RSS

In times of daunting operational challenges, a constantly evolving global security landscape and considerable financial pressure on defense budgets, making strategy has become increasingly complex. Strategists across NATO member states will have to learn a few new tricks as they go about revising their respective national security and defense policy playbooks. In this context, they could incorporate some lessons revealed by NATO's recently completed Strategic Concept, as the Alliance has gone through a strategy-drafting process of unprecedented inclusiveness and transparency. The result is a concise and readable document that has positioned the Alliance to tackle security issues from the basis of new found unity. NATO's new concept - just as well as some selected national security and defense strategies - highlight that the drafting process can be as important as the actual content of the respective document ... if done right.

Process is, of course, no definite guarantee for success. For instance in the case of NATO, only implementation will reveal the actual compatibility of Member States' priorities in security and defense. However, the process does, if thoroughly designed and elaborated, open avenues for success. As Jeremy Shapiro, former Director of Research at Brookings Institution, argues, the "...resulting strategy document, even if it gets the headlines, is the least important part of that process. The document is in fact the result of the process of strategy formulation, not its catalyst." Hence, strategy formulation ideally brings about three effects:

1. Communication: The strengthening of the social contract through a wide strategic debate,
2. Consensus building: Embed and bring on board all relevant actors, i.e. across government or the scientific community,
3. Self-reflection: Candid contemplation, rather than navel-gazing, allows for profound strategic renewal.

Three points of best practice will help to generate these effects.

First, strategy as a tool of public diplomacy and communication demands a transparent process. Strategists have to involve the public through instruments such as internet forums, subject-matter chats with decision-makers and in-depth media coverage. If these efforts succeed they will set in motion a public debate on security and defense issues and thereby foster mutual trust between state and society - especially in times when security and defense are not among the primary concerns of citizens in many NATO member states. In the case of the Strategic Concept - the first NATO strategy to include a wide public debate over a considerable period of time - the end-product furthermore benefited from its accessible and clear language.

Second, comprehensive thinking requires comprehensive structures. Therefore, tackling modern security challenges effectively requires input from various governmental departments, the parliament, academia, and in some cases the private sector. In the case of national strategy documents, input from international partners might be sensible too, given the fact that national security and defense policies - at least among NATO allies - are highly interdependent. Overcoming the traditional dominance of the military in strategy drafting, might not only lead to a better, more adequate product, but also to a higher level of consensus across government. This, in turn, could lead to coherent implementation of the joint strategy. Successive UK strategy documents, drafted in 2009 and 2010, were for instance driven by an inclusive process anchored in new cross-governmental structures on various levels as well as an institutionalized exchange with academia and the parliament. With regard to NATO's Strategic Concept, new standards in terms of inclusiveness and outreach were put into practice during the reflection and the consultation phase of the development process, which saw repeated exchanges with a wide range of actors - from academics and journalists to Member States' officials.

Third, take your time to engage in a process of candid self-reflection. Budget pressures in conjunction with a short-fused process are unlikely to produce good strategy. Profound strategic renewal is likely to be time consuming. Correspondingly, developing the 11-pages NATO Strategic Concept took more than a year, while the British government was massively criticized by a range of commentators for having drafted the 75-pages Strategic Defense and Security Review in not more than five months. Further, tackling all issues that are potentially relevant in the long-term ‘en detail' in just one document is impossible. Therefore, a realistic, yet dynamic step-by-step approach needs to be adopted, i.e. by scheduling a periodic renewal of the core strategy document and by allowing for subsequent sub-strategies, such as those that will guide the concrete implementation of the Strategic Concept.

There is no silver bullet for good strategy. Each organization and national security establishment will have to operate in the context of its political, economic and societal circumstances. Nonetheless, transparency, comprehensiveness and patience seem to be strategic virtues; just as regularly engaging in strategy drafting exercises seems to be beneficial to the credibility, effectiveness and substance of an actor's security and defense policy. Hence, decision makers across NATO member states might as well get into the flow with strategy drafting - it is unlikely that the various security challenges NATO member states face become any simpler.

Alexandra Jones is a Research Fellow at the Bundeswehr Institute for Social Sciences.

Read related articles from atlantic-community.org members:

• NATO: Voices Above the Noise
• Greg Randolph Lawson: European Stability, Not Global Power Projection

This article was submitted for the atlantic-community.org's competition: "Empowering Women in International Relations."

It coincides with the 10^th Anniversary of UN resolution 1325  calling for an increased influence of women in all aspects of peace and security. The contest is sponsored by the U.S. Mission to NATO and the NATO Public Diplomacy Division.

You can find out more about the competition here.