How National Security Policy is Formulated
Nongqai – Helmoed Römer Heitman – January 2, 2026
Abstract: National Security, National Interests, Threat Perception, Threat Analysis, Development of National Security Policy, South Africa, Intelligence Requirements
Once vital interests, risks, and threats have been identified and analysed, and a coherent, pragmatic foreign policy has been developed on that basis, it becomes possible to develop a national security policy and then a defence policy.
The purpose of the national security policy is to pull all the relevant strands together, prioritise among them, allocate responsibilities across government and ensure coordination among the departments concerned. That will allow those departments to develop complementary policies and avoid both divergence and duplication.
The process of prioritization and allocation is best handled by a National Security Council chaired by a presidentor prime minister, and comprising the relevant ministries, with technical issues handled by the professional staff of each ministry. That same NSC must in the course of its work develop an evolving set of essential elements of intelligence to be addressed by the intelligence services, with input from the Defence Force in respect of foreign military capabilities and related aspects (e.g. terrain factors) and from bodies with the expertise to analyse technical risks in respect of the supply of critical resources and the potential for alternatives.
The strands that must be pulled together and prioritised include:
- Vital national interests, including internal and external vital infrastructure.
- General national interests.
- Foreign policy intent and the attitude and policies of relevant foreign governments.
- Economic development intent and plans and, for instance, the need to import resources.
- National economic, resource, technology and infrastructure resilience.
- Existing and potential external threats and risks, including those deemed unlikely and or even deemed ‘impossible’ as the ‘impossible’ all too often is possible.
- Existing and potential internal threats and risks, including those deemed unlikely.
The process will be complex because it will require:
- Inputs from multiple ministries and agencies.
- Consideration of the needs of different ministries and agencies, beginning with their need for information before they can formulate their inputs and then their requirements.
- Constant updating throughout the process because events will not stop to wait for the matter to be completed.
‘Threats’ will not necessarily be military, terrorist or criminal. A disaster in another country could require aid by South Africa in its own interests or could result in enormous numbers of refugees crossing the border; a pandemic could put sudden, unexpected strain not only on the health services, but on general administration. Issues like these will need to be addressed and managed in much the same way as security threats, requiring not just urgent action but also close coordination and cooperation among different departments and in some cases other governments. Often it will be the Defence Force with its communications links, command and control systems and its logistic capabilities that will be best placed to handle such situations as, for instance, was the case during the 2000 floods in Mozambique.
There may well also be economic ‘threats’ resulting from another country’s policies or changes in technologies affecting export potential or import needs. Those will not be something to be addressed militarily but could affect national security by their impact on the economy and so must be considered and catered for in national security policy, particularly in respect of national resilience.
Prioritisation must be ongoing to keep up with – or preferably ahead of – the evolving strategic situation and may require radical reprioritization when there are major strategic shifts such as conflict in the region or conflict further afield that affects access to vital resources. There must be a continuous, low latency, internal feedback loop to ensure that the national security policy remains relevant and avoids unpleasant surprises or, indeed, missed opportunities.
It is also critical to understand that this is a policy development process that, while it must be agile and nimble to cope with unexpected strategic and technological developments, must take into account that many decisions will take years or even decades to implement.
Formulating defence policy based on national security
The extreme case is perhaps defence: Reconfiguring a defence force to optimally meet changes in the strategic situation will take years; rebuilding one long neglected will take decades. That is not just an issue of selecting, acquiring and bringing into service equipment and training troops and maintainers, but one of developing new doctrines and organizational structures and one of identifying and developing senior officers and senior non-commissioned officers to implement those new doctrines. In times of peace, it will typically take at least twenty years to develop a colonel, another decade to develop a major-general. That can, like acquisition, be shortened drastically in a crisis, but the bill for doing so will be presented in casualties.
Much the same will be the case regarding the Police Service – experienced police officers are that because of their years of experience, which cannot be condensed.
Once prioritisation has been dealt with, the next step must be to allocate responsibilities to the ministries that are best suited to each area. This will almost always require one ministry to take the lead role but to work in conjunction with several other ministries.
Defence issues, for instance, will clearly fall to the Ministry of Defence, but will also need to be addressed together with other ministries and agencies, for instance:
- The intelligence services (both external and counterintelligence).
- The diplomatic service (in respect of countries that might present a threat or allow or be unable to prevent transit by hostile forces, or which are potential allies in a crisis).
- The Police (in respect of the protection of internal infrastructure).
- The ministries responsible for strategic stocks (e.g. fuel).
- The ministries responsible for industrial issues (in respect of the defence industry and its resilience).
Similarly, matters of internal security and crime prevention will fall to the Police, but will also require:
- Input from the intelligence services, which will come across relevant information in the course of their work, and which will have contacts in other intelligence services relevant to countering trans-border crime and international terrorism.
- The diplomatic desks dealing with neighbouring countries, in respect of trans-border crime, and more distant countries in respect of, for instance, narcotics smuggling and international terrorism.
- The ministries responsible for vital infrastructure (to establish vulnerabilities that must be considered in planning).
Finally, the development of a national security policy will soon show that there is a clear need for close cooperation with neighbouring countries to optimize regional security, and with key trading partners to bolster and sustain economic resilience. That reality must, in its turn, feed back into foreign policy.
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The Nongqai National Security Correspondent and Columnist Helmoed Römer Heitman has written and lectured on defence since 1978. He served in the SA Army reserve from 1970 to 1996, finally at the Long-Term Planning Division at Defence Headquarters. He has consulted to the Ministry of Defence, the Defence Force, political parties and defence industry companies, worked with the non-statutory forces and political parties in 1991/94 and during the 1995/96 Defence White Paper drafting and served on a work group of the 1997/98 Defence Review. He participated in Army Vision 2020 and doctrine development for the Rooivalk attack helicopter in 2005/06, drew up an airlift study for the Ministry of Defence in 2009, served on the Defence Review Committee in 2011/13, worked on through-life capability management in 2015/17, helped edit the Defence Acquisition Handbook and drafted the defence industry strategy in 2017, an intervention plan in 2019 and parts of the Aerospace and Defence Industry Master Plan in 2020. He has also briefed work sessions of the Security Cluster Directors General, the Chief of the Defence Force, the GOC Special Forces, the Standing Maritime Committee of the Inter-State Defence and Security Committee, the French Ministry of Defence and the German Army Combat Reconnaissance School. Helmoed Heitman holds economics and public administration degrees (University of Cape Town), an MA (War Studies; King’s College, University of London) and management diplomas (Stellenbosch University Graduate School of Business) and passed the junior staff course of the SA Army College.*