Adapting US defence to future needs

Abstract

The American military is the envy of the world. But its impressive performance against the relatively minor challenges of the post-Cold War era has engendered a dangerous complacency in American national-security thinking. As a result, the US is not making four related adaptations needed to ensure that today's superiority endures. Strategy should focus on a preventive-defence approach to the most important long-term threats to security, rather than on intervening in minor conflicts. Budgeting should reflect both preventive approaches and protection against asymmetrical threats if prevention fails. The Department of Defense's organisation should give homes to the growing number of new missions that have 'no one in charge'. And defence-industrial policy must adapt to the commercialisation and globalisation of the industrial base upon which America's technological edge rests.

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A. Carter

Professor of Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.