As part of the Strauss Center’s International Security Speaker Series Adam Lovinger gave a talk entitled Net Assessment as a Basis for U.S. Grand Strategy on October 16, 2014. LBJ Professor and Strauss Center Distinguished Scholar Josh Eisenman introduced and welcomed Mr. Lovinger, an eight-year veteran of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, to discuss net assessments as a tool for developing grand strategy.
Mr. Lovinger explained that net assessment can have different implications across countries, organizations, and agencies, and while the term was pioneered by the Department of Defense, they resist defining it. However, a net assessment is essentially an examination of a country, its competitor, and their relative strengths and weaknesses in order to identify strategic risks and opportunities. Lovinger described net assessment as “what you do before strategy to get your strategy right,” and said if net assessment is conducted correctly, strategy will naturally emerge.
Said Lovinger, the focus must be on long-term strategic competition and assessments should determine net positions through an honest accounting of both weaknesses and strengths. Furthermore, net assessments should focus on structural characteristics, take a compensatory approach to dynamic processes, and examine a healthy mix of quantifiable and non-quantifiable factors. In particular, Lovinger pointed the role of culture in influencing a country’s decision-making process.
Ultimately, Lovinger explained that net assessments are only valuable if they are “full and frank” and look unsparingly at strengths, weaknesses, and trends. Furthermore, net assessments must be forward thinking, focused on the future while also understanding the realities of change. As Lovinger concluded, “bureaucracies don’t turn on a dime” and shifting strategy is like “turning the wheels on an aircraft carrierit takes time.”
Adam S. Lovinger is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, McCourt School of Public Policy, and McDonough School of Business. In spring of 2014, he co-taught the first ever course on net assessment in an American MBA program. As a strategist in the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA), Mr. Lovinger provides direct support on long-term strategy to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense. Working from within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) since 2004, he conducts diagnostic analyses highlighting emerging strategic problems and opportunities confronting the Department’s leadership, and identifies strategic management issues relating to the long-term military competition between the U.S. and her competitors.
Prior to his current position, Mr. Lovinger served as general counsel within OSD’s lead office focused upon the operational reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan and as associate deputy general counsel for DoD. In such capacity Mr. Lovinger was the principal U.S. government liaison to the United Nations entity overseeing U.S. stewardship of the Development Fund for Iraq. Prior to his government service, Mr. Lovinger was an international project finance lawyer in the London-based law firms Clifford Chance and Freshfields.
Since 2011 he has served as guest lecturer of U.S. grand strategy formation, net assessment, and the emerging U.S.-China long-term strategic competition at Georgetown University, and the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University, and a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center.