What NATO Taught Me About Uncertainty

We often imagine international politics as a contest of power. States compete, alliances form, leaders make decisions, and history moves forward through moments of dramatic consequence. Yet after several years working at NATO, I came to a starkly different conclusion.

The defining characteristic of international affairs is not power. It is uncertainty.

Governments make decisions with incomplete information. Diplomats negotiate without knowing how political circumstances might change tomorrow. Military planners prepare for contingencies they hope will never occur. Entire institutions are built around the challenge of acting in a world where certainty is always elusive.

In this respect, international diplomacy is less like a game of chess than many people assume. Chess offers perfect information. Every piece is visible. Every move can be analysed. Diplomacy, by contrast, more closely resembles navigating through fog. The destination may be clear, but what you must go through to arrive rarely is.

The Myth of Control

Modern societies place great faith in planning. We produce strategies, forecasts, and risk assessments in the hope that the future can be rendered manageable. We have sprawling bureaucracies, think tanks at every turn and lobbyists for every conceivable issue.

There is value in all these things. Yet working in international security reveals the limits of control.

During my time at NATO, crises often emerged not because policymakers lacked expertise, but because events unfolded in unexpected ways. Political disputes developed where none had been anticipated. Relationships that had seemed stable suddenly became fragile. Decisions made for entirely rational reasons generated unforeseen consequences.

This is not a failure of governance. It is simply the nature of complex systems.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once distinguished between those who believe the world can be explained through a single organising principle and those who recognise its irreducible complexity. International affairs invariably reward the latter perspective. Nations pursue multiple interests simultaneously. Political leaders face competing pressures. Institutions contain different cultures, priorities, and assumptions.

The result is a world that resists simple explanations. No grand plan can provide a comprehensive answer.

The Importance of Conversation

One consequence of this complexity is that dialogue becomes more important than certainty.

Many people imagine diplomacy as the pursuit of agreement. In practice, much of diplomacy involves something more fundamental: understanding.

Before differences can be resolved, they must first be understood. Before consensus can be built, competing perspectives must be acknowledged. Progress often begins not with persuasion but with listening.

This may sound unremarkable, yet it is surprisingly difficult.

In public debate there is often pressure to speak quickly, judge quickly, and decide quickly. The cut and thrust of modern-day politics demonstrates that. Diplomacy demands a different temperament. It requires patience. It requires curiosity. Above all, it requires an acceptance that intelligent people can view the same problem and arrive at entirely different conclusions.

The challenge is not eliminating disagreement. The challenge is preventing disagreement from becoming destructive. Governments need spaces to breathe and think.

Institutions as Repositories of Wisdom

Working within a multilateral organisation also changed the way I think about institutions.

Institutions are frequently criticised for being slow, bureaucratic, or resistant to change. Sometimes such criticism is justified. Yet there is another side to the story.

Institutions embody accumulated experience. They preserve lessons learned through previous crises. Procedures that appear cumbersome often exist because someone, somewhere, discovered the consequences of acting without them.

The great achievement of organisations such as NATO is not that they eliminate conflict or uncertainty. It is that they create frameworks through which disagreement can be managed peacefully and predictably.

That may sound modest, but history suggests it is anything but.

The twentieth century demonstrated how easily international competition can descend into catastrophe when such frameworks are absent. The post-war international order, for all its imperfections, was built on the recognition that conversation is preferable to confrontation and cooperation preferable to isolation.

Security as a Human Problem

Perhaps the most unexpected lesson I learned is that security is ultimately about people.

Public discussions often focus on military capabilities, technological innovation, or geopolitical competition. These things matter enormously. Yet beneath them lies something more fundamental.

Security depends on trust.

Alliances function because nations trust one another’s commitments. Institutions endure because people trust the rules that govern them. Negotiations succeed because individuals trust that agreements will be honoured.

Trust is difficult to build and remarkably easy to lose.

This reality means that many of the most important tasks in international affairs are also the least visible. Building relationships. Maintaining dialogue. Resolving misunderstandings. Preserving channels of communication during periods of tension.

Such work rarely attracts headlines. Yet it is often what prevents crises from becoming conflicts.

Humility and History

My academic background as a historian reinforced another lesson that diplomacy taught me: the importance of humility.

History is filled with predictions that proved incorrect and certainties that later appeared misguided. Every generation tends to assume its challenges are unprecedented, only to discover echoes of similar dilemmas in the past.

This does not mean history repeats itself. It does not.

But it does remind us that human beings remain remarkably consistent in their ambitions, fears, hopes, and mistakes.

For policymakers, leaders, and citizens alike, this should encourage a degree of intellectual modesty. The world is usually more complicated than it first appears. The future is more open than we imagine. The possibility that we may be mistaken is not a weakness but a necessary starting point for wisdom.

Living with Uncertainty

The philosopher Karl Popper argued that civilisation advances not because we possess certainty, but because we remain open to correction. We progress by recognising our fallibility.

In many ways, this captures the essence of diplomacy.

NATO taught me that uncertainty is not a problem to be solved once and for all. It is a condition to be managed. Effective leaders are not those who eliminate ambiguity, but those who learn to navigate it with judgement, patience, and resilience.

That lesson extends far beyond international affairs.

Whether in politics, business, academia, or everyday life, we inhabit a world of incomplete information and competing perspectives. We make decisions without knowing exactly what comes next. We act despite uncertainty rather than after it has disappeared.

Perhaps that is why diplomacy remains so relevant. At its best, it is not merely a profession concerned with relations between states. It is a practical philosophy of coexistence, an acknowledgement that in a complex and uncertain world, our greatest achievements often emerge not from certainty, but from our ability to work together despite the absence of it.