ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the challenges of strategic leadership in multinational and multilateral ventures, arguing that this context is the norm in international affairs. It describes how participants come together more or less formally into coalitions led by a strategic leadership that finds that it must maintain the coalition concurrently with fulfilling the task. In international affairs, it would be rare for a state to gain and keep international legitimacy if it were to conduct a completely unilateral strategy that involved military forces, and was not about immediate self-defence. The nature of the issue – its challenges and opportunities – influences the type of coalition. The different national and organisational cultures of coalition members combine to create a powerful degree of creativity and sensitivity to the cultural challenges of the task itself. The strategic leader steps into this political obstacle course to achieve the objective within the constraints imposed by the coalition.
