Strategic Ambiguity: Deconstructing Duterte's 2018 National Security Strategy (original) (raw)

A country's National Security Strategy (NSS) contains principled guidelines and purposeful plan of action to promote national interests and protect these from threats in a vulnerable and uncertain world. It outlines the right mix of ways and means—i.e. internal political consolidation, economic capacity-building, diplomacy, and/or military—in order for the state to survive and succeed at both domestic and strategic levels. When published as an unclassified document, the NSS serves various, at times ambiguous, purposes for a state actor's performativity before diverse audiences at the two-level theater of national security. On the home front, the NSS draws the people to the national leader's strategic vision for the country in the midst of emerging and pressing security problems. It creates national consensus on a range of security issues and concerns that the leadership desires to address with utmost priority. It lays down strategic lines of action for the executive branch and informs congress of the budgetary requirements for a whole-of-government approach to national security. As a management tool, the NSS provides national level direction and coordination, institutional oversight, measures for effectiveness, and mechanisms for accountability in national security administration. Outside the homeland, the NSS communicates to the world the unity, resiliency, and firmity of the state and its people to counter threats against their safety and security, and carve a strategic position in the region. It projects power, pride, and even pretenses to influence others in the security community. It aims to deter aggression and defeat the enemy if needed. As a strategic communication, the NSS shows off the strengths and will of the nation-state under a strong leader, and shrouds any weakness and indecisiveness in challenging times.