ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on policy initiatives for the Alliance to address since policy should dominate the strategy process and define the political context within which strategy, force development, and weapons acquisition decisions should be made. The process of executing policy decisions is important; but that process is often long and complicated, requiring extensive negotiations and bartering within the Alliance framework to obtain a consensus that is politically achievable and financially affordable. The Alliance needs to adopt a regular and systematic public education or public diplomacy program-not the ad hoc system that exists-that spells out not only these geopolitical realities but also the nature of the military threat confronting North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Major NATO Commanders can base their military plans only on those forces and resources that each Alliance member has agreed to allocate to NATO as a result of NATO’s formal defense planning system.
