In the classic American study of the lessons of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Thomas Schelling argued as follows:
“It would be reassuring to believe that Pearl Harbor was just a colossal and extraordinary blunder. What is disquieting is that it was a supremely ordinary blunder…. It is not true that we were caught napping… Rarely has a government been more expectant. We just expected wrong. And it was not our warning that was most at fault, but our strategic analysis. We were so busy thinking through some “obvious” Japanese moves that we neglected to hedge against the choice they actually made.”
For more than three decades I have been both participant and partner at Wilton Park in pursuit of sound strategic analysis. My first event at Wilton Park came as the Cold War ended and the threat from WMD-armed “rogue states” emerged from the shadows. The event illuminated to me emerging challenges in the new security environment and the need for new policy approaches. It also introduced to me a transatlantic Community of Interest that was new to me as a young scholar and to the value of fresh perspectives from outside the Washington beltway.
Over the decade of the 1990s, regular dialogues at Wilton Park on emerging threats and multilateral diplomacy played an essential role in developing the thinking in Western capitals that supported ratification and entry into force of the Chemical Weapons Convention, measures to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention, and the decision to extend indefinitely the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
By 2000, storm clouds on the horizon suggested that the post-cold war peace might not be as enduring as many had hoped and expected. Rather than simply watch these opportunities slip away, a few of us, all veterans of earlier Wilton Park dialogues, came together to conduct a series of workshops over a three-year period to explore the possibilities and limits of cooperation among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
With five members from each of the five members, we engaged in often sharp exchanges about rules and norms, ambitions and intentions, the proper balance between multilateralism and sovereignty, and the proper use of collective use of force to enforce norms. Fault lines were immediately evident and constructive suggestions were few, foreshadowing the subsequent falling out among the five.
A decade later, storm clouds began to turn into storms. The re-set button in US-Russia relations hadn’t worked for very long. China’s rise was accelerating. North Korea crossed the nuclear threshold. The position of the US and its allies and partners in the international balance of power was eroding. Then matters turned from bad to worse, as the US-led world order was increasingly contested by nuclear-armed challengers. This brought the spotlight back onto deterrence. But the spotlight revealed how little expertise had survived the post-cold war peace dividend.
Wilton Park once again provided the leadership to adapt to this new context. Working with a new set of partners, we have convened annual workshops for the last 17 years on deterrence and assurance in a transatlantic context, rethinking legacy approaches in a new context and encouraging the development of a new, more diverse, and more broad-minded generation of deterrence policy experts.
As we have moved into a much more competitive era, with deep rivalry among the major powers and an increasingly fragile international nuclear order, the need for sound strategic analysis is again compelling. We cannot afford to “expect wrong” or to make “ordinary blunders.” Our strategic analysis must be the best of which we are capable. As a long-time participant in Wilton Park events, I have found no better tool for ensuring that this is so. And as a long-time partner in convening such events, I am proud of what we have accomplished. So far.
