Paradoxically, this American ability to project military power to any region gives us a responsibility that keeps us from being completely at peace, as we have seen in recent years. The costs and frustrations of our efforts to quiet regional turbulence and the very substantial accompanying anguish should not, however, obscure the extraordinary circumstance in which we find ourselves. We have a double privilege: we enjoy security in its most fundamental sense, because there is no country that credibly threatens to dominate this nation by military force, and we can extend this security to almost any nation we choose to protect. In short, we have no major military competitor capable of achieving a military victory, so long as we possess the will to oppose it.

This is a gift from those who preceded us in managing U.S. national security. There are differences of opinion about which of our predecessors and which of their strategies had the largest roles in putting us in this privileged position, and there are intense and appropriate debates about where and when we should spend our patrimony (Kuwait, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia are recent cases in point). But about the rarity, the immensity, and the reality of the gift, there can be no debate.

Moreover, there would be a high degree of unanimity that this gift was bestowed upon us because our predecessors combined military, economic, and diplomatic initiatives to shape the environment. We are without a major competitor because our military strength defeated our opponents in World War II and deterred them throughout the Cold War. At the same time, our economic power enabled us not only to outspend the Soviet Union in arms but also to discredit its Marxist logic. When generously shared, it brought potential and former competitors, such as Germany, Italy, and Japan, into a community that shares values and has a large stake in the present international order. Our economic and political ideologies and culture have an appeal and evident success that helped to persuade Russia (and Germany, Italy, and Japan before) to adopt a new course.

These observations suggest a first conclusion about our risks. The gift of advantage we have been given will not necessarily or easily endure; maintaining that advantage requires sustained commitment, well-conceived strategies, costly investments and luck, all to an extent we now only imperfectly understand. It is our most important challenge. Just as we judge our predecessors predominantly by the gift they have given us, our successors will judge us by how well we sustained it. If, in 2029, no major enemy threatens the existence of the United States, no opponent matches our military strength, and no regional enemy can project and sustain military force in the face of our determined opposition, then we will have succeeded. On the other hand, if we do not sustain this gift, history will judge us negatively.

Only if military technology and doctrine were stagnant could the challenges of the past adequately predict the challenges of the future. Because ours is a period of immense technological and doctrinal innovation, we need to ask what may distinguish the national security environments we will confront from those that confronted our predecessors. For some future risks, the strengths we displayed in the Cold War and Desert Storm may be no more relevant than the Maginot Line.

An adversary could try to exceed us in traditional power projection, to dominate territory by the use of troops and explosive weaponry, but it need not seek to overpower us on our own terms. Rather, it could seek to disable us from projecting power by undermining our will or ability to deploy our assets. Attempts to do this, attempts predominantly aimed at sowing anxiety, despair, disruption and confusion, can be called "traumatic attacks."

To the extent that our power inhibits traditional military competition, we increase the likelihood of resort to other methods—asymmetric warfare. In warfare and criminal conduct, as in physics, every action produces an opposing reaction: every strength invites exploration of a different arena that may reveal a weakness. If we are perceived as unbeatable on the conventional battlefield, our opponents will try to beat us unconventionally and in other settings.

Having learned the lesson of Desert Storm, smaller competitors are especially likely to be drawn to asymmetric methods and strategies. In warfare, as in business, there is a tendency for a dominant power to overinvest in forestalling mirror-image competitors. Smaller actors exploiting new technologies are more difficult to anticipate than traditional opponents are. In the 1970s, IBM focused on its mainframe competitors; CBS on NBC; General Motors on Ford. But it was software and personal computer manufacturers, cable channels, and producers of small cars, respectively, who most threatened these once dominant actors.

It is precisely such smaller competitors (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and innumerable guerrillas, militias and terrorists) that America most often fought and suffered from in the last half of the 20th century. Diminishing the risk of a major military adversary may properly be our most important concern, but in the 21st century, as in the past, our most prevalent problems are likely to be opponents who are not major industrial states and cannot be expected to fight as such.

Technologies of destruction have developed and proliferated so as to give groups, third-tier and second-tier states, as well as major competitors the power to destroy or disrupt targets beyond the battlefield. Our global effort to control nuclear weapons and missiles continues to be worthwhile, but it is imperfect and losing ground. Worse still, we are witnessing the proliferation of inexpensive, accessible, and invisible technologies—"poor-man’s weapons"—that do not require missiles for delivery. These technologies, including biological, chemical, and "information warfare" weapons, increase the capabilities of smaller states, terrorist groups, and individuals.

Since the Chinese invention of gunpowder 650 years ago, warfare has focused on effecting or preventing explosive impacts. To date, terrorists challenging a country’s security almost always have used explosive weapons. Our attention has been captured by the domestic bombings in Oklahoma and the World Trade Center in New York and overseas terrorist acts on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. embassies in Africa. Bus bombs in Israel, package bombs in Ireland and Great Britain, the destruction wrought over decades by the Unabomber—all are examples of traumatic violence wielded by groups or individuals in regrettably familiar ways.

The 1995 Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system, however, was more ominous, because it suggests the potential for other kinds of weapons as instruments of terror—chemical, biological, and radioactive materials can be used either alone or in conjunction with explosives. Add to this arsenal "information warfare," which can be waged by computer to degrade or erase data and software and, in consequence, the systems they control. An airplane can be destroyed not only by a bomb, but also and no less effectively by misguiding its computer and communications systems. These NEW weapons and related forms of attack can be applied simultaneously to thousands of systems. Regardless of whether NEW weapons assume a larger role against soldiers in the century to come, they are evidently well suited to attacking civilian populations and infrastructure. Their traumatic effects can be expected to be amplified by their unfamiliarity and invisibility.

This proliferation of offensive power goes hand in hand with an increase in the vulnerability of what we must defend. The interconnection and interdependence of civilian populations grow as we expand telecommunications, travel, urbanization, and international commerce. The increasingly complex weave of human society, with its ever-greater densities and frequencies of virtual and real interaction, increases both the ease and destructiveness of attacks that will traumatize. The erosion of barriers to the movement of goods, capital, and people and the sensitivity of markets make modern societies volatile. NEW weapons exploit this volatility. Though widely labeled as "weapons of mass destruction," they may even more effectively traumatize as "weapons of mass disruption."

"Traumatic attack" is the bastard child of our information age. Over the last decades, satellites, fiber optics, and computers have transformed communication. This change was first incorporated into warfare as a modification of means. Satellite and fiber communications have been embraced by the American military as speedier, more accessible, cheaper methods of performing familiar tasks—but the technology transforms ends as well as means. Though it may take some time to fully absorb the point, telecommunications can change the purpose of an attack.

Contemporary communication is immediate and ubiquitous and has a high amplification. It is immediate not only because it is quick, but also because it feels (often incorrectly) as though there is no intermediate actor to soften or distort what is received. What was once out of sight, and therefore largely out of mind, is now salient. What used to have little impact, because it was over, is now known while in process. Because there are so many channels of communication, and they are so accessible, news is ubiquitous. Elites no longer control information; therefore, they no longer control decisionmaking. Furthermore, by its own amplifying and echoing effects, contemporary communication induces wave reactions. Pivotal incidents reported, replayed, and colored by the media and private telecommunications catalyze investor, public opinion, and decisionmaker reactions that have disproportionately disruptive effects. The result can be not just NEW weapons, but also a new warfare.

The archetypical view of warfare internalized by this generation of Americans is derived from our revolutionary, civil and world wars. These were struggles for territory conducted by massed armies delivering body blows against one another. Propaganda, aimed at troops and civilians, was deemed to be worth some effort, but the commitment of national populations—for example, America, England, Germany, Russia, Japan in World War II— was largely unquestioned. Psychological warfare was a secondary effort, intended to soften the primary target: military forces. Wars were won on battlefields. Desert Storm fit this mold. But the enemies in the next century’s warfare may not choose to fight on battlefields; America's advantage is too large in that setting.

The strategy of traumatic attack ignores armies on the field or uses them as props for theatrical points. Traumatic attack seeks not to defeat armies, but instead to eviscerate the will to use them, making primary what was previously secondary, aiming to divert or diminish the public will to utilize what would otherwise be overwhelming force. Democracies are particularly vulnerable to these attacks, as shown by the three leading 20th-century examples of this strategy in its nonviolent form: Gandhi’s call for passive action, guerrilla warfare in Vietnam, and terrorist groups in Northern Ireland. These merely foreshadow 21st century possibilities, as traumatic attack strategy gains in power in proportion to the immediacy and evocativeness of communication. For those who are unscrupulous, it fits, as hand in glove, with NEW weapons.

NEW weapons and the new warfare are likely to be aimed at civilian populations, including the America people. Enemies will be tempted to blackmail us by holding civilians hostage, or to debilitate our will and ability to fight by attacking our people, challenging our government's credibility as a protector, and distracting its attention while diverting its resources. To the extent our opponents are unimpeded, they will demolish now comfortable geographic, bureaucratic, and psychological boundaries that define our national security.

Since the Civil War, America national security has related to war abroad. By contrast, "domestic tranquillity" has been the concern of organizations other than those charged with the national defense. The work of our security establishment has been directed to the use of force; other groups are charged with addressing public opinion. The 21st century seems likely to break down those distinctions. Our second great risk arises from not sufficiently preparing for and responding to the challenges of traumatic attack both inside and outside the United States.³

The Risk of Erosion of Domestic Support

While the first two risks would stem from the actions of others, the third risk stems from our own politics and society. The mainstream of this country may become so indifferent to or, worse, alienated from its military and foreign policy institutions as to undercut U.S. ability to develop and deploy its military, diplomatic, and economic strengths in the international arena.

To the extent they are successful, traumatic attacks pose a version of this risk, because they are aimed at undermining the will to use military power. This third risk, however, is even greater if traumatic attacks and a major military competition do not occur. Without clear and present dangers, there is likely to be erosion of support for security investments. This problem will be intensified if, simultaneously, DOD is viewed as wasteful. It will be compounded again if there is a gap between the military officer corps and American civilian society. Difficulties can now be perceived in all three of these dimensions. Alone any of these problems would be perilous; together, they multiply one another and constitute the third of the great risks to American security.

The erosion of the rationale for security expenditures and diplomatic or aid initiatives is, like the risk of traumatic attacks, in some measure a consequence of our gift. The threat posed by the Soviet Union elicited a strong response from the United States; now it is no more, and lesser evils abroad are now seen as directly threatening this country. For some period we will probably sustain a substantial effort, like a runner whose momentum and rhythm keep him running beyond the finish line. As we adjust to the fact that the old race is over, however, questions will multiply as to why and how fast we should keep on running.

In a time of relative peace and fiscal pressure, preferred DOD answers to these questions become less compelling. With a defense budget of more than $280 billion per year, the United States spends one-third less in real terms than at the height of the Cold War, but that expenditure still is more than a third of the defense expenditures of all the world combined. Moreover, our allies are responsible for another third of world defense spending (over $255 billion). We and our allies thus outspend our potential opponents (who are nowhere near as united as we are) by almost two to one. Our Army, Navy and Air Force separately have annual budgets greater than the entire government (including all its defense forces) of Russia. Such spending may become increasingly controversial.