

be construed as policy of any U.S. Government, Department of 

Defense, or National Defense University agency.

This chapter reflects on the challenges facing those 

engaged in educating U.S. grand strategists today. 

Rather than engage redundantly with the other panelists, this chapter will address the internal professional 

military education (PME) questions that are arguably 

as important as the theoretical ones. Within the PME 

environment, a number of contradictions appear that 

complicate executing the mission of educating strategists. It will identify several contradictions and offer 

some thoughts on how to go about addressing them. 

Many of the points will appear most relevant for students at the senior service schools (war colleges), but 

they are meant as general queries about how PME 

is evolving at all levels, as we cross-feed students to 

achieve whole-of-government ideas. I am not labeling 

the policies as bad or good decisions, but I hope to 

raise people’s awareness of unintended consequences 

in seemingly “free” additions to the programs.

The point here is not to say PME is perfect; it is far 

from such. The intent is to lay out the contradictions 

that exist in the various goals set forth for PME institutions. These are trade-offs, rather than absolutes, in 

the overwhelming majority of cases. As is true with 

any other strategic decision, the ultimate responsibil-
20

ity is to prioritize interests in determining the best advantage in PME for the Nation.

SEVERAL OBSERVATIONS ON PME 

WELL INTO THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD

PME is a luxury that few states have been able to 

afford in the past, yet the ability, the dedication of 

time, and the commitment of money to allow military 

officers (and civilian counterparts, to a much lesser extent1

) to study the lessons of the past, while engaging 

in “safe” risk-taking in a safe environment, is important to the nation-building of a cadre of grand strategists. While world history, as well as U.S. history, is 

replete with examples of officers who did not have the 

privilege of studying the lessons of those who faced 

the task of orchestrating national security strategy, 

“contemporary” strategists such as Generals Dwight 

Eisenhower, George Marshall, and David Petraeus 

each had the opportunity to crystallize thought when 

studying or teaching in a PME assignment.2

 In an era 

of shrinking budgets, the taxpayers and Congress increasingly look at expenditures such as PME as subject to scrutiny, but the leadership of today’s professional military have passed through PME in various 

locations to fine tune their strategic thinking.3

OBSERVATIONS ON PME 

20 YEARS AFTER THE COLD WAR ENDED 

There are a number of competing goals for the 

stakeholders driving PME today. Each admirable 

goal, based on where its supporters sit in the community, confronts similarly admirable alternate priorities 

which, taken together, complicate dramatically the 
21

PME mission. An example is the International Fellows 

(IF) Program, which educates officers from overseas 

in various U.S. PME institutions. The primary goal for 

the Fellows is probably to strengthen the military ties 

between the United States and the relevant other state 

while enhancing strategic relations, but this overarching goal may conflict with classroom priorities. The 

IF students themselves, however, may come to the 

United States for the sake of earning a master’s degree at the senior service college level or to enhance 

their time with their families while learning about the 

United States. 

The contradiction that often arises comes from the 

classroom-driven time constraints that a participatory 

seminar-based academic program confronts when a 

student leaves to travel around the Nation on sponsored trips to learn about the U.S. countryside, culture, 

and economy. While this is not an automatic problem, 

it may create challenges for a student, particularly 

where English is not the native tongue, to divide her 

or his time between the desires of the IF leadership 

and the academic requirements of the college where 

the IF is enrolled. This is not insurmountable but has 

serious implications for the IF student, the U.S. cohort 

in any seminar, and for the instructor trying to craft 

a course most appropriate to a learning environment 

that benefits all.

Another example is the essence of the PME system 

itself. The primary client, thus the funding source, for 

professional military education is the military from 

which the largest component of the student body 

comes. The names Industrial College of the Armed 

Forces, the U.S. Army War College, or the Naval War 

College speak to the historic and foremost focus of the 

institution carrying that name. In any case, the largest 
22

percentage of students comes from all the armed forces in the former case, or the Navy in the latter instance. 

The focus of the curriculum has been overwhelmingly 

tied to that focus.

As student bodies have changed, however, additional sources of students bring their interests to the 

institutions and add to the overall understanding of 

these agency or service roles in the national security 

community.

At the same time, these additional sources of information, most likely, also bring a desire to promote 

or explain their value to the national security process. 

While that is good for basic understanding, the curriculum and time at PME institutions operate from a 

zero-sum reality: The time available for education is 

not going to grow, thus putting more material into the 

time available will result in either a watering down of 

everything or will require the academic leadership to 

jettison something else. This decision is an exceptionally challenging one. The stakeholders of the institutions, those who pay to enroll their students, have an 

expectation that their goals will be met by the curriculum, but as more agencies’ personnel are added to the 

mix of students, those newer sources demand at least 

a small portion of the curriculum. Bureaucracies tend 

to behave in a least common denominator methodology, thus little gets taken out of the curriculum, while 

more is added. This is not catastrophic, but it is definitely a contradictory trend.

A specific instance of this phenomenon is when the 

military services seek to educate on the use of the military tool of statecraft, while building professional understanding and networks. Civilian agency students, 

on the other hand, seek to understand the armed forces, other national security agencies, and various other 
23

players in the national security community but do not 

bring the same deployment capabilities to the table. 

While the overlap between these types of capabilities does occur, there are dramatic gaps between them 

as well. IFs come to learn about the United States, 

learn values, see the Nation, and get to know peers 

from elsewhere. This set of students offers challenges 

in developing curricula that answer the desires and 

needs of the various stakeholders. The benefits may 

be tremendous to all, but for those seeking to fine tune 

their skills exclusively in areas most tied to their traditional field, that is less likely to occur. Broadening 

is often cited as the greatest benefit in PME, which is 

exceptionally useful for today’s volatile environment, 

but this does not always provide the basic information 

transfer process that some expect from PME.

Challenges to national security are much more 

difficult today: as the complexity of the international 

environment increases, rapid fire information technology affects the decisionmaking cycle, and resource 

constraints accelerate. This breathtaking array of complexity argues strongly for an education that broadens 

student views to the widest aperture. 

However, today’s armed forces and other national 

security specialties require career development—

for good, sound reasons—that may conflict with the 

needed breadth of thinking to address the exploding 

variables in the international system or to think across 

the spectrum of national objectives. For example, offering students closer scrutiny of some of the military 

planning processes so they can assume positions on 

joint staffs and in service staffs would be quite irrelevant to the needs of students from, for instance, the 

Agency for International Development or Defense 

Intelligence Agency. 
24

Similarly, a quarter century after passage of the 

Goldwater-Nichols Act, the Services retain fairly different goals from those of civilian agencies regarding 

the value of joint PME. PME was originally a way to 

introduce individual service members to the capabilities of all the Services, while emphasizing the uniqueness of their own service, in order to help understand 

the uses of the national military instrument for any 

specified scenario when the National Command Authority deems it appropriate. The school, where a military student enrolls for a set period of time to pursue a 

curriculum that satisfies the learning objectives set by 

the J-7 as suitable “joint” for a joint duty officer, aims 

to educate that student to fill a designated joint billet 

for her/his next tour. Civilian agencies, on the other 

hand, hunger to understand the Department of Defense (DoD) and strategy but have different objectives 

and missions, such as understanding how to integrate 

the national security policymaking bureaucracy, rather than to accomplish a specific mission.

Some advocates have argued for sending only 

the brightest students to civilian educational institutions, because PME does not produce the most rigorous thinking. This idea is counter to the intent of the 

Goldwater-Nichols Act, which aimed at addressing 

PME as a portion of the reforms to the military. In 

the 1980s, the Congress, especially Representative Ike 

Skelton of Missouri, took a strong interest in pushing 

the PME community to address those deficiencies that 

prevented producing officers like Generals Marshall 

and Eisenhower.4

Additionally, military education in 2011 has multiple masters who have rather different goals in mind. 

The J-7 and the military side find their work governed 

by the Officer Professional Military Education Policy, 
25

which allows PME schools to develop curricula to 

achieve their responsibilities, which, in turn, will allow students to meet requirements under the Goldwater-Nichols Act for joint officer qualification. Congress has further sought additional intellectual rigor 

and inflicted on PME institutions a civilian credentialing process. Agencies providing civilian students 

are seeking to learn about the military and security 

missions in an era of declining funding, thus making 

them ready to step into individual circumstances as a 

better rounded U.S. representative. Generals Petraeus and H. R. McMaster both went to civilian schools 

(Princeton and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, respectively) and have been cited as stating 

that the reason was that these civilian programs give 

creative thinkers a much better experience than 

does PME.5

Promoting traditional civilian graduate programs 

would have three serious challenges that are not true 

in PME institutions. A doctorate, admittedly not currently available at a PME school, would take an officer 

out of his/her career path for a minimum of 3 years.6

However, few officers probably want to engage in the 

doctoral process as they advance in their careers. 

A second issue is that most graduate programs 

would not have the substantive basis to provide adequate instruction on joint professional military education (JPME) topics to qualify a graduate as a joint duty 

officer required under Goldwater-Nichols for promotion to flag officer. Civilian institutions simply have 

no reason to cover those topics in their graduate programs. Third, the often less-than-subtle anti-military 

bias at many civilian institutions would make this a 

less efficacious venture than it sounds. While personal 

bias against the military is one aspect that still exists 
26

widely across the academy, it is manifested clearly 

in the lack of military studies topics, such as military 

history, security studies, and related fields, at U.S. 

graduate schools.

 A tremendous challenge increasingly confronting 

PME is that much of the new technology and many 

new technology-driven pedagogies that may be used 

offer a new direction for educating strategists but 

require additional sustained funding. Increasingly, 

technology-driven solutions to deliver education appeal more to students than physical books or arriving 

at a brick and mortar school. The computers for library 

access or communication are not a single purchase but 

require replenishment on a regular cycle, thus incurring a commitment to information technology (IT) refreshment that becomes expensive over the long term. 

Furthermore, hard copies of anything take longer to 

reach the consumer—faculty and students—and run 

the risk of being outdated more quickly than is true of 

electronic delivery.

However, a commitment to the more environmentally friendly electronic age requires a sustained 

commitment to keeping technology up-to-date, 

which is an expensive commitment. This may make 

PME institutions rethink their priorities to allow for 

this constant, at least annual, refurbishment of the 

technology base.

Additionally, electronic resources for delivering 

PME come up against information assurance levels. 

As students prefer using electronic tablets that they 

may buy themselves, how does the institution prevent 

cyber problems from arising? The DoD has already 

banned “thumb drives” after apparent infiltration of 

the U.S. network by some adversary that may have 

used a thumb drive to gain access; banning students 
27

from hooking up their personal tablets to a network 

will make it much harder to transfer basic administrative information in an educational institution. This 

is not a reason to terminate the program, but it will 

require more time and assets by the PME institutions 

to establish firewalls or duplicative systems to prevent 

cross-contamination.

The academic community is now driven by concerns about assessments and proof of non-cross-contamination, which affect the environment for U.S. 

military education. But that education focuses on the 

measurable academic content of the program, as well 

as on some of the development of personal ties among 

students and their gaining an understanding of basic 

capabilities across the national security community. 

Academic assessment drives faculty to worry about 

whether learning objectives have been achieved and 

how to measure that achievement. 

This has, arguably, brought more rigor to the PME 

classroom but may incur less faculty tolerance for 

the seminar process to develop personal ties among 

students than was true in the past. The pressure to 

measure if students have mastered the learning objectives requires more attention to developing those objectives, crafting the instruments of assessments, and 

taking time to digest the results. This is time taken 

away from faculty for developing courses or refining 

discussion approaches for a particular topic. New faculty especially need time to develop their courses.

THE FACULTY

PME faculty composition may lead to tension; each 

type of faculty brings different goals and understanding of what an institution seeks to accomplish. This 
28

can affect educating strategists, as various instructors 

bring their particular views into the classroom. On 

the one hand, each faculty member brings to the institution her/his specific benefits to the faculty mix. 

Uniformed faculty with tactical/operational/strategic experience worry about how well students understand the military instrument and who they may send 

into the field in hard-headed, fundamental ways, but 

they are not as interested in abstract academic arguments that may not matter outside of the classroom 

or a refereed journal. Agency faculty coming from 

the civilian part of the government also arrive with 

vast tactical/operational/strategic experience but are 

stretched thin by their agencies’ challenges to keep up 

with operational imperatives. When they arrive at a 

PME institution, they often are still doing a bit of their 

home agency work as they challenge students to see 

the trade-offs in the real world challenges ahead. Both 

of these types of faculty are acutely sensitive to the 

on-the-ground experiences of their students and often 

spend countless hours in mentoring students because 

of the faculty-student bonds over various experiences 

in the field, especially in the post-September 11, 2001 

(9/11) environment. 

Title X7

 civilians, hired in greater numbers since 

1989 to increase rigor and strategic thinking, often 

may have had prior government experience. However, some are most interested in teaching and traditional academic research, which drives them toward 

time away from the classroom. While all faculty are 

expected to teach, mentor, and engage in research and 

outreach, too many Title X faculty, who often arrived 

at PME institutions by serving in traditional academic 

institutions where a “publish or perish” atmosphere 

dominates, prefer not to grasp many of the collateral 
29

responsibilities in administration at the college, preferring instead to do research. This attitude creates 

tensions among the faculty. An unstated attitude implies that researchers are “better” faculty than those 

who are not engaged in published research in refereed 

journals. In fact, time spent in research may take away 

from time spent in classroom preparation. Publishing 

is no guarantee that an individual is a better seminar leader because the skills are different. Similarly, 

there are military and agency personnel who have 

engaged in research, but their contributions are too 

often dismissed as not being on the same level as their 

civilian colleagues. This is an easily remedied issue, if 

approached clearly and openly.

More important for any PME institution is the 

problem of Title X faculty doing serious research 

while agency and military faculty are doing the pedestrian work of mentoring, faculty advising, and 

other internal, less glamorous tasks. The fact that Title 

X faculty qualify for sabbaticals is an example. To a 

faculty member who has been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan for several tours, a sabbatical is an appealing but unavailable option, since for the individual, 

sabbaticals are only applicable to Title X faculty who 

have served in their positions for 6 years. This implies 

a second-class status to many uniformed or agency 

faculty at PME schools.

More broadly, the type of activities engaged in by 

the faculty should answer the following questions for 

their employment at PME institutions: First, how do 

these activities affect the education mission? Second, 

are the effects positive or negative? Further, uniformed 

and agency faculty almost always are assigned to a 

PME institution for shorter periods than their Title X 

colleagues; thus, they have significantly less impact 
30

on the curriculum development, even if their practical 

experiences are valuable to the students. Additionally, 

teaching may be harder for these practitioners who 

come to PME institutions because their experiential 

skills are not necessarily appropriate to some teaching 

environments. Yet these individuals add a great deal 

to the unique curriculum of PME institutions; they add 

a vital portion to the educational experience because

they have experience in the field addressing the nuts 

and bolts of hard strategic and operational concerns.

The efficacy of hiring traditional civilian academics 

as opposed to those with considerable practical policy experience is another frequent contradiction confronting PME. Many supporters of hiring traditional, 

“publish or perish” academics note that PME schools, 

under Title X hiring practices only offer renewable, 

nontenured positions instead of the traditional tenure system. Many people argue that this undermines 

the quality of the faculty who come to PME schools, 

since the best quality academics can command tenure, 

high salaries, extensive research time, little time in 

the classroom, and broader power over faculty governance. The PME community has tended to prefer Title 

X regulations, however, because they allow shorter 

term, but renewable, hiring to give the institutions 

greater flexibility, while also preventing the development of “dead wood” that many critics charge is true 

in traditional academic environments. Under existing 

conditions, PME faculty have clear-cut responsibilities 

that prioritize teaching, with some research, outreach, 

and administrative responsibilities. 

Those who argue for hiring traditional academic 

faculty increasingly advocate a PME system that focuses more on publishing in peer-reviewed, mainline 

academic disciplines and journals, thus making the 

faculties look more like those at traditional universi-
31

ties. Opponents argue that the students at PME schools 

are not there for the same research requirements characterizing traditional academe and that the former 

practitioners—whether uniformed or agency—offer far more relevant challenges to the students than 

do abstract research-driven academics. This remains 

a point of tremendous difference between various 

people in the PME field. 

The type of civilian faculty hires have other effects 

as well. A traditional academic develops a curricula 

looking at strategy in a more abstract way rather than 

based on current national security policies or challenges that may be more applicable to students today. The lieutenant colonel who goes to the Air War 

College may benefit from a curriculum with far less 

theory than one that pushes her/him to wrestle with 

a hard-to-solve practical problem about logistics in 

Afghanistan. Academics from traditional backgrounds assume that research helps in the classroom, 

but students are not always certain of any correlation, much less one between research and the quality 

of teaching.

Title Xs also tend toward specialization along academic disciplinary “research” lines rather than across 

the PME institution’s broadest mission, perhaps creating artificial academic boundaries that limit student benefit. An Army Foreign Area Officer would 

be aware of the cultural, political, linguistic, historic, 

economic, and military aspects of the area into which 

she/he is sent because of the relevance to the mission, 

as has become clear in Afghanistan and Iraq. Traditional academic disciplines in the United States today 

rarely allow this sort of interdisciplinary work. The 

rigid commitments to discipline have their advantages for academics but may affect the quality of student 

thinking about responding to international threats.
Specialists who focus on research think in terms of 

their “lanes,” creating a disincentive to focus on broad 

curricula because specialists prefer to teach where 

they have invested time rather than in the core curriculum. This does not mean they cannot broaden their 

work, but they may be reluctant to do so. Additionally, theoretical academics may not be as interested 

in educating students in broad grand strategy questions since they often work in extremely narrow areas 

of inquiry. 

These are two differences between Title X and 

agency/military faculty that may function as PME 

teachers. They are not balanced, since the typically 

longer tenure of Title X faculty gives their ideas greater 

weight in curricula development and other functional 

aspects of PME. This imbalance argues for hiring only 

Title X faculty who have previous, extensive experience as military officers or civilian officials. 

How students fit into the PME system is also an 

important issue. Many students arrive with little, if 

any, idea of where they will go upon completing their 

PME work, but the Services often appear to pay little 

attention to where they will post students upon completion of schooling. Agency students, on the other 

hand, often return to precisely the same jobs they had 

before studying. The lack of systematic assignments 

for military students relates to force needs but begs 

the question of whether this is a good use of assets—

human and fiscal.

A student may “fill a billet” rather than be best 

prepared for a particular school if the service or agency has a slot allocated but unfilled at the beginning 

of a school period. This appears to undermine student interest and occasionally preparation. This also 

may affect the quality of the seminars in which the 

student participates.

32
33

Students’ personal desires based on a need to keep 

children in school or a spouse in a job may trump the 

“logic” of a particular school’s curriculum for a student’s career path. In the all-volunteer force, this reality collides with an ideal vision of handpicking every 

entrant to PME classes around the country. The Services’ desire to educate their officers may affect the 

mix of students in the schools. Increasingly, DoD and 

non-DoD civilians attend the schools with active duty 

personnel. While this trend may increase the civilian 

capacity in national security education, is it diluting 

the objectives of the DoD and the individual Services?

FINAL THOUGHTS

Educating strategists is a zero-sum game: The time 

available is finite and extraordinarily unlikely to increase for fiscal and professional reasons. Taxpayers 

do not want to spend more on having the force in the 

schoolhouse, and the career advancement of someone 

who spends all available time in school may be seriously undermined. Any addition to the curriculum 

leads to watering down of quality or removing something else, which is hard to explain to the affected 

stakeholder. Each and every topic has a fierce advocate who argues passionately for his/her addition to 

the curriculum. Faculty composition, goals, and incentives matter to the schools, to their graduates, and 

to the quality of teaching and research.

PME will continue to generate costs beyond salaries 

and the building maintenance, especially for keeping 

technology on the cutting edge where the DoD tries 

to sustain the highest quality force. No single agreed 

standard exists for achieving the best education for 

strategists, but we likely cannot achieve everything to 
34

the highest level in the time the taxpayer and the Services want to allocate. Educating strategists requires 

prioritizing objectives for PME as much as thinking 

great thoughts.

I do not note any one of these contradictions as a 

reason to terminate PME in the United States. It has inherent value, ranging from students from all agencies 

meeting their peers and the probable decisionmakers 

for the next 2 decades, to finding the best strategic 

thinker on Carl von Clausewitz’s view of leadership. 

PME has many things that make it absolutely the best 

in the world because of the resources the United States 

puts into it.

The purpose of these thoughts is to point out that 

different parts of the U.S. national security community have different aspirations for sending students 

and resources into the PME community. Those aspirations may coincide, or they may be directly in contradiction. Without understanding and stating that these 

differences exist, we are less likely to be effective in 

this whole process in the years ahead at a time when 

the taxpayers expect us to be the best stewards of the 

public expenditures, be they time or money. 

The PME system still works and allows many students to flourish. It is not the same as a traditional 

academic experience, but these students are not traditional, either. Without the opportunities that the various levels of education have, the U.S. national security 

community would be weaker and less useful to the 

Nation. It is not perfect, but it challenges them to open 

their minds and to produce the leadership the Nation and those of various international students in our 

programs need.
35

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3

1. While I will discuss civilians in various places in this chapter, the overwhelming focus is on military education for professional military officers, which falls under DoD as a part of the officer development programs. I am in no way misinterpreting the 

need for civilians to learn more about the military, about strategy, 

or about what are often called whole-of-government solutions to 

national security concerns, but adding the civilian sector of the 

government would make this topic unwieldy for a conference paper except at the most vague level of analysis.

2. General Eisenhower studied and taught simultaneously at 

the Army Industrial College in the mid-1930s; General Marshall 

taught at the U.S. Army War College in the 1920s, as well as at the 

Infantry School at Fort Benning, GA; and General Petraeus studied at Princeton in the 1980s after completing the Command and 

General Staff Officer Course at Fort Leavenworth, KS.

3. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army General 

Martin Dempsey graduated from the National War College, as 

did Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz and the 

Combatant Commanders for Southern, Central, and European 

Commands, General Douglas Fraser, USAF, General James Mattis, USMC, and Admiral James Stavridis, USN, respectively. Vice 

Chief of the Joint Chiefs Admiral James Winnefeld and Chief of 

Staff of the Army General Raymond Odierno graduated from the 

Naval War College. General Carter Ham of the U.S. Africa Command and the Commandant of the Marine Corps General James 

Amos did senior service school studies at the Air War College.

4. In 2007, I presented Representative Skelton with a copy 

of my Military Education (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio, 2007) in 

his office. He thumbed through it and then asked me whether I 

could seriously say that the students produced by the National 

War College could compete intellectually with General Marshall 

or General Eisenhower. I said I believed they could and explained 

why. He gave me a long look and concluded by saying “Well, I 

hope so. We need them.”
36

5. I would argue there are countless counterarguments of officers who excelled at PME and were every bit as creative when 

they returned to the force. General Dempsey, National War College Class of 1996, is a prime example, as is General John Allen, 

USMC (National War College, 1999).

6. An exception to this is an officer pursuing her or his doctorate while serving at a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) unit 

as an instructor at a traditional civilian school. The assignment 

would be probably 3 years, which does take the officer out of the 

operating forces but is not seen by the Services as the same period 

outside of the traditional career path due to the teaching function 

that he/she would engage with cadets, when one teaches at the 

Service academies.

7. Title X refers to the portion of the U.S. Code, in this case 

covering the DoD, that authorizes hiring civilian faculty members 

for PME assignments. The shortening of the concept to Title X is a 

common usage within the military education community.
37

CHAPTER 4

EIGHT MYTHS ABOUT

AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY

Dr. Peter D. Feaver 

Grand strategy appears to be the flavor of the 

month in the strategic community. I have planned or 

been invited to numerous conferences looking at the 

topic, and the debates on this topic are as lively as I 

can remember in a long time. Just recently, I gave a 

talk to a grand strategy conference at National Defense University on the myths that afflict the field.1

MYTH 1: 

THE UNITED STATES CANNOT DO 

GRAND STRATEGY

Many critics claim that the United States is simply 

too disorganized to do strategy on a grand scale. In 

fact, we had a coherent grand strategy during the 19th 

century built around the Monroe Doctrine. We had 

a coherent grand strategy during World War II built 

around winning in Europe first. We had a coherent 

grand strategy during the Cold War built around the 

idea of containment.

MYTH 2: 

THE UNITED STATES LOST THE ABILITY 

TO DO GRAND STRATEGY WHEN THE 

SOVIET UNION DISAPPEARED 

Many critics concede we had a grand strategy 

during the Cold War but claim that we have not had 

one since. This is by far the most prevalent myth, and 
38

some of the very best in the business peddle it. In fact, 

we have had a coherent, bipartisan, and largely successful grand strategy from George H. W. Bush to Bill 

Clinton to George Bush to Barack Obama.

MYTH 3: 

A GRAND STRATEGY HAS TO HAVE 

A 3-SYLLABLE LABEL THAT RHYMES 

WITH “AINMENT”

This gets to the heart of why you get the odd argument that we had a grand strategy during the Cold 

War but we have not since. When critics say that we 

have not had a grand strategy since the end of the 

Cold War, what they really mean is that we have not 

had a label like “containment” that enjoys widespread 

popularity. This is true, but trivial. In fact, since the 

fall of the Soviet Union, a five-pillar grand strategy 

has been clearly discernible.

Pillar I. 

The velvet covered iron fist: The “iron fist” built a 

military stronger than what is needed for near-term 

threats to dissuade a would-be hostile rival from 

achieving peer status. “Velvet” accommodated major 

powers on issues, giving them a larger stake in the 

international distribution of goodies than their military strength would command to dissuade a near-peer 

from starting a hostile rivalry.

Pillar 2. 

Make the world more like us politically by promoting the spread of democracy.
39

Pillar 3. 

Make the world more like us economically by promoting the spread of markets and globalization.

Pillar 4. 

Focus on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 

proliferation to rogue states as the top tier national 

security threat.

Pillar 5 (added by George W. Bush). 

Focus on terrorist networks of global reach inspired by militant Islamist ideologies as another top 

tier national security threat, i.e., equal to WMD in the 

hands of rogue states. The nexus of Pillars 4 and 5 is 

the ne plus ultra threat.

No administration described the strategy in exactly these terms. Every President succumbed to the 

political temptation to produce differentiation and especially to describe one’s own actions as a bold new 

departure from the “failed” efforts of his predecessor. 

Yet, a fair-minded reading of the core governmental white papers on strategy, especially the National 

Security Strategy reports prepared by each administration, as well as the central policy efforts each administration pursued, reveals a broad 20-year pattern 

of continuity.

All post-Cold War Presidents championed the first 

four pillars. The last two Presidents (Bush and Obama) 

adopted the last two pillars. The major grand strategic 

moves of the period derive from one or more of these 
40

pillars: e.g., the outreach to India derives from Pillar 1, 

the invasion of Iraq derives from Pillars 4 and 5, and 

so on.

Obama campaigned as if he was going to make a 

grand strategic innovation by adding a 6th pillar: elevating climate change to be equal to WMD and terrorism. But he chose to do health care instead.

MYTH 4: 

MAYBE WE HAD GRAND STRATEGIES, 

BUT THEY WERE FOLLIES

Some critics say that maybe the United States has 

tried grand strategies, but we are just not good at it. 

In fact, all of the grand strategies I have mentioned 

were largely successful. I defy you to identify a great 

power that has had a better 230+-year run, or a better 100-year run, or a better 50-year run. Maybe we 

could have an interesting debate about whether some 

countries have had a better 20-year run. Perhaps Prussia under Bismarck had a better 20 years, though the 

period afterwards rather took the luster off the earlier achievements. In the era of U.S. sole-superpowerdom, a number of near-great powers have thrived 

by free-riding on the public goods provided by the 

United States.

Now I concede that China has had a better last 3 

years or so than the United States has had. But despite 

the bluff and bluster from Beijing, it is clear that Chinese leaders understand the very daunting challenges 

they face. Betting against America for the medium to 

long run boosts one’s speaker’s fees, but it otherwise 

has not been validated by history.

As great powers go, we have a remarkably good 

track record. Perhaps you will argue we have just 
41

been lucky. I think the capacity to select satisfactory 

grand strategies and to refine those strategies as circumstances dictate is part of the story.

MYTH 5: 

A GRAND STRATEGY ONLY EXISTS IF IT 

COMMANDS SUCH A DOMINANT 

CONSENSUS AS TO END ALL POLITICS 

AT THE WATER’S EDGE

If stopping at the water’s edge means parties do not 

have strong disagreements about foreign policy ends 

and means and do not seek political advantage from 

foreign policy maneuvers, then I do not know of a period when this happened in U.S. history. A large part 

of the confusion about today’s grand strategy is due 

to sloppy historical understanding of the Cold War 

grand strategy. Containment was coherent enough as 

an overarching grand strategy to be recognizably operative from 1947-89. But during that period, that left 

room for deeply divisive debates about:

• The need to defend the Korean peninsula,

• The need to prevent falling dominos in 

Southeast Asia,

• The possibility and desirability of splitting the 

Soviet pact,

• The mix of confrontation and détente,

• The adequacy of arms control, and

• The requirements of nuclear deterrence.

The point is that grand strategies have lots of subordinate debates. We tend to exaggerate the strategic 

consensus during the Cold War and the strategic dissensus during the post-Cold War.
42

MYTH 6: 

A GRAND STRATEGY HAS TO BE 

FORWARD-LOOKING

On the contrary, grand strategies tend to be backward-looking. If generals prepare to fight the last war, 

grand strategists prepare to avoid fighting the last 

war. Thus, containment was designed to confront the 

Soviet Challenge while avoiding another global war 

like World War II. The post-Cold War grand strategy 

has been designed to deal with the challenges we face 

today while avoiding another cold war (i.e., another 

rivalry where our global interests are challenged by 

a hostile peer competitor). Even Bush’s refinement of 

the post-Cold War strategy, elevating the threat posed 

by militant Islamism, had a heavy dollop of backwardlooking “never again” to it.

Of course, any successful grand strategy must also 

address the evolving and future strategic environment. Thus, containment had to adjust to post-colonialism and the Sino-Soviet split. The Bush global war 

on terror (GWOT) was unusually forward-looking, 

with its emphasis on promoting political and economic liberty in the broader Middle East and its willingness to contemplate short-term costs to achieve longterm benefits.

But most grand strategies begin with a look backward before they look forward. To the extent that we 

are starting a fundamental debate about our grand 

strategy today, it is probably out of a desire to avoid 

another GWOT, which is a high cost, high operations 

tempo conflict with a dispersed global footprint.
43

Myth 7: 

A GRAND STRATEGY REQUIRES 

AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT

It may be easier to describe the grand strategy 

when there is an overarching existential threat to 

concentrate the mind. But as the post-Cold War has 

shown, it is possible to have a coherent grand strategy even when the threats are dispersed and less than 

existential.

The Cold War was not a time when everything 

was simple, or when everyone knew priorities, or 

when everyone agreed on the threat. It sure wasn’t “a 

time of great stability and security unlike these really 

dangerous times today”—a curious view that I hear 

most often from students who never lived through the 

Cold War era. But it was a time when the much more 

obvious—and by the late-1950s, possibly existential—

threat posed by the nuclear confrontation overlaid 

on top of a global ideological contest with the Soviet 

Union circumscribed strategic thinking in a way that is 

not the case today. Compared to the Cold War period, 

we have more slack in our security environment, and 

that introduces a certain amount of indeterminacy in 

the strategic debate.

MYTH 8: 

ONLY BIG GRAND STRATEGY SHIFTS MATTER

There is vastly more continuity than change between Obama and his predecessors. As you move 

up the ladder from rhetoric to policy and to strategy, 

the higher the level, the more this is true. But over 

time, the small changes can be significant, like a onedegree shift in the vector of an aircraft carrier over a 

1,000-mile voyage.
44

So the comparatively small changes—small compared to the outsized rhetoric of the 2008 campaign—

could, over time, be quite consequential. Obama has 

made some very consequential and risky bets. If they 

do not pay out, they could force a reconsideration of 

our grand strategy. Indeed, the ferment in the strategic 

community about grand strategy suggests that such a 

reconsideration is well underway.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 4

1. Posted by Peter Feaver on Wednesday, November 23, 

2011, 11:47 AM, on Shadow Government and first delivered at 

the National Defense University Conference entitled “Forging an American Grand Strategy” held in Washington, DC, on 

November 8-9, 2011. 
45

CHAPTER 5

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

APPROACH TO STRATEGY

Dr. Allen S. Miller

This presentation covers the Department of 

Homeland Security (DHS) systems approach to risk 

informing strategy, how risk assessment processes interact with foresight, and how these processes may be 

applied to the development of an American 

grand strategy.

The DHS was created in 2003. At that time, the 

focus of the Department was on preventing terrorist attacks. Since then, the focus has been broadened 

to include natural and accidental hazards. From the 

beginning, DHS was thrust into the world of homeland security strategy development. The first National 

Strategy for Homeland Security and many subsequent 

national and department level documents identified 

risk assessment and risk management as the fundamental approach to addressing the challenges of securing the homeland. The Nation and DHS recognized 

that they could not secure everything, everywhere, all 

the time, and certainly would not be able to provide 

complete security from the vast and diverse set of 

threats and hazards we continually face.

In 2007, DHS created the Office of Risk Management and Analysis (ORMA) and charged that Office 

with developing an integrated approach to homeland 

security risk management. The ORMA immediately 

convened a risk steering committee (RSC) consisting 

of members from across the offices and components of 

DHS. The DHS RSC developed a vision that included 
46

integration across the many organizations that make 

up the homeland security enterprise, integration 

across risk assessments from numerous perspectives, 

and integration across levels of strategies designed to 

manage homeland security risks. Integration of organizations, risk assessments, and risk management 

strategies is recognized as the way to improve and 

provide homeland security in a unified manner.

Organizations with a role, responsibility, or contribution to homeland security include DHS and its 

federal partners, as well as our state, local, territorial, tribal, private sector, and international partners. 

These organizations are viewed as components of a 

system of organizations that make up the homeland 

security enterprise. Furthermore, as with any system, 

it is critical that one understand the relationships, the 

interactions, and the interdependencies among the 

components, such that the enterprise can leverage the 

synergies of the components that make up the system. 

DHS recognized that homeland security was not going to be achieved by any one organization, but by the 

collective unified efforts of many organizations.

Furthermore, organizations in the homeland security enterprise assess homeland security risks from 

multiple and various perspectives. Risk is generally 

defined as a function of likelihood and consequences, 

or a function of threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences of an unwanted outcome resulting from an 

incident, event, or occurrence. Each organization has 

a different role, responsibility, or contribution and 

therefore assesses homeland security risks from different perspectives. In some cases, an organization 

will assess risk from a particular threat or hazard perspective. For example, the DHS Domestic Nuclear Detection Office assesses nuclear and radiological risks 
47

for the purpose of improving our capability to detect 

and report on such activity. In other cases, organizations assess risk from a mission perspective. For example, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 

a federal agency charged with building and supporting the Nation’s emergency management system, assesses risks to inform national preparedness and resilience. In other cases, organizations assess risk from a 

domain perspective. For example, the Transportation 

Security Administration assesses risk in the air domain and the Coast Guard in the maritime domain. 

Lastly, there are times when organizations assess risk 

from a functional perspective. For example, DHS assesses risks associated with security screening and 

domain awareness functions that cut across multiple 

DHS organizations.

In addition to assessing risk, the organizations that 

make up the homeland security enterprise also develop strategies to manage homeland security. Strategies 

in general, either implicitly or explicitly, describe objectives, methods to achieve those objectives, and the 

resources required to implement. In senior service college language, it is: ends, ways, and means. National 

level strategies serve to provide overarching goals 

or objectives for the Nation and provide the context 

for supporting strategies to be developed and implemented by departments, agencies, and their components. For example, there are national level strategies, 

supported by DHS level strategies, further supported 

by DHS cross-component strategies and DHS component strategies. The connectivity across independent 

but complementary strategies facilitates a unified approach to securing the homeland. 
48

There are obviously many combinations of ways 

one can integrate organizations, assessments, and 

strategies. Furthermore, as the organizations and the 

risks we face as a Nation continuously evolve, the 

security strategies must also evolve. Therefore, continuous coordination and collaboration on our independent but supportive assessments and strategies 

to achieve desired and shared objectives is a significant and ongoing challenge for DHS integrated risk 

management (IRM).

How does this DHS view of IRM intersect with 

foresight? All risk assessments and strategies, either 

implicitly or explicitly, include a temporal aspect. 

They may be developed and implemented for shortterm, medium-term, or long-term time horizons. This 

temporal aspect is one intersection between risk assessment and foresight. Risk can be assessed for the 

current environment, as well as for short-term, medium-term, or long-term time horizons. Risk is generally defined as the potential for an unwanted outcome 

resulting from an incident, event, or occurrence, as 

determined by its likelihood and the associated consequences. Foresight is generally defined as the disciplined analysis of alternative futures. Therefore, 

risk assessments on today’s security environment can 

set the foundation from which to conduct a foresight 

analysis to identify potential alternative security futures. Each of those alternative security futures can 

then be further assessed from a risk perspective. Collectively, developing information about today’s risk, 

information about alternative security futures, and 

information about risk associated with those alternative security futures can inform a path forward for an 

organization and the Nation.
49

Another intersection between risk assessment and 

foresight is the area of opportunity analysis. Assessing 

the likelihood of opportunities and the consequences 

of deciding whether to engage in them is another form 

of risk information needed to forge a path forward for 

an organization or the Nation.

The following example demonstrates how the interaction among risk and opportunity assessments, 

foresight, and temporal aspects could interact. One 

could assess the year 2012 to determine the relationships, interactions, interdependencies, and synergies 

to be gained from the organizations in 2012; assess the 

risks we face in 2012; and assess the strategies those organizations have in place to address those risks. Using 

that as a foundation, engage foresight organizations 

to define alternative futures for 2025. The organizations in 2025 may have different relationships, interactions, interdependencies, and synergies. In 2025, we 

may be expecting very different risks and may need a 

very different set of strategies to manage those risks. 

Similar to assessing risks we may face and developing 

strategies to address those risks, we must also assess 

the opportunities we may be given and address strategies to manage those opportunities. An analysis of 

the likelihood of opportunities and an analysis of the 

consequences of engaging or not engaging in the opportunity are as critical as the analysis of the risk.

From an American grand strategy perspective, 

anything the Nation can do to better understand the 

system of interacting organizations and to improve 

the way we assess our risks and opportunities for the 

current security environment, as well as alternative future environments, significantly strengthens the ability of the Nation to function in a unified manner into 

the future. These kinds of analyses and assessments 
50

can provide invaluable information for planning and 

decisionmaking over any time horizon the Nation values. Engaging in analysis to support strategy development helps us learn something about where we have 

been as a Nation, learn something about where we are 

currently as a Nation, learn something about alternatives for the future, and become increasingly anticipatory in the way we govern our Nation and shape the 

world in which we will live.

There are at least three questions worthy of consideration going forward. First, what organization 

should lead, and which organizations should contribute to the development of the next American 

grand strategy? Second, how do we educate more 

people to engage in critical thinking about strategic 

thinking at the national level? Outside of the DoD, 

few have the opportunity for the kind of education 

offered at the National Defense University and the 

other senior service colleges. Third, how can the Nation apply more rigorous analysis to foresight and 

opportunity, similar to what we do for risk and security analysis, and use the resulting information to 

develop strategies that shape the future and facilitate 

anticipatory governance?
51

CHAPTER 6

FORGING GRAND STRATEGY:

THE PRESIDENT’S ROLE

Dr. David M. Abshire

In opening this conference, National Defense University President Vice Admiral Anne Rondeau offered 

a sobering observation: The United States has been 

searching for a grand strategy since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. 

Leading scholars in the field have provided a 

framework through which the rest of us can approach 

this challenge. Leon Fuerth has called for better ways 

to look at long-term strategic planning. Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter has endorsed the idea that such planning 

should produce a grand strategy. Captain Wayne Porter and Colonel Mark Mykleby, associates of former 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, 

have called for a long-term strategic narrative to tell 

the story of our Nation into the future. Our mission 

is to explore potential building blocks and roadmaps 

for this narrative and to consider possible structures 

for such a grand strategy. My contribution to the 

discussion is the application of the lessons of history, particularly to the role of the Chief Executive as 

Grand Strategist. 

The President is empowered by Article II of the 

Constitution as a very powerful commander in chief. 

Article I retains for Congress the right to declare war, 

but war has been declared only five times in American 

history. Despite periodic objections from Congress, 

the President has exercised his power to command 

in over 125 other military actions. But the clear scope 
52

of this power only extends to military strategy. The 

President cannot simply command the acceptance of 

a long-term grand strategy by Congress or the public. 

He must resort to what the late Dean of Presidential 

Historians Richard Neustadt called the “Power of Persuasion.” To become “Grand Strategist in Chief,” the 

President must first become “Persuader in Chief.” It 

is our challenge to persuade the Persuader in Chief 

of the necessity of a long-term grand strategy and to 

offer him a practical pathway to it. Today, that means 

convincing the current President that this long-term 

consensus-building approach can help end the political civil war in Washington.

Arguments against the possibility of developing 

any strategic consensus are based on the mistaken 

belief that our current post-Cold War environment 

lacks the national uniting force of an easily identified 

opponent or cause: an Adolf Hitler, Pearl Harbor, or 

Joseph Stalin. Especially since the elimination of Osama bin Laden, it is common to hear that there is no 

such threat to our Nation today. WRONG. The threat 

is the potential decline of America as a leading global 

power. History makes clear that the seeds of decline 

are always sown within the nation—from Athens and 

Rome through the British Empire and Japanese economic power. American decline will be no different. 

It will be the result of diminishing economic strength 

and competitiveness, not global politics. A strong 

domestic economy is the engine of national success. 

Today, the pistons of our national power are out of 

alignment, and our engine has a serious misfire. If we 

do not fix this, America’s role in the world will wane, 

and the American dream will end. 

For these reasons, I believe the threat to the Nation is as great today as in 1787, 1861, 1941, and at the 
53

dawn of the Cold War. Accepting this urgency, the 

question then is how to convince the Chief Executive, 

as well as Congress, that there can be a consensusbuilding, long-term, bipartisan narrative to lead the 

Nation back to its full potential: domestically sound, 

internationally strong, and globally competitive. 

WHAT IS STRATEGY?

The word strategy is derived from strategos, the 

Greek word for generalship. Webster’s Dictionary says 

strategy is the process of ensuring the enemy is joined 

in combat under advantageous conditions. The Greeks 

understood strategy as the process of using multiple 

stratagems—initiative, agility, flexibility, and especially deception—to upset an opponent’s equilibrium. 

Strategy involves developing, revising, and adapting 

pathways to achieve longer-term goals, while ensuring a reasoned relationship exists between the means 

and the ends. Strategy depends on vision, innovation, 

resiliency, and timing. In contrast to an attrition approach, which is reactive and based on brute force, 

strategy always seeks, through new invention, tactics, 

or mobility, to seize and retain the initiative. Most 

important, strategy is a process to achieve certain 

ends, the opposite of a fixed plan of specific means to 

those ends.

The strategic process is built on three principles 

of classical Greek strategy, all still applicable today. 

The first is Unity of Effort. The second is, as Herodotus put it, Freedom of Action, which offers the chance 

for agility and deception to upset an opponent’s equilibrium. The third is Proportionality. The classic case 

of disproportionality was recounted by Thucydides, 

when, against the advice of Pericles, Athens at-
54

tacked Syracuse, an unnecessary over-extension of 

limited resources. 

Grand strategy is strategy writ large, extended in 

scope, perspective, purpose, and time frame. It is also 

built around three pillars. First, that it actually be a 

strategy rather than just a plan; that it incorporate the 

three core principles and the basic characteristics of 

the strategic process. Second, that it be long-term and 

comprehensive; that it derive from a nation’s character, incorporating any exceptional national qualities, 

and be grounded in the strength of a sound domestic economy where all the economic pistons are firing 

in order. Third, that it be grounded in what Walter 

Lippmann called a Public Philosophy; that it be something all Americans can understand and embrace, and 

in which they can participate. This last characteristic 

makes grand strategy the purview of Presidents. Only 

the President, as Persuader in Chief, can turn a strategic concept into a true public strategy. 

 The ultimate aim of strategy is to shape the environment over the long term rather than being slave 

to the short-term demands of externalities. The ultimate aim of grand strategy must be to do this on a 

national and global basis, to leverage innate strengths 

and resources, to get all our pistons firing together, to 

keep our focus above and beyond the crises we face 

on a daily basis, and thereby to reclaim our mantle of 

global leadership. 

PAST PRESIDENTS AS 

GRAND STRATEGY MAKERS

The question at hand is whether America and an 

American President can create or foster a grand strategy, or as Michael Lind put it so well in The American 
55

Way of Strategy, a way “to defend the American way of 

life by means that do not endanger the American way 

of life.” History says yes, it can be done in the future 

because it has been done in the past. The lessons of the 

Presidents who have been successful grand strategists 

are there to persuade our current and future Presidents of the way ahead.

Our first President, General George Washington, 

understood that being Commander in Chief meant 

being Strategist in Chief as well. Soon after assuming 

office, he laid down a national strategy influenced by 

his Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton. The new 

Republic faced a depression at home and a lack of 

creditworthiness abroad because each individual state 

had issued its own debt to finance the Revolution, and 

some were not honoring their obligations. The new 

administration consolidated state debt and set up the 

first national bank. This emphasis on credit and debt 

management fostered national prosperity and provided a foundation for rapid economic expansion. 

As emphasized in his Farewell Address, Washington also opposed foreign entanglements. President 

James Monroe, with his Secretary of State, future 

President John Quincy Adams, built on this idea with 

the Monroe Doctrine. If Washington had warned that 

we should stay out of Europe, then Monroe warned 

Europeans to stay out of America. 

In effect, Washington and his successors implemented the three principles of classical strategy: unity 

of effort, freedom of action, and strategic proportionality. Further, throughout that formative period, it was 

understood that domestic strength, assured by the national bank, was our strategic foundation. This lasted 

until President Andrew Jackson, virulently anti-debt, 

paid off the national debt, closed the national bank, 

and plunged the country into depression. 
56

Our greatest Commander in Chief, President 

Abraham Lincoln, was a self-taught strategist but 

had what some of us call strategic DNA. After Fort 

Sumter, SC, was fired upon, Lincoln seized the telegraphs and railways and mobilized the resources of 

the Nation. As a candidate, he had been anti-slavery; 

as President, he pivoted, stressing survival of the Republic to keep northern Democrats and border states 

loyal to the Union. When Lincoln found his generals 

unwilling to engage Robert E. Lee, he retreated to the 

Library of Congress to study the classics of strategy 

and military campaigns. He became his own Grand 

Strategist. He held tightly to the principles of unity of 

effort and freedom of action, defying his Cabinet in 

1862 by refusing to fight Great Britain over treachery 

on the high seas. He then executed another strategic 

pivot, capitalizing on victory at Antietam, MD, to announce the Emancipation Proclamation. This upset 

the equilibrium of the Confederacy by undermining 

its alliance with Great Britain. 

Lincoln understood that strategic success requires 

a long view and must be rooted in strategic strength. 

Even in the middle of our greatest war, Lincoln paid 

attention to economic and technological growth, investing in a national railroad, creating what has become the national academies, establishing land-grant 

colleges, and launching the Homestead Act. Finally, 

he understood a national strategy had to be a public

strategy. With a command of the language perhaps 

like none since Shakespeare, Lincoln embraced the 

role of Persuader in Chief. 

Decades after Lincoln’s assassination, a Navy Captain at the Naval War College, mocked by his superiors as a mere “pen and ink sailor,” drafted the first 

consciously conceived grand strategy for the United 
57

States. With his book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon 

History, Alfred T. Mahan won acolytes such as Elihu 

Root, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt for 

his vision of America as an ascendant world power. I 

recently delivered an address on Mahan to the U.S. 

Naval Academy Class of 2012. In his introduction to 

the printed version, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff Mullen noted that the Mahan reform movement was vigorously opposed by senior admirals, but 

because of his followers, it ended up shaping America’s role in the 20th century. 

Pursuing Mahan’s concepts, Theodore Roosevelt 

crafted the first global grand strategy by engaging 

in the Pacific, starting the Panama Canal, increasing 

international trade, and building a world-class navy 

backed by a network of bases. Domestically, he engaged the government as a constructive element in 

our modern economy. Together, these strengths made 

the United States an agile power and allowed the 

American Expeditionary Forces to play the decisive 

role in World War I. The lesson for this conference is 

that ideas have consequences. Powerful ideas that attract acolytes can move a President and the Nation. 

President Franklin Roosevelt read Mahan when he 

was a teenager and then, when serving as Assistant 

Secretary of the Navy, helped apply those theories. 

In 1938, Roosevelt became alarmed about Hitler and 

executed a strategic pivot as dramatic and significant as Lincoln’s in 1862. He told his closest advisor, 

Harry Hopkins, that the threat of Hitler would eventually engulf the still isolationist America and started 

crafting what became the grand strategy for winning 

World War II. 

Unlike Lincoln, who lost Colonel Robert E. Lee to 

the Confederacy, Roosevelt got his man, appointing 
58

General George C. Marshall as Army Chief of Staff. 

To build what he already envisioned as the Arsenal 

of Democracy, Roosevelt pivoted from his “soak the 

rich” campaign rhetoric to recruit Republican business 

leaders who had opposed the New Deal. After receiving a letter from Albert Einstein warning of Hitler’s 

progress on the atomic bomb, Roosevelt asked Dr. 

Vannevar Bush, the great scientist-engineer, to mobilize science, engineering, and medicine. Then, echoing Lincoln’s watershed second inaugural address, 

Roosevelt laid the foundation of international peace 

and cooperation with his Four Freedoms, the Bretton 

Woods system, and the United Nations conference. 

Massive armament production, the development 

of the atomic bomb ahead of Hitler, and an extensive 

network of international cooperation are but the most 

obvious results of these initiatives. We also gained decisive edges in land and sea warfare technologies. At 

the end of the war, the head of the German Navy said it 

had been defeated by American science. As Vannevar 

Bush believed would happen, the benefits of these investments extended far beyond military applications, 

to national growth and prosperity, and across what 

he characterized as “the endless frontier.” Today, we 

seem to have forgotten the lessons of that experience.

Contrary to many scholars, I do not see President 

Harry S. Truman as a grand strategist. Truman became 

an acolyte of George Kennan, but Kennan’s vision of 

“containment” was a strategic concept, not a Mahanlike vision of grand strategy. He offered neither a 

philosophy of leadership nor operational initiatives, 

without which even the best ideas have no legs. As 

Henry Kissinger noted in his recent review of John L. 

should this be Gaddis’s new biography, Kennan knew 

this and struggled with it throughout his life. The 
59

Truman doctrine, the Marshall plan, and the North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance made 

containment functional, but they could not compensate for an ambiguous and incomplete strategic vision. 

Congress tried to address the matter of strategy 

in the National Security Act of 1947, creating the National Security Council (NSC) as a venue for integrating military, economic, and political strategy. Truman 

ignored this effort, rarely convening the council until 

the invasion of South Korea in June 1950. The Korean 

conflict itself may be the best example of the consequences of strategic incoherence. In January, 1950, 

Dean Acheson— otherwise a great Secretary of State— 

defined America’s strategic interest in the Pacific theater in geographic terms instead of as an extension of 

containment. When he did not include South Korea 

within the U.S. “defensive perimeter,” North Korea 

miscalculated and invaded South Korea. North Korea 

was surprised by U.S. intervention and found itself 

in a far more protracted and destructive war than it 

had expected.

When Dwight Eisenhower became President, 

George Marshall advised him to develop a comprehensive, long-term Cold War strategy incorporating 

the Truman doctrine, the Marshall plan, and NATO. 

They agreed that Paul Nitze’s NSC 68 concept, which 

advocated building for a point of maximum danger, 

could not be the basis of the strategy. It would continue the ups and downs of defense spending and 

eventually become unsustainable. Eisenhower’s response was Project Solarium, a competitive exercise 

conducted at the National War College, now the 

National Defense University.
60

Project Solarium featured three teams pursuing 

different strategies to explore various policy options. 

The results led Eisenhower to conclude that sustainable international power requires a strong, sound domestic economy and broad, bipartisan political and 

public support. Project Solarium became the basis for 

Eisenhower’s “New Look,” his strategy for a sustainable approach to winning the Cold War over the “long 

haul” and what I would call America’s most recent 

true grand strategy. 

To execute his New Look strategy, Eisenhower 

organized his NSC Staff with a separate, dedicated 

forward-planning group to look over and across the 

strategic horizon. He also understood the imperative of proportionality. He is the only President to 

articulate clear criteria for foreign interventions, laying down five prerequisites. These were the basis for 

his decision not to assist the French at Dien Bien Phu, 

Vietnam, during the Indo-China crisis of 1954. Not 

one of Eisenhower’s successors has followed either of 

these examples. 

Like George Washington, Eisenhower started with 

fiscal strength, focusing on debts and deficits as critical to national power and influence. As Eisenhower 

emphasized budget cuts, he also emphasized investments. His Interstate Highway Act was a masterpiece 

of investment in both national security (domestic 

mobility in the event of attack) and interstate commerce. Eisenhower hired a presidential science advisor, created the Defense Advanced Research Projects 

Agency, and established the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the United States Information Agency. He sought to produce innovative 

breakthroughs to fuel future growth and international 

competitiveness, as well as bolster national security. 
61

Where Eisenhower fell short was as Persuader in 

Chief. Never a big fan of the “bully pulpit,” Eisenhower was content to let results speak for themselves. 

Toward the end of his Presidency, he was increasingly 

viewed as disengaged and out of touch— assessments 

that eventually, and unfortunately, attached to his 

otherwise successful grand strategy, undermining its 

public support.

In strong contrast, John F. Kennedy entered the 

White House with a sense of urgency, youthfulness, 

and new energy. With a focus on both domestic economic power and international leadership, and soaring rhetoric that inspired the nation’s youth, Kennedy 

had the hallmarks of a grand strategist. He was betrayed by a combination of hubris and inexperience, 

abandoning the NSC system and other elements of 

Eisenhower’s strategic infrastructure, suffering the 

Bay of Pigs debacle, and facing major crises in Berlin, 

Germany, and Cuba. Still, along with being a brilliant 

crisis manager, Kennedy was a serious student of history. In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he ordered his staff to read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns 

of August to better understand the consequences of 

miscalculation. 

Kennedy also recognized the threat of what we 

now know as asymmetric warfare, countering the 

Soviet Union’s aggressive engagement in the Third 

World with an unprecedented commitment to special 

forces, a strategic investment that is still paying dividends. On balance, Kennedy was a shrewd international strategist who, but for his assassination, might 

have crafted a new American grand strategy. Sadly, 

his successor ignored these hard-learned lessons. 

Though a brilliant legislative strategist, Lyndon Johnson squandered his Presidency on a massive conventional war of attrition. 
62

Like Truman, President Richard Nixon is a textbook example of the difference between brilliant strategic vision and innovation and a true national grand 

strategy. Nixon campaigned on getting our forces 

out of Southeast Asia and ending the Vietnam War. 

Henry Kissinger’s extraordinary knowledge of narrative history, along with Nixon’s diplomatic skills and 

mastery of the strategic pivot, combined to produce a 

secret plan to open China, achieve détente with Russia, and isolate North Vietnam, forcing peace negotiations. This approach, coupled with “Vietnamization” 

to reduce the need for U.S. troops, was working by the 

end of Nixon’s first term. Just 2 years later, though, 

Saigon fell, and South Vietnam collapsed. This was 

not the result of bad strategic design, but bad Presidential character. Eisenhower was often quoted as 

saying, “Trust is the coin of the realm.” Without trust, 

a brilliant strategy is worthless. 

President Ronald Reagan was not a strategic intellectual like Eisenhower but, like Franklin Roosevelt, 

could have transformational vision. Transformational 

leaders sense moments and opportunities when a strategic pivot can change the course of history. Washington pivoted by backing the Constitutional Convention. Lincoln pivoted after Antietam and again with 

his second inaugural address. Roosevelt pivoted in 

1938. At the Geneva Summit, after meeting alone with 

him for over an hour, Reagan sized up Soviet General 

Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev as a man in trouble and 

looking for a way out. Reagan’s advisors all thought 

he was naïve, but this was his strategic pivot. It began 

the waltz that ended the Cold War—the culmination 

of Eisenhower’s grand strategy. The NATO alliance of 

democracies prevailed and could rightly claim what 

ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu called perfect victory—winning without ever having to fight. 
63

The follow-up was fully realized as President 

George H. W. Bush and his Secretary of State James 

Baker were able to do the almost impossible—incorporate a united Germany into the Alliance. This set the 

stage for President Bill Clinton, who led the Alliance 

to embrace its former enemies—the newly democratic 

nations of Eastern Europe. But without the uniting 

threat of the Soviet Union, Presidents Bush, Clinton, 

and George W. Bush each failed to develop a comprehensive post-Cold War strategy. For each of them, 

as for President Barack Obama today, preoccupation 

with near-term crises and distractions has precluded 

successful long-term strategy making. 

A NATIONAL GRAND STRATEGY 

FOR THE RENEWAL OF AMERICAN 

LEADERSHIP AND POWER 

Going into the 2000 Presidential election, there 

were two attempts to induce the new president to 

think in terms of a comprehensive national strategy. 

One was the congressionally-funded Hart-Rudman 

Commission. The other was a booklet we produced at 

what was then known as the Center for the Study of 

the Presidency, Comprehensive Strategic Reform: Moving 

From Inherited Cold War Rigidity to Needed Post-Cold War 

Anticipation and Agility. Written a year before September 11, 2001 (9/11), this report noted the weak links 

in domestic security, the stove-piping of the executive 

branch, and the lack of agile means: early warning, 

coalition-building, information sharing, and coherent investment strategy. It called for a President’s 

Strategic Advisory Board, including leaders from 

outside government to help the President look over 

and across the horizon. It also recommended a new 
64

Project Solarium. After President George W. Bush was 

elected, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of 

Defense Donald Rumsfeld took an interest in our report 

and created a liaison with our office to pursue 

these initiatives. 

Those joint efforts ended after 9/11, but our efforts 

have continued. Etched in gold on our conference 

room wall at the renamed Center for the Study of the 

Presidency and Congress is Mark Twain’s famous adage, “History does not repeat itself, but it can rhyme.” 

Our mission is to find the good rhymes in history 

and apply them to meet the toughest challenges facing our Nation. Four years ago, in A Call to Greatness, 

I challenged our next President to “relearn the art of 

strategy.” Our Center built on this in our Strengthening America’s Future Initiative, calling on President 

Obama and the new Congress to initiate a new Project 

Solarium and: 

Develop a ten-year national strategy based on a 

comprehensive assessment and national purpose to 

align all elements of government and the allocation of 

resources.

When President Obama entered office, this country was in the midst of a catastrophic recession, fighting two wars, and facing threats from an increasingly 

hostile and unstable world. As Eisenhower observed, 

when immediate problems require a President’s complete attention, he cannot look over and beyond the 

horizon to the strategic frontier. Nonetheless, I believe President Obama may have some of the strategic DNA that defined our best Presidents. He gave 

an extraordinary speech on the role of commander 

in chief to the Nobel laureates. Emphasizing that do-
65

mestic renewal and international power go hand in 

hand, he has focused on restoring America’s strength 

at home, working to get our economic cylinders firing 

smoothly once again. In a time of budget cuts, Obama 

has pushed increased investment in education, science, and innovation as tools of national power. He 

has quite correctly used the specter of rising foreign 

powers, even the search for a “Sputnik Moment,” to 

justify this integral foundational element of a national 

grand strategy. What he has not yet been able to do 

is put all the pieces together. Devoid of private sector 

experience, Obama has not harnessed the entrepreneurial capabilities of the private sector to rebuild the 

economy. He has not overcome poisonously partisan 

politics. He has not united the Nation around a longterm narrative for the way ahead. 

In the midst of another presidential election, in 

which Obama was re-elected, our Center continued 

the quest to achieve a good rhyme of Eisenhower. We 

are leading a national conversation about the need for 

and key elements of a 10-year consensus-building national strategy. Such a grand strategy would overarch 

two or maybe three Presidents and would be necessarily and consciously bipartisan. We place special 

emphasis on the reform of the broken parts of our 

political process and the rebuilding of our domestic 

capabilities and global competitiveness—the critical 

pistons of national power referred to earlier. 

In looking ahead to the next presidential term and 

the task of restoring an America with no peers, it is 

important to understand the multitude of obstacles 

that any President will face. As an illustration, let 

us consider what I believe is the greatest example of 

multinational grand strategy in history: the alliance 

of democracies that, for more than 60 years, has kept 
66

World War III at bay and has also created the widest 

distribution of freedom and greatest improvement in 

living standards ever seen. NATO was the centerpiece 

and foundation of this strategy, providing both the organizational muscle and the procedural discipline to 

stay focused over time and through an ever-evolving 

environment. At the same time, NATO did not define 

nor limit the underlying strategic goals or vision. Most 

dramatically, in a move that led directly to internal 

strife behind the Iron Curtain and despite the opposition of his foreign policy team, President Gerald Ford 

stepped beyond NATO and backed the Helsinki accords. The point is that our NATO-based strategy had 

key elements any U.S. President will be hard-pressed 

to emulate: the ability to retain popular and political 

support over extended periods and to adapt and renew itself as circumstances require. As Ambassador 

to NATO in the 1980s, I named our official residence 

Truman Hall. It is no small irony that the U.S. President most responsible for the success of this international grand strategy struggled and ultimately failed 

to create an adequate American grand strategy.

Still, some things are clear. In their recent book, 

That Used To Be Us, Thomas L. Friedman and Michael 

Mandelbaum start by remembering how our schools, 

our politics, our economy, and our technology were 

all the envy of the world. In a recent lecture to Phi 

Beta Kappa, I reviewed the American era of heroic 

political leadership when such as General George 

Washington, Speaker of the House and Senator Henry 

Clay, and President Abraham Lincoln on the cusp of 

Reconstruction each led the Nation to higher ground 

through civility, cooperation, and compromise. Not 

long ago, it was considered patriotic to put country 

ahead of person, party, and politics. Today, too many 
67

of our leaders would have us believe such qualities are 

character weaknesses. When Standard & Poors downgrades our national credit rating, in part because of a 

broken system of government and politics, and when 

a failed “super committee” represented a last, best effort at avoiding policy chaos, it is time to reform the 

worn-out system of compartmentalized Washington. 

This has been done before, just not recently. 

Both Presidents Roosevelt overhauled the executive 

branch while in office. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower each utilized commissions chaired by former 

President Herbert Hoover to manage further reform. 

Eventually, nearly 200 recommendations from the 

Hoover commissions were implemented. Most recently, President Nixon turned to industrialist Roy 

Ash to lead a similar effort during his first term, but 

Watergate stopped what would have been a radical 

and much needed bottom-to-top reorganization of the 

executive branch.

Congress has also reformed itself. Bipartisan, bicameral efforts produced the Legislative Reorganization Acts of 1946 and 1970, strengthening Congress 

in the face of the vastly enlarged executive branch. A 

major achievement of the first act was the creation of 

the Joint Atomic Energy Committee. This effort overcame parochial jurisdictional battles and equipped 

Congress to deal directly with the emerging threat of a 

nuclear-armed Soviet Union. A major challenge today 

is the threat of cyber warfare: many experts believe 

a coordinated cyber attack could bring the Nation to 

a standstill. This similar threat demands a similar response: a joint cyber or joint intelligence committee 

with broad powers would force a compartmentalized 

executive branch to coordinate efforts and a decentralized private sector to become more collaborative.
68

As Persuader in Chief, the President must lead this 

effort personally. In view of the crises we face in governance, President Obama should pledge to carry out 

an overall reform of the executive branch in his second term and prepare the way for his successor to do 

so if this is not accomplished. Not only will a pledge 

like this push Congress to reform its own organization and structure, it will push the President’s Republican opponent to respond in kind and thereby change 

the terms of political debate. While the details of any 

specific reform proposal will inevitably be a point of 

partisan difference, the imperative of systemic reform 

itself should not be. The one thing both parties agree 

on is that Washington is not working; reform is the 

only answer. It is the prerequisite to any meaningful 

new grand strategy. By setting explicit expectations 

that this can, will, and must happen soon, regardless 

of partisan control of the House, Senate, or Presidency, the President can create the environment of civility, cooperation, and compromise that is necessary for 

it to be able to happen.

CONCLUSIONS

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta properly says that 

“Our job is not to accept destiny; our job is to create 

destiny.” The role of grand strategy is to shape and 

control the strategic environment. In the face of a dangerous and out-of-control world, grand strategy is 

the only way to rise above the noise created by crisis 

after crisis and achieve the promise of our 

national narrative. 

History shows that national grand strategy for 

the United States can only succeed when grounded 

in domestic strength and embraced by the American 
69

people. History also shows that this requires direct 

and active presidential leadership. America faces a 

historic choice: national renewal or national decline. 

This President and his successor must commit themselves to developing a public consensus on a grand 

strategy for national renewal, a 10-year strategy that 

rises above partisan interests and can be continued 

and completed by their successor as well, regardless 

of party affiliation. Only by pursuing such a path can 

America meet its current challenges and rise to new 

heights. If our President cannot bridge the partisan divide and forge a public strategy that starts with getting 

our economic engine firing on all cylinders again, our 

weakened Nation will be choosing decline by default. 

America’s strategic leadership in the world is not 

guaranteed. It is something tenuous and precious, constantly vulnerable. We need presidential leadership, 

in coordination with Congress, to hone the national 

traits and skills exemplified by the Founding Fathers 

and to follow Lincoln’s injunction to “think anew and 

act anew.” If we fail to preserve what Lincoln called 

the “last best hope of earth,” history, as he also noted, 

will not forgive us.

71

CHAPTER 7

GRAND STRATEGY AND 

HUMAN THINKING

Evan M. H. Faber

Special thanks to Sheila Ronis for organizing a great conference and for inviting me to speak, and special thanks to my boss 

and mentor, Leon Fuerth, who has influenced all of my own ideas, 

but whose ideas I do not represent as a speaker on this panel.

I have a hypothesis that personality plays an under-considered but crucial role in the way that “grand 

strategy” is viewed as a concept and how it is produced and used in practice. This hypothesis is based 

particularly on work being done at the Institute for 

Alternative Futures, an organization that takes a psychology and values-based approach to thinking about 

the future. They use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a model that—while not at all perfect—is 

useful for assessing personal learning style and preference. For example, of the MBTI types, iNtuitivePerceiving (N-P) preferences are often paired, as are 

Sensing-Judging (S-J) preferences.

• N-P types are generally more comfortable with

uncertainty and surprise as permanent features 

of the world. They are generally less comfortable handling measured data and more interested in the big picture that emerges from it. 

N-P types think more naturally, think in terms 

of systems, and probably prefer better question-asking to finding concrete answers.

• S-J types, rather, are generally most comfortable

with what can be measured and prefer to focus 

on “the thing itself.” Concerned with solving 
72

the problem at hand, S-J types are likely to see 

the future more or less as a linear extrapolation 

of the present, with less interest in questioning assumptions and more interest in what is 

knowable and doable.

This contrast is obviously very general: it certainly 

does not apply uniformly, there are blends of these 

kinds of preferences, and this is not a judgment about 

which way of thinking is better. This is an observation about preference, style of thinking, and people’s 

comfort with different types of analysis. I would venture to guess that the majority of people in this audience fall closer to the N-P type. I would also guess that 

many of the people that rise to the ranks of top leadership are closer to S-J types, and they rise because of 

their natural talent for high performance at the tactical 

and operational level, where N-P types are less likely 

to distinguish themselves. That means that the people 

responsible for grand strategy are people whose style 

is detail focused and evidence oriented. Consequently, having risen to a position where systems-thinking 

is needed, senior leaders are likely to default to thinking tactically, since they are not innately comfortable 

thinking in terms of uncertainty, surprise, adaptation, 

and complex systems in general. That does not mean 

they are not able; it means it does not come naturally.

Grand strategy demands foresight, which Fuerth 

defines as the disciplined analysis of alternative futures (and I would add, of hypothetical future contingencies). That means our calling for an American 

grand strategy is essentially expecting people who are 

not naturally inclined to think strategically about hypotheticals to make it their regular practice, at a point 

in their career where their honed style has served 
73

them very well. Therefore, for those of us here who believe the United States does not have but needs grand 

strategy: we need to be able to articulate the case for 

this kind of thinking to people who are not naturally 

wired with the instincts of a grand strategist. Not everyone who thinks innately like a grand strategist can 

rise to the level of a grand strategist, and we cannot 

sit in the ivory tower yelling that we need grand strategy to people who do not innately operate in this way 

of thinking. Again, that is not a value judgment, it is 

an observation about human personality backed up 

by research.

We need to find new creative ways of communicating the need and the utility of foresight and strategy to 

those who are concerned with the day-to-day events. 

New media and advanced information technology 

(IT) is important for this. Jerry Glenn– another mentor 

of mine—spoke earlier in the conference about collective intelligence. The ability to link brains, electronic 

systems, and software to achieve collective intelligence is doable with the technology we have today, 

and it should be a priority. Instead of watching and 

reacting as technology evolves, we should actively be 

shaping it for strategic utility: not just for making our 

lives more comfortable and convenient, but to make 

knowledge more useful to decisionmakers. Advanced 

IT for collective intelligence has the potential to democratize participation in the development of grand 

strategy by enabling us to organize and harmonize 

information and perspectives; improve our capacity 

for disciplined foresight and planning, as well as feedback for learning from results; and therefore also to 

enhance our ability as individuals and collectives to 

behave strategically toward achieving goals. The form 

that technology takes will determine our strategic ca-
74

pacities. We should be guiding development of these 

tools to expand organizational bandwidth, improve 

decisionmaking, and visualize complexity for all types 

of learners and operators. 

Enhancing our government organizations means 

not just incorporating a long view, but a lateral view 

to watch what is developing and to gauge the approaching impact; to synchronize timing, synchronize 

investments, and continuously consider implications 

of oncoming events. There is so much happening at 

once, and the bandwidth of our organizations is too 

narrow. We need tools that expand the capacities of 

our organizations to be able to act intelligently and 

strategically, and to organize effectively. That is the 

difference between “strategy” and what Fuerth calls 

“strategic behavior.” If national grand strategy is a 

top-level activity, then the job of civil society and government bureaucrats cannot be to lock-step march in 

support of a grand strategy. Strategy needs continuous, active participation. It needs to be taking place in 

the minds of the people who will execute it at all levels. It is shocking that the people who design strategy 

for our government are disconnected from the people 

who run budgets and control the funding streams, 

all of whom are disconnected from those who implement the strategy. Everyone needs to be involved in 

the creative process of grand strategy. We are human. 

When our ego is not engaged, we turn passive. To this 

end, a “strategic narrative” as proposed by “Mr. Y” 

is useful as scaffolding around which to synchronize 

strategic behavior.

I’ll close with a comment on “grand strategy.” It is 

possible that the idea of “grand strategy” is actually 

incompatible with complexity, uncertainty, and surprise. Grand strategy connotes something “static,” the 
75

production of a large document by a group of people 

charged with strategy. Suppose you do a large 2-year 

grand strategy exercise and complete it in, say, December 2010. “Here is our view of the world and our 

grand strategy,” and there it is for everyone to reference. Then in January 2011, you have the Arab Spring, 

which changes everything. What are you supposed to 

do? Are you supposed to chuck the whole thing and 

commence a brand new 2-year grand strategy exercise? 

That seems like wasted effort, especially in a world 

where surprise will be the norm for the foreseeable future (meaning more wild cards like the Arab Spring). 

The point is that “uncertainty” and “complexity” have 

profound implications for what grand strategy is in 

form, not just substance. Grand strategy itself needs 

to be dynamic. It needs to be comprised of the requisite variety of potential events and adaptations in 

its form—literally its format—not just in its substance. 

We have tools for this kind of format—perhaps like a 

wiki or a Web page. Grand strategy needs to be used

every day rather than published in a book that gets 

put on a shelf and occasionally referenced or largely 

ignored. You cannot produce dynamic strategy using 

a static strategic document, and we do not have to.

77

CHAPTER 8

DESIGNING THE U.S. PRESIDENT’S ABILITY 

TO MAKE STRATEGY

Dr. Robert B. Polk

The year is 2018, and the National Well-Being Act 

passed by Congress 6 years earlier has already established the new National Planning and Execution Management System. On this day, U.S. President Jennifer 

Landon prepares for counsel on a brewing international situation. The crisis centers around the country 

of Pacifica. From President Landon: 

I entered the Think Room of the National Assessment, 

Visioning, and Integration Center (NAVIC) with my 

accompanying National Security Staff (NSS) staff and 

Cabinet leaders. We settled in for the deliberation 

experience orchestrated by the White House Chief of 

Staff [CofS]. The NAVIC had its work cut out for it. 

By the end of the 90-minute session, the NSS staff, key 

Cabinet members, and assisting NAVIC professionals 

would present all the essential fused aspects of the environment affecting Pacifica. Here I would learn the 

potential for success or failure. 

We used the now venerated ends, ways, means, thinking, and doing framework enshrined in National Planning 

and Execution Pub 1, version 2.0 to communicate our 

thoughts. To be clear, the situation in Pacifica was only 

one of 85 high priority issue areas managed by the 

NAVIC across the five geographical knowledge bins 

of this framework. These included the dimensions of 

space, the globe, regions, countries, and the United 

States. I was intimately familiar with this framework, 

as the reports I received daily from the White House 

CofS and my Cabinet were always broken down into 
78

these same categories. If an issue transcended geographical dimensions, we simply binned them in the 

next higher concentric frame to track.

Consequently, as I sat in my “captain’s chair,” I could 

ask very penetrating questions about Pacifica upon 

the briefing’s conclusion. Because my staff integrated 

the resource management arm of my executive branch 

with congressional oversight councils through the 

NAVIC, I could get a strong sense of what I had at my 

disposal to affect the Pacifica situation. 

The NAVIC’s risk assessment and gaming of the NSS 

preliminary recommendations on Pacifica gave me a 

good feel for the complexities and potential trade-offs. 

The NAVIC displayed all this visually, while beaming 

the conversation in real-time to participants around 

the country in 3-D with surround sound quality. 

I recognized the impact of my options clearly from 

the presentation experience led by the Visioning Team. 

After my staff and I took our multisensory headsets 

off, we clearly understood in the most visceral, fourdimensional way that U.S presence on the ground in 

Pacifica would change lives. 

This story offers only a glimpse into a system 

prototype for strategy making described in my book, 

The Thinking and Doing of National Security—A Proposal for the President. Yet, prototypes are—by definition—unfinished. With collaboration, other solutions 

will emerge. 

Before we arrive at the details of my proposal, I 

would like to present a select group of expert thoughts 

that relate to our eventual destination. These include 

ideas on grand strategy from Professor Russell L. 

Meade; research related to the human brain as reported by Rebecca Costa in her new book, The Watchman’s 
79

Rattle; and, finally, the work of authors J. Liedtka and 

T. Ogilvie on design thinking. 

MEADE

My focus on the mechanisms of strategy making 

seems rather prudent if you join in Meade’s assertion 

that we already have a U.S. grand strategy that works. 

He describes several components of what he calls 

America’s existing “strategy to dominate the world.” 

First, the United States has established and maintained 

an open society at home where everyone is welcome, 

especially his or her ideas. Second, the United States 

took, “the show on the road” and aggressively engaged with the rest of the world. Third, with its new 

friends, the United States bought, traded, and grew 

rich. Fourth, the United States has developed and 

maintained a geopolitical strategy and vision to match 

this open economic vision (Meade, 2009).

According to Meade, this global geopolitical strategy ushered in our now default balance of power 

paradigm. This contributed to a self-beneficial world 

order where all societies are open to engage and trade 

with the United States and each other. Such a world 

order is one in which all global participants could 

get rich and happy as long as everyone played by the 

same rules. The hope is and remains that intertwined 

interests reduce the will for conflict. 

According to Meade, the United States rejected 

the Lighthouse State, where the Bismarck-like figure 

stands on his pillar and thinks great thoughts in a 

complicated game of chess with other great figures in 

other lands. Instead, we evolved into a Mirror State, 

where the political process reflects the various different voices, coalitions, and interests on board that com-
80

bine to vector the ship of state. There are no divine 

thinkers sitting in tall towers. Rather, the state and 

its people look at history and the patterns of its actions to put various corrective pressures on the system 

over time. The summation of these vectors determines 

our destiny. 

At the very least, Meade correctly points out that 

we simply do not keep the ship of state intact long 

enough to make really grand strategy of generational significance. Instead, we are joined on a ship that 

lurches from side to side, never quite going where we 

want it to for very long (Meade, 2009) and . . . it has not 

run aground, yet. I think our future President Jennifer 

Landon would likely agree with this overall characterization even as she began to explore new ways of 

evolving her strategies in 2018.

COSTA

Costa, in her 2010 book, The Watchman’s Rattle, 

adds color to this conversation. She suggests that our 

greatest problems are not political; they are biological. 

Specifically, she reports that science and anthropology converge to prove that the human brain has not 

evolved to keep up with human progress. Complexity has outpaced the brain’s ability to process it. This 

causes it to hit what she terms a cognitive threshold, 

defined as the difference between the slow speed at 

which the human brain can evolve and the rapid rate 

at which complexity grows (Costa, 2010, p. 188). She 

argues that all fallen human civilizations suffered in 

part from this very phenomenon.

Costa answers the so-what of her research by contending that, when societies reach a collective cognitive threshold, they begin a natural coping process. 
81

When individual humans no longer have the time or 

ability to ascertain facts, they begin to substitute what 

they know with beliefs. Unchallenged, this can lead 

to the creation of false memes (beliefs passed unsubstantiated to the next generation) encouraged by false 

prophets. Some memes grow into super memes and 

affect the very fabric of whole societies. 

Costa goes on to report that the United States is 

entering such a societal cognitive threshold. Who can 

argue that the U.S. Congress is not overwhelmed with 

complexity? How can a single U.S. President factcheck the myriad of important elements in his/her decisionmaking? Who among us understands how the 

global economy works and what to do about it when it 

does not? Does anyone have a handle on the intersection of religion and politics anymore? These are just a 

few opportunities where unsubstantiated beliefs can 

easily creep into the conversation and create nonevidenced base norms. 

Costa argues that the following super memes are 

tearing at the fabric of America today: 1) Irrational 

opposition to each other and to evidence-based argument. 2) The personalization of blame as the scapegoat 

for compromise. 3) Counterfeit correlations where 

causation is no longer the standard. Simple correlation, however falsely conceived, suffices. 4) Silo thinking, where we find it too difficult to see the world as 

complex and intertwined, leading to solutions that often fall far short of being holistic. 5) Extreme economics where short-term profit is the moral equivalent of 

the doing what is right even if the long-term negative 

consequences may be obvious (Costa, 2010, p. 175).

These super memes, if they do exist, can cloud or even 

block any strategic approaches to thinking and doing.
82

Costa gives hope when she reports how there may 

be some approaches that can help us break away and 

move beyond this cognitive threshold. Most importantly, she suggests the increased and deliberate use 

of insight as a product of left and right brain synthesis. She offers evidence from scientific research on the 

frontal cortex that supports an emerging ability to call 

up insight on demand. Here, Costa champions Dr. 

Michael Merzenich’s research on brain fitness, where 

even simple warm up exercises in the brain can measurably lead to such insight (Merzenich, n.d.). 

As a short aside for those of us who call ourselves 

thinkers, Costa also reports that when viewing brain 

activity on a computer screen, short-term thinking in 

humans causes the display to light up like a Christmas 

tree. However, when given tasks of a long-term nature, that same human brain barely generates a glimmer! Controlled for other variables, the implication is 

that the brain has not been rewarded by evolution for 

long-term thinking. Is it any wonder, then, that making strategy is hard? Costa asserts that some evidence 

even suggests that our brain actively tries to suppress 

long-term thinking, in evolutionary terms, as superfluous and even harmful to our basic survival needs. 

As if the challenge to long-term thinking could not 

get worse, Costa also notes that: 

When business principles prevail, there is enormous 

pressure for individuals to respond to complex problems with great speed and efficiency. Quick, decisive 

action is prized over slower, thoughtful methodical 

examination. . . . 
83

But then she adds: 

Never mind that [our] leaders possess the same biological apparatus we do and, therefore, are overwhelmed 

by complexity in the same way we are in our daily 

lives (Costa, 2010, p. 172). 

Isn’t it time we take a closer look at the biological 

aspects of our human capacity in making strategy?

In the storyline I offered earlier, President Landon 

understood these limitations all too well and in recognition of this, she immersed herself in the deliberation experience to gain advantages over such natural 

limitations in decisionmaking not available to past 

leaders. She praised and embraced the new tools that 

enhance her understanding and improve her participation in strategy making. Finally, she inspired others 

to do the same. 

Costa concludes with a final note on how she 

would mitigate against these biological limitations 

and long-held super memes. Reminding us that complexity theory states that there are more wrong solutions than right ones, she suggests that the only way 

to get at these fewer right solutions is by doing something—anything. Some might say in more technical 

terms, prototyping using high failure rate modeling. 

The global design thinking community espouses the 

same and picks up where Costa leaves off.

LIEDTKA AND OGILVIE

According to some, design thinkers are unique 

in their ability to produce novel and unexpected solutions. They appear to tolerate uncertainty, work 

with incomplete information, and apply imagina-
84

tion to practical problems using drawings and other 

modeling media as means to problem solving (“Art 

of Design_v2.pdf,” n.d.). In their book, Designing for 

Growth, Liedtka and Ogilvie support this discussion 

by offering a testimony from a design-thinking veteran that there are two types of problems—mysteries 

and puzzles. 

Puzzles are problems with an answer. Mysteries 

are situations where there may not even exist a discernable problem, let alone a solution (Liedtka and 

Ogilvie, 2011, p. 13). The latter situation is where design thinking distinguishes itself from analysis. It uses 

visualization, pursues novelty and emotional context, 

and relies on iterative movement between abstract and 

practical. It values co-creation with users and prototyping where the object is to learn not launch (Liedtka 

and Ogilvie, 2011, p. 12).

So why isn’t design thinking a more popularly 

employed technique in the U.S. Government today? 

Well, as my colleague, T. X. Hammes from the National Defense University, reminded me recently, the 

challenge of design thinking is in how to translate the 

iterative process of design into the linear processes of 

bureaucracy. If anyone could answer this question, it 

would be the team of Liedtka and Ogilvie. 

According to Liedtka and Ogilvie, design thinking 

can be made practical by applying the following approaches. First, one should explore current reality and 

frame the challenge (or determining What is). Second, 

one should generate new possibilities for growth (or 

determining What if). Third, one should test assumptions, refine and prototype the concept (or determining What wows). Finally, one should enroll customers 

to shape it into something we can execute (or determining What works). There are a number of sub-steps 
85

and techniques embedded in each of these but not discussed here (Liedtka and Ogilvie, 2011, p. 21).

None of this is foolproof, of course, and Liedtka 

and Ogilvie point out that failure to achieve results 

from design thinking does happen. When it happens, 

it usually revolves around an inability to connect the 

concept to an unmet need. Leaders fail to get the results prioritized amid the sea of ideas and priorities. 

They fail to prototype or visualize the results so others understand it, and they fail to get live customers 

involved in shaping the results from the beginning 

(Liedtka and Ogilvie, 2011, p. 178).

One of the most profound aspects of design thinking is its ability “to bypass the culture of debate and 

help managers learn through action in the marketplace.” (Liedtka and Ogilvie, 2011, p. 167) Most of us 

would also intuitively agree with Liedtka and Ogilvie’s claim that:

. . . the greatest barriers to growth . . . [are an] organization’s internal army of designated doubters exercising their veto power before you even have the chance 

to try (Liedtka and Ogilvie, 2011, p. 184). 

So one way to help ease design thinking into an 

organization is never to call it design thinking. Just do 

the work and call it whatever you like and, think small 

. . . at first. Do not push all the ideas at once.

Finally, Liedtka and Ogilvie provide a great list of 

attributes for a successful design team. Ask yourself 

if these attributes would be found in most of today’s 

government staffs and leaders. Design teams should 

have a diversity of skills. They need to listen. They 

need to find the appropriate framing and create the 

corresponding strategy, followed by robust analysis. 
86

They use visualization and storytelling to create and 

communicate. They should check their egos at the 

door. Teams should co-locate often in a flexible, collaborative physical space. The team should accept a 

shared purpose. Finally, a successful design team 

must have top cover from their bosses (Liedtka and 

Ogilvie, 2011, p. 187). I do not know about you, but 

I would like to be a part of such a team, and these 

are the attributes I would want in a national strategymaking organization.

CONCLUSION

Now I want to suggest my own take on how we 

could roll all these perspectives into a successful system for the thinking and doing in the U.S. Government. I call my approach the National Planning and 

Execution Management System. I created it as the 

backdrop to the day-in-the-life story of President Jennifer Landon. Its components consist of the interaction 

among the President, his/her NSS, the 50 governors, 

the U.S. departments, as well as the public at large and 

the Congress. 

My system begins with framing any conversation 

on strategy making into five concentric bins of knowledge. Any issue that could affect the viability and vitality of the Nation will find a home in one of these 

bins. These bins are: space, the globe, regions, countries, and internal U.S. matters. This common framework allows all participants to share their narratives 

about the future in ways that promote fast learning. 

This also sets the foundation for actionable participation in generating new ideas.

I realize that, at first glance, such a framework 

seems to defy modern reality that most of our prob-
87

lems today—from global warming to health concerns 

and the economy—abide by no boundaries. Yet, every transboundary issue imaginable can be binned 

in one of these categories. Each of these broad categories is further sub-organized into the time frames 

of near-, mid-, and long-term. The intersections of 

these time frames and geographical knowledge bins 

contain the various national strategies for linking 

the ways and means to all stated ends for every issue and area of concern. This thinking and doing 

framework would serve as a template across all the 

participants in the National Planning and Execution 

Management System.

The linchpin of this system would be a newly established capability called the NAVIC, housed within the Executive Office of the President (EOP). The 

NAVIC would never make policy but instead provide 

visioning, assessment, and strategy-making services up to the NSS and Congress. The NAVIC would 

provide these same services to the governors and the 

U.S. Cabinet. It would integrate all these services and 

synthesize the feedback and lessons learned into new 

approaches for the President and the NSS to consider. 

Finally, selected congressional entities would have an 

unprecedented access high and early in the executive 

processes within the NAVIC. These are just a few of 

the functions presently conceived.

The NAVIC would serve the NSS as its primary 

client, and it is from the NSS that the NAVIC would 

get its priorities. These services would free the already 

beleaguered NSS to stay focused on its primary duties of advising the President on the national ends (or 

policy), while leaving the NAVIC and the Cabinet to 

devise and integrate the ways and means.
88

The NAVIC would deploy state-of-the-art facilities and cutting edge visual decision support aids. It 

would provide continuity on matters across the spectrum of national organizations with its common informational connectivity across the breadth of actors. 

The mirrored capabilities positioned in the 50 states 

would also provide the President multiple redundant 

command center capabilities. 

The NAVIC would emphasize the integration of 

both thinking and doing under one roof, supported 

by a modest staff working for six functional directors 

confirmed by the Senate. Members would be appointed for 15-year tours reporting to one presidentially 

appointed Executive Director. The Executive Director would also serve as the deputy to the President’s 

Chief of Staff to ensure the overall system serves at the 

pleasure of the President.

So this is the system that President Landon inherited to cohere the full breadth and depth of the U.S. 

Government more effectively in making strategy. She 

used this to mitigate threats and to take advantage of 

opportunities that affected the viability and vitality of 

the Nation in the near-, mid-, and long-term. Her system included the human and organizational dimensions of thinking and doing as equal sides of the same 

coin. This helped her develop the visions through the 

human-centered process of design leading to strategy that matched appropriate ways and means to her 

designated ends. 

I want this chapter to serve as a beginning. The 

ideas and details expressed in my book could be used 

as a starting prototype. Think of it as throwing the 

proverbial pasta on the wall to see what sticks. I am 

quite certain Steve Jobs didn’t hand us the iPhone on 

his first try. Instead, his team must have prototyped 
89

dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times before going to a 

pilot and only then to a launch. Washington is awash 

in studies and conferences, but these will only carry us 

so far. My dream is to move our thinking into action 

through iterative prototyping. We should follow the 

great design company IDEO’s creed to fail faster to 

succeed sooner. I hope this chapter and my book may 

spark others to take up this challenge.

REFERENCES

ArtofDesign_v2.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from usacac.army.mil/

cac2/CGSC/events/sams/ArtofDesign_v2.pdf.

Costa, R. (2010). The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out 

of Extinction (First Ed., First Printing.). New York: Vanguard Press.

Liedtka, J., & T. Ogilvie. (2011). Designing for Growth: A 

Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers. New York: Columbia 

University Press.

Merzenich, M. (n.d.). Dr. Michael Merzenich’s Brain Fitness 

Program: “You Can Rejuvenate Your Memory And Your Abilities To Learn” DeansGuide. Retrieved October 27, 2011, from 

deansguide.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/dr-michael-merzenichs-brainfitness-program-you-can-rejuvenate-your-memory-and-your-abilitiesto-learn/.

Polk, R. B. (2010). The “Thinking and Doing” of National Security: 

A Proposal for the President. Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing.

Meade, Russell L. (December 10, 2009). U.S. Grand Strategy—from Theory to Practice. Rethinking Seminar Series. Retrieved 

October 27, 2011.

91

CHAPTER 9

THE NEED FOR GRAND STRATEGY 

DEVELOPMENT: LESSONS FROM THE PROJECT 

ON NATIONAL SECURITY REFORM 

AND SINGAPORE

Dr. Sheila R. Ronis

INTRODUCTION

The Vision Working Group (VWG) of the Project 

on National Security Reform (PNSR) recommended 

the establishment of a Center for Strategic Analysis 

and Assessment (CSAA) in its July 2010 Report and 

Scenarios (Ronis, 2010). Over a 5-year period of study, 

the PNSR VWG established that the United States 

needs a place, a process, and a set of capabilities in 

the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to develop 

and test grand strategies for the Nation, particularly 

to support the national security system.

The National Security Strategy is the best representation of a comprehensive discussion of where the 

country is going and what it wants to accomplish. 

Published by The White House from time to time, it is 

neither sufficiently long term nor a true strategy that 

links resources with objectives over time. It represents, 

at best, a list of aspirational goals by an administration. In a world of increasing complexity, the United 

States should consider long-term, whole-of-government thinking and planning. Other countries have 

established such a set of capabilities within the heart 

of their governments, such as the United Kingdom 

and Singapore. For that reason, the set of capabilities 

in Singapore was benchmarked, because the VWG de-
92

velops specificity for the proposed Center. This document represents a synthesis of lessons learned from 

the Singapore system, recognizing that not all of the 

processes are scalable to the U.S. Government.

THE CONTEXT

For decades, the private sector has routinely used 

management tools such as forecasting, scenario based 

planning, strategic visioning, political and economic 

risk assessments, etc., but the government, especially 

in a whole-of-government way, rarely, if ever, uses 

such tools across the board, although sometimes 

those tools are used in pockets—in specific agencies 

or departments. 

The question is, “What mechanisms should the U.S. 

Government develop to improve the Nation’s ability 

to plan in a whole-of-government way for its future—

to be better prepared for a future that is very different 

from its past?” At the end of World War II, General 

George C. Marshall said, “We are now concerned with 

the peace of the entire world, and the peace can only 

be maintained by the strong.” (Marshall, 1945) But, 

how does the United States remain strong? What does 

that mean in a world of globalization? How should 

the country define what national security is in such a 

complex and interdependent world?

The PNSR VWG took a systems approach to examining this series of questions. The group stepped out 

into the next larger system, and the system beyond 

that, to look across the entire mosaic at the elements 

and their interdependence and interactions to better 

understand the whole and its behavior. The study engaged in both analysis and synthesis and used visioning tools to assist in testing the creation of the new 
93

structures, policies, strategies, and processes necessary 

for a successful 21st century national security system 

as outlined in Forging a New Shield, (PNSR, 2008) the 

overall study presented to the President of the United 

States, The President-elect, and the U.S. Congress in 

December 2008.

U.S. security is rooted in the successful integration 

of all major elements of national power: economic, 

diplomatic, military, informational, and so on. When 

successfully combined, the vitality of the nation is 

ensured, and the country’s ability to encourage positive change throughout the globe is enhanced. The 

PNSR proposed a modern apparatus to serve the nation’s needs well into the 21st century to support the 

broad national security challenges and address the 

interagency mechanisms in the organizational space 

between the President of the United States and the 

Cabinet level agencies and departments. 

The VWG asked the question, “What is the basis 

for rethinking the national security system, and how 

will success in the future be characterized?” If “what 

is” and “what is not” in the arena of national security is artificially or prematurely narrowed, it is likely 

that situations will be misread that can ultimately, and 

negatively, affect the Nation. Ten years ago, the challenges related to sub-prime mortgages, diseased birds, 

automobile emissions, and pilot training rosters were 

not typically the focus of national security. Today, it 

is clear that they might well have been. The point is 

no one can imagine or determine now with certainty 

what might affect the Nation in the future. 

Threats can be assessed and prioritized based upon 

considerations such as urgency, impact, magnitude, 

mitigation options, and intention. Opportunities can 

be assessed and prioritized based upon considerations 
94

such as knowledge, expertise, probability of success, 

resources, long-term sustainability, proportionality, 

and intention.

Based on this approach, national security can be 

considered “Any situation, condition, or entity that 

has the potential to enhance or degrade the viability 

and vitality of the nation” (Benner, 2007), so that the 

national security system would be responsible for and 

measured by:

• the viability and vitality of the Nation,

• peaceful and positive development throughout

the countries of every region, and

• cooperation and collaboration around the

globe.

The national security system needs to become a 

“learning organization” that can anticipate, adapt to, 

and successfully address the widest range of threats 

and opportunities for both the good of the Nation and 

the world. As a complex adaptive system, the future 

security system will need to possess certain inherent 

qualities that will be critical to success. It must: 

• share information and collaborate horizontally,

• accommodate unanticipated needs and

partnerships,

• ensure agility in the face of uncertainty,

• incorporate ad hoc structures and processes,

and,

• maintain a long-term view.

Because the U.S. national security system is a 

complex adaptive system, it is difficult to separate 

geopolitical, social, and economic phenomena. These 

elements interact as a system of systems. In fact, in 

most instances, it is a complex system of complex systems, and that is the challenge facing the Nation.
95

The environment of the 21st century is, and will 

continue to be, characterized by rapid change and 

continuing uncertainty. Many factors contribute to a 

security landscape that differs greatly from the world 

envisioned at the end of the Cold War and even more 

since 9/11. Simply put, globalization has resulted in 

a world that is increasingly interconnected and interdependent. Readily available technology, environmental degradation, global capital market collapses, 

transnational terror, global disease, cyber attacks, and 

a host of other concerns have added complexity to the 

national security landscape. These volatile, uncertain, 

and complex ambiguities of the strategic environment, as taught at the U.S. war colleges, will demand 

the application of a wide range of traditional and innovative strategies and tactics to counter threats and 

take advantage of opportunities. 

Based upon both the realities being faced today 

and the context emerging for tomorrow, the following are basic observations. First, the world is a system, 

like a spider web. Movement or damage in one spot 

has the potential to be felt throughout the entire web. 

Like in a pond, while the ripples may be visible closest to where the stone is thrown, the entire pond feels 

some level of movement and/or impact. Global interdependence is now a reality, and national security issues must always assume a global focus. 

Second, the nation’s homelands are no longer 

protected by distance or time. The great oceans that 

buffered the United States from much of the world, 

for example, no longer serve as boundaries. Therefore, 

the distinction between foreign affairs and homeland 

concerns has become blurred—perhaps even nonexistent for all. National security is a merged “mess” of internal, external, and interdependency issues, and this 
96

has enormous consequences for dealing with national 

security issues.

Third, the reality of globalization demands a holistic worldview alongside specific national interests. 

The needs and concerns of every country must be developed in concert with the welfare and security of the 

entire globe. To participate in globalization requires 

new ways of connecting to everyone else on the planet 

to ensure that all are secure—being a rogue nation, or 

having rogue citizens, can change everything in ways 

that are far reaching. 

More than 2,400 years ago, ancient Chinese Philosopher Sun Tzu said in his masterpiece, The Art of War,

If you know your enemy and you know yourself, you 

need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will suffer a defeat.

But if you know neither yourself nor the enemy, you 

will succumb in every battle (Tzu, ~400 B.C.).

In today’s global context, this quotation suggests 

that if a nation is in any kind of competition, it must be 

familiar with, and develop knowledge of, its competitors as well as itself if success is to be expected. How 

well have nations developed relationships with their 

partners and friends to ensure cooperation when there 

is a problem anywhere on the globe? No one is big 

enough or wealthy enough to truly cover the world in 

terms of knowledge and/or capabilities.

In a 1957 speech, General Dwight D. Eisenhower 

said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” 

(Eisenhower, 1957) President Eisenhower is explaining that through the knowledge learned in planning 
97

processes, plans are more likely to be successful. This 

is learning in the Sun Tzu sense.

The complex systems within the national security community have interesting characteristics worth 

identifying and discussing. Probably the most important characteristic is that complex systems cannot be 

controlled—at best, they can be influenced. The systems can only be influenced if understood intimately; 

what the late American statistician Dr. W. Edwards 

Deming calls “profound knowledge” of a system 

(Deming, 2000).

The CSAA needs to be a learning organization 

to support whatever national security structure is in 

place in the United States. The Center would be created to learn, analyze, assess, and synthesize risk, 

foresight, and the development of “grand strategy.” 

Government policymakers may want the Center to 

predict. But, prediction assumes theories, and theories 

require assumption testing to learn. The complexity 

sciences say that, in complex systems, there are limits 

to what can be learned or known with any precision; 

you can predict probabilities but not certainties. Even 

in physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says 

if some things are known, other variables cannot be 

known. Such is the case in the national security system. Many policymakers expect prediction and control of the real world complex systems they are supporting. In the real world, complexity science is clear. 

Prediction and control of complex adaptive systems is 

impossible with certainty.

One of the VWG findings included the need to 

synthesize “all of government” solutions to complex 

system issues and problems; and sometimes “all of 

society.” The only successful way to do that is to be 

learning about the system issues—in hyper learning 
98

modes using accelerated learning processes and coupling those with foresight tools such as Delphi techniques. These enable the development of scenarios 

for planning . . . and ultimately being able to develop “grand strategies.” The VWG also found that the 

United States needs to systematically use these tools 

and processes to improve decisionmaking and create 

mechanisms for that to happen at the whole-of-government level—at the level of the President.

The CSAA in the EOP will develop scenarios 

and “grand strategies” to apply lessons learned in a 

world of complexities, and that requires context and 

synthesis. It also requires breaking down the stovepipes of government so they can work together effectively. Mechanisms to use complex systems thinking 

and foresight tools in the decisionmaking processes 

of the executive branch of the government need to 

be developed. 

PNSR VWG Scenario Development Process.

To begin the process, the PNSR VWG began by 

asking the question, “How can foresight be used to 

have an impact on presidential decisionmaking in the 

context of the uncertainties inherent in an interconnected, fast-changing world?” (Ronis, 2010) The findings of the overall PNSR effort were stress tested by 

developing a set of scenarios to see if they improved 

system performance. In addition to complementing 

and enhancing the overall PNSR findings, the visioning process resulted in detailed scenarios against 

which specific options generated by the Project 

were assessed. 

The process used to develop the scenarios began 

by determining the purpose and scope of the scenar-
99

ios. Since The National Security Act of 1947 survived 

largely intact for more than 60 years despite major social, technological, economic, environmental, and political changes, the VWG looked ahead about 50 years. 

The Nation will face extraordinary changes during 

this time. Most forecasters and technologists believe 

that the rate of change in the next decades will accelerate so rapidly that it will be difficult to imagine. 

It was with this in mind that the VWG created 

scenarios that would provoke discussion and debate 

within the Project and hopefully lead to better, more 

resilient recommendations. The next step required the 

development of a questionnaire to be given to experts 

representing some of the best minds in the Nation. For 

that process, experts in many fields, including a cross 

section of the sciences and engineering, in particular 

the national academies, were enlisted. The best approaches to the development of a survey instrument 

were examined, and a questionnaire was developed to 

solicit the input of experts in many fields. The national 

academies hosted a conference to explore these issues, 

and, based on the findings, the survey instrument 

was finalized.

The VWG then created a list of experts to receive 

the questionnaire in many disciplines across the sciences, engineering, arts, futurists, and other fields too 

numerous to mention. The experts’ viewpoints would 

be critical to the successful development of scenarios 

that would be based on their projections of the future. 

The questionnaire was then sent to over 1,500 experts who were queried via email about the future of 

their disciplines. It was hoped that 2-3 percent would 

return their opinions regarding the future to ensure 

a sufficient population. The Project obtained 133 responses, a 9 percent response, and the responses rep-
100

resented a full spectrum of disciplines. The experts’ 

insights on future trends and milestones were aggregated, analyzed, and synthesized to better understand 

the ways that the future could unfold. The trends 

identified by the experts were then woven into nine 

scenarios representing three time horizons—2020, 

2040, and 2060.

Before the scenarios could be used to stress test the 

recommendations of the Project, the VWG asked the 

commandants of three major schools at the National 

Defense University to choose selected faculty who 

taught in the national security curriculum of each 

school to read all nine scenarios and give the VWG 

feedback regarding the scenarios. The scenarios were 

then stress tested with the national security faculty 

at the National War College, the Industrial College 

of the Armed Forces, and the Joint Forces Staff College. Based on the feedback of the faculty, adjustments 

were made.

The five major solution sets of the Project were then 

stress tested by the Working Group Leaders, using all 

nine scenarios developed. As a caveat, the scenarios 

were intentionally designed to stress the working 

group’s recommendations from several angles. The 

scenarios should not be viewed as predictions, but 

rather glimpses into plausible alternative futures. The 

scenarios are intentionally inconsistent and oft times 

bleak, all in the interest of provoking a wider range of 

conversation. 

For each scenario, five general questions were used 

in testing the solution sets. 

1. What are the stressors in the scenario?

2. How well was the system able to anticipate the 

scenario problems?

3. If the system was not able to prevent/remove 

the threat, how well was the system able to react?
101

4. How well was the system able to recover?

5. How well does the system function as a whole—

specifically, the structures and processes?

As the working group leaders worked through the 

scenarios, it was clear that each solution set performed 

differently in the different scenarios. Strengths and 

weaknesses of the solution sets gradually emerged. 

Each scenario is followed by specific discussion 

questions to ponder. 

1. How will the recommendations function in the 

scenario presented? 

2. Are there problems or solutions identified that 

have not been addressed? 

3. If this future is not desirable, what choices should 

be made today to avoid it? 

The 2020 scenarios include:

Scenario 1: Red Death, in which the country is 

struggling to get back on its feet after a major biological attack and witness a debate about the future role of 

the U.S. Government both at home and abroad. Half 

of the world’s population perishes in this disturbing 

scenario.

 Scenario 2: The People’s War, in which the United 

States faces global asymmetric warfare against a nuclear-armed great power. The entire federal government is caught in the conundrum of how to respond to 

anonymous attacks at home and abroad, while avoiding an escalation to nuclear war. 

Scenario 3: A Grand Strategy, in which the utility 

of an integrated grand strategy development capability is explored for smoothing the transition from one 

presidential administration to another, the time when 

the country is most vulnerable. 
102

The 2040 scenarios include:

Scenario 4: A New Economy, in which the United 

States faces its worst economic crisis since the Great 

Depression. The crisis is a perfect storm of the unintended consequences of new technologies, policies, 

court decisions, and popular expectations. 

Scenario 5: Army of One, in which the intersection 

of unmanned, robotic warfare and, on the ground, assisted diplomacy, is explored. This scenario depends 

upon the continuation of current trends in robotics and 

sensors technology, as well as a public policy choice to 

enable greater real-time interaction between the military and diplomatic arms of the U.S. Government. 

Scenario 6: Who Holds the High Ground, in which 

major competitive changes in the Earth-Moon system 

are envisioned from the perspective of a traditional 

interagency space working group. 

Scenario 7: A Brave New World, in which a plan is 

examined to apply proven neuroscience, psychiatric, 

and medical techniques to control pathological behaviors in a world of readily accessible weapons of mass 

destruction and genetic engineering. 

The 2060 scenarios include:

Scenario 8: A Warm Reception, in which the challenge of developing international consensus for action 

on the issue of global climate change and the possibility of unintended consequences is focused. 

 Scenario 9: It is a Small World, in which the implications of a very different future are explored, wherein small, molecular scale machines (nanotechnology 

robots or “nanobots”) have become ubiquitous. 
103

 Finally, the possibility of a technological singularity by 2060 is noted, when robots will be smarter 

than human beings and the unknown effects of life 

on earth. 

The scenarios demonstrated that the five major findings of the PNSR significantly improved 

system performance.

Singapore Examples for Benchmarking.

By studying the Strategic Policy Office, National 

Security Coordination Secretariat, National Security 

Coordination Centre, Horizon Scanning Centre, Centre for Strategic Futures and the Risk Assessment, and 

Horizon Scanning Centre in the Office of the Prime 

Minister and the Centre of Excellence in National 

Security at the S. Rajaratnam School of International 

Studies at Nanyang Technological University, there 

are many lessons that will assist in the establishment 

of the U.S. Center. 

According to Peter Ho of the Singapore Civil Service, there are four major roles for their Centre for 

Strategic Futures, all of which should be represented 

in the U.S. EOP Center’s set of capabilities (Ho, 2010).

These roles are:

• “Challenge conformist thinking” by building

global networks and partnerships with academia, think tanks, and global thought leaders 

through conferences and projects;

• “Identify emergent risks” by creating risk maps

and communicating emerging issues to decisionmakers;

• “Calibrate strategic thinking processes” by using scenario planning and risk assessment to 

develop policy and new capabilities; and,
104

• “Cultivate capabilities, instincts, and habits,”

by using systems and strategic frameworks 

and mindsets to deal with uncertainty, disruptive shocks, and whole-of-government 

approaches regularly.

This set of capabilities and mindsets represent 

a strategic capability for Singapore that, although 

not specifically scalable to the United States, would 

certainly enhance the capabilities within the EOP, if 

adopted in the United States.

The Center for Strategic Analysis and Assessment.

The scenarios used in the PNSR study represent 

the kind of creative systems thinking that the United 

States needs today—the kind of thinking that should 

be infused in the CSAA. The Nation needs to support 

strategic decisionmaking in an interagency whole-ofgovernment manner at the highest levels for issues of 

national importance and/or security. 

This can be accomplished by the establishment of 

the Center, which will be a place, a process, and a set 

of capabilities that enable the development and use of 

forward-looking global contexts improving decisions 

by integrating all major elements of national power—

economic, diplomatic, informational, defense, and 

others—to assess second, third, and fourth order effects of decisions and develop “grand strategy” where 

necessary. Singapore represents an example of where 

this kind of thinking is thriving.

The Center should provide a rigorous framework 

to analyze, synthesize, test assumptions, develop 

red team solution sets, and integrate the elements of 

national power to provide contexts to support long-
105

term strategic decisions. The Center will support 

the integration of the nation’s near-, mid-, and longterm national security planning based on pragmatic 

internal (U.S.) and external (the world) assessments 

and aspirational visions of what the future could be. 

The center would endeavor to help translate policies 

made by the various EOP offices into plans for the 

interagency space. 

The Center should provide comprehensive exercises to support the development of grand strategies and 

policies in the interagency. It should continually develop scenarios, table-top “games,” and simulations, 

anticipating areas that should be strategically thought 

about to inform policy and strategy development.

Networking and Outreach.

The Center should provide workshops and 

seminars as well as outreach activities to the private 

sector, academia, think tanks, communities of practice, 

and the American people. It should provide long-term 

planning capabilities to maintain unity of purpose 

over successive administrations and generations of 

leadership. For all the things the CSAA will do, it should 

not develop policy. It should inform the development 

of policies and grand strategies by providing context 

and testing assumptions of those making policy and 

strategy decisions. 

Annually, The CSAA should host a “State of the 

World” conference in which its members will share 

lessons learned from the systems, processes, and scenarios developed in the Center. Internal staff promotions and cross-training among experts will be critical 

to inform future national policy and strategy leadership with fused, strategic thinking capabilities.
106

One role of the Center should be to ensure that 

strategic American and global assets—human, material and those related to our national power—are 

known and employed strategically and systematically 

when needed. The Center will need to operate in both 

open and classified environments, depending on the 

needs of the President and the issue being discussed 

or studied.

Examples of scenarios that might be developed in 

the Center should include:

• U.S. energy independence solution sets,

• Global religious extremism issues and strategies,

• Strategies to improve science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduate degrees by 

U.S. citizens,

• Increasing U.S. children’s science and mathematics scores for 6th, 9th, and 12th grades,

• Universal health care sustainability,

• Industrial base incentives,

• Palestinian-Israeli peace talks,

• Wargaming, and

• Peace gaming and everything in between.

Grand strategy assessments of major recommended policy initiatives should be cross-walked 

with an interagency mindset across all elements of 

national power. 

There are two strategic weaknesses of the United 

States that regularly keep the Nation from looking at 

its future in a strategic and systemic way and preparing itself for that future. The United States does not 

engage in strategic visioning or foresight exercises, 

and it does not write and/or execute grand strategies 
107

as a nation. It needs to do both. Worst of all, it does 

not even think this way.

The Center should be established within the interagency and continuously develop scenarios of the 

future. This will help senior government policymakers plan for an integrated future across the entire government spectrum, including the Congress. This will 

probably include congressional committee reform 

that creates interagency mission funding mechanisms 

through intercommittee decisionmaking processes 

across jurisdictional boundaries. Systems thinking 

provides the framework that establishes the need to 

break down the barriers in the stovepipes of government from the top to the bottom.

Finally, within the Center, the Nation needs to 

help senior government policymakers plan for the 

role the United States will play in that future, including how the United States will remain strong in the 

Marshall sense. Although originally conceived to “fit” 

into other national security reforms, the capabilities of 

the Center need to be established within the EOP with 

or without the other reforms envisioned (PNSR, 2008).

Assessment Capability.

The Assessment Center’s capability should be developed using the five essential planning perspectives 

of 1) space, 2) the planet, 3) regions, 4) countries, and 

5) U.S. internal (domestic) for each of the three time 

cycles of near-, mid-, and long-term. Each of these 

near-, mid-, and long-term assessments would include 

both geographic and functional dimensions. 

The assessment of risk needs to encompass system 

risk most of the time. Frequently, the impact of a particular course of action has an economic or political 
108

risk associated with it. But, risk in a world of complexity requires an understanding not only of individual 

risk variables, but also of the interactions of risks associated with all of the system variables across the spectrum from sociological, technological, economic, environmental and political (STEEP) risk. Frequently, the 

risk must be accumulated, and the algorithms need to 

take into consideration the amount of risk and the associated influence of multiple risk factors at the same 

time. Only when all of the risk is accounted for in a 

system can a risk variable be calculated. System risk is 

the aggregation and understanding of the many forms 

of risk that occur internal and external to the system 

but which potentially have an impact on the system—

the product of the interactions and interdependencies 

of the various forms of STEEP risk. See Figure 9-1.

Figure 9-1. System Risk across the STEEP Variables.

System

Sociological

"System Risk" is the aggregation and understanding of the many forms of risk 

that occur internal and external to the system but which potentially have an 

impact on the system–the product of the interactions and interdependencies of 

the various forms of risk, sociological, technological, economic, environmental 

and political.

Technological Economic Environmental Political
109

Visioning Capability.

Visioning would produce both pragmatic and 

“what-if” scenarios to test assumptions, ends, ways, 

and means of plans. The Center will include various 

inputs from the U.S. intelligence community, homeland security, private industry, and international entities as needed. 

The Center should provide the President with an 

ability to immediately take stock of the status of both 

the internal system and the external environment, as 

well as to understand the decision points necessary to 

maintain his/her policy objectives in the near-, mid-, 

and long-term across the whole of government in the 

five planning perspectives. The Center director would 

be a senate confirmed member of the EOP at an executive level, and the staff would be comprised of a majority of full-time civil servants to provide continuity 

between administrations. Consequently, the director 

should have rank commensurate to this responsibility. This position should be Senate-confirmed for two 

reasons: 1) to help satisfy the desire for congressional 

oversight over this most central function of the executive branch; and 2) to help this official garner the 

support of the wider interagency in this process. This 

person should therefore be at the rank equivalent to 

the President’s highest directors in the EOP, just one 

position in rank below the National Security Advisor 

or Chief of Staff. The Center Director should brief the 

President formally once a month but would sit on any 

EOP committees as required.

Advisors and contractors from outside of government would likely be a part of the Center in the preparation of its work products since the Center expects to 

keep some of its hires as part-timers, and this might 
110

include work done by contracted advisors from outside government in order to keep the Center on the 

highest edges of evolving technologies and processes 

for its mission accomplishment.

The President of the United States should have a 

place and a process to conduct grand strategy on issues of national importance and security. The Center, 

within the EOP, should develop and support many 

functions and capabilities in support of the development of these grand strategies. 

The Gaming Function.

One of the most critical functions of the Center 

should be the capability for gaming issues of national 

importance and security in support of the development of grand strategy. Gaming is usually considered 

the process of thinking through events in a step-bystep, point and counterpoint fashion to explore possible outcomes of certain courses of action over others. 

These processes enable the use of various exercises to 

think through potential situations before decisions are 

made. The processes should be developed to ensure 

a thorough investigation and analysis of the situation by exploring positions on all sides of the question involved. These capabilities will range from “red 

teaming” proposed courses of action to developing 

step-by-step tabletop exercises meant to role play 

situations in foreign policy or peace negotiations to 

the development of alternative visions of the future 

and calculating risks associated with each one to determine which set of decisions should be made and 

which policies should be implemented to create the 

preferred future state. 
111

Gaming is a form of scenario based planning. Gaming processes improve the ability to develop strategies 

and policies or choose specific decisions over others in 

a world of uncertainty. The objective of a game, however, is not to predict behaviors but to learn about the 

potential of certain behaviors and their effects over 

others and to learn which sets of behaviors, and therefore outcomes, might be best for the “end game” you 

want. Games are structured thinking processes that 

ultimately produce analysis and synthesis to improve 

decisionmaking regarding strategies and policies. It 

requires holistic and systems thinking about issues.

The spectrum of games available in the Center will 

include traditional scenario based “stories” associated 

with specific interagency issue or country teams and 

grand strategy level issues such as “energy independence by 2050” or “sustainable peace in the Middle 

East.” The gaming capabilities within the Center will 

be available at many different levels of scale and complexity depending on the needs. Levels from grand 

strategy to tactical concerns are levels of scale. Levels 

of complexity can also be varied, depending on the 

sets of issues to be examined. Levels of sophistication 

can also vary from the use of tabletop exercises that 

use pencils and paper to the use of algorithms in the 

development of software that can facilitate a variety of 

games using simulations in computers.

Games can be developed at any level of system 

scale. The grand strategy level will be used to describe 

the highest level of strategy needed, usually at the 

global or country-to-country level. The strategic level 

will imply the whole agency or department level or 

the level of an institution such as the Army. The operational level will imply a lower level of an organization such as a directorate or a battalion level. The 
112

tactical level can go as low as the individual in a group 

or a small group such as a platoon level.

What is most important is that the mission of the 

exercise be identified so that clear objectives can be 

written and exercises developed to accomplish the 

mission. All games should have one thing in common: 

to facilitate learning about a particular topic, course of 

action, or policy decision to better understand the dynamics of the environment surrounding the issue, the 

issue itself, the stakeholders, and players involved. 

Games are studies. In particular, decisions should be 

thought through looking holistically at the situation 

and determining the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects 

of decisions involved. For example, tools as diverse 

as causal loop diagramming and mathematical techniques of operations research will be available in the 

Center and available for gaming as needed. Causal 

loop diagrams visually “map” the relationships between phenomena and decisions. Operations research 

techniques are frequently used to study costs and effectiveness of judgments. Many methods for strategy 

and policy analysis, synthesis, and systems thinking 

will be used. In fact, all suitable methods within the 

structured and disciplined processes that will enable 

better thinking will be used in the Center. According 

to Richard Kugler in his seminal work Policy Analysis 

in National Security Affairs: New Methods for a New Era:

. . . the U.S. Government will continue to face many 

difficult decisions in the national security arena because the future is hard to see, and the consequences 

of alternative policies are hard to predict . . . systems 

analysis can help improve the quality of these decisions . . . it can help the Government think clearly in 

times of uncertainty and during noisy debates about 

policy and strategy (Kugler, 2006).
113

Most of the games employed in the Center will 

be developed for the Center but will draw upon the 

myriad games that have been used over decades to 

think through “war” scenarios but with other themes, 

including economic, diplomatic, and environmental

issues and the traditional war-peace issues that games 

have played in the past. Learning through play is a 

major way to prepare for the future, not only for children, but also for all who need to use imagination 

and knowledge, coupled with experimentation, to 

practice the way forward—using games. As Arie De 

Gues says in The Living Company: Habits for Survival 

in a Turbulent Business Environment, when describing 

the original Royal Dutch Shell scenario process 

development:

. . . the decision-making process is in fact a learning 

process in any company and there are ways to improve the speed, if not the quality, of the decisions. 

The more in depth the simulation, and the more that 

‘play’ triggers the imagination and learning, the more 

effective the decision-making process seems to be. In 

companies that attempt large-scale internal change, 

this is particularly true. Decisions cannot be made in 

the old authoritarian manner. They need interaction, 

intuitive reflection, and the fostering of collaborative 

mental models. They need play. They need learning 

(De Gues, 1997).

New gaming and analytical tools need to be honed 

in The Strategy Center. They will continuously improve over time. As Robert Lempert argues in Francis 

Fukuyama’s Blindside:

Policy-makers may not always welcome a critical 

spotlight on the potential weaknesses of their proposed strategies. But, if rigorous assessment of sur-
114

prise becomes as commonplace as budgeting and accounting, policymakers will find it harder to ignore 

(Fukuyama, 2007).

The Center will further make use of these assessments to engage in medium- and long-term projections of future threats, risks, and opportunities, again 

incorporating diverse and interrelated elements such 

as economic, diplomatic, societal, environmental, 

technological, military, and so forth. 

The Center can be tasked by any agency, or by the 

President, to assess, game out, or develop grand strategies for problems in which impacts and solutions 

cut across multiple government agencies. Such assessments and solution sets will be presented to each 

affected agency to provide a basis for cooperation, 

policy formulation, and/or resource allocation. 

Engage in Rigorous Problem Analysis. 

Effective policies must be grounded in rigorous 

problem analysis incorporating both a multidisciplinary approach and sensitivity to the ways in which 

policies will affect other variables. Failing that, policies may be made based on false or outdated assumptions or may produce unintended consequences in the 

long-term. Currently, the various organizations of the 

federal government are host to exceptional bodies of 

knowledge and expertise. Yet the ability to engage in 

rigorous problem analysis in crafting policies is hindered by a number of factors. 

The demands of urgent emerging national challenges, coupled with limited human resources, frequently preclude rigorous problem analysis. This is 

especially true when doing so requires drawing on 
115

diverse competencies spanning multiple agencies or 

departments. 

Nowhere does the capability exist to test thoroughly the assumptions of analysts, which may prove false, 

outdated, or incomplete. Their conclusions, moreover, 

are invariably aimed at achieving short-term objectives, and they lack the ability to thoroughly assess the 

medium- and long-term impacts of proposed policies. 

Finally, the quality of problem analysis can be hindered by the inevitable loss of institutional memory 

sustained through turnovers in human resources with 

successive administrations. The Center should seek 

to remedy these shortcomings. Unburdened by the 

need to make or implement policy itself, it is wholly 

devoted to problem analysis, research, scenario development, gaming, and assessment.

The Center should continuously develop scenarios 

and provide assessments of the global climate and of 

emerging national challenges. Decisionmakers can 

also task the Center to engage in specific projects 

where the agencies lack the resources to conduct such 

analysis themselves or where the issues transect multiple departments or agencies. Its research, which employs a variety of analytic and testing tools and draws 

on a broad range of expertise, will help inform policies 

and grand strategy in the interagency. 

The Center should also provide a rigorous framework to analyze and test assumptions, as it continually develops scenarios, games, and simulations to anticipate the effects and secondary impacts of potential 

solution sets and proposed policies into the medium 

and long term. Finally, the Center seeks to facilitate 

finding, identifying, and storing national and global 

assets, both human and physical, as needed to develop specific expertise.
116

Facilitate Long-term Planning and Preserve Institutional 

Memory.

As the rate of change and the complexity of challenges continue to increase, there is little doubt over 

the value of conducting long-term strategic planning 

and attempting to create anticipatory government 

(Fuerth, 2006). However, the turnover and shifts in 

priorities that accompany successive administrations 

can render this process difficult. Long-term planning, 

to the extent that it can be carried out at all, is necessarily limited to 2 or 4 years out. Strategies that take 

longer to achieve may be discarded by future administrations or congresses. Furthermore, policy planners 

must, in order to remain relevant, tailor their strategies based on the political priorities of the President 

under whom they serve. 

Yet another challenge to long-term planning is the 

loss of institutional memory that accompanies personnel turnover. In federal organizations, most of the organization’s institutional memory is held within the 

memories and experiences of its employees, and much 

of it will thus be lost with administration changes, regardless of the quality of transition teams. 

While it will not formulate tactics itself, the Center 

will seek to provide a consistent basis for the creation 

of forward-thinking interagency grand strategy. This 

is to be accomplished by providing long-term projections and assessment of the global environment spanning well beyond the time frame of one administration. These projections will be continually assessed 

and revised, but they will retain the characteristics of 

incorporating all facets of national power. The work 

of the Center will thus help inform the policies of each 
117

new administration. As such, it will help minimize the 

risk that successive administrations will adopt narrow 

national priorities that fail to adequately understand 

the full range of issues, and it will continually remind 

policymakers of the long-term global environment. It 

also provides workshops and seminars, as well as a 

long-term strategic planning capability to maintain 

unity of purpose over successive administrations and 

generations of leadership.

In addition to providing forward-thinking visions 

to assist in policymaking, it can also serve as the memory of the bureaucracy for each new administration. 

It will enable new administrations to learn about past 

treaties, commitments, views, and processes that have 

occurred across the interagency. 

By engaging all facets of national power and a 

full range of expertise to engage in short-, mid-, and 

long-term assessments of the global environment, the 

Center will enable the country to not only react to the 

changing global environment, but also to preempt 

changes to that environment and play an active role in 

shaping a better future through the development and 

use of scenarios and various other tools. 

The Center will support the EOP in the development of whole-of-government grand strategies that 

are both long term (at least a decade) and interagency. 

The Center will provide national assessments of both 

geographical and functional threats and opportunities spanning the concentric and inclusive spectrums 

of space, the planet, specific regions and/or subregions, specific countries within regions, and the 

United States. 
118

A National Security Strategic Management Process.

Developing grand strategies, either at the request 

of the President, the National Security Advisor, or 

any interagency issue team, will occur through the 

use of a generic strategic process to think through the 

policies and strategies that will be required to be developed. Issues that are strategic are not just important; the word “strategic” has at least two additional 

meanings. First, strategic issues are systemic, that is, 

they are related to an entire system and must be put 

into context. Second, strategic issues need to be dealt 

with over time, so all strategic issues have a temporal 

component to them as well. Since management is the 

process of directing the accomplishment of objectives 

through others, strategic management can be viewed 

as managing an institution as a system over time. The 

Center will always be looking out at least 10 years and 

will frequently study longer time horizons.

In the coming years, the new national strategies 

will need to be developed within the context of the 

world. The Center will support the integration of the 

nation’s grand strategies based on pragmatic assessments and aspirational visions of what the future 

could be. The majority of the staff would be full-time 

civil servants, to provide continuity between administrations. The center would have many functions; assessment studies for the development of grand strategies, scenario development and gaming, outreach 

through conferences and projects, and “challenging 

conformist thinking,” like Singapore. 
119

CONCLUSIONS

In summary, the Center’s core capabilities need 

to include: 

• Strategic and systems thinking and “visioning,”

• The development of a holistic and evolving

view of the global environment and national 

security context,

• The ability to game specific scenarios to assist 

in the formulation of contingency plans and to 

test the impacts of proposed policies,

• Regular development of scenarios out 10, 20,

50+ years,

• The capacity to house leading edge tools 

and technologies for assessments, especially 

“system risk,”

• Engaging in “red teaming” and alternative

analyses to test assumptions and solutions with 

rigorous problem analysis,

• Providing, when necessary, classified research 

environments, developing grand strategies as 

assigned by the President, facilitating longterm planning, and preserving institutional 

memory,

• Providing networking and outreach to government, academia, industry and the general public, including public seminars and conferences,

• Challenging conventional wisdom in the Singaporean sense and the Project on National 

Security Reform sense.

The Center should be established to help senior 

government policymakers plan for the future and 

the role the United States will play in that future, 
120

including how the Nation will remain strong in the 

Marshall sense.

The entire world expects the United States to remain a leader. But, the United States cannot do this 

unless it is strong. It cannot be strong unless it plans 

for and shapes its future. The saying from the Judeo 

Christian Bible, “Where there is no vision, the people 

will perish,” from Proverbs 29:18, is as true today as it 

was thousands of years ago.

As a nation, the United States needs to become 

proactive in using foresight and vision in shaping 

the future and working toward a world of increasing 

liberty, prosperity, justice, and peace because that is 

what future generations deserve.

REFERENCES

Benner, P. (2007, September). Vision Working Group Workshops, Project on National Security Reform, Washington, DC. 

De Gues, A. (1997). The Living Company: Habits for Survival 

in a Turbulent Business Environment. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 

Deming, W. E. (2000). The New Economics for Industry, Government Education (2nd Ed.), Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Eisenhower, Dwight D. Speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, DC (November 14, 

1957), in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight 

D. Eisenhower, 1957, National Archives and Records Service, 

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, p. 818.

I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I 

heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because 

when you are planning for an emergency you must start 

with this one thing: the very definition of ‘emergency’ is 

that it is unexpected; therefore, it is not going to happen 

the way you are planning. 
121

Fuerth, L. S. (2006). Project on Forward Engagement. Washington, DC: George Washington University.

Ho, P. (2010). Thinking about the future: What the civil service can do. Ethos, Issue 7, Centre for Governance and Leadership, 

Civil Service College, Singapore.

Kugler, R. L. (2006). Policy Analysis in National Security Affairs: New Methods for a New Era. Washington, DC: Center for 

Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University Press.

Lempert, R. (2007). “Can scenarios help policymakers be both 

bold and careful?” in F. Fukuyama (ed.), Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics. Baltimore, MD: 

Brookings Institution Press.

Marshall, G. C. (1945). The winning of the war in Europe and the 

Pacific: Biennial report of the chief of staff of the United States Army, 

July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1945, to the secretary of war. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Project on National Security Reform (2008). Forging a New 

Shield. Arlington, VA: Project on National Security Reform.

Ronis, S. R. (ed.) (2010). Project on National Security Reform 

Vision Working Group Report and Scenarios. Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College.

Tzu, S. (1963). The Art of War, translated by Samuel B. Griffith, 

Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

123

CHAPTER 10

POSTSCRIPT

Dr. Sheila R. Ronis

The Nation needs an ability to conduct grand strategy in the 21st century. But what does grand strategy 

mean in a large complex system? Perhaps we should 

consider a framework for the development of grand 

strategy—one that considers questions more than answers, system characteristics over specific functions, 

and organizing principles over rigid rules.

In a complex world of globalization, 21st century 

grand strategy is about thinking differently. It is 

about the relationships between economics, politics, 

progress (social, religious, cultural, technological), 

and physical, environmental, and national security 

systems, as well as interdependencies. It is a set of 

guidelines and concepts, as opposed to one idea, like 

“containment.” Today’s world has the West playing 

chess, a game of taking out the opponent while the 

East plays Igo, Weiqi, and Baduk—games of gaining 

and controlling ground. These ancient strategy games 

represent the difference between Sun Tzu and Clausewitz, perhaps an appropriate way of thinking in the 

new world. While the East thinks about winning a 

victory without firing a shot, by being smarter rather 

than winning and by being bigger, Westerners win by 

force. Although ancient, these games represent two 

worldviews and the kinds of challenges facing policymakers who must also develop grand strategy in a 

nonlinear construct.

In addition to new ways of thinking, complex systems knowledge is added that is critical to winning 
124

the grand strategy global competitions of the 21st century. Complexity science needs to inform policy and 

ultimately, grand strategy. Exploring complex system 

characteristics and organizing principles may be the 

best method to develop grand strategy in a world of 

complexity. Perhaps, this was the most important lesson learned from the symposium.
125

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

SHEILA R. RONIS is Professor and Chair, Department of Management and Communications at Walsh 

College in Troy, Michigan, where she teaches in the 

Doctorate and MBA Programs. She is also President of 

The University Group, Inc., a management consulting 

firm and think tank specializing in strategic management, visioning, national security, and public policy. 

A Fulbright Specialist Scholar, Dr. Ronis is studying 

the need for the development of grand strategy and 

foresight mechanisms in the Executive Office of the 

President of the United States. She is a Senior Advisor 

to Ambassador David Abshire at the Center for the 

Study of the Presidency and Congress. In December 

2011, Economic Security: Neglected Dimension of National 

Security, published by National Defense University 

Press and edited by Dr. Ronis, was published based on 

a conference she chaired at NDU in August 2010. Dr. 

Ronis was a Distinguished Fellow and Vision Working 

Group leader of the congressionally mandated Project 

on National Security Reform (PNSR) in Washington. 

After nearly 40 years of working in government, industry, academia, and as the CEO of a management 

consulting firm, Dr. Ronis published Timelines into the 

Future: Strategic Visioning Methods for Government, Industry and Other Organizations (Hamilton Books, June 

2007). She edited the Project on National Security Reform Vision Working Group Report and Scenarios (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, July 

2010). In June, 2005, she chaired, at the Industrial 

College of the Armed Forces, the Army’s Eisenhower 

National Security Series Conference, “The State of 

the U.S. Industrial Base: National Security Implications in a World of Globalization.” The proceedings
126

of that conference, which Dr. Ronis co-edited with Dr. 

Lynne Thompson, was published by the NDU Press 

in April 2006. In March, 2006, she completed a study 

of the national security implications of the erosion of 

the U.S. industrial base for the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Small Business. Dr. Ronis 

holds a B.S. in physics and mathematics, and an M.A. 

and Ph.D. in large social system behavior from Ohio 

State University. 

DAVID M. ABSHIRE served as Assistant Secretary of 

State for Congressional Relations from 1970 to 1973 

and worked out the plan that saved Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty from extinction. In 1974, he 

was asked to become the first chairman of the Board 

for International Broadcasting. He was a member of 

the Murphy Commission on the Organization of the 

Government, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the President’s Task Force on U.S. 

Government International Broadcasting. During the 

transition of government in 1980, Dr. Abshire was 

asked by President-elect Ronald Reagan to head the 

National Security Group, which included the State 

and Defense Departments, the U.S. Information Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency. He has also 

served on the Advisory Board of the Naval War College and on the Executive Panel of the Chief of Naval 

Operations. More recently, from 1983 to 1987, he was 

Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) where, in reaction to the threat posed 

by Soviet SS-20 missiles, he was the U.S. point man 

in Europe for deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles. It was this NATO success that convinced the Soviets to sign the historic Intermediate Range Nuclear 

Forces Treaty and withdraw their missiles. Ambas-
127

sador Abshire initiated a new conventional defense 

improvement effort so that NATO would not have to 

rely heavily on nuclear weapons. In December 1986, 

at the depths of the Iran-Contra crisis, he was called 

by President Reagan to leave NATO to serve in his 

Cabinet and help restore confidence in the Presidency. 

He coordinated the Tower Board and the Independent 

Counsel. Dr. Abshire is the author of seven books: The 

South Rejects a Prophet (1967), International Broadcasting: A New Dimension of Western Diplomacy (1976), 

Foreign Policy Makers: President vs. Congress (1979), Preventing World War III: A Realistic Grand Strategy (1988), 

Putting America’s House in Order: The Nation as a Family with Brock Brower (1996), Saving the Reagan Presidency: Trust Is the Coin of the Realm (2005), and A Call 

to Greatness: Challenging Our Next President (2008). He 

also wrote an essay for the Fetzer Institute’s “Deepening the American Dream” series titled The Grace 

and Power of Civility: Commitment and Tolerance in the 

American Tradition (2004). He is editor of Triumphs 

and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency: Seventy-Six Case 

Studies on Presidential Leadership (2002), and author of 

CSPC publications: The Character of George Washington

(1999), Lessons For The 21st Century: Vulnerability and 

Surprise December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 (2002), 

and The Character of George Marshall (2005).

EVAN M. H. FABER is the Executive Associate for the 

Project on Forward Engagement and Special Assistant 

to Leon Fuerth. The Project on Forward Engagement 

promotes the use of anticipatory governance to improve the federal policy process by incorporating foresight as an actionable component of the policy process; 

networked systems to support whole-of-government 

responsiveness; and feedback systems to monitor 
128

performance and speed up learning from results. Mr. 

Faber is also cofounder and Acting Director of Banaa.

org, an organization that connects talented Sudanese 

survivors of war with scholarship opportunities in the 

United States, as well as the tools and contacts to implement peace-promoting development strategies in 

their homeland. Mr. Faber holds a bachelor’s degree 

in philosophy and designed a concentration in security, complexity, and foresight studies for a master’s 

degree in international science and technology policy, 

both from the George Washington University.

PETER D. FEAVER is a Professor of Political Science 

and Public Policy at Duke University. He is Director 

of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies and Director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy. From June 2005 to July 2007, Dr. Feaver was on 

leave to be Special Advisor for Strategic Planning and 

Institutional Reform on the National Security Council Staff at the White House, where his responsibilities included the National Security Strategy, regional 

strategy reviews, and other political-military issues. 

In 1993-94, he served as Director for Defense Policy 

and Arms Control on the National Security Council at 

the White House, where his responsibilities included 

the National Security Strategy review, counterproliferation policy, regional nuclear arms control, and other 

defense policy issues. He is a member of the Aspen 

Strategy Group, blogs at shadow.foreignpolicy.com, and 

is a Contributing Editor to Foreign Policy magazine. 

Dr. Feaver is author of Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Harvard Press, 2003) 

and Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear 

Weapons in the United States (Cornell University Press, 

1992). He is co-author, with Christopher Gelpi and 
129

Jason Reifler, of Paying the Human Costs of War (Princeton University Press, 2009); with Susan Wasiolek and 

Anne Crossman, of Getting the Most Out of College (Ten 

Speed Press, 2008); and with Christopher Gelpi, of 

Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations 

and the Use of Force (Princeton University Press, 2004). 

He is co-editor, with Richard H. Kohn, of Soldiers and 

Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National 

Security (MIT Press, 2001). He has published numerous 

other monographs, scholarly articles, book chapters, 

and policy pieces on American foreign policy, public 

opinion, nuclear proliferation, civil-military relations, 

information warfare, and U.S. national security. Dr. 

Ferber holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

LEON S. FUERTH is the Founder and Director of the 

Project on Forward Engagement, Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense University, Research Professor of International Affairs at the George 

Washington University, and the former National Security Advisor to Vice President Al Gore. During the Bill 

Clinton administration, Mr. Fuerth served simultaneously on the Deputies’ and Principals’ Committees of 

the National Security Council, created and managed 

five binational commissions, and led efforts to develop 

the International Space Station; marshal international 

support for sanctions against Slobodan Milosevic’s 

regime; take action to prevent the spread of HIV/

AIDS in Africa; denuclearize former Soviet states; win 

China’s cooperation in protecting the environment 

and reducing pollution; and spur foreign investment 

in Egypt as part of the Middle East peace process. The 

Project on Forward Engagement promotes the use of 

Anticipatory Governance to improve the federal policy process by incorporating: foresight as an actionable 
130

component of the policy process; networked systems 

to support whole-of-government responsiveness; and 

feedback systems to monitor performance and speed 

up learning from results. The Project is funded by the 

MacArthur foundation and operates simultaneously 

at the National Defense University and the George 

Washington University. Mr. Fuerth holds a bachelor’s 

degree in English and a master’s degree in history 

from New York University, and a master’s degree in 

public administration from Harvard University.

ALLEN S. MILLER is an experienced strategist, analyst, and educator serving as a Deputy Assistant Director for the Office of Risk Management and Analysis in 

the National Protection and Programs Directorate of 

the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, 

DC. In this capacity, Dr. Miller is responsible for directing a team of professionals working to enable and 

advance a unified approach to managing risk to our 

homeland, leveraging the capabilities of all the components of the homeland security enterprise, including 

federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government 

organizations, the private sector, and our international 

partners. As a U.S. Government civil servant for over 

30 years, Dr. Miller has served in multiple positions 

with varying degrees of responsibility at the Central 

Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Air Force Defense Mapping Agency Aerospace Center, the U.S. Army Test 

and Evaluation Agency, the U.S. Army War College, 

and the U.S. Coast Guard. Dr. Miller holds a bachelor 

of science degree and a master of public administration degree from the Pennsylvania State University, 

is a graduate of the U.S. Army War College Strategic 

Studies program, and holds a doctor of philosophy 

degree in education from Walden University. 
131

ROBERT B. POLK has served in various senior level 

planning and execution management positions both 

in and out of government. Today, he remains a Senior Adjunct Research Member and Consultant with 

the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, 

DC, where his ongoing experience helping develop 

such capacity in several U.S. Departments continues 

to provide valuable insights. He recently completed 

3 years as Senior Advisor, Strategic Planner, Deputy 

Issue Team Lead, and cofounding member of PNSR. 

Previous experiences were during his 20-year military 

career as both a front lines combat infantry officer and 

senior civil-military strategist for major Army and multiservice commands serving across the international 

spectrum from Thailand to Japan, Bosnia, Germany, 

and Iraq, including many months as the Co-Creator 

and Co-Director of the Office of Policy Planning to the 

United Nations-sanctioned Coalition Provisional Authority under Ambassador L. Paul Bremer in the early 

days of Iraq. Preceding this, Mr. Polk served as the 

Director of Plans for the original U.S. civil-military coordination team going into Baghdad called the Office 

of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance led 

by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Jay Garner. A West Point 

graduate, Mr. Polk holds a master of military arts and 

science in operational theory and strategic planning 

from the Army’s premier School of Advanced Military Studies, and a master of arts in national security 

and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College.

CYNTHIA A. WATSON is Professor of Security at the 

National War College. She served for 5 years as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, then Associate Dean 

for Curriculum and Faculty Development. She also 
132

served as the Chairwoman of the Naval War College’s 

Department of Security Studies and Director of the 

Electives Program, and as a core course director. Prior 

positions included Assistant Dean for Social Sciences 

and Assistant Professor in the Department of Political 

Science at Loyola University Chicago and Assistant 

Professor of Politics at Ithaca College. Additionally, 

Dr. Watson has worked for the U.S. General Accounting Office and U.S. House of Representatives. Dr. 

Watson also served as Senior Advisor to the Society 

for International Business Fellows’ New Member Program from 2006 to 2010. An active speaker and author, 

she has been named University of Missouri-Kansas 

City’s Alumna of the Year 2011. She is on the Governing Boards of a number of professional organizations 

and the Editorial Board of Third World Quarterly, along 

with being a Member of the International Institute for 

Strategic Studies and the Society for Military History. 

Her current research interests include China-Taiwan 

in Latin America and China’s security concerns in its 

new world posture. Her first edition (2002) of U.S. 

National Security received CHOICE’s designation as a 

Book of the Year. Other publications include NationBuilding, U.S. Military Service, Military Education, and 

U.S. National Security (2nd Ed.), Political Role of the 

Military (co-edited with Constantine Danopoulos), 

and Interest Groups in National Security; and Combatant 

Commands: Origins, Structure, and Engagements (Praeger, 2011). She is also completing a manuscript on 

nation-building/stability operations for Praeger Security International. Dr. Watson holds a B.A., with honors, from the University of Missouri at Kansas City, 

an M.A. from the London School of Economics, and a 

Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Anthony A. Cucolo III

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

and

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE PRESS

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Steven K. Metz

Editor

Dr. Sheila R. Ronis

Editor for Production

Dr. James G. Pierce

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil
This Publication SSI Website USAWC Website

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE