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McNair Paper 63, All Possible
Wars? Towards a Consensus View of the Future Security Environment,
2001-2025, November 2000 Chapter One Sifting the Sibylline Ashes
If I always appear prepared, it is because before entering on an undertaking, I have meditated for long and have foreseen what may occur. --Napoleon9
To the defense planner, an expectation of the future is an absolute requirement in preventing, preparing for, deterring against, and, if necessary, fighting wars. At the operational and tactical levels of war, an ability to anticipate the future actions of the enemy has always been considered a defining skill of history's greatest military commanders. In fact, it is a skill that most clearly delineates the successful from the unsuccessful military leader. While personal leadership and courage may be the two elements that bring victory in the tactical situation of the battlefield, even the bravest of great captains have faced ultimate defeat because an unanticipated element derailed the overall plan. This can also be true of otherwise successful strategists, including the great Napoleon himself--who did not foresee the effects of delay and Russian winter on his 1812 campaign. On the level of grand strategy--where there is the interplay of the competing efforts of nation-states in defending their security and achieving their vital interests--a detailed assessment of the overall international security environment is clearly the fundamental requirement in the development of a national defense policy. For the policy to remain effective, the common understanding of the security environment should be continually assessed, and changes in the security environment must be anticipated. As the United States enters the 21st century, it is certainly prudent for the nation to review its overall defense policy to ensure that its strategy, plans, and military force structure are valid for an ever-changing security environment. In addition to the normal planning processes within the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the National Security Council, and other organizations entrusted with national defense, there has been in recent years a series of Congressionally-mandated defense reviews. Along with increasing Congressional participation in defense policy, the intent of these reviews has been to obtain a formal assessment of American security in order to foster longer-range planning and decisionmaking by the Department of Defense, which has frequently been accused of focusing on the urgent, rather than the important. The first of these reviews, the Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review, was conducted in 1997.11 Following QDR 1997, an alternative, independent assessment, also mandated by Congress, was charged with critiquing the results of QDR 1997. This National Defense Panel (NDP) provided several alternative defense concepts and force structure recommendations based on a somewhat different view of the future. Currently, an additional Congressionally-sponsored study group, The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (previously known as the National Security Study) is completing a series of reports that includes a specialized look at the future security environment.12 And a second Quadrennial Defense Review, to begin January 2001, has been included as a requirement in the latest Congressional defense authorization bills. Original legislation indicated a Congressional intent to make QDR a recurring four-year evaluation of American security efforts. A natural first step in this evaluation process is to determine what is the future, or more properly, the range of alternative futures that we are planning for. What challenges and opportunities will the future security environment present to the United States? What developments should we anticipate? Exactly what sort of threats do we expect to face? What possible wars should we plan for, prepare our forces for, and, hopefully, deter through our policies, programs, and actions? From Clear Threat to Cloudy Lens The need for a continuing assessment of the security environment seems common sense when a security threat is evident. During the Cold War, the NATO alliance and most other nations of the noncommunist world saw the potential expansion of the Soviet empire as a clear and present danger against which well-defined security plans were an absolute necessity. Constant assessment of the trends and shifts in international security were required if the plans were to be valid and deterrence maintained. Entire organizations were created--staffs of intelligence collectors, analysts, and planners, supported by academic assessments of demography, industrial capacity, economic factors, and social trends--to give decisionmakers a clear picture of the international environment. The fact that such clarity was difficult, and that assessments were sometimes invalid, is much less an indictment of these efforts than a validation of the limits of human perception. Yet, there is an underlying irony that this intensive assessment effort occurred during an historical period in which the international security environment changed relatively little. It was largely a bipolar world in which security issues revolved around or were primarily affected by the rivalry between the two superpowers. Thus, it was relatively easy to forecast the strategic importance of any particular event, even when its occurrence could not be anticipated. In contrast, the post-Cold War world--a world heady with the collapse of communism and in which the United States remained the sole superpower--proved a much more difficult environment to analyze, particularly after the apparent stabilizing effects of victory in Operation Desert Storm and in the absence of a clear security threat.13 Many thought that the reduction in East-West tensions created a new world order, made possible a "peace dividend," and made extensive security assessments practically moot.14 As a practical matter, the United States did reorient and reduce its defense structure by approximately one-third. From this perspective, re-assessment of the future security environment appeared difficult and important, but not necessarily urgent.15 The reduction in defense structure included a corresponding reduction in assessment organizations and policymaking staff. Arguably, the United States now faces a post-post-Cold War world in which threats are more direct, more dispersed, and, to some degree, more evident.16 It is a world in which a liberated Russia did not develop a solid foreign policy partnership with the United States. It is a world in which China did not allow the inevitable growth of democratic sentiment, but crushed it ruthlessly at Tienanmen Square and elsewhere. It is a world in which globalization and economic interdependence did not prevent a series of ethnic wars along an Adriatic coast that was rapidly becoming the summer vacation zone of choice for Western Europeans. It is a world in which a thirty-year series of arms control treaties and proposals did not prevent other nations--even states presumably nonaligned during the Cold War--from seeking to build nuclear arsenals.17 It is a world in which the crushing coalition victory over the Iraqi forces that had invaded neighboring Kuwait did not deter, for all time, the aggressive encroachment of other authoritarian regimes on their neighbors. In other words, it is a world that did not cease to be dangerous, frequently chaotic, and ruled by power, rather than by law. Recognition of this post-post-Cold War world was a significant motivator behind the current series of Congressionally-mandated defense reviews. The common perception was that defense processes originating in the Cold War or the immediate post-Cold War era might not be appropriate to the apparent and anticipated changes to the future security environment. A fresh look was needed. And, in fact, all of the reviews--with their wide range of current and potential future impacts on U.S. defense policy and structure--sought to define, to a varying degree, the future security environment that American decisionmakers would face. Consensus and Divergence Each of the reviews used different methods. QDR 1997 relied primarily on intelligence estimates and forecasts, some of which were later publicly released by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) as Global Trends 2010.18 Supplementing the intelligence community work was a series of commission studies by outside research institutes, along with a series of projects by the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University. The corresponding NDP report attempted to construct a series of alternative future scenarios that could provide insight into the range of defense policies that might be considered in the face of an uncertain future. However, this effort was conducted primarily off-line from the rest of study, and the panel's final recommendations appear to have had only limited impact. In the case of both QDR 1997 and the NDP, much of the logic leading to their respective future assessments is largely implicit or was developed from other sources. Describing the future security environment was but the prerequisite to their overall objectives. In contrast, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, established in July 1998, attempted to make its views of these threat estimates particularly explicit as a separate phase of the study. Released September 15, 1999, this phase one assessment, entitled New World Coming, is (as of July 2000) the latest U.S. Government-sponsored futures work in publication. Given the complexity and attractiveness of this field of study, it will obviously not be the last word on future security threats. The issue of consensus and divergence in studies of the future security environment studies is an intriguing one, since almost every government agency, Federal research institute, nongovernmental organization, and academic center involved with national security policy issues has--at one time or another--pursued its own assessment of the future security environment. An unpublished study addendum of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century cites 20 studies published since the end of the Cold War which the commission surveyed as pertinent to its efforts.19 As previously discussed, these studies were chosen from approximately 50 identified futures efforts. Sixteen studies from the mid-1970s also were identified. Whatever the exact number of ongoing futures studies, it is obvious that political decisionmakers, business leaders, and academic observers consider such assessments worthy of considerable time, effort, and expense. Yet, there have been few attempts to categorize and compare the findings of this myriad of future security environment studies.20 Practically all of the ongoing efforts, particularly those that focus on future scenario development, essentially begin with a clean slate. The Fallacy of the Clean Slate While the clean slate approach is intended to avoid intellectual bias and group-think generated by the study of previous futures efforts, it also leads to disconnects between what could be mutually supportive endeavors, as well as to the lack of a corporate knowledge of the cognitive and political factors that influence future analyses. A dramatic example of the failure of linear trend analysis--the projected future of the manned space program in the late 1970s--is frequently used to explain why the incorporation of previous future forecasts may be detrimental to fresh assessments. Forecasts based on the continuing and incremental successes of the manned space program in the 1960s and 1970s tended to project a robust future for the program--with permanent moon colonies established by 1990, and missions to Mars underway by 2000. Many of the public forecasts were based on internal assessments by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the evolution of space technology. Obviously, these events failed to come about--primarily due to political and public disinterest in funding the high cost of manned space exploration, factors not anticipated by otherwise technologically accurate forecasts. It is presumed that clean slate thinking can avoid such traps. Instead of analyzing previous assessments and accepting them as starting points for further refinement, it is argued, such previous efforts should be largely ignored lest they contaminate the intellectual freedom and greater accuracy of current creative thought. However, it can also be argued that a comprehensive assessment of the future of manned space flight can only be developed if such previous misassessments, and the spirit of optimism that generated them, are analyzed and understood. This is an argument for inclusion of context as well as content. Likewise, there is much to learn from previous accurate forecasts. Processes that produce accurate results are appropriate starting points for replication and should not be discarded without careful examination. If the wheel needs to be reinvented at every turn, who will have the energy to reinvent the whole car? Purpose and Methods With that in mind, the purpose of this survey is to provide, not an independent forecast, but a comparative analysis of current studies of the future security environment in order to support upcoming reviews of American defense posture. It does so by providing background information of futures study methodology, and then surveying both governmental and private studies. In short, the survey technique consisted of first developing an analytical summary of each primary source, and then preparing a series of matrices comparing the conclusions of each study concerning specified common issues. The common issues were initially organized under the categories of anticipated threats, nature of probable conflicts, and drivers.21 The goal was to identify both consensus and disagreements among the selected studies concerning the following three questions that define the future security environment from the perspective of the United States: * What are the most likely security threats that the United States will face? * If conflicts occur, what are the likely nature or forms of these conflicts? * What are the drivers--such as ideology, economic competition, or advances in technology--that might cause such threats and propel conflicts to occur? The apparent consensus and disagreements are then more fully developed and discussed on an issue-by-issue basis as findings. The findings are categorized as consensus, divergence, contradictions, and--in the case of forecasts that are confined to a single source, or rare events that are discussed as mere possibilities, but not probabilities--as wild cards and outliers. In sum, the survey employed a four-step technique: * Summarize the source. * Identify topics addressed in each source by the following categories: anticipated threat, nature of probable conflict, drivers, or common themes. * Compare the sources by building matrices displaying sources, topics, and conclusions, which either supported a view, did not support a view, or did not discuss a view. * Develop findings, which could be in the form of a consensus view, a dissenting or diverging view, or an outlier/wild card. The Second Round After consensus points, divergence points, and outliers were initially identified, these findings were subjected to a second round of analysis. Over 300 other sources were examined and compared to the findings in an effort to ascertain: * whether the consensus points represent a majority view across the literature * whether other points of dissent could be identified * whether the divergence debates were common to the literature * whether additional wildcards could be identified. The 300-plus secondary sources were identified from bibliographic searches through various media, including libraries, electronic databases, and the Internet.22 Searches were primarily restricted to sources published after 1996, except for issues that appeared to require earlier background information. For example, the issue of economic competition led to the identification of concerns between the United States and Japan that peaked in the early 1990s. Material from those years was used for background information. Criteria for Primary Sources 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) which influence defense planning in the United States. A working assumption was that a representative view could be identified for each of 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 (JCS) and unified commanders-in-chiefs (CINCs); war colleges; individual services (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force); Federally-funded research institutes; independent research institutes; nongovernmental organizations; 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 these organizational categories, 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 particular drivers (such as population growth or availability of resources) of future trends * examine multiple subjects affecting the future security environment * be 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 * be unclassified (if a U.S. Government product) or provide analysis of the future security environment in unclassified sections.23 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.24 As will be discussed, representative views of the future are not necessarily the official view of the organization concerned. Once the representative sources were selected, they were summarized and their conclusions categorized in the method outlined above. Representative Views Selection of representative sources was meant to be both inclusive and simplifying. At least one view from each type of participant in the defense debate was included. But the sources needed to be kept to a manageable number. In most cases, the organizations identified do not have official views. As a practical matter, it can be said that the official view of the future security environment for the overall U.S. Government is contained in the President's current National Security Strategy. But this strategy is a political document as well as an expression of policy; it represents the public view at the national command authority level, but is not necessarily inclusive of views at other governmental levels. Other sources may have some degree of official standing in the respective agencies. For example, the National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2010, which is developed in consultation with members of all of the U.S. intelligence community (as well as other sources) could be construed as the official unclassified view of the overall intelligence community concerning the future security environment to 2010. Although developed by defense organizations, other sources are designed as reports or reflections, but are not intended for acceptance as an official view for the respective organization. An example is the Joint Strategy Review (JSR), a report prepared annually by the Joint Staff in consultation with the staffs of the Armed Services, and presented to the Joint Chiefs to assist them in strategy and policy formulation. The JSR is intended as a strategic study, not an official JCS view. Its thematic focus varies year-to-year based on direction from the Chairman. In 1998, the JSR focused exclusively on alternative futures. Among the services, the Air Force 2025 project appears to be the most extensive alternative future scenario-development effort, but does not represent an official Air Force view of the future. The three selections from Army sources represent the perspectives of three different, though related organizations within the service itself. None is official. The Navy sponsored significant reexaminations of the future security environment in conjunction with the development of its post-Cold War...From the Sea strategic vision in the early and mid-1990s, but since that time has not directly sponsored futures work. To derive a representative view, two sources were surveyed: an alternative futures analysis conducted by the uniformed officers of the Navy Strategic Studies Group (SSG) in 1995 for a previous Chief of Naval Operations, and a personal view of the future security environment written by the Secretary of the Navy. Again, neither can be construed as an official Navy view. In contrast, the genesis of the Marine Corps sources allows them to be construed as the official view of the Marine Corps during the tenure of General Charles C. Krulak as Commandant. This reflects a deliberate choice on the part of the leadership to develop a consensus view for their Marine Corps. Within OSD, the Defense Planning Guidance, a classified document issued to direct the Title 10 activities of the individual branches of the armed forces and defense agencies, contains an unclassified section detailing "The Projected Security Environment." This section is the closest to an official view of the future by the civilian authorities of the Department of Defense, and the 1999 version was selected for survey. A subordinate organization, the Office of Net Assessment within OSD, which reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy has long been known for its iconoclastic, outside-the-box studies and analysis of current and future military threats. Its unclassified 1999 Summer Study reports were selected for survey as representative of distinctly unofficial OSD views.25 A source that can be construed as contending with the views of the individual services and representative of the perspectives of the unified commands is the "Futures Program" of U.S. Joint Forces Command (formerly U.S. Atlantic Command). The "Futures Program," geared to the development of joint experimentation and identification of future weapons requirements, has not produced a documentary final report. However, a series of unclassified briefings were surveyed as being potentially representative of general CINC concerns toward the future security environment. Several studies conducted by the National Defense University Institute for National Strategic Studies were selected as representative of the futures assessments being conducted at military war colleges, and that presumably impact thinking within the Pentagon. Outside Sources The process of selecting analyses from outside the U.S. Government was intended to capture the richness of the contending voices of the defense debate in the United States. But while there are many contending assessments, there are not many studies that fit the criteria described above. Many outside sources consist of single-issue forecasts, or examine the future security environment only indirectly. Thus, the wider range of debate is captured largely in the secondary sources. However, fourteen nongovernmental sources were selected as representative of differing organizational or individual perspectives. Two studies conducted by research institutes that are primarily federally-funded were selected: RAND's Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century: Regional Futures and U.S. Strategy was produced for the U.S. Air Force, and the Vision 21 project was conducted for the U.S. Marine Corps by the Center for Naval Analyses. Included in the primary sources are two studies published by independent research institutes, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (formerly known as the Defense Budget Project) and the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (or IFPA, associated with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University).26 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are represented by three studies sponsored by an environmental NGO, a humanitarian assistance NGO, and a project cosponsored by two public policy NGOs. Studies are also included that represent an independent, self-appointed commission, a private consultant on strategic futures, and a political candidate running in opposition to the current administration. Four studies that are the published work of individuals represent different types of experiences as participants in the defense debate were selected. Paul Bracken and Donald Snow are both teaching academicians; however, Bracken has served on official defense advisory groups, such as the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel, and has consulted for the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies. Ashton Carter and William Perry are both associated with academic institutions but have frequently served as defense decisionmakers. After a distinguished career in defense-related industry and government service, William Perry was Secretary of Defense from 1994 to 1997. A retired career military officer, Ralph Peters is a prolific and widely-respected contrarian on defense issues. Although an enormous number of outside sources could have been selected, these four met the criteria and appeared representative of varying, but influential, perspectives, ranging from teaching academic, to academic consultant, to former defense official, to retired officer. As discussed, other unofficial and civilian perspectives were captured within the collection of over 300 secondary sources. Secondary sources were not subjected to the same rigorous subject-by-subject analysis and comparison as the primary. Instead, they were assessed for their support or opposition to the consensus points or their views on the divergence debates. Readers interested in details on primary and secondary sources surveyed may consult the appendices. Outliers and Wild Cards While the relationship between consensus and divergence may be evident, the impact of outliers and wild cards on defense planning is not. The term "outlier" is used to define those findings that appear plausible but are idiosyncratic to a particular study; they lie outside the norm or consensus. Outliers are neither contradicted nor confirmed by other studies, but usually evaluate a topic specific only to its parent assessment. For example, one outlier concerns the development of a standing UN military force. This topic is addressed by assessments directly focussed on the future of the United Nations Organization, but is addressed separately by the broader future security environment studies. Wild cards are "unforeseen events that could cause a major discontinuity or fundamental change" in an environment.27 By their occurrence, wildcards literally sweep away the effects of many of the anticipated events and supplant them as the overriding driver and primary planning concern. An example of a wild card would be a cascading economic crisis that impoverishes much of the world. Under such circumstances, the security equation might change overnight, with a shift in focus from deterring major theater war (MTW) to preventing mass migrations, internal conflicts, and the rise of a neo-fascist ideological threat to democracy. By definition, wild cards are not events that are normally planned for. They can be conceived but not predicted. At best, they are occurrences that could (and should) be hedged against. Their role in scenario building, and futures assessment in general, is precautionary as well as instructive--they encourage intellectual humility. On the other hand, as elements of future defense planning, they are cards that must be played wisely. Incorporating the conceivable premise that earth could be invaded by space aliens into a significant assessment of national security, tends not to add credibility to the assessment. Outliers and wild cards are included in this study to reinforce the fact that prudent defense planning must include hedging factors. For the purposes of analysis, there will be no distinction made between outliers and wild cards. Sum of All Fears Once the findings--including wild cards--are identified and discussed, this study attempts to incorporate them into a consensus scenario that describes a baseline view of the anticipated future security environment. The objective is to provide a most likely view of future threats against which defense plans and force structure can be evaluated and developed. One of the most frequent criticisms of contemporary American defense planning is that we tend to plan for the last war instead of the next. Part of this problem, of course, is that no one can predict absolutely what the next war will be. The best we can do is combine the lessons from previous wars with an assessment of what kinds of wars might occur. From that overall assessment, combined with creative thought and a wide range of evaluative tools, a range of defense strategy options--along with corresponding force structure alternatives--could be developed that would best prepare the United States to deter or defeat likely threats, while hedging against the less likely. That is, in fact, the objective of previous defense reviews, as well as the desired objective of QDR 2001. As expressed in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000: The conferees intend that the Quadrennial Defense Review described in this provision should include an effort to determine a defense strategy designed to protect the full range of U.S. national security interests and to identify forces sufficient to do so at as low a risk as possible.28 Included in the QDR report would be "the threats to U.S. national interests examined for the purposes of this review."29 The obvious first step in determining a full range of threats to United States national security interests would be to assess--as methodically as possible--the plausible future environment in which they will arise.
Yet, even as we attempt this task, it is of vital importance to keep in mind two significant hazards. First, it is difficult to compare futures assessments that are based on different methodologies. Second, adherence to a consensus view may be very dangerous in a world of rapid change. These concerns are discussed in the following chapters.
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