NORFOLK

Globalization. Failed governments. Urbanization. Terrorism.

Huge, thorny issues, with effects that are impossible to predict, but nations will have to address them nonetheless.

Senior military leaders from NATO’s 26 member nations are gathering in town this week to imagine these sorts of problems and frame their responses.

This Multiple Futures Project is part of Supreme Allied Command Transformation in Norfolk, the alliance’s sole United States presence.

One of the goals is to see what the alliance can contribute to addressing any global crisis, said Italian Adm. Giampaolo Di Paola, who is on his first official visit as the chairman of NATO’s military committee.

“Nobody can predict the future,” he said. “Good planning is to make the least mistakes possible.”

The project’s focus is necessarily conceptual and long-term.

“We want to be careful about thinking what’s going on today is what’s going to go on tomorrow, too. We don’t want to be captured by it,” added Marine Gen. James Mattis, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.

“When we get done, we hope to have laid out what people in our jobs five and 10 years from now will confront.”

The project’s goal is not a to-do list, but rather an intellectual framework that will drive defense advice and planning, and strategy and policy development, within the alliance and its member countries.

In addition to the military expertise the alliance provides, the goal is to draw input from the political, economic and civilian sectors, as well as international governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Discussions are the first of three phases. The goal is to have conclusions drawn up in time for the alliance’s 60th anniversary in April.

However, even those conclusions will have to be tested continuously to evaluate their worth.

“We know we can’t get it completely right. We want to make certain we don’t get it completely wrong,” Mattis said, “and be agile and flexible in our thinking so when the surprises come that surely will come, we’re ready for them.”

It’s really about trying to avoid big mistakes, Di Paola added, “because, in this case, the consequence could be disastrous.”

Matthew Jones, (757) 446-2949, matthew.jones@pilotonline.com [1]