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The Schlesinger Working Group on Strategic Surprises

During the fall of 1999, ISD launched the Schlesinger Working Group on Strategic Surprises, an exciting initiative of the James R. Schlesinger Program in Strategic Studies. The Working Group aims to review and assess a range of possible scenarios that have significant potential for strategic surprise and unanticipated outcomes. The initiative aims to identify future crisis areas, as well as unexpected events and political and economic discontinuities around the globe. Another motivation is to inject some counter-intuitive discipline and outside-the-box thinking into the Washington policy milieu. This is an environment that -- despite the ever-growing number of skilled and expert participants -- remains dangerously vulnerable to conventional wisdom and pressure to conform. A further reason to focus on strategic surprise is to raise awareness of the side effects and unintended consequences of apparently successful actions. Recognizing that surprise can never be eliminated completely from global politics, the Working Group explores the implications of potential strategic surprise and how its effects can be managed.

The concept of strategic surprise originates from the military realm and it connotes the clever stratagems we use on adversaries, or they use on us. With today's complex challenges, strategic surprise has a far broader range of meanings in addition to the original one. Surprises with strategic significance may come from random events, historical discontinuities, trend reversals, systemic transitions, our own actions or the actions of others. Strategic surprises come in various sizes and shapes. They can be positive as well as negative in their impact. For a further discussion of the concept of strategic surprise see Schlesinger Working Group Co-Chairman, Chester Crocker's article: "Reflections on Strategic Surprise". The article will appear in Patrick Cronin's edited forthcoming volume: The Impenetrable Fog of War: Essays on Modern War and Strategic Surprise.

The Schlesinger Working Group relies on a permanent "core membership" of generalists from the policy-making and research communities and academia, who are joined by some half dozen respected authorities recruited for the regional or functional topic under consideration. Several of these specialists are asked to prepare papers and presentations for each of the Working Group's meetings, which act as springboards for the ensuing discussions.

Each session consists of two meetings, moderated by two co-chairs: Casimir Yost, ISD Director, and Chester Crocker, Schlesinger Professor of Strategic Studies. Sara Thannhauser, ISD Program Officer, serves as the Working Group's rappoteur and is responsible for writing and editing the meetings reports. Meetings are usually held about a month apart. Much of the first meeting is spent identifying future trends and potential scenarios for the topic at hand, while the second delves into the implications of the predicted outcomes for policy-makers and explores potential U.S. policy responses.