In recent years, an arc covering a large part of the earth’s surface—from North Africa to the Philippines, and from Central Asia to Central Africa—is chaotic and in turmoil. We are going to be dealing with this turmoil for decades. Remote places such as Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda, East Timor, Aceh, Colombia, and others have become flash points that required our intervention at some level. At the same time, the need to contain regional threats such as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea still remained a major military requirement. These became more threatening as they developed greater military capabilities aimed at denying us access to their regions and to our allies within those regions. More and more, our security interests have drawn us into remote, unstable parts of the world.

As a result of these commitments, our shrinking and adjusting armed forces were hit by an onslaught of strange, nontraditional missions that pressured their dwindling ranks and resources with an operational and personnel tempo that was not sustainable. With some exceptions, the U.S. military resisted these missions and the adjustments it should have made in doctrine, organization, training, and equipment needed to meet this growing new mix of commitments. Traditionalists in the military leadership insisted on holding the line; they wanted to fight only our nation’s wars, and hoped to go back to “real soldiering” as they were mending a transitioning force suffering from all the pressures on it. One of our most senior military leaders was quoted as saying, “Real men don’t do OOTW”—a term that became the title for all of those messy little low-end commitments (we now call these missions “Stability Operations”).

THE TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY MILITARY

Several serious questions and challenges face our military. The first has to do with the growing number of these nontraditional threats. Will these continue to increase, with new types added to the confusing mix, and will we rely on the military as our principal instrument to deal with them? Second, can we afford the kind of military that can meet all the potential challenges ahead? The third question relates to the much-needed military reform. Can the military change, reform, or transform to meet the challenges of the new century and adapt to the rapid development of new technologies that could radically alter the military as we know it today? The fourth issue deals with the interagency reform necessary for other agencies to move in parallel with military reforms. Can we meet the demand for better decision making and the integration of all the instruments of power (political, economic, informational, etc.) to solve the multidimensional challenges ahead?

No one can predict the future, but we can make judgments on the growing number of threats that now face us. Some of these will not be what we have grown used to preparing for.

Our security interests will require that we have a military capable and prepared to respond to:

• A global power with significant military capabilities.