Americas Strategic Choices

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Americas Strategic Choices

• Professor Sean OKeefe

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Episodes and Tendencies
Sir, the old wars were decided by their
episodes rather than by their tendencies. In
this War the tendencies are far more important
than the episodes. -- Winston S. Churchill,
1915
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Episodes

• Large scale warfare unlikely, but...
• Rogue nation use of first nuclear or
  chemical/biological weapons
• Super-terrorism at home
• Korean debacle
• renewed conflict in the Persian Gulf
• .... other possibilities

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Trends (1) The Budget

• Stagnant defense budget levels
• A trend toward increasing operations support
  costs
• A national budget squeeze -- despite surplus
  projections -- defense increases likely to be
  insignificant
• More operations and an RD intensive strategy
  puts pressure on procurement

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Trends (2) Geopolitics

• The rise of China
• The return of Russia?
• The vulnerable Middle East
• The shrinkage of Europe
• Balkanization and ethnic cleansing
• The open world economy

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Varieties of Empire

• History has more imagination than any scenario
  writer in the Pentagon
• Donald Kagan
• Rome, 2nd century AD
• Athens, 5th century BC
• England, 19th century AD

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Rome

• The ambition near universal empire
• The force structure a frontier military
• The strategy integrated client militaries
  disproportionate punishment

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Athens

• The ambition democratic empire
• The force structure naval superiority and a
  power projection army
• The strategy tight alliances and democratic
  enlargement

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England

• The ambition benevolent hegemony, maintaining
  the international rules of the game
• The force structure naval supremacy, an imperial
  army with limited continental reach
• The strategy selective dominance knowing when
  not to intervene

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Some Concrete Choices

• Smaller, similar, and aging, or much smaller,
  different, and modern?
• Aggressive alliance building, or multilateral
  affiliation?
• A world of friends and enemies, or of interests?
• operations other than war or
  youre on your own?
• Proportionality or an eye for a tooth?
• World-beaters or bandit-bashers?