Strategic Competence

Integrating Elements of National Power

Too often diplomatic, economic, intelligence, military, and law enforcement efforts are disconnected from one another and, in some cases, work against one another. The Program’s work focuses on integrating diplomatic, informational, military, and economic elements of national power to improve strategic competence.

Bolstering Partnerships and Alliances and Reforming International Institutions

The initiative fosters strategic empathy, an understanding of the challenges and opportunities the United States faces from the perspective of others to protect against mirror imaging and other forms of self-delusion, avoiding cognitive traps such as optimism or confirmation bias. Research and seminars consider how the recent past produced the present as the first step in projecting into the future. The Program features programs and publications to advance ideas and policies that promote American security, prosperity, and influence.

Improving Confidence

The United States must possess the confidence to sustain a foreign policy based on the recognition that American security and prosperity at home depend on engagement abroad. Improving strategic competence is critical to restoring confidence among the American people that U.S. engagement abroad is critical to security at home and important to building a better future. The program reinforces other efforts at Hoover to improve confidence in democratic principles, institutions, and processes.

Understanding Lessons from History

A reinvigoration of history in higher-level education is important. Many courses in diplomatic and military history have been displaced by theory-based international relations courses, which tend to mask the complex causality of events and obscure the cultural, psychological, social, and economic elements that distinguish cases from one another. History, on the other hand, teaches us how to think as we gain an appreciation for the complex causality of events. The Program’s oral history projects increase the availability of archives on policies that provide crucial lessons about strategic competence for future generations of scholars and policymakers. The initiative reinforces the Hoover History Lab, the Applied History Working Group, and the Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group.