The Emerging World System

The essential features of the emerging world system include the following.

The Global Order Remains in Transition

There have been five world orders since the United States became an independent state. These have been defined by the character of contemporary relations among the great powers: the Napoleonic period; the Congress of Vienna system; Germany's drive to become a leading power (concurrent with the division of Africa and Asia among colonial powers); the League of Nations era; and the Cold War (concurrent with the end of colonization). We are now entering a sixth period, one in which European concerns may not dominate the world as they have for the past several centuries.

Transitions between periods have typically lasted several years. The transition now under way is likely to take longer than most because there was no definitive, cataclysmic end to the old order: the Soviet Union disintegrated on its own, rather than being defeated in war and occupied. The emerging order may not fully reveal itself until after the end of the decade. The fluid character of that order is a major reason why recent administrations in Washington have had such difficulties articulating a U.S. policy vision. The final shape of the new order will depend crucially upon such factors as:

* the degree of U.S. involvement in world affairs;

* the progress of European integration, both within the European Union and through the expansion of Western institutions to include all of Europe;

* developments inside Russia;

* the extent to which Japan assumes new international obligations;

* the ability of China to hold together and remain on a peaceful path to prosperity; and

* the control of nuclear proliferation.

The World Is Dividing into Market Democracies, Transitional States, and Troubled States

At the height of the Cold War, there was a generally industrialized and free First World, a Communist Second World, and an underdeveloped, largely non-aligned Third World. By the 1980s, these divisions were beginning to erode as some Communist lands began to develop freer institutions and some underdeveloped nations evolved into industrial democracies.

The emerging order also involves a division of the world into three parts. Those parts, however, differ from the three cold war worlds in important ways. Ideology is no longer the basis of the division; the non-aligned states are no longer an important category; and some countries of the Third World have become prosperous market democracies, such as South Korea and Chile.

The emerging lines of division appear to be the following:

* The market democracies comprise a growing community of free and prosperous - or at least rapidly developing-nations that is expanding from North America, Japan, and much of Europe to include large parts of Latin America, the newly industrialized nations of East Asia, and Central Europe (Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary).

* The transitional states include ex-authoritarian and ex-Communist lands that are working toward democracy and free markets, as well as countries such as India that seem to be making progress toward freedom and prosperity from a low baseline. Many states in this category run the risk of backsliding into political chaos and economic decline. It is not clear if this will be a purely transitional category, or if some of these states will establish enduring systems marked by authoritarian politics, heavily politicized economies, and relatively low levels of prosperity. It is clear that the future of the transitional states will be one of the most important determinants of the new system.

* The troubled states, primarily located in Africa, the Greater Middle East, and parts of Asia, are falling behind the rest of the globe economically, politically, and ecologically. Many of these states are plagued with rampant ethnic and religious extremism. All have inadequate quality of governance; some are "failed states" that are slipping into anarchy. A few - particularly Cuba and North Korea - are decaying die-hard Communist dictatorships. Others are, or threaten to become, rogue states.

Some very important countries combine characteristics of two or even three groups. For instance, China can be considered a transitional country; economically, it is evolving in the direction of the market democracies. On the other hand, its politics still resemble those of a troubled state, and many analysts fear that political disarray after the death of Deng Xiaoping could push much of China back into the troubled camp. Likewise, India, which appears to be in transition economically, incorporates elements of both the market democracies (parliamentary democracy) and the troubled states (explosive ethnic and religious hatreds).

Despite the indefinite character of the dividing lines, the general trend is for a growing gap between market democracies and troubled states. The gap shows up in differences in economic growth, political stability, and adherence to international human rights standards.

Less Important for Security Purposes Are Divisions Along Lines of Economic Blocs, Spheres of Influence, or Civilizations

Three other lines of division are emphasized by national security thinkers. In what we see as decreasing order of impact, they are:

Economic and Political Blocs. Regional blocs based on trade and political cooperation seem to be emerging in Europe, the American hemisphere, East Asia, and to some degree in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In the early 1990s, there was a burst of enthusiasm for economic integration and political cooperation in both Europe and the Americas, resulting in the Treaty of Maastricht and two American trade organizations (the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] and Mercosur), as well as tentative steps in the Pacific (with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation [APEC] summits). Russia is strengthening its economic and political ties with the sometimes reluctant states of the CIS.

The implications for the world order of such blocs, were they to be consolidated, depend upon the extent to which they are open to trade and political cooperation with states outside their region. Open blocs can contribute to reducing global trade barriers and improving world political cooperation - for example, facilitating international negotiations by reducing the number of players.

The danger of tensions, possibly escalating into conflict, is greatest in the case of blocs that jealously guard themselves from outside influence and that see world trade and politics as zero-sum games. With the possible exception of the CIS, we do not see such closed blocs emerging in the next few years. Congressional passage of the Uruguay Round agreement supports this conclusion. Therefore, at this time we do not judge the development of economic and political blocs to be as important for understanding national security interests as bilateral relationships and the split among market democracies, transitional states, and troubled states.

Spheres of Influence Around a Great Power.

Closely related to the emergence of economic and political blocs has been the concentration of military attention by the great powers in their own neighborhoods and areas of historic and strategic interest. Peacekeeping operations provide a good illustration of this trend. For example, debates on Rwanda, Haiti, and Georgia in the United Nations (UN) Security Council in mid-1994 made it clear that the major powers are beginning to accept that each should take responsibility for its areas of historic and strategic interest, with France, the United States, and Russia taking the lead respectively. Similarly, Japan played a major role in Cambodian peacekeeping.

As with economic blocs, the implications of this development depend upon how open or closed the system is. If a great power accepts responsibility for acting in the common interest of the world community, then its involvement in troubled states within its area of historic and strategic interest can help those states develop more normal relations with all countries, including the other great powers. But if a great power seeks to exclude the influence of other powers and to compel its weaker neighbors to act against their own interests, then neo-empires could develop, and great powers could clash over the boundaries between their exclusive spheres.

The U.S. public has historically not accepted a national security policy based simply on great power geostrategic maneuverings. U.S. policy has been most successful and acceptable when it is based on both U.S. values and interests. Although the United States must be watchful for the development of spheres of influence, U.S. security policy for the present is more likely to be linked to values and broader interests than to spheres of influence politics per se.

Civilization. Centuries-old divisions among cultures and religions seem to have retained more of their political importance than many would have suspected a few years ago.(3) The 1,000-year-old fault line between Catholicism and Orthodoxy very nearly approximates the line of conflict between the warring parties in the former Yugoslavia and, more generally, the line of division between the East European states that are doing well economically and politically and those that are floundering. In many regions where the Islamic world runs up against other civilizations and cultures - northern India, the Levant, the Balkans, North Africa, the Caucasus - violent conflict has erupted.

Cultural and religious factors seem to primarily exacerbate and lend emotional depth to strife caused by concrete historical grievances, political disputes, and geostrategic factors. Furthermore, some of the deepest cultural-political splits are within civilizations. Witness the vigorous debate at the UN International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in September 1994: the issues of abortion and reproductive rights are at least as divisive within civilizations and individual countries as they are between civilizations.

In addition, civilizations generally lack central decision-making bodies and are therefore unlikely to displace states as the key actors in international strategic matters. A state's appeals for the defense of the civilization to which it belongs can be a powerful instrument for mobilizing support at home and abroad, but the key actor remains the state and its politics, not the civilization. We are therefore skeptical about using civilizational divisions as a primary basis for ordering the emerging world order.

Moreover, to emphasize differences among civilizations could create the impression that those with different cultural and historical backgrounds are enemies, or at least cannot be allies of the United States. That could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, thereby creating new enemies or losing current allies among countries culturally profoundly different from the United States but now friendly to it.

The Most Likely Conflicts in the Emerging World System Are the Least Dangerous to the United States

Within this system of market democracies, transitional states, and troubled states, three main types of conflict that correspond loosely to the three groups of states can be distinguished:

* Conflict among the major powers - the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the major states of Western Europe. At this point, the great powers are all cooperating, not preparing for conflict with each other. Almost unprecedented in history, this cooperation is a powerful force for peace so long as it lasts. Yet if the powers were to consolidate around themselves political and economic blocs that were exclusive rather than open, tensions could emerge at the edges of the blocs, especially between Russia and Western Europe. Of the three types of conflict discussed here, a clash among great powers (directly or through proxies) would be the greatest threat to the United States, but it is the least likely scenario.

* Conflict among regional powers, mainly involving transitional or troubled states. Conflicts not involving major powers will occur periodically, often as the result of aggressive moves by states seeking regional hegemony. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons, could increase the propensity of aggressive states to threaten their neighbors and increase the risks for the United States.

* Conflict involving troubled states, nearly always starting out as conflict within a country. This type of conflict is likely to be most prevalent but least threatening to U.S. interests. The great powers are often willing to provide humanitarian and political support for troubled states. They are increasingly reluctant to intervene militarily, however, unless a particular crisis threatens to escalate to engulf other states, create a humanitarian disaster, or otherwise affect great power interests.

Trends That Affect U.S. Military Power and Its Implications

In the context of the new world system, U.S. military power and its applications are being shaped by a number of trends rooted in technological change and the diffusion of liberal values. Eight of the most important economic, political, and military trends follow.

Proliferation Is Increasingly a Contemporary Rather Than a Future Concern

Nuclear weapons programs undertaken by rogue states have proved difficult to stop, despite the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Acquisition of nuclear weapons by a few of these states could destabilize whole regions and severely complicate U.S. power projection operations. The problem is likely to get worse on the supply side. More countries are developing the industrial base to produce nuclear weapons (by now a 50-year-old technology), and continuing economic problems in the former Soviet Union are making criminal diversion of its nuclear material and know-how more likely. Access to chemical and biological weapons may prove even easier.

Reducing the demand for weapons of mass destruction requires constructing a world order in which such weapons confer little military or political advantage to proliferators. One element of such an approach is to reduce the regional tensions that lead states to worry about their neighbors' intentions. Another part of the process is to build an international consensus against proliferators and in favor of reducing existing nuclear stocks.

Arms-control efforts have focused on countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. goals in this area include:

* securing and dismantling nuclear stockpiles in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan;

* freezing existing programs as a first step toward creating the conditions for rolling back nuclear programs (South Asia, North Korea);

* using a combination of denial of technology (Iran and Libya) and highly intrusive inspection regimes (Iraq) to deny nuclear capabilities to rogue states;

* managing nuclear proliferation where it has already taken place (South Asia); and

* developing counterproliferation measures against recalcitrants, including the ability to defend against weapons of mass destruction.

The proliferation agenda also includes eliminating chemical and biological weapons, plus strengthening agreements on control of missile technology.

The Domestic Focus Is Limiting National Security Capabilities

The end of the Cold War and the peace among the major powers has made foreign policy seem less pressing to people in many nations. The public is more preoccupied by domestic travails, in part due to the perception that social problems are worsening and in part due to the lower economic growth rates of the last 20 years.

The focus on domestic policy in the United States draws support from across the political spectrum. The political center generally believes that the United States must reinforce its economy before it asserts itself internationally. The left is sympathetic to the argument that military and foreign expenditures are a drain on resources that could be better used at home (the theory of "imperial overstretch" as the cause for national decline). The right tends to believe that the triumph of democratic and free market ideals removes the rationale for active intervention abroad (building upon the thesis of the "end of history"). As one pundit noted, the left does not want to inflict the United States on the world, and the right does not want to inflict the world on the United States.

As a result of this emphasis on domestic problems and the realization that the greatest danger to world peace - the Soviet threat - is gone, public opinion in many countries now insists on lower defense spending. In the United States, northern and eastern Europe, and Russia, force sizes are declining, and weapons procurement is falling even faster. U.S. cuts are hitting the assets that allowed the United States to maintain a global presence: foreign base infrastructure, the intelligence services, military aid, and military-to-military cooperation programs.

The trend toward declining forces is by no means universal. Forces are being maintained in areas where perceived threats have not waned, for example in a southern Europe worried about the situations to the south and east of the Mediterranean. Military spending is increasing in Southeast Asia, as larger economies make generous defense budgets easier to support.

The priority given in most industrial countries to domestic policy translates into a reluctance to deploy forces. Particularly unwelcome are sustained commitments, as distinct from emergency responses. At the same time, emergency operations are impeded by increasing public sensitivity to casualties, especially those incurred during military operations that are not considered vital to national interests.

Information Technology Is Displacing Heavy Industry as the Source of National Economic and Military Power

Mastery of information technology is surpassing mastery of heavy industry as a primary source of national power, whether exercised through commercial or military channels. The industries growing most rapidly are in the computer and communications fields, and they continue to introduce new technologies at breathtaking rates.

The extension of this trend to the battlefield suggests that information-based warfare will become more widespread within a decade or two. Defense requirements will demand more investment in information systems and less in industrial-era configurations of tanks, planes, and ships. The nature and conduct of information warfare is becoming a subject of intense interest to defense analysts.

International Organizations Are Assuming an Important Legitimizing Role for Military Action, Despite Their Limited Capabilities

Partly because some nation-states are failing and partly because world public opinion shares more and more values in common, international organizations are becoming more accepted, even when they may limit national sovereignty in various domains.

The increasing weight given to international organizations is felt most strongly in the desire of the market democracies to seek UN authorization for the use of force. Although the Cold War legitimized the free world alliance and rendered the UN system largely impotent, the passing of the Cold War has brought new life to the UN's role in legitimizing the use of coercive force.

The first blush of enthusiasm for multilateral action has faded, however, in light of the experience of the early 1990s, when international organizations proved less than effective in orchestrating responses to humanitarian disasters and civil wars. The Clinton administration's attitude underwent a sea change from its early embrace of assertive multilateralism to the cautious approach of the spring 1994 Presidential Decision Directive-257 Multilateral action has proved difficult because of differing political objectives among states and organizations; problems in making decisions in a timely manner; the limited military capabilities of multilateral organizations and ad hoc coalitions; public sensitivity to casualties from multilateral operations; and the high financial costs of operating in a multilateral fashion.

The entire world community need not become involved with every crisis. Regional organizations are playing the leading role in resolving some local problems that affect members most directly (although such organizations may sometimes lack the resources to intervene effectively, thus requiring outside assistance). The UN has delegated its role to the powers most interested in some particular problems, in what has been called "spheres of influence multilateralism."

Recent events have shown that multinational organizations such as the UN Secretariat, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) have their own institutional interests. For one thing, each has a narrow mandate (e.g., GATT promotes only free trade) that does not allow consideration of potential conflicts with other goals (e.g., protecting the environment). These interests are not always congruent with the goals of U.S. foreign policy: no matter how much influence the United States may have over an organization, that organization will always have its own procedures, its own staff, and its own agenda. Thus, U.S. respect for international organizations does not necessarily translate into automatic acquiescence in their judgments.

Globalization Is Creating Transnational Threats as well as Benefits

The pulse of the planet has quickened, and with it the pace of change in human events. Technological advances and open societies are allowing unprecedentedly free movement of goods, people, and ideas. These trends are likely to continue as communication costs fall and the new World Trade Organization facilitates the dismantling of obstacles to trade. Trade, finance, and communications are all becoming global. Computers, faxes, fiber optic cables, and satellites speed the flow of information across frontiers, as illustrated by the explosive growth of the Internet.

Most of these flows across frontiers are beneficial. Not only is prosperity enhanced, but so is freedom, as governments lose their ability to control the exchange of ideas that brings the concepts of human rights and democratic government to the furthest reaches of the globe. Some of what flows across borders is, however, pernicious. For example, terrorists can now instantaneously share technical information with their comrades far away. Both pro-democracy activists and promoters of ethnic cleansing can more easily disseminate their views to the public.

Transnational threats take various forms, some of which may involve a U.S. military role in response. One of the most worrying is the internationalization of crime. Organized criminal groups and international terrorism could endanger governments. Smuggling of plutonium and enriched uranium could become a serious threat to national security as the sophistication of criminal enterprises increases and barriers to obtaining and transporting these deadly metals fall.

Another type of transnational threat is disruptive migration. Many industrial societies feel that immigration is already at intolerable levels. Deteriorating conditions in failing states and increased access to information about the industrialized world will stimulate more migration. Mass exoduses resulting from political strife or natural disasters will sometimes require mobilizing the military for emergency relief. Large numbers of refugees could overwhelm attempts to control their movements, thus requiring military force to contain them.

Democracy Is Becoming the Global Ideal, if not the Global Norm

The world has been experiencing a wave of democratization since the late 1970s. In Latin America and Central Europe, democracy has become the norm, not the exception. Even in Asia and Africa, where many governments remain autocratic in practice, most feel compelled to present themselves as either democratic or in transition to democracy. The overthrow of democratically elected governments has become an unacceptable practice in the eyes of the world community, bringing opprobrium or worse to the perpetrators. In societies in transition to democracy from Latin America to Eastern Europe, the U.S. military has been encouraging more effective civilian oversight and control of the military through training programs and military-to-military contacts.

Elections are no guarantee that freedom will prevail. In several transitional states, neo-Communists have made a comeback at the ballot box, in reaction to the slow progress made by reformers toward improving the lives of ordinary peoples. In some places elections have been held prematurely, before the emergence of a free press and other basic institutions of civil society, resulting in the fear that some of these nations will experience "one person, one vote, one time." In other nations, especially India and the Muslim lands, religious extremists with considerable popular appeal continue to reject governance based on democratic principles in favor of governance based on the divine will as they interpret it.

The Sovereign State Faces Fragmentation Challenges

The sovereign state is losing its unique role as the fundamental unit of organization within the world system. As globalization proceeds, governments lose some measure of control and are less able to deliver solutions to problems felt by their citizens. Frustrated by the inability of governments to help, people may turn away from the sovereign state and embrace smaller, more effective groups. Thus, fragmentation pressures are often related to the decreasing ability of the state to respond to its citizens' needs.

Fragmentation pressures take a variety of forms. One is a wave of lawlessness. Another is extremist ideologies, like those espoused by radical and intolerant fundamentalist religious groups, which challenge social harmony. The decline in national cohesion also affects the caliber of public servants and politicians: the quality of governance deteriorates, with corruption growing at the expense of disinterested public service.

Sovereign states face no greater threat than fissiparous minorities, whose desire to break away from a larger state is sometimes justified by their treatment at the hands of intolerant majorities. The ideal of national self-determination is increasingly invoked to validate the fragmentation of multiethnic states - sometimes into units that more closely approximate legitimate nation-states, but sometimes into monoethnic mini-states determined to exclude minorities from political life.

Democracy is not necessarily a panacea for intrastate ethnic tensions. It is difficult to reconcile the principles of majority rule and national self-determination when a cohesive minority wants to opt out of a larger state. In fact, in the absence of guarantees of liberty against the tyranny of the majority, democracy can exacerbate ethnic problems. When people vote systematically along ethnic lines, those elected often pursue the interests of their narrow group rather than compromising when the common good calls for it.

The sad results of such intrastate tensions can be seen in many places. Violent nationalist, ethnic, and ethno-religious conflicts are becoming more common and more bloody, in Africa (Angola, Burundi, Nigeria, Sudan, Rwanda), the Middle East (the Kurds), South Asia (Sri Lanka, India), the former Soviet Union (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Tajikistan), and even on the EU's doorstep (the former Yugoslavia). The U.S. military may be called upon to assist with peacekeeping or with relief operations in some such situations.

Governments Are Giving More Weight to Economic Interests Relative to Traditional National Security Interests

Concerns about the economic foundations of national power are increasingly voiced in the industrial nations. East Asian states take satisfaction in the rapid growth that is propelling them into the forefront, while Europe and North America are concerned about growth rates that have been much lower in the two decades since the oil shock of 1973 than in the preceding postwar decades.

Concerns about prosperity and employment are playing a greater role in shaping international affairs and U.S. policy. The United States is increasingly prone to place economic concerns at least on a par with, if not ahead of, military and diplomatic concerns. It is likely to put concerns about the budget deficit, low levels of national savings, and investment needs ahead of worries about the long-term impact of current reductions in military expenditures.

A broad consensus has emerged that open economies perform best. Despite opposition from protectionists, the Clinton administration has made progress toward an open multilateral economy, It successfully completed multiyear negotiations for NAFTA and for replacing GATT with the World Trade Organization. It has also elevated the profile of APEC, institutionalizing annual summits for its heads of state.

Possible Principles for U.S. Involvement

President Bill Clinton, in his July 1994 National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement, stated:

Our national security strategy is based on enlarging the community of market democracies while deterring and containing a range of threats to our nation, our allies, and our interests.(5)

The Strategy stressed three primary objectives to that end: enhancing security, promoting prosperity at home, and promoting democracy.

Our analysis of world trends and U.S. interests tends to confirm the importance of these goals. We would explain the goals of engagement and enlargement as follows.

Engaging Selectively

It is no longer necessary, as it was during the Cold War, for the United States to dedicate its resources to achieving one overriding goal, and the country is free to turn more of its attention to secondary goals. But not all of those goals are worth pursuing simultaneously, given their costs and the competing domestic demands for resources. A good rule of thumb is to engage only in those cases that enable the United States simultaneously to promote its national interests and its principles.

Defining those principles for which the United States will act is no easy matter, however, as recent administrations have found; the old cold war standards are no longer so clear-cut. For example, one quandary is how to reconcile potentially conflicting principles such as:

* national self-determination versus the inviolability of internationally recognized borders;

* the right to refuge versus protection from excessive immigration; and

* the protection of human rights versus nonintervention in internal affairs.

Defining U.S. interests is also no easy matter. Our analysis argues that the most important U.S. ties are with the other major powers, both in Europe and increasingly in rapidly growing East Asia. To be sure, the United States also has several vital ties in other parts of the world, based on access to key resources (the Persian Gulf), historic interests (the Korean peninsula and the Arab-Israeli conflict), and concern about problems in the U.S. backyard (the trans-Caribbean basin). In addition, transnational threats and humanitarian disasters will sometimes demand a response from Washington.

Promoting Enlargement

Whereas during the Cold War the priority was to contain communism, the new focus of U.S. foreign and security policy is on enlarging the community of market democracies. Enlargement has a role to play in each of the three areas of the emerging world order. Some of these are more vital than others:

* Sustaining democracy and free markets in what we call the community of market democracies. Although of vital importance to the United States, this task does not require urgent efforts because free institutions usually face little challenge in the market democracies.

* Promoting the transition from totalitarianism or authoritarianism in what we call the transitional states - for example, Russia, South Africa, and China. This task is both vital and time-consuming for policy-makers.

* Encouraging the development of democracy and free markets in what we call the troubled states. This difficult task is important from the perspective of promoting U.S. values and serving long-term U.S. geo-strategic interests. Nevertheless, enlargement to encompass the troubled states is not at the top of the list of short-term national security interests.

Proposed Priorities for U.S. Security Policy

In the traditional security realm - setting aside other national interests such as economics - four priorities flow from this analysis. We discuss them in order of importance.

Ensuring Peace among the Major Powers

The most important U.S. interest is maintaining peace among the major powers. The health of the alliances with Japan and the major powers of Europe is primary. The United States also wants good working relations with Russia and China, which will be easier to the extent that the transitions to democracy and free markets advance in those countries. Besides having good bilateral relations with each of the major powers, the United States should also seek the peaceful resolution of disputes among other major powers - for example, the Kurile Islands dispute between Russia and Japan. Seen in this light, the 1994 Russian - Chinese accord is good for U.S. interests.

Creating mechanisms for nonviolent conflict resolution will become all the more urgent if the world divides into distinct great power spheres of influence, because history suggests that great powers tend eventually to fight over the boundaries of their spheres of influence. To date, the spheres are too amorphous to clearly identify potential conflicts over them. New conflicts could arise, for example, in Asia, where the pattern of influence remains muddled, or over Central Europe, which lacks clear lines separating possible spheres of influence.

This interest in peace among the great powers is unlikely to attract the continued close attention devoted to troublesome regional crises, but the deterioration of relations among the major powers would be more threatening to the United States in the long term than any regional crisis. When considering how far to press principles like democracy and human rights in China or free markets in Russia, Washington will need to carefully evaluate the risk that such efforts might damage relations with the country in question, with negative consequences for the peace among the great powers. In responding to regional crises, as well, the United States should place among its most important considerations the question of how its actions will affect that peace. For instance, a danger in any Korean crisis is the possibility that different perceptions of the danger in Tokyo and Washington could strain the U.S.-Japanese alliance.

Engaging Selectively in Regional Conflicts

It is neither desirable nor possible for the United States to engage in every regional conflict. It is to be hoped that Washington will choose to exercise leadership primarily in those situations in which both U.S. interests and principles are at stake, rather than where only its principles are tested. Priority should be given to traditional commitments and to those cases in which action is needed now to prevent a greater danger later, particularly in the case of rogue states that refuse to fit peacefully into the world system and are acquiring weapons of mass destruction. The most likely arenas for involvement are in areas of traditional U.S. concern: the Korean peninsula, the Persian Gulf, the Levant, and the nations around the Caribbean. This list is by no means exhaustive, because the United States could decide to fight almost anywhere if sufficiently important interests were at stake and because it could make new commitments, for example in parts of Central Europe.

In defending its vital interests and principles, the United States must be prepared to use decisive force. It must also be prepared to act alone, although acting as part of a coalition is preferable as long as the United States leads that coalition.

Responding to Transnational Threats

Problems like drug trafficking, terrorism, and pollution are increasingly becoming transnational in character as criminals operate across borders and environmental problems arise on a global scale. These problems have become an important part of the national security agenda because they affect the well-being of so many Americans. That said, it remains unclear how much the military will become involved in the growing problem of transnational threats.

Some threats of this kind seem to call for military forces to back up police forces that are outgunned and outmaneuvered by international criminal syndicates. Quasi-police operations have been normal for armed forces in many nations and for U.S. armed forces in times past. They have not, however, played a major role since World War II in the activities of most of the armed forces, other than the Coast Guard and National Guard. There may well be resistance within the military to the use of increasingly scarce resources for quasi-police functions. The natural inclination of the military is to concentrate on preparing for major conflict rather than be drawn into areas for which military force is less obviously needed.

On the other hand, a reason to give priority to such transnational threats is the risk that if these problems are left unattended, they could escalate to affect vital U.S. interests or to create massive humanitarian disasters, which would then demand U.S. intervention on a much larger scale.

Assisting Failed States

The U.S. public is likely to support assistance to failed states in those cases where the military can respond constructively and at relatively low cost. One example would be the provision of relief after humanitarian disasters. Likewise, when a local conflict threatens to spill over into neighboring states, border monitors and military aid to the neighbor can often be effective. Similarly, when clashing parties agree on a political solution but are suspicious of the willingness of the other side to live up to its promises, peacekeepers can make a difference.

Messy domestic conflicts create problems for military intervention. Yet U.S. public pressure to prevent humanitarian disasters and genocide may encourage intervention in countries where the United States has few direct and immediate interests, as was the case in Somalia. No other issue has created a more difficult set of foreign policy problems for the last two administrations.

In general, the U.S. military's role in failed states will probably be to provide humanitarian aid, protect noncombatants, and prevent conflicts from spreading to other countries. The U.S. military is less likely to play a major role in nation-building, at which its success record is spotty at best. But the military is unlikely to avoid all nation-building responsibilities, as the 1994-95 intervention in Haiti demonstrates. A danger in nation-building is that restoring political institutions often requires choosing sides in an on-going conflict. The side not chosen may then see U.S. forces as the enemy and attack them, leading to casualties that erode public support for the operation. Of course, humanitarian operations can also have a downside: underlying problems that were suppressed when U.S. forces were present often reemerge after those forces have departed, leading to questions about the efficacy of intervention.

Forming coalitions for crisis response will be difficult. No state, including the United States, wants to take the responsibility of leadership in those cases where history and common sense suggest that intervention will be lengthy, costly, and complicated. When U.S. interests are not directly at issue, Washington may choose to be marginally involved or to press for a clear exit strategy should intervention go badly.

Implications for the U.S. Military

Combining these trends and priorities, certain implications can be drawn for how the military can prepare today for the conflicts it may encounter in the coming years.

Balance Forces among Four Fundamentally Different Missions

The U.S. military will be expected to accomplish four fundamentally different missions, flowing from the four priorities listed above. Resources may be insufficient to accomplish all of these missions equally well. Thus, Washington is likely to face difficult choices about how to allocate available resources to respond to these missions. In order of descending priority, these missions are:

* Hedging against the emergence in the next one or two decades of a military peer competitor from among the major powers. This mission requires developing capabilities for leading edge warfare. The U.S. military wants to be in a better position than any potential rival to exploit new commercially developed technologies for military purposes. Taking advantage of the revolution in military affairs requires new doctrines as well as new equipment. Although easy to overlook in the short run, this mission may well be the most vital in the long run.

* Preparing for major regional conflicts with rogue states. This mission requires the successful stewardship of a ready force with superior war-fighting abilities and a significant counterproliferation capability. Much current military analysis, including the Bottom-Up Review, focuses on this challenge.(6) The nightmare scenario is two nearly simultaneous major regional conflicts, such as one in the Persian Gulf and one on the Korean peninsula. Given likely budgetary constraints, success in such a situation may well require coalition partners.

* Developing a cost-effective response for quasi-police missions in order to meet transnational threats. Operations such as picking up illegal Haitian or Cuban immigrants, intercepting narcotics shipments, and fighting western forest fires will be one part of the military's vigorous engagement throughout the world in support of U.S. values and interests. At the same time, such missions do not require multibillion dollar equipment designed for combat. Nor should they be allowed to tie up personnel with specialized combat skills for extended periods.

* Engaging selectively in troubled states. The military may prefer to minimize this mission, both to husband resources for major conflicts and because of problems with "mission creep" - which happens when a humanitarian operation begins to take on aspects of nation-building. The hard reality, however, is that failed states are becoming more common and the U.S. public often insists on intervention in the face of massive humanitarian disasters.

Adjust to Higher Operational Tempos

U.S. forces will be engaged in more operations even as their numbers decline. They will be committed simultaneously on numerous fronts. At the time of this writing in late 1994, U.S. forces are involved in Haiti to restore democracy, deployed to the Persian Gulf to deter Iraq, air-dropping humanitarian supplies in Bosnia, deterring an attack by North Korea, and maintaining thousands of Cuban and Haitian refugees in camps.

The higher operational tempo takes a toll on several fronts. Less time is available for training, which can cut the edge U.S. forces have in the use of the most advanced technologies. Morale and reenlistment rates can suffer from the human toll on those separated from their families.

Expect Ad Hoc Coalitions Rather Than Alliances

There is no overpowering threat that will create enduring alliances the way the Soviet threat brought the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into being. Like-minded states, including the NATO states, will not always agree on which regional crises deserve attention, so coalitions will shift from case to case. Public opinion, in the United States and internationally, will usually insist on intervention by a coalition rather than by U.S. forces alone, even when coalition partners add nothing to - or even complicate - the military effort. Most important, as defense spending declines, the United States will increasingly need to rely on coalition partners to complete the four missions discussed above. Programs like International Military Education and Training, aimed at increasing the ability of foreign forces to work with their U.S. counterparts, will become more useful militarily, in addition to their political impact. In some situations, the United States may decide the most appropriate response to a security problem is to encourage a coalition in which it does not participate.

Plan Based on Tasks, not Threats

After 50 years of being able to easily identify the chief threat to the United States, the U.S. military may have to return to an older style of planning in which the world is full of dangers but no one knows where or how the U.S. military will get involved in combating those dangers. The best way to plan in a world with unknown enemies is to identify the sorts of tasks that the military will be called upon to do, not to guess about the specifics of where and whom the military will be asked to fight. A capability of growing importance will be interaction with coalition partners.

Give Continued Weight to Forward Presence

During the Cold War, U.S. forward presence was primarily for deterrence, with U.S. forces abroad at times acting as a trip wire that assured U.S. commitment to respond vigorously in the event of an attack. In the new environment, a continuing U.S. forward presence, albeit at a lower level, provides reassurance in Europe, East Asia, the Middle East, and Central America that regional stability remains important to the United States. A U.S. presence also deters regional powers from jockeying for positions of dominance. Forward presence also provides staging areas for operations elsewhere, which becomes more important as the United States is called upon to intervene in disasters that could break out anywhere in the world, including areas far removed from the usual theaters of U.S. military operations. This staging area role may create problems in those cases in which the host country does not see eye to eye with the United States about its intervention in some third country crisis.

Anticipate Declining Importance of Main Battle Platforms

Classical military formations, with their planes, ships, and tanks, are no longer the sole pillars of military might. For the militaries of the advanced industrial countries, the integration of advanced weapons and communication and sensing systems - the military technological revolution - is increasingly the key to success in war. This has two effects. First, large battle platforms are becoming more vulnerable to precision-guided munitions. Second, weapons are getting smaller, so they can be carried on smaller platforms. In less technologically advanced nations, success in limited warfare against major powers may be possible through deployment of "silver-bullet" weapon systems that can accomplish one particular task well (for example, brilliant mines for blocking straits or portable anti-aircraft weapons). With the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, dispersion of forces becomes more attractive relative to concentrations of main battle platforms.

Adjust to a World of WMD Proliferation

Every effort must be made to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Experience in the Indian subcontinent indicates, however, that nations will sometimes acquire such weapons despite U.S. efforts. Counterproliferation policies are needed to deal with these contingencies. Anti-tactical ballistic missile systems, for example, will be needed to protect U.S. forward-deployed forces and allied nations. New tactics, with an emphasis on dispersion of forces, will be needed. And new confidence-building measures to stabilize regions affected by proliferation will become important.

Determine the Most Appropriate Command Structures

The trend in the U.S. military has been toward more power for the unified commanders in chief. New information and communications technologies, moreover, are shifting power to those with the most powerful computers and most effective sensors. Depending on how the new technologies are introduced, national level commanders in Washington could be tightly linked to the constituent elements of the unified command, with the role of the regional commanders being unclear. At the same time, the punch packed by the individual soldier is increasing, eroding the role of field commanders and resulting in flatter command and control structures. The fluidity of the political scene also complicates the formation of stable command divisions, because crises may flow across the areas of responsibility fixed during the Cold War.

Avoid Further Reductions in the Defense Budget

It will be impossible to meet all four military missions and deal with the other changes discussed above if current trends in budget cuts continue. By the end of the decade, defense spending is projected to fall to the lowest level relative to national income since 1950, and military personnel to the lowest level since 1939. In the short term, it is possible to maintain readiness by cutting force structure and reducing investment in research and procurement, especially because the United States has such a large inventory of advanced weaponry. If this trend continues, however, the United States will be forced to make a clear choice. Either it will have to skimp on research, development, and procurement of new weapon systems and risk being unready for a peer competitor several decades from now, or it will be forced to abandon its two major regional conflict strategy due to cuts in current force structure and reduced readiness. It will also have to reduce its current operations other than war and risk abandoning peace operations. These are choices no U.S. administration should be forced to make.

Conclusion

From the perspective of U.S. national security, an assessment of major world trends includes grounds for both optimism and pessimism. On the optimistic side, the major powers are at peace and are generally cooperating; democracy and the market system are models to which most nations aspire; and the United States remains far ahead in incorporating information technology into a revolution in military affairs.

On the pessimistic side, multiethnic states are fragmenting violently; traditional alliances are under stress; transnational threats are increasingly being felt in U.S. cities; and nuclear proliferation will increasingly create instability and greater risks. In addition, the focus in the United States on domestic policies, economic issues, budget cuts, and the need for multilateral solutions complicates the ability of U.S. policymakers to manage these new threats.

In this environment, it is particularly important to set clear national security priorities. In our view, it is most important to focus U.S. diplomacy first on the major powers. That entails sustaining key U.S. alliance systems and supporting the transition to market democracy in Russia and hopefully China. As the United States strives to sustain the peace among the major powers, it should also hedge against the possibility that the usual pattern of world history will reassert itself in future decades, that is, that there will be tensions among some of the great powers. To this end, the United States should maintain a military lead sufficiently convincing to dissuade any potential future peer competitor from seriously considering building up its forces to the point of confrontation. To sustain the U.S. lead, the central task is to take full advantage of the revolution in military affairs.

The second U.S. national security priority is to be able to deal decisively with those regional rogue states that threaten vital U.S. interests. Even though those interests may be more narrowly defined now than during the Cold War, they do exist, particularly in Northeast Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Arab-Israeli theater, the trans-Caribbean area, and increasingly Central Europe. Defeating proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is particularly important because such weapons in the hands of a rogue government could endanger U.S. allies and threaten American lives. But the ability of the United States to deal militarily with two regional military contingencies nearly simultaneously will decline rapidly if additional defense cuts are imposed.

The third priority is dealing with transnational concerns, such as international crime, narcotics traffic, and illegal refugee flows. Although these phenomena do not pose a threat to the security of states, they threaten the security of peoples, and they have a profound impact on the life of each American. The military should develop cost-effective ways to support the law enforcement and humanitarian agencies that will have the lead on these issues.

The last priority item is peace operations to deal with failing states. This is the most common new threat but also the least likely to affect U.S. vital interests. Although peace operations appeal to U.S. national values, Americans should approach them cautiously because they carry a high opportunity cost. Unless its vital interests are involved, the United States should not commit itself to long-term deployments. If it does commit, it should be prepared to act decisively. Operations like that in Somalia can erode both the credibility of the United States and its will to take determined action elsewhere where it can be more effective at promoting its humanitarian and democratic values as well as its national interests. If Bosnia turns into a Somalia for NATO, the alliance could be gravely harmed.

The trick will be to.balance these four interests, remember their priority, and not let budget cuts or the pace of events undermine those of the highest priority. There are limits to what the United States can do in the national security area, and the nation. must invest its time and resources wisely.

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Defense University, the Defense Department, or the U.S. government.

Notes

1. We use the term "policy" to mean a course of action selected from among alternatives. We do not use the term in the sense favored by many military analysts, namely, a high-level overall plan embracing the government's general goals and procedures. We use the term "strategic" in a broad sense, relating to the government's overall aims.

2. INSS, Strategic Assessment 1995 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1994). This survey brings together the efforts of 19 of INSS's analysts to identify the trends, security issues, and U.S. interests that are likely to occupy the attention of the U.S. national security community in the next two to seven years. The analysis is divided into 16 chapters, dealing with specific regions and topics (weapons of mass destruction, U.S. force structure, transnational threats, and so on) of interest to the U.S. military.

4. See "The Clinton Administration's Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations," unclassified document (The White House, Washington, D.C., May 1994).

5. William J. Clinton, A National Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington, D.C.: The White House, July 1994), p. 2.

6. Les Aspin, The Bottom-Up Review: Forces for a New Era (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 1993).

Hans Binnendijk is director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies in the National Defense University. Patrick Clawson is a senior fellow of the same institute and senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly.

This article originally appreared in The Washington Quarterly, Spring 1995