R.J. Godlewski's The Independent Counterterrorist. I, Militia. June ...

indivisible. From this perspective, there are no longer
primary and secondary interests—there is only an
overriding interest in preventing disorderly spaces that
can provide terrorists safe havens. If the United States
envisages its role in terms of maintaining stability,
shaping the environment, minimizing disorder, and
preventing or eliminating chaos, the demands on
national resources will be enormous—and perhaps
unsustainable. For the United States to carry out a
strategy of this kind, at the very least, it would have
to expand the Army and Marine Corps—which are the
keys to successful interventions—beyond the increase
already projected. This would likely be at the expense
of the Navy and Air Force—which are typically more
concerned (again in a stateocentric way) about the
emergence of peer competitors than about military
interventions in chaotic contingencies. Even this,
however, might not be enough for what is potentially
an open-ended strategy.
More important than the size of the intervention
capability, however, would be its composition. In
confronting a deteriorating security environment of
the kind envisaged here, the United States would need
a far more holistic approach to the exercise of power
and a far more coherent organizational structure than
currently exist. In responding to security challenges,
the United States still tends to develop several strands
of distinct and often independent activities rather than
a sustained strategic approach that integrates multiple
activities and directs them towards a common purpose.
In a world where the United States seeks to combat
extensive disorder and restore stability, military,
economic, and diplomatic power have to be targeted
in ways that create synergies rather than seams, that
reinforce rather than undercut, and that provide
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