Welcome to SPF

"Congressional and Executive Branch leaders must build programs to encourage individual members to acquire knowledge and experience in both national security and foreign policy"

"Giving members of Congress a [vehicle] to learn about a region, about the procedures and systems of Executive Branch decision making, and about crisis interactions will lead eventually to a more sophisticated Legislative Branch."

Hart-Rudman Commission Phase 3 Report, p. 111

EXERCISES FOR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Initiated by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Strategic Policy Forum (SPF) program is a division of National Defense University’s National Strategic Gaming Center and Institute for National Strategic Studies. SPF’s primary goal is to design and execute strategic level tabletop exercises for Members of Congress. SPF exercises bring together sitting Members of Congress and current Executive branch officials for crisis simulation exercises that provide insight into the complexity of policymaking in the current global security environment. Rather than supporting planning for actual or anticipated government actions, the exercises are designed to stimulate discussion of emerging national security issues, explore the capabilities and limitations of the main instruments of national power, and examine the consequences of policy choices.

OTHER SPF PROGRAMS

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Although SPF’s primary exercise series are designed for Members of Congress and senior Executive branch officials, we have found that our materials are of interest to the wider policy community. In particular, we run two ongoing programs that supplement the Congressional events: a biannual exercise for Congressional staff and exercises for the state-level policy community.

EXERCISE TOPICS

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SPF exercises run the gamut of both homeland and national security issues. We plan four to five exercises a year on topics that we anticipate being particularly salient security challenges over the next twelve months. Our repertoire of exercises includes:

Several new exercises are planned for 2009. You can read about past exercises in more detail here.

PROGRAM METHODOLOGY

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Form: SPF exercises all take the format of tabletop simulations, which is to say that participants gather around a seminar table to discuss policy options in response to a series of postulated events that unfold over the course of several moves, presented via a series of short videos and slides.

Scenario: Each exercise is set in the context of a very realistic, near-term security challenge. The topics are not set in the distant future or highly speculative projections of issues, but rather current issues, with scenarios generally set less than twelve months from the date of the exercise.

Topics: Each year’s schedule is a mix of brand new and revised exercises. This enables us to continually follow topics of on-going importance as well as to add issues to our repertoire. Where we present revised exercises they are significantly modified and updated in order to capture changes in the geopolitical environment and to ensure their freshness for repeat attendees, of which we have many.

Participants: A distinctive feature of SPF exercises is that participants are drawn from sitting Members of Congress and current Executive branch policymakers (as well as, where appropriate, representative of state and local governments), rather than former figures. The discussions during SPF exercises, then, are informed by the perspectives and insights of those currently grappling with these security challenges.

Execution: Exercises are conducted on a “not for attribution” basis, which we find promotes the most active, uninhibited exchange of views. We can run up to two cells of 16-20 Congressional and Executive Branch participants with both groups simultaneously playing the same scenario which consists of three moves. We then conclude each exercise by gathering all participants for an interactive lessons-learned, ‘hotwash’ session. The total duration of exercise play is about two and a half hours.

RECENT EFFORTS

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• Global Tempest (February and December 2006, February and August 2007) posited the emergence of a novel influenza strain that spread both internationally and within the United States, causing a pandemic of catastrophic proportions. Two Senators and eight members of the House of Representatives participated, along with Executive Branch participants from the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and Transportation; USAID, and the Homeland Security Council. State and local perspectives were provided by representatives from the State of Pennsylvania and Montgomery County, Maryland. Global Tempest was then revised as the pilot for our new state exercise program and has served as the basis for three state-level pandemic influenza exercises. We executed an updated version of Global Tempest for a Congressional audience in February of 2007.

• Persian Gold (July 2006 and 2007) examined the effect of Iranian actions on U.S. interests in the Middle East. One Senator and twenty Representatives along with Executive Branch participants from the Departments of Defense and State, the National Intelligence Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and National Defense University have attended Persian Gold exercises.

• Gallant Quest (March 2007) explored a range of potential policy options to counter a series of energy supply disruptions. Two Senators and one Representative attended and were joined by Federal participants from various departments including Defense, Energy, State, and the National Security Council.

• Divided Horizons  (May 2007) Senior executive branch officials from the departments of Defense, State, Energy, Justice, and several others, including the National Intelligence Council and USAID, were joined by one Member of Congress for an in-depth discussion of how internal stability and electoral politics in Nigeria could affect U.S. energy security and interests in West Africa.

• Golden Phoenix  (February 2008) Five Members of Congress were joined by representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense; the Joint Staff; the Departments of State and Treasury; the National Intelligence Council; and experts from the National Defense University for an in-depth discussion of China’s rise to global prominence and how that rise may affect U.S. policies and interests in the region.

For the entire list of all of our exercises, including those previous to 2007, and more details about them, please read here.