Improving the Practice of National Security Strategy

Not all--or perhaps not many--national security strategy (NSS) practitioners have done a very good job of formulating and implementing national security strategy. The problem is not the lack of a grand strategy to replace the Cold War policy of containment; rather, it is the uneven effectiveness with which practitioners do their work. Improving the competence of NSS practitioners begins with changing how they think about making and implementing strategy. This volume includes a number of case studies from the post-Cold War era and condenses the lessons learned from them into "do's" and "don'ts" in the exercise of U.S. power. It then synthesizes and integrates the analysis into a checklist intended to help future NSS practitioners do their jobs better.

Clark A. Murdock is a senior fellow with the CSIS International Security Program. Previously, he taught military strategy at the National War College and served as deputy director of the U.S. Air Force's headquarters planning function.