Chapter Two

The Future Security Environment, 2001-2025: Toward a Consensus View
by Sam J. Tangredi

Whether in business or defense, the first steps to any strategic plan include a definition of objectives and an evaluation of the environment in which those objectives will be pursued. This chapter addresses the latter requirement for the next QDR by outlining a consensus view of the future security environment for the years 2001-2025.¹ It derives this consensus through an attempt to reconcile the existing group of competing assessments of the anticipated outlines of future conflicts. Mindful of the potential for bias, it also seeks to identify dissenting viewpoints and potential wildcard events. The objective is to develop a baseline consensus of the probable future, but at the same time to identify those unpredictable catastrophic events--or predictable, yet unlikely, developments--against which hedging strategies could be adopted as a form of national defense insurance. Additionally, the intent is to identify issues about which a consensus could not be developed but which must be debated if any defense review is to be effective.

Like its 1997 predecessor, QDR 2001 is intended to be a strategy-driven assessment that balances the preparations of the present with the anticipated challenges and opportunities of the future.² On the surface it would appear relatively easy to construct an assessment of future trends to guide the review. A recent survey identified over 50 academic or professional "futures studies" conducted since 1989, the approximate end of the Cold War.³ But there are problems in attempting to apply the results of these studies to effective policymaking, among them their lack of coordination, the significant differences in their methodologies and the time periods examined, the broad and divergent scope of topics, the presence of underlying and often unidentified biases, and the wide range of contradictory results. Many of the individual studies were constructed from a clean slate, taking scant account of previous related work. An unedited compilation of these studies would be capable of generating much debate, but would provide only a limited basis for policymaking.

To construct a policy requires a baseline consensus from which implications and issues can be examined and analyzed. The methodology developed by the working group and reported in this chapter is straightforward. Thirty-six studies (unclassified or with pertinent unclassified sections) concerning the future security environment were selected based on standardized criteria.⁴ These studies were representative of views from a wide range of organizations involved with or interested in national defense issues. The studies, with two exceptions, were published between 1996 and 2000. The choice of which studies to include here was based on the assumption that earlier themes would have been reflected in QDR 1997. These studies are identified in the appendix to this chapter.

The 36 studies were analyzed in detail and compared on a subject-by-subject basis. Sixteen points of consensus and nine points of divergence were identified and are reported in this chapter. The points of consensus are those on which 85 percent or more of the sources agreed. Points of divergence are those on which there was no clear majority position.

The consensus and divergence points were compared with the conclusions of over 300 other sources, most of them specialized studies of the specific topics.⁵ The purpose was to identify dissenting positions on the points of consensus, as well to validate the fact that the consensus represents a majority view.

Both the primary and consulted sources were also surveyed for the identification of wildcards: events that could not normally be predicted, but that could present a considerable challenge if they were to occur during the 2001-2025 time period. Along with the divergence points, the wildcards indicate changes in the security environment that might require the development of hedging strategies.

The result was a consensus scenario that describes the anticipated 2001-2025 future security environment, presented below in narrative form, along with a list of potential unanticipated events that merit hedging.

Estimates, Forecasts, Scenarios, and Caveats

There are limitations, both conceptual and practical, in providing a consensus view of the future. First is the difficulty in comparing a mixture of assessments that use differing techniques. Three distinct methodologies are currently in favor for use in assessing the future security environment. Estimates utilize an assessment of current conditions to identify possible future events. The priority is accuracy, which requires a relatively short time horizon. Forecasts represent longer-range assessments, primarily relying on trends-based analysis. Most forecasts are issue-specific. Scenarios can be thought of as a range of forecasts, which tend to be richly developed depictions of alternate worlds based on plausible changes in current trends.

The strengths and weaknesses of the three primary methodologies for futures assessment have implications for policy recommendations.⁶ But the most important is the understanding that any attempt at deriving a consensus view requires the mixing of methodologies that were not necessarily designed to be compatible.

Moreover, while an assessment of the future security environment is the essential starting point for all strategic planning, history cautions against both its inappropriate use and a belief in a high degree of certainty.⁷ Other factors also justify caution, including the problems of normative assessments, institutional bias, emotional reaction of individuals, and feedback effects, or the effects of taking action.⁸ Futures assessments, even those that are based on linear trends in political events or the development of technology, inherently carry the biases of the assessors. Institutions and organizations, such as individuals, also have inherent biases. Such biases do not have to be products of deliberate distortion, but can evolve from seeing the world from a particular viewpoint. Within the Department of Defense, for example, each service has a unique culture evolved from its historical experience and the particular mediums in which it operates and through which past, present, and future are perceived.

Perhaps the most significant difficulty in developing futures assessments and translating them into policies and actions is the fact that all actions taken have the inherent effect of changing the future. By carrying out a plan, the conditions that inspired the plan are changed. The "feedback" dynamics of such change increase through the unfolding of competing actions, such as the plans of an enemy or its counterthrusts.

The limitations of futures analysis and the historical cautions concerning its use mean that the acceptance of any assessment entails risk. While, as a starting point for defense planning, the assessment of the future security environment is essential, it cannot guarantee the success of any policy based on its premises. Compiling a comparative assessment from a balanced mix of representative sources thus appeared to the NDU Working Group to be the best method of mitigating this risk.

Aspects of an Anticipated Future: Common Assessments and Consensus Predictions
The comparative analysis generated by the survey of the 36 identified studies identified 16 propositions that represent a general consensus of the sources. These propositions reflect a common assessment of the future security environment and mark the boundaries of the most likely future events. All of the propositions concern the time period 2001-2025. They can be divided into three broad categories: consensus concerning potential threats, consensus concerning military technology, and consensus concerning opposing strategies.

Such a "derived consensus" does not represent absolute agreement by the majority of sources, nor does it represent complete agreement with any proposition by any particular source. It is meant to be a starting point from which choices about appropriate future strategies, policies, and force structure can be developed.

Almost every consensus point has a corresponding dissenting or contrary view. In the process of translating the implications of future assessment into policy recommendations, the contrary views deserve consideration, both as cautions against precipitous policy recommendations and also as indicators of potential events against which a prudent strategy should attempt to hedge. Therefore, the following discussions identify both the details of the consensus view and the arguments of prominent dissenters.⁹

1. There will not be an ideological competitor to democracy on the scale of Cold War communism.

The propellant of the Cold War was the ideological struggle between democracy and communism as embodied in the United States and Soviet Union. With the dramatic victory of the West, ideology as an element of history did not end, but the rivalry between democratic capitalism and communism did end, at least for the foreseeable future.

The majority of future security-environment studies--both governmental and private--do not identify any other ideologies with global appeal, and thus do not foresee a competing ideology before at least 2025.¹⁰ The expansion of democratic values appears to be a by-product of globalization.¹¹ This does not mean that there will not be authoritarian nations claiming to be democracies, when in fact their political structure falls far short. However--with one significant dissenter discussed below--the consensus remains that the future will be one of an evolutionary increase in democratic states.¹² But the consensus view does include room for potential public discouragement and disillusionment in democracy and market capitalism.¹³

Although not professing to be a direct forecast of the future security environment, the thesis advanced by Samuel Huntington is that there are cultural challenges to Western-style democracy.¹⁴ His view is that cultural identity plays a significant role in global politics and that there are natural frictions between the ethnic civilizations of our multipolar, multicivilizational world. In particular, he identifies the Islamic culture, with its traditional linkage between religious and political authority, as posing the greatest potential challenge to Americanized democratic liberalism by threatening a clash of civilizations.¹⁵

2. There will not be a rival coalition of states to challenge the United States militarily.

The consensus view is that economic and political globalization makes it unlikely that a rival coalition could form to challenge the United States militarily. Various nations may express their displeasure at particular U.S. foreign policies or the overall specter of American cultural imperialism, but most would have much to lose and little to gain in an anti-U.S. alliance.¹⁶ There have been no credible forecasts that the European Union (EU) interest in developing a unified military force independent from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will lead to a potential military confrontation with the United States.¹⁷

Supporters of the view that a rival coalition is unlikely argue that the desire of lesser-developed nations, as well as Russia and China, to join the "first tier" mitigates anti-Western hostility. The closer both nations are economically tied to the West, the consensus view argues, the less likely that an anti-U.S. coalition will be formed.

However, a representative dissenting view postulates a loose rival coalition driven by "an increasingly more assertive China aligned with a much weaker, authoritarian Russia." ¹⁸ The primary driver would be U.S. action to deter a Chinese naval blockade of Taiwan in the 2010 timeframe.¹⁹ The argument is that "while to some extent a worst-case scenario [and "the least likely to develop by 2025"], the potential for both Japan and Europe to turn inward and leave the United States alone to face a major challenge from China and other states is plausible and, as a parameter for future planning, must be considered." ²⁰

Although this is an unlikely scenario, there has been evidence of a desire on the part of the Russian leadership for a symbolic rapprochement with China as a way of countering "global domination by the United States," especially U.S. criticism of Russian military actions in Chechnya.²¹ Russia also sought, in late 1999, to recharge its diplomatic relations with the so-called rogue states.²² Likewise, there have been suggestions that China would seek to put together alliances that "can defuse hegemonism by the U.S." ²³

3. There will be no conventional military peer competitor capable of sustained, long-term power projection beyond its immediate region.

To define peer competitor, one must ask what the military forces of the United States can do that those of other nations cannot. The succinct answer is that the United States is capable of projecting its military power on a global basis in a sustained fashion by means of its unparalleled logistics capabilities, including airlift, sealift, an extensive series of alliances, and expeditionary forces. Other nations can do so only to a limited extent.²⁴

Whether military peer competitor is defined in terms of a "Soviet Union-equivalent" or by the capacity to sustain global power projection, the consensus view is that such a peer competitor cannot develop prior to 2025. It is not simply a question of pursuing the development of power-projection capabilities; rather, 25 years appear insufficient to duplicate the unique U.S. logistics and alliance networks.

However, the QDR 1997 report held out the possibility of the emergence of a "regional great power or global peer competitor," with Russia and China "seen by some as having the potential to be such competitors, though their respective futures are quite uncertain." ²⁵

Additionally, a Russia-China-led alliance could pose the possibility of simultaneous conflicts in multiple regions, which would severely tax the ability of U.S. forces to respond. This would be the closest equivalent to a global peer competitor, but it would still not match U.S. power-projection capabilities.

4. Economic competitors will challenge U.S. domination of the international economic system, but this will not lead to war.

Propelled by the perception of increasing trade competition between the United States and Japan, the 1990s saw a series of publications suggesting the potential for military conflicts based on economic rivalry. Although the particular controversy was effectively smothered--at least for the time being--by the Asian economic downturn of the late 1990s, the view of a linkage between economic conflict and war has remained. A staple of Marxist theology and post-First World War assessments, it resurfaced in the view that the Gulf War was all about oil. The potential for China to become an economic power, along with the evolving EU, have also been cited as precursors to politico-military confrontation with the United States.²⁶

Despite popular concerns, the consensus remains that economic competition need not lead to military confrontation and that it is very unlikely to do so in the 2001-2025 period. The particulars of U.S.-Japanese economic conflict are largely seen as reconcilable differences that will not affect security arrangements.²⁷ The prevailing view of the phenomenon of globalization is that such greater economic interconnection decreases, rather than increases, the potential for military conflict.²⁸

One diverging view, however, holds a contrary view of the conflictual nature of globalization and global prosperity:

Paradoxically, increased prosperity and integration tends to increase political instability. Prosperity leads to greater economic integration and dependency resulting in greater insecurity by increasing the importance of international economic relationships and therefore increasing the opportunities for friction. This, in turn, leads to greater insecurity.²⁹

5. Regional powers may challenge the United States militarily.

The threat that regional powers will challenge the United States militarily and seek to prevent the United States from projecting power into their regions is universally considered the primary challenge that U.S. foreign and defense policy will face in the first decades of the 21st century. Regional dangers is the term used over and over again to describe the potential for "the threat of coercion and large-scale, cross-border aggression against U.S. allies and friends in key regions by hostile states with significant military power." ³⁰ There is, however, disagreement over which power will pose such a challenge.

Initially, the first prime regional threat was thought to be the unpredictable actions (or collapse) of North Korea, the world's last true Stalinist state. The second was the actions of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or the simmering hostility of Iran towards its Arabian Gulf neighbors and the West.³¹

However, these two MTWs do not necessarily represent the most demanding future threats. Nations that can sustain sophisticated defense industries and produce significant quantities of relatively modern weaponry and that have access to a large pool of trainable manpower would be the most formidable foes. From that perspective, there is clearly a rank order of potential (and current) regional military powers. Within this order, almost every futures assessment identifies Russia and China as having the greatest potential for regional dominance.³²

Several additional rogue states, such as Iraq, Iran, or Libya, have the potential of becoming military powers in their region, particularly through the acquisition of WMD.³³ Rogue state scenarios are considered the basis for two-MTW planning. Rogue states might also seek to use terrorism or other deniable means, rather than confront the United States directly.

One or more of the rogue states (North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria) might seek to challenge the United States militarily in the near term. Such an assessment is based on current hostilities, plans or desire for regional dominance, propensity for aggressive military action, or a pattern of anti-U.S. military activity. In a longer-term view, the potential for conflict with a major regional power may grow, with Russia or China as the most difficult potential military opponents. However, there is no consensus as to which regional power or rogue state is likely to take action at any particular time.

In the sources surveyed, there are no significant arguments that a regional conflict is unlikely prior to 2025. There is, however, a perception that effective U.S. actions, along with a well-trained and technologically superior military, could deter such conflict. Likewise, astute management of relations with Russia, China, and India may prevent the development of actual hostilities.³⁴ Some sources argue that hostile states are simply too weak to mount a credible military threat to the overwhelming power of the Armed Forces.³⁵ However, a pessimistic view of the constant potential for regional conflict is widespread.

6. There will be more failing states, but U.S. involvement will remain discretionary.

The terms failed states or failing states have been increasingly used to describe nations that cannot provide law, order, or basic human necessities to their population. Such states may be wracked by civil war, ideological or ethnic hatreds, or other conflicts that prevent the central government from providing internal security or promoting general welfare.

While the internal consequences of such disorder have long been recognized, the external effects within the international environment have not always been considered a security threat to distant, stable nations. The question of exactly where the United States has vital or important interests fuels the argument that American efforts to restore order in failed states are largely a humanitarian effort that has little positive impact on U.S. national security. However, there are still compelling arguments for American intervention to stop genocide or massive loss of life.³⁶ Such arguments contributed to the American decision to prompt NATO intervention in Kosovo. But given the nature of democratic politics, such intervention ultimately remains discretionary.

Few if any sources are willing to predict categorically a future security environment in which significant numbers of failed states do not occur.³⁷ There are, however, optimistic scenarios that are envisioned, even in the case of Africa.³⁸ While some sources suggest an increase in the desire to take action to stem such conflict, others point to an increasing reluctance on the part of most nations to become involved.³⁹ Additionally, arguments have been made that advocates of intervention underestimate the complexity of involvement and that such involvement is often counterproductive.⁴⁰

7. There will be more nonstate threats to security, but they will increase gradually, not dramatically.

The term nonstate threats is used to denote those threats to national security that are not directly planned or organized by a nation-state. Today, foremost among these threats are acts of terrorism other than those sponsored by a rogue state. A loosely defined spectrum of nonstate threats includes humanitarian disasters, mass migrations, piracy, computer network attack, organized international crime and drug trafficking, terrorism with conventional weaponry, and terrorism with WMD. Nonstate actors include international organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), multinational corporations, and multinational interest groups.

Alarmist predictions that nonstate actors, issues, and threats would overwhelm and break the abilities of most nation-states to deal with them have not materialized.⁴¹ Nations that have collapsed into anarchy have largely been victims of civil wars, a phenomenon that long preceded the current definition of nonstate threats. Many of these civil wars have been fueled or supported by foreign parties, international actors, or other nations. To that extent, nonstate or transnational threats do contribute to such internal collapse, but in ways that are not unprecedented historically.

The consensus of the sources is that nonstate threats will increase in number and intensity in the future. However, this anticipated increase parallels vulnerabilities that are by-products of the evolutionary process of globalization. Nonstate threats may seem more potent due to the advantages modern technologies may bring to the perpetrator. However, the same or other modern technologies can be used to strengthen defenses. But this does not solve the near-term problems of terrorism, particularly if terrorist groups come into possession of WMD. The consensus view is of concern about the near-term potential for terrorist incidents, but the level of current and future vulnerability of societies to terrorism is still hotly debated.⁴² No sources maintain that nonstate threats will not increase in the 2001-2025 timeframe. However, some sources do view the rise of these threats as exponential rather than gradual, with more alarm than the consensus view might imply. Of particular concern is the possibility of terrorism with WMD, also known as catastrophic terrorism.⁴³

8. Advanced military technology will become more diffuse.

The category of advanced military technology constitutes a spectrum of technologies or innovative uses of technology developed during the last few decades: from emerging biological weaponry and other WMD, to new forms of nonlethal weapons, including information operations using mass media.⁴⁴ It includes highly accurate ballistic and cruise missiles; fourth-generation combat aircraft; complex surveillance, detection, tracking, and targeting equipment; surface-to-air missiles; nuclear powered submarines; and other relatively high-cost systems.

The consensus of the sources is that advanced military technology will continue to be diffused through sales, modification of dual-use systems, and indigenous weapons development programs. Although international export control regimes may exist for certain types of advanced weapons, these agreements appear to be easily circumvented. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, and India have all effectively foiled the efforts of the Missile Technology Control Regime.⁴⁵ Control regimes appear to have slowed potential nuclear weapons development by rogue states, but there appear to be other covert proliferation efforts.

Although there are sources that endorse greater efforts to negotiate and strengthen weapons control regimes, none argue that military technology will not continue to become more diffuse in the 2001-2025 period. In fact, it is the rate at which military technologies are spreading that prompts the more urgent calls for international controls. Under current circumstances, proliferation of advanced systems appears to be simply a matter of time and resources.

9. Significant operational intelligence will become commercially available.

Given the current trends in space launch and commercialization, the consensus is that operational intelligence--primarily satellite imagery--will become more and more commercially available. Yet the consensus is that the United States will "maintain a preponderant edge, using its technical systems to produce timely and usable information." ⁴⁶ The infrastructure necessary is simply too difficult to create except through the obvious expenditure of considerable resources. The consensus viewpoint concerning militarily significant commercial information is that although it might be available to a potential aggressor until the commencement of hostilities, it would be voluntarily or covertly shut down upon the initial attack. But the fact that operational intelligence would not remain available during conflict may be of little consolation, since the information obtained before hostilities would be sufficient to target fixed sites, such as land bases, in advance. The use of WMD might also make the need for real-time targeting information moot.

None of the sources surveyed suggested that operational intelligence will not become commercially available in the 2001-2025 timeframe. Opposition to the consensus view revolved around two points: that satellite information is largely irrelevant to the most likely threats the U.S. military will face, such as Third World anarchy and small-scale guerrilla warfare, and that a cut-off of commercial imagery during hostilities cannot be presumed.⁴⁷

10. Other nations will pursue a revolution in military affairs (RMA), but the United States will retain the overall technological lead.

A number of advances in military technology are frequently cited as evidence that an RMA is under way, and even skeptics concede that these advances have had a tremendous effect on warfighting.⁴⁸ Advances in information processing and command and control are cited most frequently, with predictions of increasing availability of real-time information at the command level. Some proponents claim that new intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) technology and battle management systems can dispel the fog of war that has previously prevented commanders from having a thoroughly accurate picture of the battlefield.⁴⁹

Also frequently linked to the RMA are precision weapons. Other technological advances, from biological weapons to miniaturized "nano-systems," are also frequently seen as pushing modern warfare away from the bloody killing fields of ground combat.

Critics concede that the advances in military technology have greatly increased the striking power of modern militaries. However, they argue that such advances have not changed the fundamental concept of warfare and that victory ultimately requires closing with the enemy and occupying territories or destroying centers of gravity.⁵⁰

Potential opponents may pursue an RMA through the development of advanced weaponry, but--barring a catastrophic economic disaster in the West--they cannot surpass the overall U.S. lead in advanced military technologies during the 2001-2025 timeframe.⁵¹ Certain niche technologies, such as advances in chemical and biological warfare or the development of miniaturized nano-weapons that would be easier to transport and deploy in space or on earth, could provide a temporary technological lead in specific areas.⁵² Developing such a niche could give a state with limited resources more bang for its buck, but such a development would be unlikely to make the entire U.S. arsenal obsolete, or completely paralyze decisionmaking. At the same time, the overall technological lead by the United States would facilitate the development of defenses against these advantages, or at least methods of mitigating the threat.

While conceding America's current overall lead in military technology, several sources point to alarming trends. The Nation is not producing enough engineers and scientists to maintain the knowledge capital to retain the overall technological lead.⁵³ Worse, from this perspective, the American education system is loyal to potential opponents.⁵⁴ Eventually other countries could take technological leadership.

Other sources argue that the United States is not taking the RMA seriously enough and is squandering its technological lead.⁵⁵ In this view, DOD continues to spend money on so-called legacy systems, while underfunding both basic and advanced research and development and experimentation. This combination could give opponents an opportunity to leapfrog over the capabilities of the formidable U.S. arsenal and to make its overall technological superiority moot.⁵⁶

11. If there is a technological surprise, it is likely to be developed by the United States or one of its allies.

A consensus of the sources examined views a truly unanticipated development in military technology as unlikely in the 2001-2025 period. But if one were to occur, the consensus view holds that it would most likely be the product of a Western or developed nation, not a nation hostile to the United States. If a technological surprise were to occur in a hostile state, it is likely that it could be quickly replicated somewhere in the West. Infrastructure, knowledge base, and commercial incentive appear to be the drivers of new, surprising innovations, and these are centered in the democratic capitalist states.⁵⁷

Among those assessments of the future security environment that identify potential wildcards, a major technological surprise was listed as an occurrence of potential concern.⁵⁸

12. The United States will retain control of the seas and air.

The consensus is that the size and level of operational experience of the Navy and Air Force make it nearly impossible for potential opponents to mount a serious challenge in the waters and in the air space over the world's oceans.⁵⁹ This is likely to continue until 2025. Even if potential opponents are not deterred from direct competition against these American strengths, it would take at least 20 years for any competitor to build to the numbers and sophistication of the naval and air fleets. That is not to say that an opponent would not seek to contest sea and air control in its own region, or even individual force-on-force engagements outside its region. However, the investment needed to challenge the United States on a global basis in areas that the Nation has long maintained operational advantages is staggering.⁶⁰

No source suggests that U.S. naval and air assets could be decisively defeated, and particularly not within the global commons in the 2001-2025 period. However, concerns are frequently expressed that the United States could become complacent with its current margin of superiority and elect not to replace aging systems with more technologically advanced first-line platforms. Over a long term, the cumulative effect of a procurement holiday might make the bulk of U.S. naval and air forces obsolete.⁶¹ The concept of block obsolescence for legacy systems also appears in the arguments of proponents of transformation. Critics of American complacency also point to the continuing development of high-technology weaponry for export by technologically advanced nations.

Some also argue that general American dominance of sea and air is largely irrelevant in dealing with the more likely future threats of terrorism, chemical, biological, and information warfare, and failing states, as well as against the prepared antiacces2 or area denial strategies of regional opponents.⁶²

13. Regional powers will use antiaccess and area denial strategies.

The potential use of antiaccess or area denial strategies against American power-projection capabilities has been a focal point of research by the Office of Net Assessment within the Office of the Secretary of Defense since at least the mid-1990s.⁶³ Originally these studies had a maritime focus. In the logic of the antiaccess approach, a potential opponent would not seek to engage the Navy at sea, where the United States holds absolute dominance. Rather, it would seek to prevent U.S. maritime forces from entering its littoral waters by massive attrition attacks using asymmetric weapons, such as WMD.⁶⁴ However, these studies were soon expanded to include examination of all U.S. overseas presence and power projection forces.

The obvious first step in such an area denial effort would be to neutralize any existing lodgment that the Armed Forces already have within the region by destroying U.S. forward-presence forces while simultaneously attacking the regional infrastructure for follow-on power projection forces. Another step would be to attack the ports and airfields for the embarkation of forces in the continental United States (CONUS). However, that is generally outside of the anticipated conventional capabilities of most regional powers.⁶⁵ Additionally, a strike against the U.S. homeland could strengthen rather than discourage national resolve.⁶⁶

With regional land bases destroyed and maritime access denied, the potential regional opponent would have effectively extended its defenses out to the entry points of its region. The United States will find itself in the position of having to undertake potentially costly forcible entry operations. Even in this war of attrition, it is likely that the United States would eventually breach the antiaccess defenses, particularly through the use of standoff weapons stationed outside the region or in CONUS. However, the real goal of an antiaccess strategy is to convince the United States or its allies and coalition partners that the cost of penetration is simply too high.⁶⁷

The consensus of sources surveyed is that antiaccess or area denial is the most likely campaign plan for an opponent of the United States to adopt, and thus the likely opposition that strategic U.S. power projection forces would face in an MTW. This conclusion is based not only on the proliferation of ballistic missiles and other weapons, including WMD, but also on the underlying logic of the strategy itself.⁶⁸

None of the sources surveyed maintain that it is unlikely that a potential opponent would adopt an antiaccess strategy in order to prevent the United States from intervening to stop regional cross-border aggression. If such an MTW were to occur, an antiaccess strategy would appear the best--perhaps only--method to blunt U.S. power-projection strength. However, a number of sources see the occurrence of cross-border aggression and MTW as much less likely than the chaos of failed states and internal civil strife.

Perceptions also differ concerning the actual ability of regional aggressors to carry out regional closure in the 2001-2025 timeframe.⁶⁹ Several sources suggest that, before 2025, most potential opponents will be unable to use ballistic missiles effectively against moving targets, leaving U.S. air and naval forces free to attack the weak points of an antiaccess campaign.⁷⁰ Other sources suggest that the ability of rogue states to coerce potential allies into denying American access to their territory has been overstated.⁷¹

14. Large-scale combat involving U.S. forces is likely to include the use of WMD.

The desires of certain states for WMD arsenals, the rate of actual proliferation, a seemingly growing disregard of the laws of armed conflict, and the lessons of the Gulf War suggest a potential for integration of WMD into military operations.⁷² Most sources assume that proliferation will continue in the 2001-2025 timeframe and that many of the international control regimes seeking to prevent the spread of WMD will break down or will be ignored. Terrorist groups also appear interested in purchasing or developing WMD. Underlying technologies, particularly dual-use systems such as nuclear reactors that could enrich uranium as well as generate power, are becoming available to potential aggressors and provide cover for weapons development. Humanitarian NGOs report that the laws of war appear increasingly to be disregarded, with less and less discrimination between attacking military forces and civilian noncombatants. Tyrannical regimes facing potential removal by outside forces--such as those of the United States or a U.S.-led coalition--appear increasingly tempted to use WMD in combat.

The majority of the sources surveyed view the likelihood of use of WMD during large-scale conflict in the 2001-2025 period as quite high. The consensus is that use of chemical or biological weapons would be more likely than nuclear war. Many sources view WMD use as the primary future threat to American security. There seems to be agreement that, if certain rogue states have WMD, they would be used for the survival of tyrannical regimes.

The potential of WMD in the hands of terrorist groups is considered a more frightening situation by many sources. Terrorist attacks could be directed against vulnerable civilian populations as well as military forces.

There is a perception, however, that use of WMD against the United States in conflict can be deterred.⁷³ The rate of increase in nuclear arsenals during 2001-2025 does not suggest that more than perhaps two or three states, if any, could threaten the United States with mutual destruction. Because chemical and biological weapons are routinely categorized along with nuclear weapons as WMD, there is, by definition, ambiguity as to whether use of chemical or biological weapons would provoke a U.S. nuclear retaliation. Thus, the use of WMD against forces in large-scale armed conflict with the United States might be deterred by the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Sources that view chemical and biological weapons as the significant threats of the 2001-2025 period do not necessarily dispute the deterrent effect of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, or even the deterrent effect of conventional power-projection forces. Rather, they argue that it is possible to use WMD on American soil or against U.S. forces in a manner that could render the source of the attack unidentifiable.⁷⁴ If they could make it appear to be a terrorist attack, potential state opponents might believe that they could successfully attack the United States without retribution.⁷⁵ They might use ostensibly unsponsored terrorist groups as proxies in a WMD attack designed to paralyze American response to far-off regional aggression.

Other sources argue that technology (and the American psyche) will inevitably render such attacks attributable, mitigating the attractiveness of such a reckless course of action. An additional deterrent might be U.S. theater ballistic missile defenses. If positioned in theater prior to the actual outbreak of conflict, such defenses might deter WMD use in the initial stages, or perhaps deter the entire conflict itself.

It has also been suggested that a U.S. declaratory counterproliferation policy of pursuing regime change in the event of WMD use, or threats of use, would also have considerable deterrent effect. If the likely end result of any WMD confrontation with the United States or ally would be the decapitation of the aggressor, rogue states might reconsider any potential tactical advantages of WMD use.⁷⁶

15. The U.S. homeland will become increasingly vulnerable to asymmetric attacks.

The perception that the U.S. homeland will become increasingly vulnerable in the 2001-2025 period can be traced to the National Defense Panel report of 1997. It has subsequently become an almost universal forecast. In 1999, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century echoed the prevailing perception that "America will become increasingly vulnerable to hostile attack on our homeland, and our military superiority will not entirely protect us." ⁷⁷

With the end of the Cold War and the agreed de-alerting of nuclear forces, along with reductions in overall U.S. and Russia nuclear arsenals, it would appear that the American populace is much less directly vulnerable than they have been in at least 30 years. However, others point to the balance of terror that made a nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union irrational. Rogue states, they argue, are less likely to be deterred from making asymmetric attacks on the U.S. homeland in the event of a conflict.⁷⁸ Indeed, asymmetric attacks may be the most useful--and perhaps only--military tool in the hands of potential opponents.⁷⁹

The consensus is that the U.S. homeland will become more vulnerable to new threats, particularly chemical and biological weapons in the hands of rogue states and terrorist groups.⁸⁰ The ability to transport such weapons in small packages that can easily be smuggled is often cited as a contributing factor. In addition, rogue regimes such as in North Korea are attempting to develop ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental United States. States that do not possess fissile material could opt for chemical or biological warheads.

Realization that the forward-defense posture allows for only limited defense of the U.S. coastline and airspace has increased.⁸¹ At the same time, the Internet and the ubiquitous nature of computer control seem to have made the American infrastructure more vulnerable to information warfare. Computer network defenses are possible, but at both financial and social costs.

The consensus position differs from more alarming forecasts on questions of the degree of future vulnerability. The majority view is that the increase in such threats is evolutionary, rather than exponential. As use of the Internet continues to penetrate society, the vulnerability to disruption increases, but so will redundant and protected systems. As globalization causes a rise in transnational or nonstate threats, such as massive migrations, its economic benefits may mitigate such threats. Meanwhile, the United States appears to be taking steps to deal with the potential for catastrophic terrorism and infrastructure attack.⁸²

Several sources suggest that the rate of development of future threats--fueled primarily by the malicious use of new technologies--is indeed increasing dramatically. From this perspective, increasing homeland vulnerability is inevitable, particularly if active defenses, interagency cooperation efforts, redundancy, and reconstitution do not receive substantial funding increases within the U.S. defense budget.

16. Information warfare will become increasingly important.

Information warfare refers both to the use of various measures to attack the information technology (IT) systems on which a military opponent may depend and to the control and manipulation of the information available to the civilian populace of an opposing state.⁸³ Computer network attack might be aimed at systems providing the ISR or command and control capabilities necessary for modern, high-technology warfare, or it might be an asymmetric strike on the civilian infrastructure of the opponent's homeland. Additionally, an IT-based public relations war could have a less lethal and more indirect effect on the populace than computer infrastructure attack, but as seen in the Vietnam War experience, it could have a more direct effect on the government's willingness to prosecute a war.⁸⁴

The U.S. government has recently addressed computer network defense and critical infrastructure protection, but in the face of an emerging and somewhat indistinct threat, defense necessarily lags offense.⁸⁵ An aspect of concern to some is the potential anonymity of attack and the possible use of information warfare by nonstate actors, particularly terrorist groups. Hackers and terrorists could use multiple paths of entry to disguise their identities and intentions.⁸⁶ Although it is possible to trace these paths to a source, such efforts take time and resources.⁸⁷ The question remains whether a hostile state could mask an information attack to such an extent that the United States would be unable to determine the source in order to take timely defensive or retaliatory actions.

In classical military terms, the use of information is an attempt to lift the fog of war that envelops the battlefield. Commanders have always tried to acquire accurate information; what is different is that modern IT appears to provide a greater opportunity to clear away the fog than ever before. Thus, it is natural for U.S. forces to strive for "information dominance" or "knowledge superiority" in any conflict.⁸⁸ The fact that there are more tools to make more information available suggests that information has become more important to victory.⁸⁹ This also implies that deception, disinformation, and the use of mass media are also of increasing value as military tools.

The consensus of sources is that information is increasing in importance as IT increases in reach and capacity. But the growing dependence on precise information for combat operations also creates greater opportunities for deception. Technologically superior armies, like open societies, appear more vulnerable to denial and deception than less interconnected forces or closed societies.

While there is no overt disagreement with the proposition that information will be a critical element in future warfare, there is disagreement over the extent to which information--and, by extension, information warfare--will be the dominant element.

An opposing viewpoint is that modern IT does ensure that the fog of war can be lifted and suggests that the U.S. military must be radically transformed in order to optimize its capabilities in an information warfare-dominant future.⁹⁰

Divergence and Contradictions
The 16 points of consensus form a baseline from which an effective debate on defense planning priorities, during QDR 2001 or any other defense review, could proceed. Likely issues of such a debate can be identified from the diverging views and contradictfons among the 36 surveyed sources. These alternative assessments of the future are presented here as either-or statements, but there are varying degrees of agreement, and the either-or statements generally represent the extreme ends of the range.

For the purpose of defense planning, identification of contending predictions about the future security environment is the prelude for making deliberate choices on how to prepare for and perhaps to hedge against an analytically uncertain future.

1. (A) It is unlikely that two MTWs would happen simultaneously.
1. or
1. (B) Two nearly simultaneous MTWs will remain a possibility.

A number of critical assessments--some of which are linked to a recommended strategy or force structure different from the current posture--discount the possibility of two MTWs occurring nearly simultaneously. Preparing for two such overlapping contingencies is dismissed as unsupportable worst-case thinking. Yet, despite dismissive rhetoric, few present detailed logic as to why such an occurrence could not happen. Taking a cue from the National Defense Panel, many analysts find the two-MTW construct inconvenient to their recommendations for transformation, since readiness for the simultaneous scenarios requires considerable expenditure of resources and the maintenance of considerable standing forces.

When assessments of potential regional conflicts (derived from consensus point number 5 above) are combined, the possibility of crises or conflicts developing nearly simultaneously in two or more regions seems plausible. There are both historical precedents and strategic logic for a potential regional opponent to make aggressive moves when conflicts are occurring in other parts of the world. While the United States is responding to the first conflict or contingency, an aggressor might believe that the objectives of a second conflict would be easier to achieve.

It has become common to describe recent NATO actions against Serbia--presumed to be a smaller-scale contingency--as using one MTW-worth of airpower.⁹¹ If SSCs occur at a near-continuous rate, it is almost inevitable that two or more will occur nearly simultaneously. The United States may not choose to involve itself in more than one SSC, but if it did choose to handle two, what would happen if one or both were to require an effort worth two MTWs? The divergence of views on the probability of overlapping MTWs, like the other contradicting statements, forms fundamental issues of the debates to be expected in the QDR 2001 process.

2. (A) Future wars will be more brutal with more civilian casualties.
2. or
2. (B) Information operations and precision weapons will make warfare less deadly.

The question of whether future wars will be characterized by greater brutality and greater civilian casualties or instead by more discriminate attacks and fewer civilian casualties often arises in debates concerning the existence and effect of an RMA and the importance of information warfare. At one end is the view that the trend is toward a "world of warriors" in which youthful populations of less economically developed nations are involved in ethnic, religious, or tribal conflict. This gives rise to more brutal forms of warfare, in which in the international laws of war are rarely observed.⁹² The ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and Kosovo (along with a myriad of civil wars), conducted largely by paramilitary terror squads whose primary activities involve the killing of unarmed civilians, are cited as representations of the future of war.⁹³ Combatants and noncombatants are rarely distinguished. Victory consists of complete destruction of the lives and property of an enemy.⁹⁴ Such wars will involve ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass movement of refugees, famine, torture, and rape. Weapons can range from the primitive to the merely unsophisticated. While armored vehicles, artillery, and shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles may be used, the dominant platform is the individual warrior--as young as 12 or under--and the small arms carried.⁹⁵ Commercial global positioning system receivers and cellular phones are useful, but not essential for operations. The implication is that the sophisticated precision weapons, along with the information systems, that characterize U.S. Armed Forces have relatively little effect against such an enemy.⁹⁶

At the other end is the vision that precision weapons and information warfare will make warfare both less likely and less bloody. Kosovo is also used as an illustrative case, this time as an example of how precision bombing, with considerable effort to spare civilian lives and property, was able to win a modern war and reverse ethnic cleansing. Because such precision strikes rely on accurate ISR, the processing of information is a dominant feature of this style of war. Proponents of information warfare argue that the manipulation of information may, in itself, preclude physical combat in future conflicts.⁹⁷ Under perfect conditions, it is argued, the manipulation of information will prevent a populace from going to war by persuading its members that the war is unjustified or is already over, or turning them against governments intent on war.

Somewhere in between these views is the argument that future wars will not necessarily be more brutal, but that precision strike and information warfare do not presage an era of immaculate warfare. The U. S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, while generally enthusiastic about the precise effects of emerging military technology, expresses this middle ground in its findings:

Despite the proliferation of highly sophisticated and remote means of attack, the essence of war will remain the same. There will be casualties, carnage, and death; it will not be like a video game. What will change is the kinds of actors and the weapons available to them. While some societies will attempt to limit violence and damage, others will seek to maximize them, particularly against those societies with a lower tolerance for casualties.⁹⁸

3. (A) Chaos in littorals or panic in the city are more likely contingencies than MTW.
3. or
3. (B) MTW will remain the primary threat to security.

The issue of the separation between military personnel and civilians, or between combatants and noncombatants, underlies the question of where and how future warfare will take place. Classical warfare is assumed to take place between clearly identified armies in terrain suitable for direct engagements. History--replete with siege warfare, attacks on infrastructure, and massacres of civilian populations--may demonstrate that the ideal is actually an exception. However, there remains the popular impression that war is, or at least should be, about defeating cross-border aggression as envisioned in the current MTW scenarios.

Of course, the Armed Forces are used for more than MTWs. Throughout its history, America has called on its Armed Forces to deal with many contingencies outside of formally declared wars. These contingencies have ranged from punitive expeditions to humanitarian interventions. The number of such SSCs has greatly increased since the end of the Cold War. Along with a greater propensity on the part of American decisionmakers to intervene, American military involvement in MTW against cross-border aggression has been relatively rare. From this perspective, Operation Desert Storm represents the exception rather than the rule.⁹⁹ Given the apparent increase in the number and frequency of nonstate threats and the potential for asymmetric operations, it has been suggested that the primacy of the DOD focus on preparing for classical MTW is a mistake. The threats of the future, according to this view, will be significantly different and require a different emphasis in preparations.

One perspective is that future conflicts--particularly those within failed states--will present little opportunity for firepower-intensive warfare. There will be no front lines, no rear areas, and, in some cases, no clearly identifiable enemy force. Rather, there will be an overall atmosphere of chaos in which the primary mission of U.S. military forces will be to establish order and to quell violence in the most humane way possible. Forecasts sponsored by the Marine Corps point to the continuing urbanization of the world's population and the continued breakdown of failed states as leading to numerous tribal-like conflicts.¹⁰⁰ Apropos of a naval service, Marine Corps-sponsored briefs point to the fact that over 70 percent of the world's urban population is within the operating range of a coastline, otherwise known as the littoral region. Chaos in the littorals is shorthand for such future contingencies that occur within the region, intervention into which could potentially be done best by forces from the sea.¹⁰¹

A slightly different perspective can be termed panic in the city, spurred by the potential use of chemical or biological weapons in urban areas. Proponents of this view are concerned that asymmetric or terrorist attacks could create chaotic conditions within the U.S. homeland.¹⁰² The U.S. military would be expected to stabilize chaotic conditions not only overseas, but also to do the same at home. While many emerging strategy alternatives call for increased military involvement in homeland security, most assume that the military would play merely a support role to civil authorities, providing resources that may not be readily available in the civil sector. In contrast, those who view panic as the new weapon envision homeland security as the preliminary or even the primary mission of the Armed Forces. The implication is that civilians cannot face the physical or psychological aspects of the chemical and biological warfare threat alone and that both precautions and responses should be a direct military function. Once the perception of homeland sanctuary is broken by an actual attack, the American population would panic into fleeing toward areas of perceived safety and demand that their elected officials cease whatever foreign activities may have provoked such an attack. To prevent such a scenario, sources argue, the military needs to refocus its efforts away from the less likely case--classical military response to cross-border aggression--and toward the more direct and more likely threats of asymmetric attacks against the homeland and the use of panic as a weapon of the globalized future.¹⁰³

In contrast, a significant number of sources continue to view MTW as the most likely warfare in which the United States would become involved, and job number one for its military. From this perspective, America's large-scale warfighting capability is the primary deterrent of both chaos and asymmetric attack. The divergence of opinion on whether future warfare will primarily take the form of chaos in the littorals and panic in the city, or will mostly resemble the expected forms of MTW, appears to be more related to preferred prioritization of threats than any conclusive forecast of wars to come. But there is evidence on both sides of the issue.

4. (A) Space will be a theater of conflict.
4. or
4. (B) Space will remain a conduit of information, but not a combat theater.

The question of the so-called militarization of space is particularly contentious. Space-based ISR is critical to U.S. military operations. They gave such an informational and command and control advantage during Operation Desert Storm that some have referred to the Gulf War as "the first space war." ¹⁰⁴ However, there are great distinctions between the military use of space, a war from space, and a war in space.¹⁰⁵ Every future assessment predicts increasing use of space assets by the military; however, there are wide differences over whether a war from or in space could occur in the timeframe prior to 2025.¹⁰⁶

A number of sources are very certain of the potential for a force-on-force space war. The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century's "Major Themes and Implications" states explicitly that "Space will become a critical and competitive military environment. Weapons will likely be put in space. Space will also become permanently manned." ¹⁰⁷

An opposing viewpoint is the forecast that militarization of space is not likely to occur prior to 2025. This reasoning projects a continuing U.S. advantage in military space systems based on its previous investment and infrastructure development. From this posture, "the United States is in a good position to win any ensuing arms race."¹⁰⁸ Another potential inhibitor of space-based weapons are the international treaties governing space activities.¹⁰⁹

But skeptics of treaty prohibitions tend to share a view of the inevitability of the introduction of space weaponry in the 2001-2025 timeframe. As former Secretary of the Air Force Sheila Widnall argued, "We have a lot of history that tells us that warfare migrates where it can--that nations engaged in conflict do what they can, wherever they must. At a very tender age, aviation went from a peaceful sport, to a supporting function, very analogous to what we do today in space--to a combat arm. Our space forces may well follow that same path." ¹¹⁰ A similar argument was made by the DOD Space Architect in 1997: "To hope that there will never be conflict in space is to ignore the past." ¹¹¹

5. (A) A near-peer competitor is inevitable over the long term; we need to prepare now.
5. or
5. (B) Preparing for a near-peer will create a military competition (thus creating a near-peer).

As discussed above in consensus point number 3, the development of a global military near-peer competitor to the United States prior to 2025 is unlikely. However, that forecast does not quell the debate on whether such a near-peer is inevitable in the long term. Sources that view a near-peer as inevitable base their argument on historical example; every aging leader is eventually challenged by younger, growing competitors. To ignore this is also to ignore the past. In the study of international relations, there appears always to be a struggle among states to become the hegemon that dominates the international system.¹¹² Even scholars who question the morality of hegemonic control--and in particular the apparent U.S. position as the current hegemonic power--appear to believe that such a struggle is natural between states.

If the struggle for hegemonic control is the natural order of the international system, it would also be natural that those responsible for the security of the United States--including its freedom, its institutions, its population, and its prosperity--would prepare for such a struggle. While there may be a continuous debate as to which preparations are most appropriate and how the outbreak of hostilities can be deterred in the near term, there seems to be agreement among many that a dissatisfied state could eventually build itself into a military near-peer to the United States sometime after 2025. The belief in the inevitability of a near-peer is also reflective of consensus point number 8 that "advanced military technology will become more diffuse." As military technology becomes more diffuse, it appears inevitable that any American advantage in military technology will gradually shrink, creating de facto near-peer competitors.

There is, however, an alternative view on the inevitability of military near-peer competition. In this view, it is not "natural order" that causes near-peer challengers to arise, but, rather, the actions of the leading power that cause such a competition.¹¹³ Supporters of this view range from those who see a competitive international system as an anomaly of the capitalist world to those who view gradual world democratization as eventually leading to a world free from major war, under the premise that democracies do not fight democracies. Others subscribe to the belief that near-peer competition is not inevitable as an unspoken corollary to their idea that a leading power can take actions that prevent such a competition from occurring. To some extent, such i view underlies the premises of the proposal by Ashton Carter and William Perry for ?preventive defense." ¹¹⁴

The question of the inevitability of a near-peer competitor after 2025 is not merely an academic question. It ties directly to the choice of a future defense policy. If conflict with a near-peer competitor is inevitable after 2025, it would behoove the United States to take distinct steps to develop a defense policy and force structure that would retain military superiority sufficient to dissuade, deter, or--if necessary--defeat a potential near-peer opponent.¹¹⁵

However, if it is actual or proposed military preparations of the hegemon that propel other states to seek parity, it may be in the interest of the United States to break the cycle of increasing military expenditures in order to prevent the development of a near-peer. Specific policies could be adopted--along the lines of preventive defense--that seek to co-opt or to manage a potential near-peer by allowing a degree of American vulnerability in order to preserve the current balance, which appears to favor the United States.¹¹⁶

6. (A) Overseas bases will be essentially indefensible.
6. or
6. (B) Future capabilities will be able to defend overseas bases.

The potential reach of opponents into space, along with the adoption of other techniques of antiaccess or area denial warfare, would have a damaging impact on the overseas bases upon which America's current power-projection forces appear to depend. If the 2001-2025 period is indeed one in which potential opponents strengthen their antiaccess capabilities (as appears to be the consensus in point number 13 above), then the threat to overseas bases would appear to increase. This forecast is commonly accepted.¹¹⁷ However, there is a debate among the sources as to whether the nature of the future security environment, and the laws of physics and diffusion of technology, will make an overwhelming threat to fixed land bases permanent.

To the bases-will-be-indefensible school, defensive measures simply cannot keep up with the offensive threat that places fixed military forces at grave risk.¹¹⁸ In this perspective, the action-reaction phenomenon of military technological development naturally favors offensive systems. Even with theater ballistic missile defenses in place, overseas bases could be attacked with WMD by other means of delivery, such as cruise missiles, attack aircraft, or artillery shells.

At the same time, there may be political vulnerabilities that make overseas bases, particularly those within the sovereign territory of a host nation, much more difficult to defend. The host nation may seek to placate a potential aggressor by insisting that defenses be kept minimal in order to maintain the current strategic balance. If the base relies on the movement of mobile defenses into the theater, such as Patriot missile batteries, then they are vulnerable to preemptive attack or coercion. The host nation may decide not to let the United States use its base facilities lest such permission provoke an attack by a regional aggressor. This would make mounting a power-projection campaign considerably more difficult.

It may be a reaction to the implications for American power projection that causes other sources to insist that overseas bases could be successfully defended in the 2001-2025 timeframe. To admit growing vulnerability could cause undesired revolutionary changes in the allocation of defense resources. However, the view that bases can be defended also argues that emerging military technologies can make defenses against WMD more effective. The continuing and natural lead of America and its allies in emerging military technology, as identified in consensus points 10 and 11, cause some to conclude that defenses can match offenses, particularly when backed by the eventual triumph of qualitatively (and possibly quantitatively) superior U.S. power projection.¹¹⁹ Likewise, the regional use of WMD may be deterred by the vast U.S. nuclear arsenal, use of which might be provoked by significant casualties of American military personnel or host-nation civilians. Other sources argue that overseas bases can be defended by sea-based or space-based systems.

Additionally, there is the argument that the vulnerability of land bases actually works to the advantage of the Nation. If overseas-based U.S. forces are attacked, then it is likely that U.S. determination to push for the enemy's regime change would be reinforced. This perception could potentially deter a regional aggressor from launching such a strike. Also, the vulnerability of the host-nation's territory to an aggressor might provoke the host nation to seek greater rather than lesser military cooperation with the United States. Some also argue that any host nation that could be coerced to restrict U.S. access to bases is an ally simply not worth defending.¹²¹

7. (A) Current (legacy) U.S. forces will not be able to overcome antiaccess strategies except at high cost.
7. or
7. (B) Techniques of deception or denial of information will remain effective in allowing legacy systems to penetrate future antiaccess efforts.

The debate on the defensibility of overseas bases has a parallel with that on the continuing effectiveness of power-projection forces. Supported by the same data concerning the growing development of antiaccess systems and strategies (consensus point 13), a number of sources suggests that the power-projection forces of the United States--as they are currently constituted--will have increasing difficulty penetrating antiaccess defenses in the 2001-2025 period.

The proponents of this view, however, do not necessarily see these developments as an evolutionary challenge to which the United States can modify and adapt its current forces. Rather they see this as a revolutionary development that is enabled, in part, by foreign adaptation to the RMA. This position leads to the advocacy of radical changes in the U.S. defense posture. Indeed, the perception of the growing strength of antiaccess strategies is a major impetus to calls for defense transformation.

In contrast, there remains a body of literature that characterizes antiaccess strategies as natural aspects of war that require incremental improvements in U.S. power-projection forces, but are not a revolutionary development requiring radical change. This view argues that current developments, particularly in theater missile defense and standoff and precision weapons, allow power-projection capabilities to keep pace with antiaccess systems.121 The Army vision of a strategically responsive force that is less dependent on heavy equipment and multiple air- and sea-lifts contributes to the perception that power projection forces may become even more effective in the 2001-2025 period.¹²²

8. (A) Nuclear deterrence will remain a vital aspect of security.
8. or
8. (B) Nuclear deterrence will have a smaller role in future security.

Sources are split in their assessment of the importance of nuclear weapons and the validity of traditional nuclear deterrence in the 2001-2015 period. On the one hand are those who see nuclear weapons as decreasingly effective tools in deterring war.¹²³ On the other are those sources who concede that nuclear weapons may have a different role than at the height of the Cold War, but who argue that they remain the ultimate deterrent, with considerable effect on the actions of even rogue states.¹²⁴

Many who state a moral opposition to nuclear weapons have translated this into forecasts of a globalized world in which nuclear deterrence no longer makes sense. With greater economic interdependence, this argument runs, even the so-called rogue states will be reconciled to the international order, renouncing or reducing their overt or covert nuclear arsenals.

Sources that view future conflict as consisting primarily of brutal civil wars in undeveloped states--along with Western intervention to prevent suffering and injustice--see no utility in nuclear weapons. From a considerably different perspective, some suggest that the RMA has simply passed nuclear weapons by. If information operations will be the dominant form of conflict in an internetted world, the use of nuclear weapons would seem merely suicidal. Nuclear effects, such as electromagnetic pulses (EMP), hold the potential of destroying much of the technical access to information on which both war and international society are dependent. Again, there would seem to be no utility in nuclear warfighting, and therefore nuclear deterrence is confined to a background role. Others who focus on the potential for RMA advances to make national missile defenses effective argue that a defense-dominant world will eventually lead to the abolition of nuclear arsenals. Some sources argue that nuclear deterrence has little effect on irrational rogue regimes and terrorist groups, the two types of adversaries most likely to attempt asymmetric attacks on the U.S. homeland.

Others view nuclear weapons as retaining considerable deterrent effect, even on rogue regimes. Since, it is argued, active defenses can never be 100 percent effective, the potential for nuclear destruction will remain. Nuclear deterrence therefore retains a considerable role in protecting the homeland from WMD.¹²⁵ A few sources suggest that a world in which there are more nuclear powers is a world in which interstate conflict is much less likely.¹²⁶ Peace would be even more dependent on nuclear deterrence than it is today.

Divergence of views on the importance of nuclear deterrence in 2001-2025 seems to presage a continuing debate on that portion of future American defense policy.

9. (A) Conventional military force will not deter terrorism or nonstate threats.
9. or
9. (B) U.S. military capabilities will retain considerable deterrent or coercive effects against terrorism and nonstate threats.

Sources that focus on the increasing vulnerability of the U.S. homeland and on the potential for asymmetric attack tend to doubt the ability of conventional military force to deter such attacks. Many of these sources tend to downplay the role of nuclear weapons and assume that potential opponents would concentrate on developing chemical or biological WMD, rather than expend resources on developing an extensive nuclear arsenal. Biological weapons, in particular, are frequently assumed to be immune to deterrence by conventional military forces, and possibly by nuclear weapons as well.¹²⁷ The logic is that opponents who would be so irrational or immoral as to use biological weapons (particularly against civilian populations) would not easily be swayed by the threat of extensive damage to their own people.¹²⁸ More importantly, terrorist groups--having no state or population to protect--do not necessarily present the vulnerabilities of a traditional military opponent. If there is an inherent difficulty in determining the actual perpetrators of a biological attack, then there may be no apparent target for conventional (or nuclear) forces to attack.

An opposing viewpoint is that there are always vulnerabilities that can be attacked--even for terrorist groups.¹²⁹ Presumably, terrorists act for causes that have overt elements, such as political independence for a certain population. Contrary to the most alarmist speculations, effective terrorist groups tend not to be crazy or self-destructive.¹³⁰ Proponents of this position point to the example of the 1986 Eldorado Canyon reprisal on Libya, which appeared to cause Muammar Qaddafi to reduce his support of terrorist activities.¹³¹ With a combination of intelligence, overt reprisal, covert reprisal, effective law enforcement, and some degree of consequence management preparations, it would seem possible that terrorist activities--particularly with weapons as sophisticated as WMD, which are extremely difficult to obtain or to utilize effectively--could be prevented, dissuaded, or deterred.

Conclusion

The nine points of divergence described above are based on differing assumptions concerning the implications of the previously identified consensus points. It is possible for opposing points of view to accept the plausibility of any or all of the consensus points and yet to advocate substantially different defense policies. This allows for the development of baseline expectations that American defense policy will need to fulfill to maintain security in 2001-2025. From this baseline, alternative options for policy can be explored. In developing likely strategy choices for the QDR, the working group incorporated the differing positions on the nine points into the alternative worldviews that drive the choices.

The identification of divergent viewpoints helps to frame the more contentious issues of the defense debate. But, in addition, it suggests that there may be potential developments that future defense policies may need to hedge against. If reputable, well-informed sources differ as to the future impact of chaos and urban warfare, for example, or on the future role of nuclear deterrence, it may be prudent to develop policies that are effective under multiple alternatives. Another element that suggests the need for hedging strategies is the identification of outliers and wildcards.

Constructing a Consensus Scenario
Having identified the points of consensus appropriate for consideration in the QDR 2001 process, the task is to present these findings in a way that is useful for defense planning. Constructing a consensus scenario that identifies a baseline common view of the expected future is a logical starting point. To this baseline can be added the contentious issues and appropriate potential wildcards. The alternative views of the dissenters can then be used as conceptual excursions from the baseline. By means of these excursions, policy decisions based on the consensus scenario can be evaluated in terms of their ability to hedge against alternative futures. Table 2-3 provides the outline for a baseline consensus scenario that incorporates both the points of consensus and common aspects of some of the points of divergence. whe consensus scenario for 2001-2025 can also be presented in narrative form as outlined in the following discussion.

The most critical challenge to the Armed Forces will be readily identifiable military threats by one or more regional competitors. These regional competitors will not have the global power-projection capabilities of the United States and will not be able to mount militarily significant operations outside of their own immediate regions against the Armed Forces. U.S. control of the global commons of sea and international airspace will remain relatively secure.

But, because they cannot compete as a global military peer, regional competitors will seek to increase their chances of success by developing the capabilities to conduct limited attacks on the U.S. homeland and by excluding the military from their immediate region using antiaccess or area denial strategies and systems.

In peacetime, their intent will be to create an appearance that the United States would not have the means or will to prevail in a conflict in their region, thus neutralizing potential allied support for American actions. In wartime, their intent would be more to achieve a political settlement favorable to their objectives than to inflict a decisive military defeat on the Armed Forces. The threat of severe American personnel casualties is increased through the possession and use of WMD against forward-deployed forces and U.S. power-projection forces entering the region, or the allied infrastructure that could support U.S. intervention. It will be increasingly difficult to defend overseas U.S. land bases from mass attacks. The likelihood of WMD use in these circumstances is high, although the weapons used are likely to be chemical or biological rather than nuclear.

WMD attacks would likely be focused on military forces or supporting infrastructure rather than U.S. or allied populations. This will not be the result of moral qualms, but rather an attempt to prevent the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor effect on the United States (or one of its allies) provoked to seek revenge. Another potential aspect of WMD use would be a nuclear-generated electromagnetic pulse (EMP) in an attempt to eliminate the U.S. advantage in ISR command, control, and communications (C3) systems.

As an adjunct to their antiaccess efforts, and in an attempt to sway U.S. public opinion toward a political settlement, regional competitors would attempt to conduct a high level of information warfare. American public opinion will be seen as a center of gravity. Information warfare--as well as overall antiaccess capabilities--will be facilitated by a continual diffusion of advanced military technologies throughout the world. This diffusion includes access to commercial imagery and communication via space systems.

However, the diffusion of military technology is not likely to cause a reduction in the U.S. advantage in military technology, which derives from overall American economic and technological strengths. It is likely that major technological breakthroughs will occur primarily in the United States or its economically developed allies, generated through commercial efforts. Regional competitors may be able to generate a temporary military advantage in a particular technological niche, but such advantages will not hold for long. Opponents' access to commercial satellite systems is not likely to continue during hostilities against the United States.

Increased military technology will also be sought by potential nonstate adversaries, such as terrorist groups, and in the myriad of civil conflicts erupting in an increasing number of failed states. Military intervention against nonstate actors and in failed states will be expected missions, although not the primary ones, for the Armed Forces. Such interventions or SSCs will continue to remain discretionary, and different U.S. administrations may choose differing levels of involvement. However, some level of involvement appears inevitable. As part of these interventions (and possibly as part of a regional war), some portion of the U.S. military will be expected to conduct operations in urban terrain and under chaotic conditions.

The Armed Forces will be expected to utilize available assets in humanitarian assistance and in support for domestic civil authorities. Likewise, homeland defense--in response to asymmetric threats--will be an expanding mission. Evolving challenges in homeland defense will include the possibilities of limited ballistic missile attacks by rogue states and the potential use of chemical or biological weapons by terrorists. However, the majority of the U.S. military will be required to remain organized to conduct power-projection operations during regional conflicts, a posture conceptually similar to today.

Events to Hedge Against
In addition to the use of the consensus scenario as a planning tool, there are a number of wildcards or unlikely events that a prudent defense plan would consider as potential contingencies. Wildcards can be defined as risks to national security that, by their very nature, cannot be predicted or fully anticipated.¹³² However, the effects of some wildcards could be so devastating to American security that their consideration in creating hedging strategies is of vital importance.¹³³ These include an eventual military near-peer competitor; an alliance of regional competitors; attempts to leap-frog into space warfare; collapse of key ally or regional support; and a trend toward a world of warriors.

This list is based on both a review of the points of divergence and an examination of wildcards identified during the survey of sources. Some appeared inappropriate for defense planning and are not included in the five events identified above.¹³⁴ The five events selected have three features in common: they are events for which preparations in military planning or force structure are practicable; if they occurred, then their effects would be magnified by the expected trends identified by the consensus security environment; and they hold the potential to create significant danger for the United States.

A hedge against an unexpected event could take two forms: Contingency plans could be developed and a select group of resources could be maintained in reserve in order to carry out the plans; or highly adaptive systems could be developed to operate under unexpected conditions as well as to perform optimally in anticipated missions.

Conclusion
The debates that defense reviews engender are always messy. The media make quite a sport of pointing out the conceptual disunity and lack of jointness among the "squabbling" armed services. Rarely mentioned is the fact that defense policy in a democracy was meant to be contentious and inefficient. To debate up until the very moment the guns sound was always considered a healthy thing. This is in clear contrast to the policies and procedures of authoritarian regimes. For example, Chinese Communist Party Chairman Deng Xiaoping admonished his political and military strategists: "Don't debate. . . . Once debate gets started, things become complicated." ¹³⁵ But powerful militaries that do not debate, such as the German Wehrmacht or the Soviet armed forces, seem to end up on the wrong side of history.

Americans like debate, and we generally view the future as complicated, even if we would like to be able predict it. QDR 2001 will also be complicated, as will any subsequent review. But one of the ways we can begin cutting through the complications and getting to the issues worthy of debate is to start from a consensus view of the characteristics we expect in the future security environment.

Appendix: Primary Sources Surveyed
The underlying objective of the selection process for the primary sources was to collect material that generally represents viewpoints from the range of different types of organizations (and, by extension, individuals) that influence defense planning in the United States. A working assumption was that a representative view could be identified for the following types of organizations: Congress (in the form of congressionally-mandated reviews); the White House; intelligence community; Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD); Joint Chiefs of Staff and unified commanders in chief (CINCs) of combatant forces; war colleges; individual services (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force); federally-funded research institutes; independent research institutes; NGOs; independent or ad hoc citizen commissions; private consultants; political opposition; and a range of independent scholars whose work influences the defense debate. After prospective sources were identified for the above organizational categories, the following standardized criteria were used to determine whether the source constituted an assessment of the future security environment suitable for detailed analysis. In accordance with the criteria, a primary source should:

• focus on the overall future security environment, not just the individual drivers (such as population growth, availability of resources, etc.) of future trends;
• examine multiple subjects affecting the future security environment;
• be potentially representative of the collective views of an organization influential in national defense policymaking;
• be produced by a source with a solid professional or scholarly reputation;
• have been published since 1996; and
• if a U.S. government product, be unclassified or provide analysis of the future security environment in unclassified sections.

Based on these criteria, at least one source per category was selected; in certain cases, multiple sources were deemed necessary to provide for the representative view. Representative views of the future are not necessarily the official view of the organization concerned.

Some studies published in 1996 might not have achieved wide circulation by the May 1997 completion of the QDR 1997, hence the inclusion of that year. Two 1995 studies were included because they represent organizations that did not sponsor a later study on the future security environment.

Congressionally-Mandated Reviews
Department of Defense, Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review, May 1997.

National Defense Panel, Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century, December 1997.

U. S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, New World Coming: Studies and Analyses, September 15, 1999.

White House/National Security Council

The White House, A National Security Strategy for a New Century, October 1998.

The White House, A National Security Strategy for a New Century, December 1999.

Intelligence Community

National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2010 (Washington, DC: November 1997).

Working papers, briefing materials and notes from "Alternative Global Futures: 2000-2015" workshops held September, October, and December 1999. (Global Trends 2015 project is still ongoing. Background and briefing material and discussion notes were used for the survey.)

Defense Intelligence Agency, Alternative Futures in International Security Affairs, 2015: A Summary Study of the "Transformed World, 2015" Project, December 1997. (Unclassified section; classified material from this project was not used by this survey.)

Office of the Secretary of Defense

Department of Defense, "The Projected Security Environment," from Defense Planning Guidance Update for Fiscal Years 2001-2005 (Washington, DC: April 1999), 4-7. (Unclassified section; classified material from this project was not used by this survey.)

Under Secretary of Defense (Policy), 1999 Summer Study Final Report, Asia 2025 (assembled briefing slides and text), Newport, RI: July 25-August 4, 1999; and Under Secretary of Defense (Policy), 1999 Summer Study Final Report, Maintaining U.S. Military Superiority (assembled briefing slides and text), Newport, RI: July 25-August 4, 1999. (Unclassified section; classified material from this project was not used by this survey.)

Joint Chiefs of Staff/Unified CINCs

Joint Staff, Joint Strategy Review 1998 Report (September 4, 1998). (Unclassified section; classified material from this project was not used by this survey.)

Joint Forces Command (J-9), "Futures Program" briefing slides, notes, and handouts, November 1998-September 1999.

National Defense University

Patrick M. Cronin, ed., 2015: Power and Progress (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, July 1996).

Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Assessment 1998: Engaging Power for Peace (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1998).

Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Assessment 1999: Priorities for a Turbulent World (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1999).

U.S. Air Force

Colonel Joseph A. Engelbrecht, Jr., et al., Alternative Futures for 2025: Security Planning to Avoid Surprise (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, September 1996).

U.S. Army

Series of briefing slides and notes on the "Future Military Art" (1998-99).

William T. Johnsen, Force Planning Considerations for Army XXI (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, February 18, 1998).

Earl H. Tilford, Jr., ed., World View: The 1998 Strategic Assessment From the Strategic Studies Institute (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, February 26, 1998).

U.S. Navy

CNO Strategic Studies Group XIV, The International Security Environment to the Year 2005, study group final report (Newport, RI: June 1995).

Richard Danzig, The Big Three: Our Greatest Security Risks and How to Address Them (New York: Center for International Political Economy, February 1999).

U.S. Marine Corps

"Ne Cras: Not Like Yesterday," commandant's briefing, slides, and notes (numerous presentations, 1997-1999).

Charles C. Krulak, "The Three Block War: Fighting in Urban Areas," speech presented at National Press Club, Washington, DC, October 10, 1997, published in Vital Speeches of the Day, December 15, 1997, 139-141.

Federally-Funded Research Institutes

Zalmay M. Khalilzad and Ian O. Lesser, eds., Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century: Regional Futures and U.S. Strategy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1998) (produced for U.S. Air Force).

Frederick Thompson et al., Vision-21 Source Book, Volume 1: The Process (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, November 26, 1996) (produced for the U.S. Marine Corps).

Independent Research Institutes

Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Conflict Environment of 2016: A Scenario-Based Approach (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, October 1996).

Jacquelyn K. Davis and Michael J. Sweeney, Strategic Paradigm 2025: U.S. Security Planning for a New Era (Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 1999).

Nongovernmental Organizations

Allen Hammond, Which World?: Scenarios for the 21st Century (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998).

Edmund Cairns, A Safer Future: Reducing the Human Cost of War (Oxford, UK: Oxfam Publications, 1997).

Michael Marien, ed., World Futures and the United Nations (Bethesda, MD: World Futures Society, 1995).

Independent Commission

Graham T. Allison and Robert D. Blackwill, lead authors, America's National Interests (The Commission on America's National Interests, July 2000).

Private Consultant (For-Profit)

"Decade Forecast--Decade Through 2005," December 24, 1994 (website ) and "Decade Forecast--2000-2010," December 20, 1999 (website <stratfor.com>). (1994 forecast included, with 1999 as background reference.)

Political Candidate

Governor George W. Bush: "A Period of Consequences," speech delivered at The Citadel, Charleston, SC, September 23, 1999 (text from website <http://www.georgewbush.com/News/speeches/092399_consequences.html>).

Individual Scholars and Projects

Paul Bracken, Fire in the East: The Rise of Asian Military Power and the Second Nuclear Age (New York: HarperCollins, 1999).

Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, Preventive Defense: A New National Security Strategy for America (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, March 1999).

Ralph Peters, Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1999).

Donald M. Snow, The Shape of the Future: World Politics in a New Century, 3d ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999).

Notes

Chapter Three

The Rise of Asymmetric Threats: Priorities for Defense Planning
by Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr.

At the beginning of the new millennium, the United States is ubiquitous, and ubiquity brings vulnerability. Because of this, hostile nations and groups will inevitably seek ways to undermine U.S. strength by attacking its vulnerabilities. These have come to be called asymmetric threats. The interest of the defense establishment in asymmetric threats is a recognition of an enduring truth: weaker powers, both state and nonstate, will seek ways to mitigate the dominance of the strong.

The first task of this chapter is to define asymmetry. The proposed definition emphasizes the psychological components and disproportionate effects of asymmetric warfare. Three recurring themes are identified that give structure to the definition. First, asymmetric options are sought actively by the weaker party when there is a disparity of interest between the two antagonists. Second, the target of all asymmetric approaches is the will of the stronger opponent. Third, this is achieved through the pursuit of psychological effect on the strategic level, no matter what level of war is involved.

The second task of this chapter is to determine what the asymmetric threats are to the United States and to suggest where it should concentrate in defense planning. This requires establishing a broad typology of asymmetry. Six threats are identified: nuclear, chemical, biological, information operations, alternative operational concepts, and terrorism. Each of these is examined in-depth, across the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. The integration of asymmetric threats and potential U.S. vulnerabilities enables the creation of a list of the 10 most serious asymmetric threats to the United States. Identification of such a set of potential threats can give discipline to the planning process and allow for the design of appropriate counters.

The final task of this chapter is to suggest what the United States might do to improve its ability to counter asymmetric threats. The United States does not, at the present time, have a single accepted concept for how to organize for asymmetric defense, and there is little coordination between existing initiatives. A top-down, simple, and clear concept is the starting point for improvement, based on three imperatives: minimize vulnerabilities, accentuate unique strengths, and prevent disproportionate effects. Based on these three organizing ideas, recommendations are offered to minimize U.S. vulnerability to asymmetric attacks.

We define asymmetric warfare as leveraging inferior tactical or operational strength against the vulnerabilities of a superior opponent to achieve disproportionate effect with the aim of undermining the opponent's will in order to achieve the asymmetric actor's strategic objectives. This definition emphasizes the element of disproportionate effect--achieving strategic objectives through application of limited resources--and the explicit recognition of the importance of the psychological component. These elements are essential to considering how an asymmetric actor can achieve strategic objectives through an operation--even a failed operation--that, from the perspective of the larger power, is otherwise only a tactical attack.

Any consideration of asymmetric threats must start with the most basic asymmetry of all: disparity of interest. The greatest incentive for using asymmetric approaches rises from a real or perceived disparity of interest. A weak adversary who has a vital interest that conflicts with the nonvital interest of a strong state has the greatest incentive to use asymmetric approaches. Given the breadth of American security interests, there will be many areas of potential conflict where no vital interest is at stake for the United States, but where a regional actor has vital interests. Asymmetric approaches can work in three ways. First, they can deter U.S. entry into crises where there is no U.S. vital interest by threatening disproportionate damage to the United States. Would the loss of Seattle to a ballistic missile attack be a reasonable trade for the unconditional surrender of a hostile Pyongyang government? Absent a vital American interest, such a threat would have a powerful effect on U.S. planners. This situation is the most likely to have a positive outcome for the weaker state.

Second, if a decision has been made to employ U.S. forces in a contingency that involves a less-than-vital national interest, an asymmetric approach by an adversary that threatens to cause rapid and disproportionate effect may halt a U.S. entry or accelerate a withdrawal. If the perceived U.S. stake is low and if it becomes apparent that involvement may become very expensive in terms of human and material cost, then a weaker state might calculate that a shocking display of force might cause the United States to recalculate the costs and benefits of engagement.

Third, an asymmetric approach may enable regional actors to pursue aggressive strategies indirectly, by making it hard for the United States to marshal the will to act. Information operations, terrorist attacks, or other unconventional approaches could make it difficult to trace sponsorship with the certainty required by the United States for action, ultimately diffusing the U.S. response until it may be too late to act effectively. To this end, regional states will work hard to manage their relationship with the United States, pursuing regional objectives while working assiduously to prevent or to minimize U.S. interference.

Asymmetric approaches can achieve powerful effect through manipulation of the psychological element. Aimed directly at the will of the opponent, they can compensate for material or other deficiencies. While the method of the approach may be tactical, the psychological effect is sought at the strategic level. This is a distinguishing feature of asymmetry: the continual focus on strategic effect by reliance on the psychological component of the approach selected. In functional terms, the target becomes the mind and in particular the will of the opponent. Asymmetric approaches have been applied on all levels of war, but the most effective asymmetric approaches seek to attain strategic effect regardless of the level on which they are applied. It follows that there may be a definitional blurring between the level of the action and the level of the effect, and, for the asymmetric actor, the goal is to produce effect on the highest possible level. The strategic level encompasses, in the broadest sense, actions taken to accomplish national-level security and foreign policy objectives. Actions on the tactical and operational level may yield strategic outcomes, the ideal objective of any asymmetric approach.

Determining effectiveness is critical in evaluating asymmetric approaches. What works and what does not work? Effective asymmetric approaches tend to have several common characteristics. From the perspective of the target, they are unexpected actions. The intuitive response may worsen the situation, while the most effective response may be counterintuitive. Effective asymmetric operations cause a disproportionate amount of damage to the target for the investment in resources, time, and money by the attacker. U.S. actions and strategic choices will drive the nature of the asymmetric threat. As the United States refines operational practices, potential adversaries will look to find ways to counter. This process of action-reaction is inescapable.

What Are the Asymmetric Threats?

This section outlines the range of potential asymmetric threats that the United States could face through the year 2010, focusing on the general types of potential asymmetric approaches that reasonably could be expected to be employed. As stated above, it identifies a typology of six potential asymmetric threats: nuclear, chemical, biological, information operations, operational concepts, and terrorism. These six categories of threats are logical descendants of asymmetric approaches used throughout history. The greatest change at the beginning of the 21st century, however, is the dramatically increasing effectiveness of technology and its ability to create global effects from local events.

Nuclear Weapons

The ultimate expression of power in the world today is the possession of nuclear weapons. Owning nuclear weapons allows a state or nonstate actor to have a seat at the high stakes table. The former Indian army chief of staff, General K. Sundarji, is reported to have said that a principal lesson of the Gulf War is that if a state intends to fight the United States, it should avoid doing so until and unless it possesses nuclear weapons.¹

On the tactical level, a nuclear weapon could be employed directly against maneuver or support forces in the field by short-range ballistic missile, tactical aircraft delivery, or mining or other covert means. In this context, the asymmetry of approach is principally derived from the deterrent effect that an adversary's possession of such a weapon would have on U.S. responses to crises. Actual state-sponsored use of a nuclear weapon against forces in the field is the least effective method of employment of a nuclear weapon; in fact, in many ways it is no more than the ultimate symmetric response.

Adversaries will be hesitant to employ nuclear weapons on the tactical level for several reasons. First, unless the attack is a complete strategic surprise, tactical maneuver forces can disperse rapidly, making it hard to achieve military effect commensurate with political cost. Second, it will be very easy to trace responsibility for the attack, particularly if it is delivered by conventional means. Third, use of nuclear weapons against U.S. forces would almost certainly invite a staggering response that might not stop short of the imposition of unconditional surrender. Last, adversaries will not have many nuclear weapons, and targeting fielded forces is surely the least cost-effective method of employing them.

Nuclear weapons would have the most potential utility in the early stages of a major theater war, when they can threaten or deter U.S. deployment into a theater. They would be of less utility after U.S. forces close and the theater matures, but they would again become a significant factor in the end-state of an MTW, particularly if the adversary saw the possibility of cataclysmic defeat. In this case, the temptation would be strong to use any and all means in a spasmodic response to try either to change the tide of battle or simply to take revenge on the United States or its allies.

The use of nuclear weapons against U.S. forces on the tactical level by a rational state actor is unlikely. The tactical employment of nuclear weapons against forces in the field is not really a practical asymmetric approach. If executed, it would tend to create a case of vital national interest for the United States, where perhaps there had not been one before. The concept of disproportionality would then be turned upon its head, and high risks would be accrued by the actor with little gain. The threat of use is more problematic, although threats against fielded forces also carry many of the risks of a deterring strategy while reaping few of the advantages.

Nuclear weapons can be employed operationally against the deployment and theater support infrastructure in order to deter, slow, or even halt the deployment of forces into a theater. Attacks against fixed targets would be easier to plan and to execute than attacks against forces in the field. The advantage of employment against fixed rear-area targets is that instead of targeting the most-prepared forces (usually tactical maneuver forces that possess organic mobility), targets could be selected from forces with less protection and little ability to move.

It follows that, for a state actor, the greatest opportunity to employ or to threaten to employ nuclear weapons would be in the early stages of a conflict. The intent would be initially to deter and to complicate U.S. force deployment considerations and potentially to destroy critical infrastructure in order to prevent physical deployment. If employed early enough, they might destroy or degrade critical aerial and surface ports of debarkation before U.S. forces even arrive, creating a difficult situation for the National Command Authorities (NCA). If nuclear weapons were employed against U.S. forces, the response would clearly be overwhelming and direct, but what if they were employed against an ally, and few, if any, U.S. forces felt the results? Such a use or even its threat might make potential U.S. allies more reluctant to participate in a coalition structure. The direct threat of nuclear employment against an ally or potential ally very early in a crisis might have the effect of dissuading that nation from participating in a coalition with the United States.

Strategic employment is the threat or the use of a nuclear weapon against the U.S. homeland. Strategic effect is sought by direct strategic attack. For a regional power or rogue state, the greatest asymmetric utility for these weapons is in their deterring effect. A demonstrated or otherwise credible ability to strike the U.S. homeland would have a sobering effect on any U.S. decisionmaker considering bombing a regional adversary's capital or even deploying forces in the face of threats or warnings when vital national interests are not at stake. The possession of nuclear weapons, and the demonstrated (or even suspected) capability to deliver them against the American homeland, could have the effect of dampening sentiment for intervention.

It is difficult to conceive of a rational actor electing to employ nuclear weapons against the United States in a direct strategic attack. To do so would invite its own annihilation. The deterrent effect of a U.S. response, however, might erode in a war in which the regional actor sees events going badly against it. If it looked as though the United States and its allies planned either to bomb a country into submission or to occupy its capital, then that country would have little to lose; in such a G?tterd?mmerung scenario, the possibility of actual use would become likely.

In an extended MTW, aggressive U.S. efforts to destroy or to neutralize a foe's nuclear delivery structure might result in another response familiar from the Cold War: a "use 'em or lose 'em" response. An opponent cannot stand to see its strategic trump card taken away. This does not imply that the Armed Forces should never attempt to do this, but it must be prepared for an adversary to use its weapons if we engage in aggressive WMD reduction during a regime-threatening war.

A threat to use nuclear weapons directly against the U.S. homeland is a powerful asymmetric measure. It achieves clear strategic effect and operates directly against the will of the United States. Such an approach might tend to make the United States rethink just where its vital national interests lie. Many of these asymmetric advantages could be lost, however, if a threat were actually carried out. A nuclear attack would provoke a powerful and unrelenting response from the United States. There is a fine line between the positive disproportionate strategic effect achievable by the possession of nuclear weapons and the potentially disastrous consequences of their actual use against the United States. The use of nuclear weapons by nonstate actors against the United States is the least likely alternative because of the difficulty of procuring, infiltrating, and emplacing the weapon. It is, however, a possibility and may ultimately prove the most troubling of all the strategic nuclear threats. Such an attack could be just as damaging as anything launched by a state actor, but the United States would find it difficult to establish responsibility. The threat of use of nuclear weapons thus has the greatest effect at the strategic level, although threats on both the operational and tactical levels could create similar disproportionate benefits. In terms of actual employment, the use against regional supporting infrastructures is probably the most effective; it will never be a good idea to use nuclear weapons directly against the Armed Forces or the U.S. homeland.

Chemical Weapons

Of the three types of WMD, chemical weapons are generally considered to be the least damaging. On the other hand, they are also the easiest to procure, and, if history is any guide, less stigma is associated with their use. Iraq has used them extensively against Iran and against its own Kurds.2 As with nuclear weapons, the use of chemical weapons on the tactical level against U.S. maneuver forces--the most-ready part of the U.S. force structure--is not cost-effective. Some of the delivery complications that apply to nuclear weapons also operate here, although the use of shorter-range artillery and tactical rocket delivery may partially ease them. The application of chemical weapons against refugee or other noncombatant populations could be an attractive option to opponents because it could stress the capabilities of U.S. forces to care for themselves and for a large pool of suffering noncombatants, and thus dramatically cloud the battlefield.

The Armed Forces are generally well prepared to fight and to win in a chemical environment; this is both a legacy of decades of preparation to fight the Soviets and a function of a renaissance of tactical chemical awareness in the past 5 years. Even so, the use of chemical weapons on the tactical battlefield would tend to slow the tempo, as units are forced to don protective overgarments and to conduct chemical reconnaissance and frequent decontamination. Slowing the tempo of operations will be a key component of any attempt to counter U.S. dominance.

Allied forces may be less well prepared, and this critical weakness may be exploitable through asymmetric approaches on the tactical level. Attacks against allied forces would require the United States to provide support for less capable forces, stretching thin its capability to provide adequate chemical defense coverage for its own forces. At the same time, an attacker might use chemicals against allies instead of against the United States, hoping to avoid a massive response, or at least to create some uncertainty about what the American response might be. Using chemical weapons against tactical U.S. maneuver forces could not change the basic dynamic of a campaign. The use of chemical weapons could only slow the pace of fighting. Employment against allied units or a civilian population that remains on the battlefield could prove to be far more effective. Such an approach might bring an adversary huge political dividends as well, if the United States were unable to correct potential deficits in allied chemical defense training and equipment rapidly or provide immediate succor to threatened civilians. This approach does promise disproportionate effect and might well achieve significant strategic effect through an aggressive information operation.

Many of the considerations regarding nuclear weapons apply also to the use of chemical weapons at the operational level. The most likely targets would be the deployment infrastructure in a theater, command and control facilities, and the combat support and combat service support infrastructure that support the operations of U.S. and allied air forces. Another potential target would be the host-nation population in the theater service area, with the intent of stressing host-nation, allied, and U.S. medical support systems as well as political unity.

Chemical weapons could play a role in strategic attack, which, as with nuclear weapons, means an attack on the U.S. homeland. While they are less lethal than biological agents and not as destructive as nuclear weapons, they are inherently more stable, an important consideration when dealing with less well-trained operatives. They can still be very effective, particularly when employed against indoor and point targets. Chemical weapons do not have the shock and horror of biological or nuclear ones, but that is a relative consideration. A few pounds of VX or Sarin in a busy subway station in New York or Washington would have a tremendous psychological effect. Perhaps the greatest distinction between chemical weapons and nuclear weapons is that tracing the origin of a strategic chemical attack may be more difficult. For this reason, the threshold of employment may be lower than with nuclear weapons.

Chemical weapons are thus the least potent of the WMD triad. They do not have the open-ended potential for disaster of both nuclear and biological weapons. They are easier to produce than nuclear weapons but require a larger and more visible infrastructure than that required for biological agents.3 There are precedents for their use throughout this century, which probably means that they will continue to be employed. Across the spectrum, chemical weapons offer the most asymmetric effect when employed as threats against regional allies. A regional aggressor can expect to be able to threaten the homeland of adjacent states with these weapons. Employment in this manner promises strategic effect at a relatively small cost. Even if an actor carries through on its threats to employ these weapons, it may be careful to avoid U.S. forces, which could make it harder for the Nation to respond forcefully, and possibly crumble a regional alliance.

Biological Weapons

An interesting historical parallel may be developing with the first decade of the 20th century, in which the all-big-gun Dreadnought-class battleship became emblematic of national power. These ships were built or ordered not only by leading powers, such as England, Germany, and the United States, but also by lesser powers, such as Chile, Greece, and Turkey, which had no obvious use for them. As the numbers of these ships grew, however, the dynamics of war at sea changed their utility, and they were supplanted by the aircraft carrier as the ultimate weapon; few were ever employed. In much the same way today, even as lesser states pursue the nuclear totem, nuclear weapons may eventually be relegated to secondary status behind biological weapons, which are cheaper, easier to move or to hide from prying inspectors and, most importantly, profoundly lethal. They can also be employed in a manner that might make it hard to trace sponsorship of an attack.

Biological weapons, like all WMD, are not very effective on the tactical level, for many of the same reasons that pertain to chemical weapons. They are even more volatile and susceptible to biodegradation and corruption than chemical agents. They are also more difficult to disperse over a wide area. The target of a tactical biological weapon attack might be inoculated against the most common agents. In short, on the tactical level, the use of biological weapons is not asymmetric warfare but rather another case of an attack against the strongest part of the defense. The same considerations that apply to the tactical use of chemical weapons apply here. This is not an asymmetric approach, although the use of biological weapons against a civilian population could create problems even more significant than those caused by chemical weapons. The medical stresses, in particular, could prove far more complex and long term.

The use of biological weapons against theater-level targets offers the most lucrative and cost-effective employment option of all forms of WMD use. Biological weapons enjoy the same deterring effect as chemical weapons on the operational level, but they can be far more potent in effect. The threat of anthrax, tularemia, or Venezuelan Equine Encephalitis, for example, against a theater aerial or surface port of debarkation that depends upon host-nation support could have a crippling effect on the flow of U.S. forces into a theater. They have the added advantage over nuclear weapons for the attacker because it would be more difficult for the United States to trace sponsorship of an attack in order to retaliate.

Many airlines, including those mobilized in support of U.S. deployments (the Civil Reserve Air Fleet), may not be able to fly into areas with reported biological weapons attacks.⁴ Without them, it may not be possible to complete the deployment of U.S. forces into a theater of operations. The use of anthrax, for example, in even small quantities might cause heavy casualties and tie up medical and other infrastructure; even the hint of its use, coupled with an aggressive information warfare campaign, might greatly slow the pace of a U.S. strategic deployment.

Biological weapons offer many of the same coercing features of nuclear weapons within a regional environment. Their principal advantage for the attacker would be the potential for attack without attribution. If they were introduced by special operations forces or terrorists, then it might be very difficult for the United States to link a regional actor to a specific attack, however strong the motive and our suspicions. For this reason, they represent ideal asymmetric approaches. While the attack would be operational, the effect would be strategic.

A host of recent movies and books have highlighted the threat of strategic employment of biological weapons, and it is, with nuclear attack, at the most-dangerous end of the scale. When considered for its potential coercing or deterrent value against the United States, this threat has every advantage of the strategic nuclear threat and can be delivered in a more covert manner. For this reason, the firewall between deterrence and use may not be as strong as in the nuclear case; there may be a greater likelihood of employment.

The use of biological weapons by nonstate actors, particularly terrorists, is even more of a threat, although their use is less likely. No mainstream terrorist organization has ever elected to pursue this method of attack.⁵ However, increasingly radical terrorist organizations, including those with millenarian views, may not have this restraint. It is reassuring that the organizational skills, scientific knowledge, and cool heads (and hands) required for the conceptualization and delivery of a biological weapons attack are not normally associated with radical terrorist groups.

Nuclear and biological weapons share an unfortunate feature: they can end the world as we know it. Biological weapons are easier to produce and easier to hide than either nuclear or chemical weapons.6 The method of attack can be secret and difficult to trace. When employed to deter potential U.S. involvement in a regional crisis, they can achieve strategic effect, and, like nuclear weapons, cause the United States to weight very carefully the costs and benefits of potential involvement. If threat fails to have its effect, then use offers the advantage of forensic ambiguity. For these reasons, in the short to mid-term, biological weapons will increasingly become the tool of choice for both state and nonstate actors contemplating asymmetric approaches. The likelihood of actual employment is higher in a regional theater of operations than directly against the continental United States, but the implicit threat of use against the continental United States as a deterring or coercive tactic will rise.

Information Operations

The modern U.S. military concept of fighting is built upon the rapid, efficient exchange of vast amounts of information.7 In this, it mirrors the explosion of cultural and business information exchange unleashed in the last 20 years by the power of the personal computer and the World Wide Web. This global system supports not only the financial well-being of the United States, but also the operation of an increasing proportion of the physical infrastructure necessary for day-to-day life in the United States, from air traffic control to hydroelectric plant management. Allied with this is the growth of a global culture that fosters the rapid exchange of information on a vast variety of subjects. This is the environment, ripe with both promise and danger, for information operations.⁸

It is difficult for any other country to compete with the United States technologically on the tactical level. Tactical combat information systems are generally well protected and resistant to direct attack. The best asymmetric approaches will probably be passive: camouflage, clutter, and concealment techniques that will make it hard for U.S. intelligence-gathering systems to gain a clear picture of the battlespace. This could be coupled with aggressive deception operations and a psychological warfare campaign that seeks to magnify U.S. missteps. This means taking advantage of the fact that in a world of near-instantaneous global communications, a tactical event can have immediate strategic effect. Denial or degradation of superior U.S. battlefield vision capability, coupled with relentless efforts to gain strategic effect from U.S. tactical missteps, will characterize adversary tactical information operations.

On the operational level, it will become easier to conduct computer network attack against the family of systems, both classified and unclassified, that support the U.S. deployment infrastructure because an increasing percentage of information traffic will be carried on systems external to the Department of Defense. U.S. allies and coalition partners will be at least as vulnerable. Even well-protected defense communications systems are dependent to some degree upon unclassified routing and vulnerable public domain structures.9

Adversaries will also target regional allies and any coalition structure with psychological operations and propaganda. When conducted in conjunction with the threat or actual use of other asymmetric approaches (such as WMD), a powerful synergy can result, linking information operations with events on the ground, whether real or imagined. Charles Dunlap has outlined an extreme but thought-provoking scenario in which a regional opponent might elect to employ nuclear weapons against its own population, blaming the United States for the attack.10 The management of publicly released information will remain a core competency for any crisis. What people see, read, and hear both in the United States and abroad will ultimately shape their perceptions of the rightness or wrongness of the American cause.

A potential cyber attack against the U.S. homeland has probably received more recent media attention than any other form of asymmetric warfare. The United States is both relatively and absolutely more dependent upon computer systems than any other nation in the world for activities ranging from personal banking to management of highways. Some of these systems are protected, most are not, but virtually all are interlinked to some degree that increases their vulnerability.¹¹ Our ability to identify and to defend against these potential attacks is fragmented to some extent simply because of the scope of the threat. It may prove very hard to identify attackers, and the line between criminal activity and state-sponsored attack will be blurred.

High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse

Perhaps the most dangerous and misunderstood form of information warfare attack is that of high-altitude EMP: a combination of nuclear weapons and information warfare that can challenge the very heart of U.S. operational doctrine and national political stability. High-altitude EMP results from the explosion of a nuclear weapon detonated above the earth's atmosphere, typically above 30 kilometers.¹² Apart from the fireball, blast, light, and heat, the explosion results in an EMP as gamma-ray energy is converted in the earth's atmosphere to radio frequency energy that propagates toward the earth's surface.¹³

The higher the altitude of the explosion, the less the direct blast effect of the weapon and the greater the indirect effects such as high-altitude EMP will be. Space systems are especially vulnerable.¹⁴ A particularly ominous danger is the fact that an exoatmospheric explosion anywhere over the surface of the earth, even over the attacker's own territory, could affect satellites.¹⁵

Virtually all electronic systems in the United States today are potentially vulnerable to high-altitude EMP: televisions and mainframe computers, telephone systems, aircraft, and satellites.¹⁶ High-altitude EMP can cause malfunction or device failure directly, or it can trigger the system's internal power sources in unintended ways that cause damage.¹⁷

Relatively little of either the commercial or the military world is effectively and verifiably protected. Within DOD, tactical military communications systems are probably the most vulnerable, followed closely by theater command and control architecture. The threat extends to tactical aircraft and, in fact, to any system that uses advanced solid-state electronics to perform basic functions. This encompasses most of the systems in the U.S. military today, from wheeled vehicles to helicopters.¹⁸ "Quite simply, the use of commercial satellites is now so tightly woven into the fabric of our commercial and military endeavors that the consequences of the loss of these assets is unthinkable, yet such loss is a very real possibility."¹⁹

While the effects of high-altitude EMP may seem arcane, the Soviet Union studied it as an integral part of its strategic warfighting concept during the Cold War and devoted a significant part of its strategic order of battle to achieving decisive high-altitude EMP effects in a general nuclear war.²⁰ It is reasonable to assume that other nations have consulted Soviet analyses.

An exoatmospheric nuclear detonation offers a regional state the ability to apply nuclear weapons in a nonlethal application (a 20-kiloton burst at an altitude of 150 kilometers would produce no visible radiation, blast, or fire effects on the ground) that would have profoundly disruptive effects on U.S. space, air, ground, and sea operations. It could change the character of a theater war from that of a Desert Storm to a Verdun, from an information-rich environment to one in which intelligence would be local in nature and very hard to pass along both laterally and vertically. Most importantly, the use of nuclear weapons in this manner potentially avoids crossing the nuclear Rubicon--a direct attack upon U.S. forces that would bring a clear, unequivocal response. A high-altitude EMP attack is a sideswipe that would force the NCA to reconsider its responses. Is an exoatmospheric nuclear explosion--in which no U.S. personnel die as a direct result--serious enough to warrant a nuclear response against Baghdad, Tehran, or Pyongyang?

Alternative Operational Concepts

In choosing not to compete directly against the United States technologically, potential adversaries may make a conscious attempt to avoid mirroring Western military organizations and approaches to war.²¹ A refusal to adopt Western approaches may go well beyond questions of operational convergence and military effectiveness. The most lucrative potential approach could be to seek advantage by operating well outside the moral framework of the traditional Western approach, rejecting what the United States sees as universal norms of behavior. It might, for example, seek to exploit what is widely believed to be the extreme sensitivity of U.S. society to even minor casualties (not withstanding recent evidence that indicates this may not be so).²²

Regional aggressors or rogue states may choose to view their populations as assets to be expended, using what has been called the "operational maneuver of starving women and children." ²³ If innocent civilians are starving, left exposed to the elements, or attacked, their condition will become of intense interest to the U.S. theater commander. The regional commander in chief will have to take their well-being into account in making operational plans and to be prepared to allocate scarce assets to care for them. This will inevitably become a competing priority with ongoing military operations, because of NGO efforts and the pressures exerted by the CNN effect.

While a combination of technological approaches and innovative tactics can be used against U.S. forces, the best counter may rest in an opponent's battlespace selection. If an opponent can force the fight onto complex urban, mountain, or jungle terrain, U.S. sensors and weapons accuracy will be degraded, and the potential for U.S. casualties will rise. Choosing the right ground may well prove to be the most significant advantage available to an adversary, and U.S. forces may not be able to refuse to enter such killing grounds. ²⁴

Other supporting tactical asymmetric approaches might include the use of the civilian population as hostages, as human shields, and as de facto weapons with which to overstress U.S. and allied medical systems. All of these factors will tend to reduce the effectiveness of precision engagement systems, clouding the picture of the battlefield and imposing greater exposure on the Armed Forces. They create the risk of U.S. tactical mistakes, which an effective information operations campaign could then turn to great effect.

Antiaccess efforts can deter, slow, or prevent U.S. forces from entering a theater. The technologies for antiaccess are not new: they range from high-tech to low-tech, from conventional sea-based mines to shoulder-fired surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles. Where terrain is unfavorable and U.S. interest is only low to moderate, these approaches may gain powerful advantage. They will tend to be less effective when a vital U.S. national interest is at stake.

Antiaccess measures can be grouped into four broad and overlapping categories: deterring measures, coercing measures, antideployment measures, and anti-invasion measures. They can be either conventional or WMD. The level of U.S. national interest at stake is fundamental to analyzing antiaccess approaches. If the United States seeks access and a vital national interest is at stake, then stopping U.S. forces will be difficult. The loss of a carrier or a number of B-2 bombers, for example, might be acceptable if the objective is important enough. However, such a loss might be enough to deter the United States in situations where its interest is very low.

There is also a hidden and dangerous dynamic at work for the state that makes these calculations: a shocking and successful attack on a U.S. asset may well prove to be the catalyst that drives national interest to a far greater level than it might have otherwise been. The calculation of deterrence will be tricky for potential foes, and the risks of getting it wrong are substantial.

Terrorism

Terrorism is not a perfect fit in this matrix of threats. If terror is the means chosen by a state actor, it fits more or less into all of the previous categories. Here, however, the focus is on nonstate-sponsored groups that operate outside the framework of international relations. Their financial and scientific base will be narrower than those of state-sponsored organizations, but this is compensated for by their readiness to select more radical techniques that would be suicidal for groups linked to states.

The rise of the United States as the global lightning rod, coupled with the growing availability of weapons that promise massive and visible results with minimal outlay, means that the potential for nonstate actors to threaten use of weapons formerly reserved for states is clear and growing. The Cold War formula of the least-likely-is-most-dangerous is fast eroding, and many unsavory scenarios can be imagined that are all reasonably likely to occur.

Summing Up Asymmetric Threats

Two principal conclusions can be drawn from this examination of asymmetry. First, a number of potential adversaries are exploring strategies, the most dangerous and threatening of which are usually based on the acquisition of WMD, that may narrow certain gaps with the United States. The second observation deals with the relative importance of WMD within the typology of asymmetry. It is inviting to reduce the asymmetric argument to a discussion of the strategic WMD threat to the U.S. homeland. This is a dangerous oversimplification because, while it captures the most destructive and frightening end of the asymmetric spectrum, it also ignores a number of far more likely applications of asymmetry. Weapons--regardless of the type--are themselves of less importance than the effect they create in the mind of the attacked. There are also other ways besides WMD to achieve similar effects. We should not limit our thinking about how to defend against asymmetric approaches to an overly narrow band that encompasses only the most dangerous weapons.

What Are the Worst Asymmetric Threats?

This section distinguishes the most dangerous threats to the United States. It is difficult to plan for threats unless we differentiate between them, to lend structure and a comparative approach to asymmetric threats and heed the caution that "we should not spend more time inventing asymmetric options for other states than those states' leaderships do themselves." ²⁵ Ten threats are identified, based on the recurring themes developed in this chapter. They are not ranked, and none is singled out as "most dangerous" to the United States; they are all dangerous. They also represent other threats that have not been included; they outline the spectrum of potential asymmetric threats about which U.S. policy decisions can be crafted.

Nuclear or Biological Attack on U.S. Soil

The first asymmetric approach considered is the threat of a nuclear or biological attack against the American homeland. Such an attack threatens the greatest damage. Possession of nuclear or biological weapons and means of delivery thus gives a regional "ompetitor or a rogue state a credible means of influencing U.S. decisionmakers. This is true disproportionate effect. Any Presidential decisionmaking process will be constrained when an enemy possesses the credible capability to deliver a nuclear or biological countervalue attack on the United States.

Particularly under circumstances when a national interest of the United States is not unambiguously involved, this type of threat would severely compress the U.S. range of options.²⁶ This is a threat that operates almost purely at the strategic level of war. As a threat, this is both a highly dangerous possibility and one that is increasingly likely, and for these reasons this alternative is the only asymmetric approach considered among these ten that is based on the principle of coercion and that might not involve actual use of a weapon. It is the threat of attack that coerces or deters potential American action in this case. An actual attack would surrender many of the advantages of an asymmetric approach.

The threat of such an attack could include either covert or conventional means. Conventional means--cruise or ballistic missiles or manned aircraft--are less likely as a means of delivery for a non-peer competitor. Technological considerations alone would make it difficult to deliver such a weapon to the continental United States, and the trail back to the source would be clear and unequivocal. An alternative is the covert infiltration of a nuclear weapon or a biological weapon into a major urban center. The possibility of an irrational state actor cannot be discounted, however, when the stakes are so very high and the delivery of a small number of nuclear weapons by ballistic missiles should be considered a viable, though less likely, lesser included case of this threat.

Crossing the line between threat and actual attack would be a very dangerous step for any state. For this reason, coercive asymmetric approaches of this nature might be coupled with an intensive diplomatic campaign and information operations designed to achieve limited results below the threshold of actual use.

Information Warfare Attack

A concerted information warfare attack against our national information systems infrastructure would probably include information management systems vital for the operation of the critical infrastructures of public safety, transportation, and banking and finance. Such an attack could run the gamut from attacks of precision disruption aimed at specific elements of infrastructure (air traffic control systems, for example) to a broadly disruptive attack based on high-altitude EMP.²⁷ The relative likelihood of such an attack is high, given the level of U.S. dependence upon such systems. The potential damage could be severe, but it would probably not approach the devastation possible from a nuclear or biological attack; however, a high-altitude EMP strategic attack on the United States could be devastating to the entire national information infrastructure. Because of the combination of opportunity and vulnerability, this is assessed as a very real threat whose potential scope will only grow with time. Such an attack targets the will of the United States by operating directly against the civil population. It has disproportionate effect and, if used as a threat or coercing tactic, could have many of the deterring advantages of nuclear and biological weapons.

Biological and Chemical Attacks

Biological and chemical attacks against host-nation support and alliance forces in a theater would have the dual goals of splitting a coalition and eroding national will in the United States. An attack of this nature would seek to exploit weaker elements of a coalition by attacking principally with biological and chemical weapons. The relative likelihood of this form of attack is high in an MTW environment, and the relative danger to U.S. and allied forces is high. Because of its potential effectiveness, the threat of this form of attack could also be used to coerce potential regional allies in the early days of a crisis.

Such an attack--or threat of an attack--would be directed against the weakest elements of any coalition or host nation. It would strictly avoid targeting U.S. forces and would instead be directed against the personnel who are the vital theater enablers for U.S. forces. The most lucrative form of this attack might be to target civilians crucial to offloading U.S. equipment as it enters a theater. They would not be under military discipline, would not likely have had any NBC training, nor would they have much or any protective equipment, such as the inoculations that U.S. and allied forces presumably will have had. These workers are the Achilles' heel of any theater that will require the heavy flow of U.S. forces through a limited number of ports of entry, either air or sea.

If the will of regional allies can be degraded by these threats or by actual employment, then it could have a pernicious effect on the will of the United States to participate. A regional aggressor might achieve its goals by threats, but the line from threat to employment is easier to cross within a regional scenario and when the primary targets will not be U.S. forces.

WMD Attacks against Deployment Systems

WMD attacks could be mounted against strategic deployment systems, including air and sea ports of debarkation in theater, en-route facilities, and enabling infrastructure. The primary threat is that of chemical and biological weapons. The relative likelihood of such an attack is high in a major or near-MTW scenario. The potential for damage is high. Many of the considerations that apply to attacks on allied and coalition forces are also operative here. There are also some greater risks because in this case the attack is now being delivered directly against U.S. forces as they enter a theater.

An attack of this nature would be a central component of an antiaccess strategy that would seek to slow the arrival of U.S. forces into a theater. Chemical attacks would be the least effective but easiest to execute, while biological warfare attacks could gain high leverage. It would not take more than a very small biological attack, coupled with an aggressive information operations plan, to disrupt severely the large number of non-military enabling systems that support the deployment architecture. A lesser-included case or alternative form of attack could be the aggressive employment of conventional special operations forces and perhaps terrorists who operate against the deployment infrastructure without using WMD.

Information Warfare

Information warfare includes the threat of high-altitude EMP attack against forces in a theater. This is a potent threat across the spectrum of information operations, but the most dangerous form is the use of high-altitude EMP to degrade U.S. and allied capability to achieve information dominance. The relative likelihood of this form of attack is moderate--the technical requirements to prosecute such an attack successfully are daunting--but the danger to U.S. forces would be very high if the attack were successful.

As a general principle, offensive information warfare will grow less fruitful for an opponent as the level of warfare moves from strategic to tactical. It is harder to enter U.S. tactical computing systems, and a variety of aggressive U.S. defensive information operations will also be taking place. The use of high-altitude EMP at a tactical level, however, maximizes the advantages of disruption inherent in this weapon while minimizing the provocation of an attack on or above U.S. soil with nuclear weapons. States that possess nuclear weapons and delivery systems will also have the potential deterrence benefit that accrues from this capability. In actual operation, however, this threat would exist below the strategic level, although favorable strategic effects could be secured by operations that follow such an attack.

Battlespace Selection

Opponents may force the United States to fight in places where its information and other forms of superiority are blunted. An opponent would seek to lengthen U.S. operations in time while maximizing opportunities for American casualties. The relative likelihood of this method of attack is high--if the terrain will support it--and the potential for danger is also high. As the world becomes more urbanized, the Armed Forces will often be forced to enter and to operate in such terrain, perhaps most of the time. The examples of Stalingrad, Hue City, Manila, and Mogadishu are clear and evident.

Antiaccess Measures without WMD

Non-WMD antiaccess measures include mines, missiles, and other tried-and-true measures to slow deployment or forcible-entry operations. The relative likelihood of these tactics being employed is high, and the potential for damage at the operational level is also high. This approach relies on legacy systems from the Cold War along with newly emerging systems to prevent the entry of amphibious, airborne, or air forces. It is a tactic that has limited opportunity for success unless applied in concert with other measures. This has the greatest chance of success in a small-scale contingency, where there is no direct U.S. vital national interest at stake.

Warrior Tactics

Fighting methods and conduct on or around the battlefield--or warrior tactics--grossly violate generally accepted norms in an attempt to shock and to disrupt an opponent. There is a growing belief, perhaps inaccurate, that the United States is uniquely vulnerable to this approach to fighting. The premium placed on force protection and a current emphasis in U.S. planning on no or low casualties tends to reinforce the attractiveness of an approach that would disregard casualties in an attempt to gain an advantage in a regional conflict. The relative likelihood of such tactics being employed is high, and the potential for damage to U.S. forces is moderate, although it is far from certain that such a primitivist approach could offset significant U.S. technological and training advantages.

Chemical Attack against CONUS

The potential for chemical attack is often left in the shadow of the biological warfare threat to the homeland, but it is a distinctly separate threat, with a slightly higher relative likelihood of being employed. It is more likely because it is easier to introduce chemical weapons into the United States than nuclear weapons, and it does not draw the international revulsion that attends biological weapons. The potential for large-scale damage to the United States, however, is low. This is a less likely alternative for state actors than for nonstate actors with limited resources and delivery alternatives.

Wildcards

The last asymmetric threat is the one that we cannot even envision: the wildcard. Threats will emerge that we cannot plan for. While most of them will be reactions to the specific weapons systems and operational principles the United States employs, they will take root in the fertile soil of their own unique culture and experience and may prove to be the most dangerous of all.

Addressing Asymmetric Threats

Broad disparities in level of effort, interest, and potential effectiveness mark current U.S. responses to asymmetric threats. No overarching or coherent theme ties all elements of potential asymmetric countermeasures together. This lack of a unifying theme follows from the differing definitions of asymmetry that have influenced policies. Improving our responses to the asymmetric threat must begin with adoption of a consistent philosophy of how to deal with asymmetry, based upon a consistent definition. Such a philosophy can be derived from the themes laid out in this study.

To counter asymmetric threats effectively, our policies need to reflect three interlinked concepts. First, our policies should minimize U.S. vulnerabilities to asymmetric attack by deterring potential attackers and by having the capability to defend successfully against asymmetric attacks on both deployed forces and the homeland if deterrence were to fail. Should an asymmetric attack prove successful, we need demonstrated competency in consequence management at home and the operational flexibility to prevail in the face of asymmetric attack on deployed forces. Such capabilities will tend to make asymmetric attacks less attractive to potential adversaries.

Second, our policies should accentuate our unique strengths by continuing to pursue transformation and modernization objectives such as those expressed in Joint Vision 2020 and its successor documents. In doing this, we must avoid overreacting to asymmetric threats. The American way of war, emphasizing speed, shock, and rapid battlespace dominance, is inherently asymmetric itself when compared to the capabilities of most potential opponents. Our way of war works, and we do not need to overcorrect in attempting to anticipate asymmetric approaches.

Third, in dealing with asymmetric threats, it will be critical to prevent disproportionate effects. This is the heart of asymmetric advantage, and it must be countered at all levels of war; preventing tactical and operational effects from modifying our strategies is the most important component of this approach. For the United States, disparity of interest with a broad range of potential opponents is an enduring reality. As long as we remain a global power with many strategic interests, some interests will always be less important than others. DOD must, in dealing with the issue of asymmetric warfare, ensure that U.S. foreign policy options are not artificially circumscribed by state or nonstate actors who seek, by threat or action, to impose a disproportionately high price on our continued engagement.

A number of specific actions to implement this objective are grouped under the three organizing ideas: minimizing vulnerabilities, accentuating unique strengths, and preventing disproportionate effects. When a proposed action falls partially or wholly outside DOD, this is noted. Some will require action from departments and agencies across the Federal government, as well as state and local governments.

Actions to Minimize Vulnerabilities

To reduce vulnerabilities, immediate action to reduce the direct threat of strategic attack against the American homeland is important. This might include early deployment of an effective limited national missile defense (NMD) system capable of high-confidence interception of small numbers of intercontinental ballistic missiles.28 This would counter the threat of direct attack on the United States homeland with ballistic-missile-delivered WMD. Such a defense would limit, however, only one potential avenue of attack for an aggressor, who might still choose to employ other covert means to attack the United States with WMD.29 A ballistic missile defense system should, therefore, be part of a comprehensive approach to strategic defense that also comprises a broad range of counterproliferation initiatives, an explicit deterrence strategy, and a variety of activities designed to prevent or minimize the possibility and consequences of a covert attack.

The United States can also reduce the threat of direct or covert WMD attack on the homeland by demonstrating a capability for consequence management. For example, under the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program, first responder training could be doubled from its current level of 120 cities to at least 240 cities.30 Larger cities may need larger teams, and perhaps more of them. The existing system for regional stockpiling of medical equipment and medicines, the responsibility of the Centers for Disease Control, could be expanded, based on updates from the intelligence community. This system could include improved methods for inventory control and contingency plans for rapid movement and concentration of these resources. Significant improvements have been made in the level of epidemiological monitoring within the United States. Such continued efforts would be helpful in more rapid detection of a covert biological or chemical attack.

Long-term DOD support for local and state agencies for consequence management (CM) can come primarily from the Reserve components, and over time, elements of the Army National Guard may be restructured to reflect this.³¹ This can be accomplished by dual-missioning in the short term; ultimately, however, the requirement for WMD response and CM in the continental United States could well evolve into a primary mission for the National Guard. This is a natural choice because of the long affiliation between the National Guard and local governmental structures, and its ultimate responsibility for the defense of the United States.³²

The capability of the National Guard to assist in routine and contingency planning for CM activities and in incident response should be enhanced. Incident response would include support for command, control, communications, and computer infrastructure, augmentation of physical security, emergency mobile medical assets, nuclear, biological, and chemical reconnaissance, and mass evacuation operations if required.³³

The capability to deploy from the United States for some of these forces will thus become of lower priority. First call on designated elements of the National Guard force structure may eventually be linked to requirements for WMD (and other) CM within the United States, and only secondarily to any requirement to deploy on short notice in support of theater contingency plans. This will require a huge change in thinking on the part of the National Guard; it will need to reorient inward, despite resistance to this idea.

Under this proposal, the highest priority for the National Guard would be pre-attack, attack management, and post-attack CM within U.S. borders. The National Guard would still retain the ability to support limited rotational deployments overseas in support of the active component and would still have a strategic reserve mission, but it would no longer be explicitly linked to short-term regional warfighting operations plans. The restructuring of the National Guard would increase the numbers of low-density, high-demand units critical to CM: chemical, medical, military police, and other combat service support capabilities.

The first step toward this end could be a detailed analysis of what would be required to make such a broad change in thinking, capabilities, and supporting structure. Such an analysis would of necessity encompass more than just the National Guard because of its growing role in rotational deployments in support of peace, humanitarian, and other operations. The increasing percentage of critical combat service support force structure embedded in the Reserve components will need to be reevaluated. The comprehensive restructuring of the Army invites a parallel renaissance in the National Guard. These changes would reaffirm the longstanding relationship between the American people and the National Guard and return something directly to the communities with which these Reserve forces are affiliated.

Specific Actions to Accentuate Unique Strengths

The United States should take immediate steps at the interagency level to improve its strategic intelligence posture that monitors the global environment and actively scouts for potential asymmetric approaches that might threaten it. This effort should go beyond traditional adversaries and examine new threats that may arise. The earlier that we can sense wildcards, the more effective our response will be. In many cases, the knowledge that we are looking and listening will itself be a deterrent.

This would require substantial retooling of our technological base for information collection as we listen to a world that is increasingly encrypted and less dependent upon broadcast signals.34 The qualitative edge in electronic monitoring that the United States enjoyed for so long has evaporated, and we may never be able to fully recover it. The expanded use of human intelligence will only begin to fill this void. ³⁵

A key element of intelligence gathering is ensuring that it is ultimately disseminated to those who need it, both within the United States and among our allies. This is typically the greatest weakness of any intelligence program. Part of this expanded dissemination must be the continuous process of sharing with allies and likely coalition partners the latest available information on and counters to potential asymmetric threats. We need to take steps to assure that we will have continued access to those areas where we may be called upon to deploy in order to deter or to fight. These might include fielding effective theater ballistic missile defense systems, both upper and lower tier, to provide high-confidence coverage of arrival airfields and ports, their associated assembly areas, airbases, critical host nation support infrastructure, and both U.S. and allied land- and sea-based forces.36 Through military-to-military contacts with allies and potential coalition partners, we should ensure that a common competency in nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) protection is established and maintained and that procedures are established and rehearsed as integral parts of CINC plans for combined measures to be taken in the event of NBC attack. This should include the common provision of a single standard of prophylaxis across a combined force. We should also continue to develop the tactics, techniques, and procedures and the associated equipment necessary to ensure continued access for amphibious, air-delivered, and air forces in environments across the spectrum of engagement, from benign to forcible entry.

For air forces, such an approach would translate into a continual refinement and improvement of the ability to destroy or to degrade enemy air defenses, particularly against a foe that chooses to employ its weapons in innovative and nontraditional ways. "The SEAD [suppression of enemy air defenses] capability that we've built in the U.S. Air Force is a little bit dependent on the enemy fully utilizing his assets--if they're not emitting, then you're not suppressing very much." 37 Functionally, this means that we need to have a destruction of enemy air defenses (DEAD) capability as well as a suppression capability. We should also continue to explore the technical and tactical feasibility of extreme long-range air operations for circumstances when the threat will require distant basing.

For ground forces, the principal requirement will be the ability to conduct forcible-entry operations and subsequent logistical sustainment in extremely austere environments, potentially with an extended across-the-beach or limited airhead flow of supplies for lengthy periods. The top-to-bottom reassessment of Army organization will yield a force that is both lighter and significantly more deployable than the current one. Aside from parachute infantry and air assault forces, how this force will integrate into forcible entry operations remains to be fully resolved, in terms of equipment, doctrine, and structure.

For naval forces, the ability to defeat the mine, cruise missile, small fast attack craft, and coastal submarine threat, and to ensure safe passage for amphibious, surface fire support, and follow-on logistics ships will be paramount.38 Mines remain the principal threat to both warfighting and sustainment vessels, and the current program of eight antimine assigned systems (one submarine-launched, one surface-combatant-launched, and six helicopter-launched) will be critical in correcting this long-term deficiency.

All joint forces must also be prepared to conduct operations for extended periods of time in hazardous chemical and biological environments and to overcome this challenge through protective measures on the ground, in the air, and at sea.

In concert with industry, we should ensure that all future military and specific civil communications and satellite systems emphasize radiation-tolerant microelectronics. This would include all satellites launched by the United States, not just military-specific systems. It is not fiscally feasible to harden all, or perhaps even all military, satellites against direct (that is, kinetic or directed energy) attack, but satellite systems can have higher levels of environmental protection designed to counter high-altitude EMP. Total costs have been estimated at between 1 and 5 percent. ³⁹ Selective retrofitting of critical U.S. theater and tactical level communications systems should also be undertaken to protect against high-altitude EMP. This cost will be significantly higher, as much as 10 percent of each program, reflecting the difficulty and greater expense of modifying existing systems. This decision needs careful study of what systems are necessary to execute Joint Vision 2020, which depends on the ability to share a common operational picture of the battlefield and requires assured broad-bandwidth communication.

Rejuvenating the radiation-tolerant microelectronics industry will require a significant government-defense industry partnership and efforts to make it financially attractive for nonmilitary satellites to incorporate hardening into their design. This will not be cheap since hardening requires new electronics and additional weight, which are both expensive in a system to be launched into space.

While the interagency process for dealing with the consequences of mass catastrophic terrorism in the United States has been refined and improved with the establishment of a central coordinator within the White House, particular emphasis should be placed on the nature of the support DOD will provide in such an event. This is particularly important regarding the utilization of low-density, high-demand units and equipment in the Reserve and active components, such as chemical decontamination and medical support elements that might be needed at the same time for contingencies outside of the United States. DOD should articulate explicitly how it will support the civilian government when faced with a catastrophic attack on the United States. The time of greatest danger for an attack on the continental United States might be during a significant international crisis in which many of our forces are deployed abroad. In this instance, worst-case planning is prudent.

DOD should begin this process by ensuring that all theater contingency plans are thoroughly coordinated through the Joint Staff; that potential conflicting claims by theater CINCs and homeland defense on LD/HD assets and on stored equipment and supplies unique to catastrophic management are reconciled and prioritized; and that associated risks are assessed and articulated. This reconciliation, prioritization, and risk assessment should be articulated and agreed at the interagency level.

We should also be red-teaming our own capabilities so that we have an accurate net assessment of our strengths and weaknesses. This is an important effort that requires protection and continuity and should be located outside the intelligence community, although it must have strong ties to it. For such an organization to have credibility, it must possess not only analytic capabilities, but also operational respectability; it must be staffed with operators as well as analysts. It must also have access, and thus high-level sponsorship. There is a need for such red-teaming on every level: the services, Joint Staff, and combatant commands. On the Joint Staff, such an organization would be charged with review of plans and operational concepts from an adversarial, intelligence-based, and operationally validated perspective. Similar organizations might prove useful within each regional and functional combatant command. The services have strong vested interests in looking ahead at alternative futures and in continually refining their responsibilities. They should continue those efforts.

Specific Actions to Prevent Disproportionate Effect

It has been argued throughout this analysis that the ultimate goal of any asymmetric approach is to seek strategic effect against the will of the opponent. This can be achieved through deterrence or coercion, or--once battle is joined--through such approaches as warrior tactics and battlespace selection. While every action recommended to this point will tend to contribute to the reduction of this effect, the most important step that can be taken in this regard is for the leadership to explain clearly to the American people the purpose of an operation. While it has become conventional wisdom in some circles that the people of the United States will not accept even minimal casualties in military operations far from home, the truth is actually more complex. If the goals and objectives of American involvement in operations abroad are clearly and explicitly explained, support at home is likely to be both broad and deep. Telling the American people why their fighting men and women are in harm's way will be ever more important in a world in which the hierarchy of information is getting flatter. Other advocates, perhaps unfriendly to our interests, will also be telling their side of the story. We must take advantage of every opportunity to explain what we are doing, and we must do it better than our potential opponents.

Conclusion

The proposals outlined above argue for the continuation and refinement of existing programs, and in some cases for the adoption of new ones. Some have obvious benefits but will require presidential decision (for example, the deployment of an NMD) because of the larger political and diplomatic consequences. Some will require the breaking of long-held paradigms (for example, the role of the National Guard). These will be difficult choices.

While significant sums have been spent and are now currently programmed, a decision to deploy an NMD would require significant future commitment of resources. Of lesser but still significant fiscal impact is the recommendation to improve and to protect our information architecture from high-altitude EMP. The single recommendation having the greatest potential domestic political volatility, as well as significant fiscal impact, is the recommendation to retool elements of the Army National Guard for the domestic CM threat.

The objective of these recommendations is to gain the best competitive advantage for our nation at the least cost--in human life and national treasure--in a strategic environment in which our interest in any given engagement may not be as great as our adversary's. In preparing for this environment, it is important that we do not design our responses so narrowly that we become prisoners of our own actions. For that reason, these recommendations have sought to fulfill a basic responsibility of civil government--the protection of its citizens and their property--without becoming fixated on the defense of the United States homeland as the beginning and end of the asymmetric threat. The dual objectives of protecting our citizens at home while advancing American interests abroad form the most effective possible response to asymmetric threats.

Notes

Chapter Four

The Defense Budget: Meeting Growing Requirements with Constrained Resources
by Richard L. Kugler

Where is the U.S. defense budget headed? This chapter has a theme of impending challenge ahead. Because the globalizing world remains a dangerous and uncertain place, the United States needs to stay strong militarily, second to none. In the years ahead, the defense budget will need to grow—perhaps by more than is now realized—so that U.S. forces can be properly strengthened. But even if the budget does increase moderately, the Department of Defense will not be able to spend its way out of the mounting dilemmas facing it. Pressures for added spending are rising faster than the defense budget is likely to grow. Nor does the Pentagon have ready opportunities to cut costs for existing forces in big ways that are painless. Because DOD is not likely to get all the money it wants and arguably may need, strategic priorities will have to be set in ways that help close the widening gap between growing requirements and constrained resources.

What must be avoided is a strategy-force mismatch in which U.S. military capabilities fall far short of being able to carry out an overly ambitious strategy. Equally to be avoided is an incoherent military posture unable to execute a sound strategy that would be feasible if plans and programs were wisely prepared. In order to use resources effectively, the Department of Defense--as well as the President and Congress--will need to determine not only what the military requires, but also what it can do without. The emerging situation calls for a careful examination of tradespace: the realm where difficult yes and no decisions are taken, some improvements are pursued rather than others, and shortfalls are accepted when the risks are deemed tolerable.

After outlining the strategic context for shaping the U.S. defense budget, this chapter describes current and potential future budgets. Next, it sketches the internal components of the defense budget, including spending on services, programs, and line-item activities. It then explores in more detail where pressures will arise for more spending in such areas as military personnel, operations and maintenance (O&M), procurement, international operations, and conventional force structure enhancements. The analysis concludes by discussing how these growing pressures add up to significant challenges ahead for both the overall size of future defense budgets and their internal priorities. By providing an overall framework, this chapter helps set the stage for the chapters that follow, which address the detailed issues surrounding analysis of alternative strategies, forces, and programs.

The Strategic Context

For the past 8 years, U.S. defense preparedness policy--that is, the building of forces as opposed to using them in crises--has been humming along quietly, not attracting much public attention. The Pentagon has been busily crafting new doctrine and upgrading its forces in low-visibility ways. But because a broad public consensus existed on military affairs and because defense budgets were not rising, DOD actions did not trigger the intense political struggles that swept over such domestic issues as deficit reduction, taxes, and social policies. This tranquil setting is now mutating, not only because of changes taking place in U.S. military forces, but also because the still-turbulent world is producing new dangers and requirements. In the coming years, defense spending is likely to reclaim its old place as a controversial issue in national political life.

U.S. forces thus far have been able to handle today’s peacetime missions, crises, and wars. But they have been stretched thin by their heavy load of overseas engagement missions, peacekeeping, minor and major crisis interventions, and staying prepared for two regional wars in overlapping time frames. In the coming years, the strategic demands on them could even increase. A short while ago, the principal concern was the distant future of 20 years from now, when new and well-armed adversaries could appear. Lately, concern has been shifting to the mid-term, 5-10 years or less, when new, hydra-headed threats seem capable of gaining strength. The U.S. military’s need to remain effective in the near term, while upgrading for the mid-term and preparing for the long haul, further complicates defense planning today.

As a result, the U.S. defense budget has been rising lately. The political debate now starting to sweep over the larger security community is a reflection of the internal struggle within DOD over how best to use scarce resources in order to meet future needs, a struggle that promises to get worse before it gets better. During the Cold War before the Reagan buildup, there were great battles over strategy and resources. Today’s situation is not as stressful. But the Pentagon already is laboring with the task of keeping its forces ready, carrying out new missions abroad, handling a rising tempo of operations, dealing with an aging infrastructure, reforming its business practices, paying its military personnel adequate salaries, adopting new doctrines, and carrying out the final stages of R&D on a new generation of weapons. As these new weapons enter production, they will elevate needs for procurement spending. Beyond this, entirely new strategic requirements are arising. National missile defense may be needed in order to defend against proliferating weapons of mass destruction. U.S. conventional forces may require changes in their size and configuration so that they can perform new missions. These and other new requirements will place further upward pressures on the defense budget.

In theory, this troublesome situation could be resolved by increasing the defense budget by large amounts. In order to close the widening gap between existing resources and plausible needs, a common estimate is that the annual defense budget could be increased by $10-20 billion today and by $30-50 billion above official forecasts in a few years. Some analysts are citing a need for even bigger increases. Perhaps the defense budget will grow beyond current plans, but most likely not to that extent. Regardless of the outcome, DOD will need to extract the maximum mileage out of the resources available. Above all, it will need to preserve a coherent military posture. It cannot afford to pursue so many new initiatives in such uncoordinated ways that its forces are left in tatters, partially able to do many things, but adequately effective at few of them.1

Current Budget and Future Topline

When President John F. Kennedy entered the White House 40 years ago, he instructed his Secretary of Defense to find out what the United States needed to defend itself, and to buy it at the lowest possible cost. His guidance aptly framed the dilemma that has bedeviled presidents since then: how can the United States not only build an effective defense posture, but do so in affordable ways? Although the Cold War has given way to a new era of accelerating globalization and complicated security affairs, this dilemma remains alive today. Indeed, it has become even tougher because the new era is so murky and uncertain.

Defense planning would be easy if the task was simply to identify a theory of requirements and then tailor the budget to fulfill it. But requirements are not easy to pinpoint. Moreover, the issue is seldom meeting requirements fully or neglecting them wholly, but instead deciding upon how much defense capability is enough and how many risks can be accepted. Military effectiveness must be considered, but so must costs even when high preparedness is the standard. Difficult judgments must always be made about how to strike a reasonable balance between being adequately prepared and spending money that does not grow on trees.

As in past eras, today's search for a reasonable balance takes place within the framework of basic policy decisions made by the President and Congress. Today's dominant national goals abroad are to create a stable security system in which American interests are protected, to build a vigorous world economy in which the United States can prosper, and to promote democratic values where possible. To help achieve these goals, current national security strategy is one of global engagement, animated by the precepts of shaping the international environment, responding to crises, and preparing now for an uncertain future. National military strategy for supporting these precepts is anchored in a combination of overseas presence and swift power projection. To carry out this strategy, U.S. defense planning calls for sufficient forces to wage two nearly concurrent MTWs, while flexibly using these forces for a wide variety of additional purposes in peace, crisis, and war. This planning framework creates the need for today's force posture of 13 active Army and Marine divisions, 20 Air Force fighter wings, 12 carrier battle groups, plus sizable mobility forces, logistic support units, Reserve component forces, and other assets. These forces, in turn, give rise to today's DOD manpower totals of 1,380,000 active troops, 865,000 Reservists, and 700,000 civilians.2

These policies are not immutable, but a stance of high military preparedness is likely to be adopted by the Bush administration. The current force posture, or a similar posture, will require a large defense budget to support it. But exactly how large a budget, and how should it be spent? Because this question can be answered in different ways, it lies at the core of the mounting debate over the size and directions of the U.S. defense effort.

The Clinton administration answered this question in ways that gradually shifted during its 8-year tenure. Its first major study of defense policy was the Bottom-Up Review of 1993. Reacting to the Base Force inherited from the Bush administration, the review called for a somewhat downsized but adequate defense effort for the post-Cold War era. It adopted the two-MTW concept, reduced force levels by 10-15 percent, and charted a course of gradually declining budgets that fell to $251 billion by 1994 and then leveled off at $255-258 billion over the next 3 years. The next major study was the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), issued in mid-1997. It unveiled the new strategy of "shaping, responding, and preparing," and grappled with the dilemmas over priorities and new requirements beginning to infect the defense budget. Its central decision was to strike a balance between the near-term dictates of keeping large and ready forces, and the long-term pursuit of modernization in carrying out a revolution in military affairs and the new military doctrine set forth in Joint Vision 2020.

By early 1999, the administration had decided to fund somewhat larger defense budgets. Accordingly, Secretary of Defense William Cohen announced that $112 billion would be added during 2000-2005. Of this amount, $84 billion came from actual topline increases, and the remaining $28 billion was savings from lessened inflation, lower fuel prices, and other adjustments. Cohen's plan for the increase called for spending $35 billion on military personnel, $49 billion on O&M, and $28 billion on procurement. Most of these funds were to be provided in 2002-2005, but some were added to DOD budgets for 2000 and 2001. These two budgets halted the decade-long decline in real defense spending and started restoring a measure of growth.

The context for spending increases now in train is seen in table 4-1, which shows historical trends in budget authority from 1985 to 2001, in both current dollars--the money actually budgeted each year--and constant dollars, a figure that removes inflation and therefore is a better measure of the real value of each budget in today's dollars. The DOD budget fell by only 12 percent from 1990 to 1998 in current dollars, but in constant dollars--real purchasing power--it declined by about 28 percent (while DOD manpower shrank by a similar amount). The stable current-dollar budgets of the mid-1990s thus were being slowly eroded by inflation. It was this steady downward trend that Cohen's increases were designed to start reversing.

Table 4-2 portrays how future defense budgets may unfold as a function of alternative funding strategies. It first displays projections for 2001-2010 if the defense budget grows by only enough to offset inflation rates of 2.5 percent annually, thus providing no real growth. It shows that budget would grow to $328 billion by 2006 and to $362 billion by 2010. But in real terms, the Pentagon would get no additional funds for new measures. This projection accords closely with official DOD estimates. Table 4-2 also shows how the defense budget would grow if it receives inflation offsets plus annual real growth of 1 percent or 2 percent. At the bottom, the table shows the range of added funds, above inflation, that would be received if real growth strategies of this sort are carried out each year for the coming decade.

Table 4-2 illustrates that annual real growth rates of 1-2 percent would provide added funds that are relatively small at first and then grow slowly as the decade unfolds. Whereas the annual defense shortfall could rise to $30-50 billion by mid-decade, this budget would provide enough extra funds to cover this shortage only late in the decade, and only if the shortage itself does not grow further by then. The key point is that if modest annual growth rates become politically feasible, they can provide valuable additional funds. But unless they are accompanied by a substantial step-level increase in the next few years, they will not resolve defense budget dilemmas and the need to confront strategic priorities any time soon.

Future defense spending will depend upon decisions taken by the incoming administration and the Congress, and thus could be different than projected here. In some quarters, calls are being heard for bigger defense budgets than now planned. But there are countervailing calls for employing the federal surplus for other purposes, including tax cuts and domestic programs. Defense spending seems unlikely to be reduced, but barring an international downturn, a major buildup similar to that of the Reagan years seems equally improbable. In Congressional hearings, the Senate and House Armed Services Committees added $4.5 billion to the Clinton administration's request for the 2001 defense budget. While this is a significant amount, it is not Reaganesque. The idea of vastly bigger defense budget hikes gained little traction in the 2000 presidential campaign. Both candidates spoke in decidedly more moderate terms, and their stances resonated in public opinion polls. The reality is that while the American public wants a strong military and accepts current defense budgets, it is not clamoring for a big, expensive buildup. Complaints about budget shortfalls are being voiced mostly by defense specialists, not by a public gripped with fear of enemies on the march.

The exact dimensions of future budgets are uncertain, but unless the current political climate changes, fully 90 percent or more of the funds likely to be available to DOD have already been planned. As yet, further real increases are a vision, not necessarily a reality. Even if such increases become available, DOD will need to spend its money wisely, for success at this enterprise will have a big impact on determining U.S. defense preparedness and combat power in the coming decade. Additional funds could help lessen shortfalls and dilemmas. But they will not alter the imperative for an intelligent setting of priorities.

Internal Composition of Defense Budget

Analyzing how the defense budget is spent can best begin by addressing its internal composition: the multiple ways in which its funds are allocated. Doing so helps answer a larger strategic question seldom asked in the debate today: why is the budget as big as it is? After all, the U.S. defense budget is far bigger than any other in the world--in many cases by a factor of four or more, even though the active U.S. military posture of 1.4 million troops equates to only about 7 percent of the 20 million troops under arms worldwide. Whereas the United States now spends about $290 billion on defense each year, its European allies spend only $170 billion for a much larger posture of 2.3 million troops. On a per-capita basis, the United States spends nearly $200,000 per active troop each year, but the Europeans, who may underfund their budgets but take defense seriously, spend only $66,000. The same disparity holds true, only more so, when the U.S. defense posture and budget are compared to other regions. Why so much DOD money for so few forces?

One reason is strategy. The United States has a demanding global defense strategy, which dictates hefty requirements for a wide spectrum of capabilities. Because most countries focus only on their borders or local regions, they are able to deploy a limited set of assets, which keeps costs down. For example, Germany needs a large army and air force, but not a blue-water navy, or a nuclear posture, or big transport forces. Its ability to focus and specialize allows it to get by with low spending. Most other European countries are similarly situated; the partial exceptions are Britain and France, both of which have large defense budgets by European standards. The United States, in contrast with the European norm, must maintain many different types of forces: still-sizable nuclear forces, large mobility forces, strong ground and air forces for continental operations, powerful carrier and amphibious forces for maritime operations, advanced command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems, big overseas bases and facilities, and a diverse domestic infrastructure able to support swift power projection abroad. Each of these components must be highly capable in itself, while all of them must be able to work closely together. This sophisticated posture yields a requirement for many different types of weapons, equipment items, training regimens, and operational practices. Nearly all of them are expensive in ways that propel the defense budget upward.

The other reason is the U.S. emphasis on high quality. Precisely because U.S. forces are not overpoweringly large, they must rely on superior quality to defeat enemies, who often possess numerical superiority, in a wide variety of distant locations and difficult terrain conditions. Contributing importantly to high quality is the U.S. practice of relying on a professional and all-volunteer force, which produces skilled military personnel but is expensive. Most active-duty combat forces are kept at full manning and high readiness so that they can deploy quickly and fight immediately. They also train a great deal, considerably more than other militaries, which permits them to carry out modern military doctrines that are key to high combat effectiveness. Their technologies, especially their weapons, munitions, and information systems, are the most sophisticated in the world. They also are provided large and multifaceted logistic support assets plus extensive stocks of ammunition, fuels, and other supplies that give them firepower, tactical mobility, and endurance. This combination of readiness, modernization, and sustainment has a synergistic effect in producing the highest quality forces in the world, but it comes at the price of big defense budgets.

The important roles played by global strategy and high-quality forces dispel the accusation that the defense budget is large simply because of duplication, redundancy, and waste. No large and complex bureaucracy is perfect; but even so, DOD is among the best-managed departments in the U.S. Government or anywhere else. Forty years of management efforts by civilian and military leaders have been devoted to economizing, trimming unnecessary assets, and consolidating forces. The biggest and easiest gains in these areas have already been realized. The process of streamlining continues today with efforts to close surplus bases, adopt modern business practices, and redesign logistic support assets. Critics sometimes accuse the Pentagon of fielding multiple armies and air forces, but its tri-service structure helps promote strength through diversity. In aggregate, today's military forces reflect the requirements of national strategy, rather than exceed them. Because this is the case, the accusation of widespread duplication misses the mark.

The defense budget is best seen as a direct product of conscious strategic choices, not an unchecked bureaucracy at work. Today's budget is made possible by a booming U.S. economy that permits spending nearly $300 billion annually on defense by allocating a historically low share of GDP to the enterprise. The problem of rising pressures for more defense spending cannot easily be resolved by some wholesale paring away of outdated military assets that no longer make sense in today's world. Most of the drawdowns made possible by the end of the Cold War have already been taken. This does not imply that DOD budget and force structure are immutable; continued economizing steps make sense. But major reductions could be made only by paring U.S. defense strategy or reducing the quality of U.S. forces, both of which would entail important sacrifices in preparedness. This, at least, is the judgment of the U.S. Government to date. Because the task of managing the defense effort is truly complex and difficult, the choices ahead do not promise to be easy.

Spending on Services and Programs

The combination of a global strategy and high quality helps create the distinctive pattern of U.S. defense spending, in which large funds are allocated in multiple directions on behalf of many different activities. This pattern starts becoming evident when service shares are examined. As table 4-3 shows, the Army gets about 25 percent of today's budget; the Navy, 31 percent; the Air Force, 29 percent; and DOD agencies, 15 percent. These shares are similar to the mid-1980s and earlier. The only major shift has been transfer of some funds to DOD agencies, mostly a reflection of consolidating common activities.

Surface appearances suggest that the Army receives less funding support for its forces than the other two services. With a roster of 480,000 active soldiers, the Army has one-third of DOD manpower but receives only one-fourth of the budget. To a degree, this pattern reflects the higher cost of Navy and Air Force equipment; the Army is less technology-heavy. Even so, the reality is more complicated. The Navy share includes the Marine Corps, which costs about $10 billion annually, and whose three active divisions provide one-fourth of U.S. active land forces. The Air Force and Navy are also largely responsible for such national assets as nuclear forces, C4ISR activities, and strategic mobility. When funds for these measures are set aside, the accurate conclusion is that DOD spends fairly similar amounts for the key combat forces and support assets of all three services. The outcome is a joint posture with balanced strength in all components, but it also makes the defense budget diverse and complex.

The complexity of the defense budget becomes further evident when spending on multiple programs is examined, as shown on table 4-4. The budget is composed of 11 programs. For simplicity's sake, the following chart shows nine: it displays the new special operations forces program as part of general purpose forces, which includes main conventional units such as divisions, fighter wings, and carriers. Table 4-4 also displays the low-cost SOON program (support of other nations) as part of administration.

A common public impression is that the general purpose forces account for the bulk of defense manpower and spending. In fact, they consume only about 50 percent of manpower and 37 percent of spending, slightly over $100 billion each year. The other eight programs account for fully 50 percent of DOD manpower and over 60 percent of spending. They average about $24 billion apiece, but they vary greatly in size. Whereas the "training, medical, and OGPA [other general purpose activities]" program costs nearly $45 billion, the strategic mobility program--a bargain, given its contribution to swift power projection--costs only about $11 billion. Reserve forces are often criticized for their large manpower and uneven readiness, but they come at a relatively low cost: they provide nearly 40 percent of mobilizable military manpower, plus key assets, for only 8 percent of its budget.

Recent years have shown important trends in funding for these programs. Whereas the strategic forces have shrunk to 3 percent of the budget, the percentage share for intelligence and communications has nearly doubled, to 11 percent of the total. Smaller variations have occurred in other programs: some have grown at the margins, and others have declined in similar ways.

Notwithstanding these changes, the overall picture for the program budget is one of continuity. During the Cold War, DOD spent 50-55 percent of its budget on the four principal programs for combat forces: nuclear forces, general purpose forces, mobility forces, and Reserve forces. Today it still spends roughly 50 percent on these programs. By comparison, the Pentagon spends about 50 percent of its budget on the other five programs that provide various types of support activities. Support, however, comes in various guises, many of which provide teeth rather than tail. For example, the C3I and space program provides support that is critical to combat operations: this program has grown in importance because its high-technology assets enhance the warfighting strength of Armed Forces. The R&D program creates the weapon systems of the future. The other three programs provide domestic infrastructure and logistic support that have less immediate bearing on combat power, but they play major roles in training and supplying U.S. forces. They cost about $76 billion, or 26 percent of the defense budget. The large size of these programs reflects the need to preserve adequate assets in key support areas even as manpower and combat forces are downsized. DOD has succeeded in preventing these programs from growing larger, preserving the current portion of funding for its all-important combat forces.

This brief look at defense programs helps illuminate some key points about defense spending. Pressures for increased spending come not from just one source but from several. The natural instinct in all programs is to seek ways to improve effectiveness, or at least to replace outdated assets with new systems. The combined effect of improvement activities in all programs can create pressures for bigger defense budgets even when no new threat looms. Equally important, these programs make it hard to reduce the defense budget in major ways by making cutbacks in only one area. A 20 percent cut in a single average program of $30 billion could greatly weaken its performance, yet would yield only a 2 percent savings in the defense budget. As a result, big savings would require cutbacks in multiple programs, all of which have good reasons for their current activities. This reality dampens the incentive for major cuts in key combat forces, namely, the general purpose forces. Some critics, for example, argue for a 10 percent cutback in divisions, fighter wings, and carriers in order to generate savings for other activities, including research and development. But even though this defense program is the biggest, such a cutback would reduce overall defense spending by 4-5 percent or less. Is an annual savings of only $10-15 billion worth the damage that could be done to U.S. defense strategy and warfighting capacity by reducing a force posture that already is barely adequate to meet the requirements of the regional commanders in chief? In past years, the answer to this perennial question has been clear. If savings are needed, the best way is to seek them from every defense program. Small savings in one program matter little, but similar savings in all of them can add up to something major.

Rising O&M Spending, Falling Procurement

A picture of greater change appears when defense budget line items (functional categories) are examined. As table 4-5 shows, spending on military personnel has remained fairly constant since 1990: 26-28 percent of the budget. The shares devoted to research, development, technology, and engineering (RDT&E) and to construction, housing, and other also have remained mostly constant. By contrast, spending on O&M has shot upward, and procurement spending has plummeted. In 1990, O&M and procurement consumed equal shares of the DOD budget, about 30 percent apiece. In 2000, O&M consumed 38 percent, and procurement less than 20 percent. The widening gap between them is important and merits a discussion of its causes.

Today's O&M spending is big not only in relative terms, but in absolute terms as well. In constant dollars, DOD in 1990 spent about $57,000 on O&M per active-duty servicemember. Today, it spends about $79,000 per individual: an increase of nearly 40 percent. The oddity is that whereas the forces of 1990 were widely praised for their high readiness, today's forces are often faulted for shaky readiness. Thus, the upsurge in per-capita O&M spending since 1990 apparently has not produced a parallel upsurge in readiness. Nor is this O&M increase due solely to recent peacekeeping and crisis operations; because these operations currently cost about $4 billion annually, they account for only a small portion of the $30 billion difference between today's O&M budget of $109 billion and the lesser amount that would be funded at 1990 per-capita rates: $79 billion. Nor are the alleged fast-paced operations of today's combat forces the sole contributor: the general purpose forces consume only 32 percent of the O&M budget, which is less than their 38 percent share of the entire DOD budget. What then is the cause? Why has O&M shot upward to become such a large spender?

Multiple factors seem to have been at work. The upsurge results partly from high-level decisions in recent years to strengthen readiness, which was slipping in key ways. The result has been more funds for peacekeeping and crisis operations, high operating tempo, new training regimens, and increased spending on stocks, spare parts, maintenance backlogs, and other aspects of mat?riel readiness. But the upsurge also results partly from deeper dynamics embedded in the O&M account. The O&M budget funds DOD civilian personnel, which cost over $40 billion, and the rest is distributed among 31 separate line items in the defense program. Combat forces aside, other programs are big O&M spenders. Evidently O&M costs in several of these areas, which often escape public notice, have been rising.

Many other unseen dynamics have pushed O&M spending higher. Today's modern weapons often cost more to operate, maintain, and repair than earlier models. For the Army, O&M costs for the Abrams tank and the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle are about double that of their predecessors. For the Air Force, O&M costs for the F-15 and F-16 are less than earlier models, but costs for the B-1 and B-2 bombers are more. For the Navy, modern carriers are cheaper to operate, destroyers cost about the same, cruisers are more expensive, and O&M costs for combat aircraft cost 30-50 percent more than earlier models. The meteoric rise in care costs across the United States has also been felt in DOD. Also contributing to bigger O&M budgets have been expenses for environmental clean-up, repair of aging facilities, expensive fuels, educational and training programs, assets for child development and family centers, contractor support, and many similar activities that are small in themselves but add up when counted together.

Thus far, few public complaints have been voiced that rising O&M costs are crowding out spending on other programs. But with pressures growing for military pay raises and bigger procurement budgets, such complaints seem inevitable if O&M expenses continue rising. Although DOD voices the expectation that future O&M budgets will rise only due to inflation, recent trends are a cause for concern that this goal may be hard to achieve. Conversely, today's large O&M budget is a potential target for savings in order to generate more funds for procurement and other measures. Perhaps efforts to consolidate and streamline far-flung O&M activities can generate such savings. DOD would seem well-advised to devote careful attention to its O&M budget in the coming years. Traditionally, other more glamorous programs have captured the lion's share of high-level attention. But O&M spending has grown to the point where it can no longer be taken for granted.

The decade-long downswing in procurement spending, and its recent upswing, can be more readily explained in terms of a single strategic cause. The Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s resulted in a major upsurge in procurement spending in order to buy a new generation of weapon systems for all three services. When this effort was complete, DOD was able to go on an extended procurement holiday. DOD spent significant funds on RDT&E for future weapons, but it no longer had to buy large numbers of Reagan-era models. In 1985, the height of the Reagan buildup, procurement spending was fully 34 percent of the budget. In 1990, it stood at about 28 percent. By mid-decade, it had plummeted to less than 20 percent. Table 4-6 shows trends for procurement spending in current and constant dollars.

The procurement budgets of the mid-1990s hovered at $40-45 billion. Most of the funds were used to buy such secondary items as trucks and other vehicles, logistic equipment, spares, replacements, stocks, munitions, and other materiel. Few funds were allocated to buying new weapon systems. In 1997, for example, only about $12 billion was spent on procuring new weapons or upgrades for all three services. In these years, the Navy bought some new ships, and the Air Force some new aircraft. But overall, the pace of acquiring new weapons was far slower than in earlier years. This pattern of using available funds mostly to maintain the existing inventory, rather than to modernize with new weapon systems, prevailed throughout most of the 1990s.

The procurement budget is now headed back upward for the simple reason that the holiday of the 1990s is coming to an end. The Reagan-era weapons are approaching the ends of their life cycles, and new weapons are poised to begin emerging from the RDT&E process, ready for procurement. This especially is the case for air forces, but to a lesser degree it also is true for naval and land forces. In response, the DOD procurement budget rose from $47 billion in 1998 to $55 billion in 2000. Of these funds in 2000, $22 billion were earmarked for the Navy and Marines; $19 billion for the Air Force; $9 billion for the Army; and the remainder across DOD as a whole. For 2001, DOD requested a larger procurement budget of $60 billion, with even bigger budgets to come later.

This infusion of extra procurement funds is allowing the services to accelerate their acquisition of new weapon systems, munitions, and other hardware. In 2000-2001, the Army is upgrading its tanks and infantry fighting vehicles; improving its attack helicopters; and acquiring missiles, ammunition, C4I systems, and logistic support vehicles. The Navy is buying a new CVN-77 aircraft carrier, 3 DDG-51 destroyers, 1 attack submarine, 2 LPD-17 landing ships, 20 V-22 Osprey aircraft, and 42 F/A-18 E/F fighters. It also is remanufacturing the AV-8B aircraft, and acquiring new helicopters, missiles, and C4I systems. The Air Force budget includes funds for 30 F-16 aircraft for defense suppression roles, initial production of F-22 fighters, 1 E-8C JSTARS aircraft, 12 C-17 transport aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and missiles and munitions, such as the AIM-9X air defense missile and several new ground attack weapons.

The procurement budget seems destined to continue growing in the coming years in ways that will permit faster acquisition of new weapons, munitions, and other systems for all three services. DOD envisions the procurement budget rising to about $70 billion in 2005. If so, it will consume about 22 percent of the budget. But this share will still be low when compared to past periods of intensified procurement. How much further will the procurement budget need to rise by then and afterward, when new weapons start entering the inventory in large numbers? Only time will tell, but the effect will be to complicate defense planning further.

Growing Pressures for New Defense Spending

In the coming years, the DOD budget is likely to be subject to pressures for new defense spending from numerous quarters. In order to continue funding the current military posture, spending for military personnel, O&M, construction, RDT&E, and procurement may need to increase beyond current projections. In addition, new policy and strategy goals may call for strategic departures in several areas, for example, ballistic missile defense, international operations, and conventional force enhancements. These multiple pressures, combined with projections of only modest growth in defense spending, are the core reason for concern about a widening gap between resources and requirements that could rise to $30-50 billion in a few years, and maybe more later. Whether all of these pressures will find support in the political process is to be seen. But to the extent they do, they will create dilemmas for DOD, the President, and the Congress. The following analysis does not identify all candidates for spending increases, but it fingers enough of them to show that even if the defense budget grows moderately, future expenses may rise faster than the resources to fund them.

Military Personnel Spending

Military pay has risen about 7 percent over the past 2 years. This increase reflects a judgment that past pay increases were not sufficient to attract, retain, and adequately compensate servicemen and servicewomen. In constant 2000 dollars, the DOD budget in 1990 provided $54,000 in pay per active-duty individual. In 1999, it provided $55,000. While these figures conceal many complexities, the basic reality is that aggregate military pay remained mostly constant throughout the past decade. In 1990, U.S. servicemembers were widely regarded as well-paid. While they received basically the same compensation in 1999, with annual increases to offset inflation, the national economy grew considerably in ways that steadily elevated pay for comparable jobs in the private sector. The result was to make military service less financially attractive for officers and enlisted personnel, especially for those with high-technology skills in demand in the private sector. The pay raises now being funded will help rectify that problem.

How will military pay evolve in the future? Current projections suggest that it will rise at an annual rate somewhat above inflation. If so, military personnel in 2005-2010 will be paid better than those of today. But will these modest increases be enough to continue making the all-volunteer force viable, manned by skilled people? U.S. military forces are becoming more sophisticated by the day as a result of new technologies and information systems. In the coming years, they will need well-educated and productive people at all ranks. The problem is that if the U.S. economy continues to boom, it will offer ever-higher pay to precisely those people whom the military will need. How this challenge will be met remains to be seen. But pressures seem likely to mount to elevate military pay above the levels now being contemplated.

O&M Spending and Construction

Although per-capita O&M spending has spiraled upward in recent years, current projections envision that the O&M budget will level off and grow only at the rate needed to offset inflation in the future. Will this, in fact, be the case? One reason for concern is that a big part of the O&M budget is used to pay DOD civilians. Because they too will face the allures of the booming U.S. economy, bigger pay increases than now planned may be needed to retain a properly skilled civilian workforce. Second, U.S. military units and personnel will need increasingly sophisticated, expensive training in order to acquire adequate proficiency with the high-technology systems and doctrines of the future. Third, as current weapon systems age, they will require more maintenance in order to keep them operating. Fourth, as new weapons, munitions, and information systems enter the inventory, some of them will require higher maintenance spending than their predecessors. Fifth, costs for health care and similar support activities may continue rising. Sixth, the physical infrastructure--bases, buildings, and other facilities--is aging. This trend could require not only added maintenance funds, but also more spending on military construction. Perhaps steps being taken by DOD to streamline and reduce costs will generate enough savings to offset these pressures for more spending--but perhaps not.

Acquisition Spending: RDT&E and Procurement

Now that DOD is entering the final stages of designing a new generation of weapon systems in many areas, the need for high levels of RDT&E spending might be expected to decline. During the past few years, efforts to develop new weapons and other technologies resulted in an RDT&E budget that hovered at about $35-40 billion, or 14 percent of defense budget. Future projections anticipate that RDT&E spending will decline steadily in real terms, and will consume only about 10 percent of the budget later in the decade. However, political pressures are now rising to leapfrog the weapon systems now slated for procurement by developing an entirely new, more advanced generation of military technologies. Such pressures could produce a burst of new RDT&E spending.

Pressures for more procurement spending are not speculative, but real. Although the annual procurement budget is slated to grow to $70 billion by mid-decade, this increase might not be enough to fund the coming bow-wave of new weapon systems poised to enter the inventory in large numbers. Whereas a $70 billion effort will total only about 22 percent of defense budget at mid-decade, past periods of major procurement have resulted in 30 percent or more of the budget spent on this enterprise. Much depends upon future decisions for the nature and timing of acquisitions, but if the required allocation rises to 25-30 percent of the budget, annual procurement spending could total $80-100 billion. While this figure is illustrative, it suggests the magnitude of the challenge confronting DOD in this arena. Once the upcoming modernization cycle gains momentum, it could generate pressures for $10-30 billion of more annual procurement spending than is now being planned.

In order to replace its aging inventory, DOD will need to buy large numbers of major weapon systems of nearly all types in the coming decade and beyond. This will not require matching the procurement rates of the Reagan years, but it still will need to buy new weapons at a much faster rate than achieved during the 1990s. The costs of air modernization loom largest, not only because new airplanes are expensive, but because three services--the Air Force, Navy, and Marines--will be buying them in sizable numbers. Thus far, public attention has focused on the costly Air Force F-22 fighter, but the challenge goes far beyond this single aircraft. In order to modernize virtually the entire inventory of major combat and support aircraft, over 4,000 aircraft might have to be bought in the next 15 years. Costs for the small number of F-22s being bought--333 are now planned--might be only 15-20 percent of a total air modernization effort that could rise to $300-400 billion during the coming decade. It is the remainder of the aircraft--cheaper individually but more costly in aggregate--that could drive the total bill so high. The coming procurement bow-wave has its origins in the 1950s, when the United States hurriedly equipped its entire inventory of Air Force, Navy, and Marine fighters with jet aircraft, replacing propeller-driven models inherited from World War II. The impetus was not only jet technology, but also the Korean War and the Cold War nuclear standoff in Europe. This sweeping effort, carried out by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, set the stage for a block-obsolescence problem. It meant that in the future, aircraft from all three services would reach aging obsolescence at about the same time. The second big wave of modernization began in the 1960s, when such aircraft as the F-4, F-105, A-4, and A-7 were purchased. After serving in the Vietnam War and standing guard in Europe during the early 1970s, these aircraft gave way to the third generation, which was introduced later than normal because of the small defense budgets of the mid-1970s. This third generation included the models now in service: the F-15, F-16, A-10, F-14, and F-18. Because procurement was slow during the late 1970s, the Pentagon rushed to make up for lost ground in the 1980s, when the big Reagan defense budgets opened the gates to fast purchases. During these years, a large number of aircraft were procured quite quickly--about 4,500 combat and support aircraft in a 10-year period. DOD suddenly acquired a gleaming, modern air inventory of new aircraft with similar production dates. Because many of these aircraft are now approaching the end of their life spans, waiting to replace them is the fourth generation, led by the F-22, the Joint Strike Fighter, and the F/A-18 E/F.

As each new generation arrived, unit costs for fighters and bombers rose steadily. This upward trend owed heavily to the high cost of buying the sophisticated technologies--airframes, engines, avionics, and armaments--being developed in response to demanding service performance requirements. At each stage, the services and the aircraft industry worked together to push new technology as far as the state of the art would permit, and sometimes further. Another contributing factor was the practice, starting in the 1960s, of designing aircraft that could perform multiple missions with high effectiveness. The aircraft of the 1950s were designed for waging nuclear war, but not other missions. When U.S. strategy switched from massive nuclear retaliation to flexible response with conventional forces, aircraft were designed with broader capabilities in mind. The F-4 and F-105 were more flexible and effective than their predecessors, but the Vietnam War showed that they were far from ideal in air-to-air engagements or striking hard-to-hit targets on the ground. The designers of the next generation set about to rectify this deficiency by producing new models that could perform multiple missions, win dogfights, and bomb ground targets with pinpoint efficiency. They succeeded in ways that revolutionized modern air power, but they also gave birth to aircraft with expensive price tags.

During the 1970s, a single F-4 fighter was priced at about $10 million. When the Air Force F-16 and F-15 appeared, they were priced at about $20 million and $40 million apiece. The Navy F-18 and F-14 were equally expensive. In the late 1970s, the higher costs for this third generation of aircraft created great angst and white-hot politics within DOD and the U.S. Government. These aircraft offered high military performance, but they also threatened to break the banks of the procurement budgets of the time. Debates swirled about whether to extend old aircraft by upgrading them, and whether to buy the less-expensive F-16s and F-18s, rather than the more-expensive F-15s and F-14s. DOD eventually decided upon a high-low mix of these aircraft, while also buying the F-117 Stealth aircraft and A-10 tank-killer. Nonetheless, the debates about affordability and effectiveness ended only when the Reagan budgets permitted a big increase in procurement spending.

The Reagan-era policy of equipping the services with these new fighters was expensive, but it helped greatly enhance the combat power of U.S. forces. The aircraft were major contributors, but so also were the smart munitions and modern information systems that accompanied them. American air forces became proficient not only at sweeping the skies clear of enemy aircraft, but also at influencing the ground battle with lethal strikes against enemy targets on the battlefield and in the rear areas. The Persian Gulf and Kosovo conflicts showed an added advantage: modern U.S. combat aircraft can operate over enemy territory with few losses to themselves. Over the past decade, the networking of air forces with ground and naval forces has played a major role in propelling U.S. military doctrine toward its growing emphasis on joint operations. The strategic implication is that air power has come of age, fulfilling its promise of being able to greatly influence the outcome of wars. But this achievement did not come cheaply, and pursuing it further will not be cheap either.

Today's terms of debate--the struggle to balance effectiveness and affordability--are exactly the same as they were in the 1970s. Only the names of the aircraft and their costs have changed. Today's candidates for procurement are more effective than the aircraft to be replaced, but even after inflation is taken into account, their higher costs are eyebrow-raising. Per-unit costs for these aircraft are a variable, and will be known only when their exact components are finally approved, production schedules are set, and foreign buys are determined. The premier Air Force fighter, the F-22, offers low radar signature at high speeds, advanced avionics, and high aerodynamic performance. It will enter into full production in a few years, but currently, test models are priced at about $184 million apiece. The less-sophisticated Joint Strike Fighter, which is slated to be bought in larger numbers, currently is priced at about $75 million apiece. The Navy F/A-18 E/F fighter currently is priced at $86 million per copy. DOD will need to buy enough new fighters not only to equip Air Force, Navy, and Marine air wings, but also to provide trainers, maintenance floats, replacements for losses, and test aircraft. The cost implications of buying over 3,000 new fighters, along with their maintenance packages and smart munitions, are obvious.

Although these fighter aircraft will dominate the air modernization effort, substantial numbers of support aircraft must also be bought. Support aircraft often escape public notice, but they are large in numbers, and they play a big role in making modern?fighters and bombers effective in combat. In the coming 15 years, about 800 of these aircraft likely will need to be procured. They include command and control aircraft, electronic warfare aircraft, tactical and strategic transports, tankers, and fixed-wing submarine hunters. Many of them are more expensive than fighter aircraft. For example, the C-17 transport costs $335 million per copy, and the E-8C JSTARS, $560 million. These important support aircraft and their costs significantly drive up the expense of air modernization.

Air modernization is not the only driver of growing procurement requirements. For land forces, the Army will be buying about 1,200 Comanche helicopters, and the Marines, 360 tilt-rotor V-22 Osprey aircraft. In addition, several hundred scout and utility helicopters will have to be replaced or upgraded owing to obsolescence. The Army is planning to remanufacture 530 Apache helicopters in order to use the Longbow Hellfire missile, and to buy 500 new Crusader artillery tubes. It also is upgrading about 1,500 M-1 tanks and 1,100 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. The Marines are planning to buy over 1,000 advanced amphibious assault vehicles, and to acquire new lightweight howitzers. In addition to these measures, the Army recently has adopted a plan to equip several of its brigades with potent lightweight weapons that can quickly be airlifted to crisis spots around the world. Its quest for mobile but well-armed brigades that deploy quickly is leading it to develop a new generation of light tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery tubes, and other weapons. The cost of this important effort is yet to be seen, but it promises to be several billion dollars. Overall, this Army and Marine modernization plan is relatively modest and can be carried out over 15 years or more, but it will create further pressures for larger procurement budgets during the coming decade.

Another procurement driver will be shipbuilding plans. Whereas the Navy aspired to 600 ships during the Reagan years, it has been downsized in the past decade to its current posture of 316 "battle force ships." During this period, the Navy has been carrying out a modest construction program of about seven ships per year. Over the long haul, this rate will be insufficient to keep a 300-ship Navy. Some analysts worry that unless new construction increases, the Navy is destined to shrink to 250 ships or less in the coming years. This trend flies in the face of recent Navy calls for a re-buildup to 360 ships (discussed below). In addition, new Navy ship models are now under consideration, including the small "Streetfighter," high-technology destroyers and cruisers with small crews, submarines capable of carrying large cargoes with many cruise missiles, and big floating platforms that function as large airbases. What these developments will produce is as yet unknown. As of now, a reasonable conclusion is that owing to the scheduled obsolescence of existing ships, the Navy's current construction program through 2005--47 new ships and 28 extensions/overhauls--is likely to be subjected to calls for a bigger effort over the coming decade. If so, this trend will create added pressures for a larger DOD procurement budget than now planned.

Ballistic Missile Defense

Ballistic missile defense (BMD) is a highly visible strategic departure that comes in two forms: theater air and missile defenses (TAMD) for U.S. forces and allies, and NMD for the United States. In response to accelerating WMD proliferation, multiple missile defense programs are now progressing through the R&D cycle, and deployment decisions will be made in the next few years. TAMD programs include lower-tier systems such as the Army PAC-3, the Navy area defense system, and the NATO medium extended air defense system, and upper-tier systems such as the Army theater high-altitude area defense (THAAD) system, the Navy theater-wide program, and the Air Force airborne laser for boost-phase intercept.

NMD systems are not as far along. They are focused on defense against limited attacks and accidental or unauthorized launches. Design concepts include a combination of endo-atmospheric, exo-atmospheric, and boost-phase systems. Testing problems have precluded deployment decisions to date, but in early 2000, Secretary Cohen's Annual Report to the President and Congress spoke of a "first phase" NMD architecture that would include 100 ground-based interceptors, an X-Band radar deployed in Alaska, five upgraded early warning radars, and other components. If an NMD system is deployed, it will be part of a larger effort to create improved homeland defenses against an array of threats, including terrorist attacks.

The idea of creating ballistic missile defenses is not new. It was explored in the 1960s, when Spartan and Sprint missiles were being developed. It was examined again in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration launched its Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Both efforts yielded the conclusion that full-scale defense against very large missile threats was neither affordable nor possible against an enemy determined to maintain a strong offensive capability. But limited defense against small threats, either abroad or at home, was a more feasible proposition, provided the technical problems of networking missiles, radars, and command and control systems could be solved. Current programs are anchored in the premise that with modern technologies and information systems, these problems are resolvable in affordable ways.

What the future holds is uncertain. For TAMD, initial production of PAC-3 and the Navy area defense system is already under way, and THAAD is entering the manufacturing stage, with initial deployment expected in 2007. With other systems still undergoing testing and review, the exact combination of future lower-tier and upper-tier systems has not yet been decided. Future NMD systems are even less clear; much will depend upon WMD threats, technological progress, and arms control negotiations. The NMD program is slated to cost $10-15 billion through 2005, but this expense is mostly for R&D measures, not full-scale deployment. Costs for procuring and operating TAMD and NMD systems will depend upon the size, nature, and rate of deployment. Any estimate is speculative, but a few years from now, DOD could be spending several billion dollars annually for BMD.

While public attention is likely to remain focused on missile defense controversies, pressures for added defense spending in the nuclear arena might also come from another source: strategic forces for offensive missions. As a result of START negotiations, these forces are slated to decline to 836 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs)--with a total of 2,250 warheads--and 93 heavy bombers by 2007. Although the future force will be far smaller than during the Cold War, current weapons will be aging by then, and efforts to modernize them with new systems and subsystems could exert pressure for more spending. Today's strategic forces budget of about $7 billion is slated to increase by only enough to offset inflation, but this forecast could change if interest builds in new modernization. The same holds true for the command, control, communications, and information and the space programs, which support both strategic and conventional forces. Spending for this program too is slated to rise only enough to offset inflation. But with information systems and space technologies becoming more important in U.S. defense strategy, this forecast may not be viable.

International Operations, Infrastructure, and Overseas Presence

Only time will tell whether the recent upsurge of humanitarian missions, peacekeeping operations, and limited crisis interventions becomes a permanent feature. Perhaps limits will be set by U.S. policy, as suggested elsewhere in this volume. But because many regions are so turbulent, pressures for such operations may remain as high as today, or even increase. If the current pace continues, the cost will be about $4 billion annually. While these operations are not hugely expensive, they are not cheap. Often they inflict temporary turbulence on the defense budget because O&M funds must be used to pay for them before Congress can pass a special supplemental appropriation. The bigger drain comes from the higher tempo imposed on parts of the force structure. Often DOD must employ units with special capabilities, and because these units exist in limited numbers, they are easily overtaxed. When combat forces are deployed to lengthy involvements in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations, they are diverted from staying prepared for wartime missions. When deployed on such operations, these forces could be hard to extract for combat assignments in event of war elsewhere. For these reasons, these operations are widely viewed as having a more deleterious impact on defense preparedness than their relatively minor size and budget impact would suggest. The core problem is the lack of the manpower, forces, and funds both to perform these operations regularly and to stay prepared to carry out its warplans under the two-MTW strategy.

Although public debate is focused on this controversy, a different issue may prove to have an equal or greater impact on the defense budget: spending on overseas bases, facilities, and related infrastructure. Currently, about 235,000 troops are stationed abroad. These forces are mostly based in three areas: Central Europe (110,000), Northeast Asia (93,000), and the Persian Gulf (25,000). Current trends suggest that many future operations--peacetime and wartime--may be conducted at places far removed from these locations. For a host of reasons, the so-called southern belt may become a new focal point of U.S. defense commitments. This unstable belt begins in the Balkans and Caucasus, passes through the Greater Middle East and South Asia, and stretches along the Asian crescent from Southeast Asia northward to Okinawa and Japan. At the moment, the U.S. military has few of the bases, facilities, prepositioned equipment, coalition arrangements, and other assets that would be needed for operations there. For example, withdrawal from the Philippines a decade ago left the Armed Forces with no major air and naval bases in Southeast Asia, where it may be called upon to operate with growing frequency in the coming years. If acquiring these assets becomes necessary, the effort could impose significant spending requirements on the defense budget.

The effect could be even greater if steps are taken to alter the size and nature of U.S. overseas presence. Because the current presence reflects fading Cold War missions, it may not prove well-aligned with future missions and needs. In Europe, DOD may need fewer heavy land formations in Germany, but more mobile brigades, air forces, and naval units for use in the Southern region, including Turkey, the Balkans, and elsewhere. In the Middle East and Persian Gulf, the need to develop a wider network of coalition partnerships may necessitate larger U.S. troop deployments there if political conditions permit. In Asia, the large American presence in Korea and Japan may be rendered obsolete if Korean reconciliation ends the risk of war there. Other Asian security affairs could compel the design of an entirely new military presence, with different forces, deployment patterns, basing arrangements, coalition practices, and reinforcement plans. Although the future is uncertain, the key point is that significant changes may lie ahead. To the extent this proves to be the case, designing of a new and different overseas military presence could have significant consequences for the defense budget. Savings might be possible in some areas, but added costs could be the case in others.

Conventional Force Enhancements

Although conventional forces will be improved by procuring new weapons, additional pressures seem likely to rise for changes in the structures of these forces in order to enhance their capacity for warfighting and other missions. One reason is the effort to develop new joint doctrines under the mantle of Joint Vision 2020 and the revolution in military affairs. As ongoing experiments give rise to ideas for implementation, they may produce changes in how basic force elements--divisions, fighter wings, and carrier battle groups--are organized and operated. The key concepts of information networking, dominant maneuver, precision engagement, full-dimension protection, and responsive logistics could result in new forms of joint operations and force structures that may require significant funding to pursue.

In addition, CINCs may be seeking new capabilities in order to carry out their war plans and to offset asymmetric strategies. One example is the growing emphasis on forced-entry capabilities in the event a war begins with surprise enemy attacks that inhibit the U.S. capacity to carry out reinforcement plans. A second example is the growing need to conduct rapid lethal strikes against enemy WMD assets in order to prevent their use against U.S. forces. A third example is the need for larger, better stocks of smart munitions and cruise missiles in order to carry out the growing emphasis on deep-strike operations for defense and offense. The need for new capabilities to carry out these and other missions could give rise to new technologies and systems that are only dimly understood today. If so, the result could be further pressures on the U.S. defense budget.

Unless U.S. defense strategy is scaled back or allies improve their forces for new-era missions, DOD is also likely to face requirements for at least a modest expansion in the size of the force structure, including more units and manpower. One candidate is so-called LD/HD forces: scarce assets that provide special capabilities often in demand for peacekeeping, warfighting, or both. Examples from all three services (not all of which are on the official LD/HD list) include medium truck companies, military police, construction engineers, civil administrators, psychological operations units, special forces, coastal patrol boats, unmanned aerial vehicles, refueling aircraft, command and control aircraft, defense suppression aircraft, and search-and-rescue aircraft. Recent experience has shown the U.S. force posture to be short in several of these areas; the result is that existing units have been run ragged in meeting demands for their services. If this trend continues, DOD will have a compelling reason to seek more of these assets.

As for other forces, various options to alter the status quo may receive consideration. The Army might not need more active divisions and brigades, but it will continue improving the mobility and firepower of existing units, while also upgrading 15 Reserve component brigades to higher readiness. The Army may also seek more active logistic support units, more deep-fires units, more prepositioned equipment, and additional command, control, and information assets. The Air Force's current structure of 20 active and Reserve fighter wings may be deemed adequate for most warfighting needs. But the role of airpower in U.S. defense strategy is growing, and already a large number of the 12 active wings are deployed overseas, resulting in strains on its posture and unusual reliance on Reserve units. The idea of adding one or two wings, plus more support aircraft, may gain support in the coming years. Likewise, the Navy may have enough combat forces for warfighting, but its force needs are strongly influenced by peacetime deployment practices and the large rotational base needed to sustain them. Already the Navy is arguing for a reversal of downsizing, and a buildup from today's posture of 316 major ships to 360 ships, including more carriers. This argument seems likely to gain strength in the future.

Some of the pressures for more forces and manpower could be offset by streamlining existing combat, support, and national infrastructure assets as the information revolution unfolds, new technologies appear, and consolidation is pursued. If success in these areas is achieved, perhaps DOD can carry out future missions with its current manpower of 1.38 million troops. But if not, a manpower expansion of 10-15 percent could be needed. This step would require added funding, not only for more military pay, but also to provide for the accompanying increases in O&M, procurement, and other accounts. The impact on the defense budget would be significant.

The Challenge Ahead

The coming decade will bring a major challenge to defense planning. With both international conditions and U.S. forces entering an era of transformation, clinging to the status quo will not be possible. The Bush administration's strategic reviews should focus on the fundamentals of U.S. defense strategy, force posture, and budgets. They also should address the growing need for allies and coalition partners, especially NATO and European forces, to improve greatly their forces for future missions and operations outside their borders. Adequate allied and partner forces are a vital complement to U.S. defense strategy, but they will not be a substitute for strong U.S. forces.

Enough of the multiple pressures arising for new U.S. defense spending are likely to take sufficient hold to create a widening gap between resources and requirements. Serious dangers will arise if future U.S. defense strategy is too ambitious for DOD forces to carry out effectively. The result could be insufficient assets in one or more key areas of strategy. A second danger arises if scarce budget resources are allocated inefficiently in ways that result in an incoherent, unbalanced force posture. Such a posture might not be able to fulfill a well-designed strategy that otherwise would be supportable if resources are used wisely. An even bigger danger is a strategy-force mismatch combined with an incoherent, ineffective posture. The damage done to U.S. military preparedness and national security could be considerable.

The easiest way to avoid these looming dangers would be to fund significantly larger defense budgets. A combination of a sizable step-level increase in the near term followed by steady real increases of 1-2 percent annually in later years likely would be needed. But while moderate budget increases may be forthcoming, a bigger increase of this magnitude does not seem feasible in today's political climate. As a result, DOD will be compelled to make do with the resources that are available, and to make strategic decisions wisely and responsively. Thus, the Department of Defense, the President, and the Congress must focus on three critical tasks: shaping a defense strategy that meets key security needs yet is affordable; designing a force posture that can implement this strategy effectively; and crafting an integrated program path that strengthens the force posture in coordinated, well-planned ways.

To the extent that resources fall short of requirements, defense planning will need to weigh alternative options that provide different ways to navigate the future. A number of such options are presented in other chapters of this book. Perhaps the solution will be to retain the current strategy, or even enlarge its scope, while better tailoring the future posture to support it. Or the solution may be to scale back the strategy in ways that permit an intense focus on fewer strategic demands. Above all, this is a time for clear thinking. Decisiveness will be needed, but simple-minded approaches should be avoided. Great damage will be done if the United States succumbs to the impulse to withdraw from world affairs in some major way, or slashes its forces deeply, or scuttles a procurement effort that is key to remaining the world's strongest military power. Careful analysis instead may result in the United States urging allies to assume more responsibility for some missions, and in DOD being less preoccupied with preparing for two regional wars and stretching out its procurement efforts. Most likely a balanced approach will remain best, but not necessarily in ways that perpetuate the status quo. By 2010, the Nation may be conducting its defense affairs, at home and abroad, in significantly different ways than now. If change can produce a sound strategy and an effective posture for the strategic conditions, then it is something to be welcomed, not feared.

Regardless of the given strategy and force posture, firm priorities will have to be set. DOD will need to survey the tradespace of its programs in order to determine both the capabilities that the military needs and those that it can do without. This means that it will be compelled to identify not only the strategic risks that must be eliminated or minimized, but also those that can be accepted. None of these decisions promises to be easy. But they are the stuff of living in a still-dangerous world where nothing is perfect, the future is up for grabs, and little can be taken for granted. The consolation is that if America makes these decisions wisely, it will greatly enhance its chances for making the new century an era of peace and progress.

Notes