What Foresight Does NATO Need?

Anticipating threats and preparing to face them is one of NATO’s main tasks to guarantee freedom and security. To succeed, the Alliance must anticipate future challenges, avoid strategic surprises, and devise robust strategies and plans. Strategic foresight is uniquely positioned to help policy makers, strategists and planners deal with fundamental uncertainty. In today’s environment, foresight is not just a nice-to-have capability.

But how prepared is NATO for the future? This paper provides insights into whether NATO’s foresight practices are up to the task, what other organizations can learn from the way NATO does foresight, and how the Alliance can strengthen its futures work.

The full paper is available via NATO Defense College.