STRATEGIC

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Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World: In Pursuit of Security and Opportunity
and Central Africa remained the most troubled regions.) This progress
has arguably been purchased with a “peace dividend” 3 that may now
have been largely spent. Renewed progress may require a determined
partnership between fragile states and those more fortunate. In light
of current domestic needs, the focus on fighting terrorism, and the
potential costs of international partnerships for dealing with expensive
efforts such as mitigating mass migration and climate change, however,
it is unclear whether the American people wish to support such a grand
bargain between the world’s haves and have-nots in light of current
domestic needs, the focus on fighting terrorism, and the potential costs
of international partnerships for dealing with those expensive efforts.
Familiar, Unfamiliar, and Hybrid Challenges
Although policymakers tend to divide the world by region and devise
strategies accordingly, this approach can falter in the face of multidimensional
problems that involve the interaction of regional and global
trends. A different—and perhaps more useful—way of parsing today’s
complex set of international challenges is to divide them into categories
of familiar and unfamiliar and enduring and emerging, and then
tailor expectations, policies, and capabilities to each. Such a framework
allows us to separate problems into three categories: familiar challenges
that the United States has tackled in the past, with which it can probably
cope using existing tools; “hybrid” problems that have both old
and unfamiliar characteristics, which will likely require new thinking,
tactics, or adaptations; and truly new problems, such as rapid climate
change and threats to cybersecurity, which are not well understood
or for which appropriate or cost-effective strategies, technologies, or
resources are likely lacking. Each type of problem plagues the world
today, sometimes in isolation, other times in a specific region, and
sometimes coinciding with other problems in time and space.
3 At the end of the Cold War, President George H. W. Bush promised Americans a “peace
dividend” in the form of reduced military spending to fight Communism.