National Security Studies

The Discipline and Practice of Strategy

“Everyone needs a strategy” reads the first line of Lawrence Freedman's landmark chronicle, Strategy: A History. Indeed. Professionals who want to progress from journeyman to executive leadership need to recognize and formulate effective strategies. And yet, popular usage seems to have drained the concept of strategy of meaning. At best, it is a term suggesting an orderly arrangement of ends, ways and means to achieve an important goal. More typically, strategy has come simply to signal obvious virtues or express a compelling vision.

The objective of this course is an antidote to this problem and an accelerant to professional development. It provides knowledge of strategy as a specific discipline, an awareness of its application to the special class of challenges that truly warrant its exercise, and a toolkit of how to think strategically, formulate strategies and act with strategic coherence.

The syllabus comprises 27 hours of instruction organized into nine, three-hour sessions, which include:

• An Overview of Strategy, which teaches a framework of strategy as a discipline.
• “What's an Army for?”, which is a case study of the strategic choices General Edward Meyer made in the early-1980s to create the Army of Excellence which cinched the Cold War and destroyed the Iraqi Army in 1991.
• Throughlines to Winning the 21st Century, which teaches how a grand strategist appraises the key tectonic changes that will play out across the next eight decades.
• The Practice of Strategy: Legislative Affairs, which explains how the principles of strategy apply to the work of the U.S. Congress.
• The Practice of Strategy: Civil Rights, which provides a history of the American Civil Rights Movement with the precepts of military strategy.
• The Practice of Strategy: Business, which teaches the application of strategy to advance a commercial or financial interest.
• The Practice of Strategy: Electoral Politics, which teaches the application of strategy in U.S. presidential campaigns.
• Project Solarium, which teaches the history of President Eisenhower's initiative to reconsider U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in 1953.
• U.S. Policy Toward the Russo-Ukraine War, which reviews the evolution of U.S. policy from Russia's 2014 incursions into Ukraine to the advent of the Trump-47 administration.
• Project Kyiv, a capstone exercise which organizes students into small groups to analyze a real-life strategic challenge and present a diagnosis and recommendation about it to a review panel.

National Security Management

The program's flagship is a course in National Security Management (NSM). NSM develops senior executives of military, government and industry organizations to perform confidently in roles for which in-depth knowledge of national security affairs is essential. Graduates of NSM at Syracuse join a distinguished cadre of over 2,000 alumni who form a powerful network of leaders in U.S. national security affairs.

The course is geared to the needs of senior executives who are navigating the transition from enterprise leadership to the management of policy challenges at a national scale and scope. Accordingly, the class comprises mostly flag/general officers of the U.S. military, senior executive/Foreign Service civilians, and executive vice presidents in commercial enterprises. However, those at the ranks of O-6/GS-15 and their commercial equivalents may also apply.

Classroom time involves a mix of keynote addresses, case studies, lectures and practical exercises addressing a range of the most important topics that comprise a rounded primer in national security affairs. Its 60 hours of instruction are delivered over seven weeks in a hybrid format that is organized into two phases.

The fall 2025 program fee is $10,000, which covers tuition, curricular materials, housing, meals and course-related transportation. Participants will only be responsible for expenses associated with transportation to/from Syracuse University. Payment for the course is due before the first day of class.

Students will be awarded a Maxwell School Executive Education certificate upon the successful completion of the course. Those who wish to earn academic credit for participation in the NSM course may do so by completing an independent study assignment under the supervision of a Maxwell School faculty member.

Phase I

The first 20 hours are delivered online in weekly four-hour sessions over five weeks. The objective of Phase I is to instill knowledge of the building blocks of national security affairs:

• Tectonics: global trends that shape the national security landscape.
• Strategy: the theory of grand strategy and its expression in national security strategies.
• Hard Power: the military, kinetic instruments of national power.
• Soft Power: the diplomatic, economic and information instruments of power.
• Technology: how advanced technologies give impetus to the dynamics of national security.

Phase II

The 40-hour balance of the course is delivered over seven successive days in-person, on campus at Syracuse University. The objective of Phase II is to explore the application of knowledge to solving practical challenges of national security leadership and policymaking: 

• In the Arena: first-hand accounts of distinguished national security leaders.
• The Kinmen Crisis: an inter-agency crisis simulation in which students play the roles of executive branch officials and elected representatives in Congress.
• Project Minto: a study group exercise involving small groups working in collaboration with Maxwell School faculty.