This first appeared as a PATImes column in June 2007.

Getting Our (Foreign) Affairs in Order: Project Horizon
by John M. Kamensky

An amazing thing is quietly occurring in the depths of the federal foreign affairs bureaucracy.  It is slowly but surely defining and organizing for the future around different scenarios that the U.S. may face in the next 20 years.  This effort reaches across more than two dozen federal agencies that have a hand in how the government sets priorities and acts on them across the globe.  These agencies touch on issues ranging from food security to pandemics to climate change to counter-drug strategies.  To these agencies, “globalization” is a fundamental fact of life, not a buzzword!

The initiators of this “revolution” are a quiet and unassuming deputy assistant secretary at the State Department, Sid Kaplan, and two high energy analysts on his staff in the Office of Strategic and Performance Planning – Jason Foley and Rudolph Lohmeyer.  Typically, the phrases “State Department” and “cutting edge management practices” have not been used in the same sentence.  But this case is different!  Lohmeyer, who served as the project’s director, joined Kaplan’s office from the private sector, where he had acquired expertise in scenario planning.  It seems the success of their effort has been driven by their grassroots approach, largely at the senior career staff levels.  Their approach seems to have avoided the traditional institutional posturing the results in turf battles, not collaborative solutions.

So how did this start?  Back in 2005, the State Department met with senior executives from across the federal government and the White House National Security Council to explore ways to develop the interagency capacities that would be crucial to successfully navigating global challenges that may face the nation over the next 20 years. This ambitious effort – dubbed “Project Horizon” – led to an ongoing relationship among over 200 senior executives across more than two dozen agencies.  The project was funded and governed jointly by all of the participating agencies.

The group agreed on three goals:  (1) to identify strategic interagency capabilities that the government needed to develop and invest in over the next 20 years; (2) to provide participating agencies with a scenario-planning toolset that they could each use independently; and (3) to develop an institutionalized interagency planning process.

But what could possibly constitute some valid “operating environments” that the federal government might face over the next 20 years?  The State Department team was inspired by the scenario planning approaches used by the Coast Guard and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Recognizing that they were “not smart enough to forecast THE future . . . but that we could develop and plan against a range of possible futures,” the interagency team created a range of different possible scenarios.  The five final “plausible alternative future” scenarios were selected via a series of planning workshops and finalized by the Senior Principals Board that governed the effort.  The five “worlds of 2025” – with catchy titles -- are:

Asian Way.  In this world, the global economy is dominated by Asian mega-corporations that expand at the expense of the rest of the world.  The U.S. government is losing influence as it tries to dig itself out of a significant fiscal and economic hole, driven in part by an aging and in-debt population unable to control its healthcare costs.

Be Careful What You Wish For.  In this world, American-led globalization sees democracy taking root throughout the globe.  The U.S. government is the world’s policeman and first responder, and is stretched thin.  The world is made up of activist democracies that are chaotic and challenging in unexpected ways.

Congagement.  This is a world combining confrontation and engagement, or “congagement.”  Political and economic powers are organized regionally rather than globally, following a wave of Asian pandemics.  There are multiple points of friction between the European Union, the Americas, and the China-led Asian bloc.

 Profits and Principles.  In this world, a new culture of global capitalism fuels rapid growth, integrated markets, and technological innovation.  Multinational corporations heavily influence foreign policy.  Profit motives drive out social safety nets, and as a result, moderate Islam offers a principled message that it cares for people while global capitalism does not.  The global clash between profits and principles creates divergent paths with consequences for the U.S.

Lockdown.  This is a multi-threat world marked by persistent terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and challenging economic times.  The U.S. turns defensive, protectionist, and isolationist following terror attacks.  The negative impact on U.S. economic and social life has harsh effects across the globe.

Kaplan cautions that these scenarios are “not intended to be forecasts of the future,” but rather serve as a carefully constructed set of contexts for developing and testing strategies.  In this case, the interagency strategic conversations focused on identifying the capabilities the federal government should consider developing in order to be ready to address any one of the five.  These strategic conversations led to the development of ten “big ideas” that policymakers should consider developing as interagency capabilities.  Again, Kaplan stresses, “these interagency capabilities do not represent an integrated framework, but rather 10 discrete capabilities” that the group believed would be valuable to address future challenges.

The Ten Big Ideas

 The 10 strategic interagency capabilities that the planning group surfaced that seemed to have value across all five of the scenarios are: 

1.      Quadrennial Strategic Review.  The government currently lacks an integrated strategic plan for global affairs that translates the high-level guidance in the National Security Strategy into a specific set of strategic and performance goals and assigns lead and supporting agencies.  The idea would be to conduct a coordinated, regular interagency strategic planning process for U.S. global affairs that links the President’s National Security Strategy with other National Strategies, agency strategic plans, and – significantly – budget submissions.

2.      Interagency Fusion Groups.  Inspired by the states’ homeland security fusion centers, and the emergency-based Incident Command System, be able to create, staff, and monitor time-limited interagency organizations targeted to address emerging strategic issues with clear lines of authority, resources, and accountability.

3.      Partnership Frameworks.  Create a capacity for the federal government to more effectively partner with non-federal entities – states, localities, non-profits, foundations, and the private sector.  One model might be the Emergency Management Assistance Compacts that have led to ad hoc sharing of resources on an as-needed basis.

4.      Global Hazards Planning and Response.  Create an integrated federal planning and rapid response capability that can be activated for significant global hazards – such as tsunamis – in partnership with other nations and non-governmental actors (e.g., corporations and nonprofits), as appropriate.

5.      Global Health Engagement.  Mobilize interagency and non-governmental public health assets to advance U.S. leadership and public diplomacy efforts.

6.      Science and Technology Incentives.  Create a framework that aligns the $140 billion in federal government science and technology investments with emerging, long-term global priorities, and rewards cross-agency and cross-academic and private sector initiatives.

7.      Global Domain Foresight.  Maintain “anticipatory” global domain awareness to enable proactive responses to emerging man-made and natural threats.

8.      Governmentwide Information Sharing.  Follow the intelligence community’s lead in transforming how information is shared across the government, including a shift from the “need to know” model to a “need to share” model of information access. 

9.      Human Resources Model for Global Affairs.  Like the Intelligence Community, develop a cross-governmental set of human capital policies, procedures, and incentives to assembly a cadre of capable, integrated, and trained personnel for global affairs activities.

10.  Global Affairs Learning Consortium.  Create a jointly governed network of federal global affairs training institutions that mutually leverage training, exercises, and experimentation on behalf of all federal global affairs professionals.

The remarkable interagency team that drove this effort is now becoming institutionalized as the Horizon Interagency Strategic Planning Group (ISPG), and is exploring possible implementation of capabilities from this group of ten in the coming months.  However, it is just as possible that this list could well become a ready toolkit for action by the next Administration.  Fast action could be possible since the group has already invested two years of collaborative efforts to build some degree of cross-agency consensus.  In any case, the group believes that the efforts to develop a common understanding of future challenges is valuable in itself because it has helped agencies develop a tool set and an understanding of scenario planning that each agency can independently use in their own agency planning efforts as they develop their next round of strategic plans under the Government Performance and Results Act.