The Case for a US National Strategic Plan

Part 1

Corporations do it, cities and even some states do it, so why shouldn’t the federal government generate a comprehensive strategic vision and plan? Some advantages of doing so are obvious: legislation and programs can more readily coordinated, and targeted investments in infrastructure can be identified that will enhance the nation’s competitive position, productivity, sustainability, and quality of life. The plan would provide a platform from which individuals, corporations, and other organizations could effectively formulate their own plans. Other advantages are not so obvious. A national strategic plan gives politicians cover from the pressures of self-serving constituents, and elected officials might view the price for this cover, a reduction in influence-peddling, as a reasonable trade-off. Through the process of preparing the strategic plan, the general citizenry gains an important dimension in the practice of democracy.

Governments tend to be primarily focused on duties associated with internal program administration. In this role governments are at best able to manage problems that are already known. Strategic orientations with a focus on anticipating, identifying or addressing emerging problems and their implications tend to be secondary considerations within a bureaucracy. Although strategic plans are sometimes prepared for individual programs, the major challenges of our nation require forward-thinking multi-disciplinary expertise, research, and brainstorming, along with interdepartmental cooperation and coordination to successfully address the issues. However, instead of governmental policies and actions driven by strategic decision-making, we have for the most part politically expedient, fragmented policies and a lack of overall vision about how to, for example, maximize our strengths while managing changes to ensure sustainability and mitigate problems.

The framework within which the federal government takes on a strategic planning role has three components. First, government must function in ways that are inherently helpful to maintaining social stability and “progress,” however defined. Second, it must take on the task of monitoring society’s health as a distinct function. Third, it must intervene in society in ways that help correct unstable conditions that are identified as threats or that simply arise. In practice, the first component is not simply about keeping the peace; it is also a matter of keeping up with a society growing increasingly complex. Complexity expands due to technological change and then expands further due to the kind of growth supported by new technology. At the same time, government must be sensitive to how policy actions affect both localities and the nation as a whole. In the absence of strategic direction, federal government actions can have a destabilizing influence, by shifting resources from investment to spending, undermining business plans with arbitrary changes to tax laws, and through choosing the locus of direct investment or disinvestment without analyzing the consequences.

The second component is currently being done in some respects. Agencies collect data on numerous measures of economic and social wellbeing, and these data support the information needs of many public service organizations. However, there is little concerted effort to tie this information together to address, prescriptively, the foundations of societal health. Government can also directly sponsor research that will expand our understanding of the civilizing influences that operate in today’s world. What are the strengths and weaknesses of our society? What resources, government and non-government, can be used to address these conditions? Once we understand these questions, the government can invest in the systems — cultural, technological, etc. — most likely to foster truly meaningful progress.

The third component of the federal role, intervention, occurs in a number of ways. International policies are expressed through diplomacy and the military. Domestically, the Federal Reserve intervenes to mediate the swings of economic cycles. Governments need to prepare for more extreme conditions, however. Using worst-case disaster planning within a strategic framework, governments can give citizens a greater sense of security and reasons to “stay the course” of lawful behavior in times of severe stress. Ultimately, the challenge for the federal government is to establish strategic systems by which government can change itself in response to changes now occurring beyond its ability to deal effectively with them.