How do political leaders decide which policy advice to accept and which to reject, especially when the lives of many thousands of their own citizens and the citizens of other nations are involved?

The senior advisors to political leaders themselves make choices as to what policy advice will be presented to the politician. This goes to the very heart of any democracy. Political leaders, supported by their senior policymakers (in the Cabinet or other legislative organ) should undoubtedly be the ones to decide on one or other course of action.  But,  he or she should require to hear, and listen to,  a wide variety of policy voices. 

More importantly, the representatives of the different policy viewpoints should themselves be required to sit around the table and undertake a structured dialogue on the subject at hand; a dialogue (in Buberian terms) that takes into account the constraints and fears (weaknesses) of each of the participants (representing differing government voices), in an environment where every one of the participants has an equal voice. 

This is not a process where each shouts at and /or over the other and where the one with the loudest voice gets to push the group in their direction; nor one where the political leader’s advisors get to sanitise or select the information that is given to the President. And, this must be an explicit process, where the ideas that will have been presented and further explained during the structured dialogue are documented, and the influence of one idea on another is made explicit. 

Such a process will utilise a systems science approach to identifying the root causes underlying the complex socio-political challenge that they are addressing (i.e a dignified, humane, secure and diplomatic withdrawal of US and other troops from Afghanistan, without destroying the achievements to date), and identify the steps that they will jointly recommend to the President and be prepared to jointly implement, in order to resolve the root causes underlying the challenge, and also identify and plan how to overcome the obstacles that will be encountered on the way to achieving the desired goal. 

A simplified process could be completed in one day, a more complete approach would require a three-day weekend retreat to consider:

• an initial SDDP where the participants will develop the vision and the shared language for addressing the Afghanistan withdrawal;
• a second SDDP would identify the obstacles that must be addressed to implement this vision; and
• a third and final SDDP will obtain agreement on a road map of agreed actions that will overcome the obstacles to achieving the vision. 

When did the President call all his advisors from the different camps into the room and ask for their joint recommendations?  Only after the scale of the botched withdrawal had become evident to all.

The disasterous US withdrawal from Afghanistan was an excellent example of a process that could have benefited from the application of a Structured Democratic Dialogue Process.