Strategy

This article and the information that follows are provided to help you understand how national security strategy is formulated via a hierarchical process beginning with a review of national values and ending with an assessment of risk.

Reading: Cancian, M.F. et al. Formulating National Security Strategy: Past Experience and Future Choices (2017)  

Strategy should be a careful and thoughtful process intended to pursue long-term national interests by striking a balance between national objectives and the policy alternatives or methods to achieve those national objectives coupled with the resources or means available to accomplish those policy alternatives. Lykke (2001) states that strategy can be simply expressed by the following equation:

Strategy = Ends (objectives) +Ways (methods) + Means (resources)

If nations possessed unconstrained resources there would be no need of strategy. Limitless resources such as personnel and money ("blood and treasure"), time, and information, etc. would enable nations to pursue any and all policy options and alternatives even simultaneously if necessary or desired. Since no nation has such an abundance of resources they must attempt to balance the strategy equation by employing all elements of national power to include diplomatic, information, military, and economic in such a manner that long-term national interests are pursued coherently and deliberately. Whenever one component of the equation is out of balance national leaders should attempt to reevaluate their proposed strategy, i.e. adjust their ends, ways, or means, or accept a level of risk. Therefore, the derivative of the Lyyke model, which includes risk, can be expressed as follows:

(Strategy ≠ Ends (objectives) +Ways (methods) + Means (resources)) = Risk

Using the war in Iraq as an example: the Bush administration accepted a degree of risk when it chose to depose Saddam Hussein (end) by invading Iraq (way) in that the United States did not have sufficient ground forces (means) to react to another significant global event elsewhere, such as the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Certain types of risk can be mitigated through the use of other resources.