The Audacity of Hope

If nation-states no longer have a monopoly on mass violence; if in fact nation-states are
increasingly less likely to launch a direct attack on us, since they have a fixed address to
which we can deliver a response; if instead the fastest-growing threats are
transnational—terrorist networks intent on repelling or disrupting the forces of
globalization, potential pandemic disease like avian flu, or catastrophic changes in the
earth’s climate—then how should our national security strategy adapt?
For starters, our defense spending and the force structure of our military should reflect
the new reality. Since the outset of the Cold War, our ability to deter nation-to-nation
aggression has to a large extent underwritten security for every country that commits
itself to international rules and norms. With the only blue-water navy that patrols the
entire globe, it is our ships that keep the sea lanes clear. And it is our nuclear umbrella
that prevented Europe and Japan from entering the arms race during the Cold War, and
that—until recently, at least—has led most countries to conclude that nukes aren’t worth
the trouble. So long as Russia and China retain their own large military forces and
haven’t fully rid themselves of the instinct to throw their weight around—and so long as
a handful of rogue states are willing to attack other sovereign nations, as Saddam
attacked Kuwait in 1991—there will be times when we must again play the role of the
world’s reluctant sheriff. This will not change—nor should it.
On the other hand, it’s time we acknowledge that a defense budget and force structure
built principally around the prospect of World War III makes little strategic sense. The
U.S. military and defense budget in 2005 topped $522 billion—more than that of the
next thirty countries combined. The United States’ GDP is greater than that of the two
largest countries and fastest-growing economies—China and India—combined. We
need to maintain a strategic force posture that allows us to manage threats posed by
rogue nations like North Korea and Iran and to meet the challenges presented by
potential rivals like China. Indeed, given the depletion of our forces after the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, we will probably need a somewhat higher budget in the
immediate future just to restore readiness and replace equipment.
But our most complex military challenge will not be staying ahead of China (just as our
biggest challenge with China may well be economic rather than military). More likely,
that challenge will involve putting boots on the ground in the ungoverned or hostile
regions where terrorists thrive. That requires a smarter balance between what we spend
on fancy hardware and what we spend on our men and women in uniform. That should
mean growing the size of our armed forces to maintain reasonable rotation schedules,
keeping our troops properly equipped, and training them in the language,
reconstruction, intelligence-gathering, and peacekeeping skills they’ll need to succeed
in increasingly complex and difficult missions.
A change in the makeup of our military won’t be enough, though. In coping with the
asymmetrical threats that we’ll face in the future—from terrorist networks and the
handful of states that support them—the structure of our armed forces will ultimately
matter less than how we decide to use those forces. The United States won the Cold
War not simply because it outgunned the Soviet Union but because American values
held sway in the court of international public opinion, which included those who lived
within communist regimes. Even more than was true during the Cold War, the struggle
against Islamic-based terrorism will be not simply a military campaign but a battle for
public opinion in the Islamic world, among our allies, and in the United States. Osama