OPINION – The current conflict with Iran highlights a longstanding, core premise that national security comes from visible instruments of power - weapons. While hard power will always be critical to national security, national security is not created by accumulated hard power. It is created by enduring internal capacity that prevents the need to rely on hard power. This enduring internal capacity is the critical but overlooked and undervalued foundation of national security.
Traditional security models are not sufficient for the world we live in today. These models - hard power, Powell Doctrine, containment, deterrence - conflate a tool with an outcome, and they rely on assumptions that no longer hold or are increasingly strained: stable institutions, a cohesive society, reliable decision-making, and political continuity. National strategy is constantly changing, which shrinks planning horizons, compresses and degrades decision making, and increases the cost to prepare for and execute new priorities. Ultimately, this environment is a reactive system, and reactive systems narrow the set of good options.
Chronically reactive systems benefit adversaries who can exploit institutional fatigue, political volatility, divided populations, and cognitive overload. Adversaries do not need to out-invest or out-build us - they only need to exploit the cracks in the foundation.
I offer an updated definition and framework for national security. First, national security is a nation’s enduring capacity to protect and advance its interests, deter and mitigate threats, and sustain power and legitimacy over time. If national security is enduring capacity, strategic continuity is significant. Repeated strategic resets, electoral and leadership transitions, and compressed decision timelines destabilize institutional readiness, shorten planning cycles, and undermine the enduring capacity and stability that national security requires.
This framework focuses on the internal capacity variables that determine whether power can be generated, sustained, and effectively applied. That enduring capacity rests on four interdependent variables:
National Security is created and sustained through decision quality, institutional performance, societal resilience, and innovation and adoption capacity. If any one of these variables degrades, overall national security capacity declines - regardless of material advantage.
NS = DQ + IP + SR + IA
DQ (Decision Quality): The ability to make sound, timely choices under stress.
IP (Institutional Performance): The ability to execute strategy consistently and adapt over time.
SR (Societal Resilience): The level of trust, cohesion, and foundational stability that prevents internal fracture from becoming an external vulnerability.
IA (Innovation & Adoption Capacity): The ability to integrate emerging technologies into functioning systems at scale.
I also want to offer a note on resilience in anticipation of an argument that these variables fall under resilience rather than national security. The government defines resilience narrowly as the ability to absorb kinetic shock. Modern competition targets cognitive stability, institutional trust, and social cohesion long before kinetic thresholds are crossed. Thus, these are core elements of a proactive, preventive national security posture as well as requirements for withstanding gray zone and kinetic action.
Decision Quality
National security is high stakes, and personal psychology and leadership determine more than we acknowledge (even within the Intelligence Community, leadership analysts are viewed as a “nice to have.”) Modern geopolitical competition and gray zone conflict require leaders and institutions to make sound choices under stress and frequently without all the data. An individual leader’s psychology and temperament – a person’s root operating system that shapes the way they view the world and approaches decision making – often determine a decision before the following two critical factors for high decision quality: objective intelligence gathering and analysis and positive leadership dynamics (including access to advisors that are experienced, encouraged to debate, and present diverse recommendations). High decision quality comes from grounded leadership, objective intelligence, and trusted advisers. If these factors are not present, decision quality degrades as options and choices are made based on faulty or incomplete intelligence, personal desires, or group think, and capability does not translate into strategic success.
Institutional Performance
Government organizations must be capable, trusted, resourced, and agile as they plan and execute strategy over time. Strong institutional performance comes from workforce stability, strategic continuity, adequate resourcing, and technology adoption capacity. Organizational psychology and leadership dynamics can have significant influence on whether an institution can execute and meet expectations. Staff need to feel secure, supported, and respected in their roles and have trust in the leadership, mission, and vision. Strategic continuity supports short- and long-term planning and reduces costs associated with constantly changing mission priorities. Resources are a core requirement to ensure organizations can execute, and technology adoption can drastically optimize organizational performance.
Institutional performance also affects societal resilience. People need to believe government institutions are capable, responsive, and supportive of their needs. Without responsive organizations, societal trust and cohesion erode.
Societal Resilience
“United we stand. Divided we fall.” Social cohesion, trust, and stability prevent internal division and protect the population from becoming an external vulnerability. Likewise, having a population that is well-educated and healthy with opportunities for upward mobility generates individual strength and resilience, creating stronger immunity and resistance to adversary operations. These are not social add-ons; each is a structural input into resilience, legitimacy, and institutional effectiveness. Human flourishing is a competitive advantage: nations that invest in people generate the talent, trust, and institutional capacity that innovation and ultimately power depends on.
Societal resilience is crucial in an age of cognitive warfare: propaganda, deepfakes, mis- and disinformation, information operations, and sophisticated cyber capabilities. What is the ground truth? How do people verify what they are seeing, reading, and/or hearing are true? Adversaries can create powerful narratives that can influence and bias a population against supporting its government, divide it amongst itself, or convince a population to take/not take action that directly benefits the adversary.
Can we resist influence operations; Can we maintain social cohesion under narrative pressure; Can we sustain legitimacy during prolonged competition or conflict; Can we prevent internal fracture from being exploited externally? Ultimately, trust + cohesion + opportunity = resistance to manipulation.
Innovation & Adoption Capacity
If technology cannot be integrated effectively, innovation amplifies dysfunction rather than being an advantage. Innovation and adoption capacity are longstanding challenges within the government. More investment and innovation occur in the private sector now, and public-private partnerships are critical to translating emerging technology into tangible improvements in operations and mission outcomes. However, the core challenge remains the ability to integrate emerging technologies into existing systems at scale. The rapid development and deployment of AI across the public and private sectors right now is an excellent example of a game-changing technology struggling to be adopted and implemented effectively at scale.
Innovation and adoption capacity also support decision quality, societal resilience, and institutional performance by providing tools that enhance decision making, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our institutions, and give us the tools to identify and counter adversary activities. Technology innovation and adoption are critical to provide the US with a strategic, asymmetric technical advantage should kinetic conflict occur.
What does this new definition and framework mean for hard power and deterrence? They remain necessary but are instruments rather than the source of national security or a strategy unto themselves. Deterrence is not strictly a function of visible military capability. Deterrence is also a function of credible execution, decision coherence, institutional reliability, political and social stability, technology integration, and escalation absorption. Enduring internal capacity determines whether hard power is credible and sustainable.
Adversaries will ask: Can they sustain; Can they respond coherently; Is their society stable; Will political volatility constrain action;Can they absorb escalation; For how long?
Security in the 21st century is not defined by what we can destroy. It is defined by what we can sustain. National security is not primarily created by accumulated military capability. It is created by durable internal capacity that prevents vulnerability from emerging in the first place. Hard power deters. Capacity endures.
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