Michael Singh, direttore del Washington Institute for Near East Policy e già funzionario del Consiglio di Sicurezza Nazionale, in questo articolo pubblicato dal Washington Post sottolinea l’importanza fondamentale che assume la pianificazione a livello di vertice politico-decisionale nella gestione delle crisi internazionali e nella tutela degli interessi nazionali:

As the United States tries to determine how to respond to Russia’s intervention in Crimea — perhaps the most pressing foreign policy dilemma of Barack Obama’s presidency — another question hovers over the proceedings: Why didn’t we see this coming?
When I served on the National Security Council staff, the meetings I looked forward to the least were contingency planning sessions. With so much happening in the world that demanded an immediate response, it seemed almost indulgent to engage in hypothetical debates over how to respond to events that had not yet happened, and might not ever.
But contingency planning is a critical step in the policymaking process. It forces one to think not merely of how to respond to events of the day but also to extrapolate several moves ahead and consider the likely implications for U.S. interests as those events unfold. In doing so, one develops a better understanding of what is likely to occur and what policy steps one should be taking now to head off future crises, or at least how to be prepared for them when they erupt. Planning also forces prioritization: Senior officials have only so much time and energy, and they cannot afford to expend it on matters that are marginal to U.S. interests.
Few foreign policy failures have been so acute lately as the failure to think ahead and plan for contingencies. Many of the crises we are grappling with were foreseeable. […]
Russia’s incursion into Ukraine serves as a reminder of something policymakers have learned and forgotten many times over: Geopolitics is not dead yet. It should also snap us out of our foreign policy stupor and underline the importance of contingency planning and forward thinking in policymaking. In a world full of crises and conflicts, we should at least be prepared for — and, better yet, prevent — the foreseeable ones.