**Does the U.S. Face a Future of**

**Never-ending Subnational & Transnational Violence?**

Thomas P.M. Barnett

*May 2004*

**The views expressed in this and other papers associated with the NIC
2020 project**

**are those of individual participants. They are posted for discussion
purposes**

only and do not represent the views of the US Government.

**Does the U.S. Face a Future of**

**Never-ending Subnational & Transnational Violence?**

Thomas P.M. Barnett

*May 2004*

# Introduction/Executive Summary

The short answer is yes. But the more important answers are that:

1)  This future is worth pursuing because it represents genuine
    historical progress in the de-escalation of mass violence

2)  This problem-set is boundable and easily described as a grand
    historical arc of ever-retreating resistance to the spread of the
    global economy, and

3)  The sequencing of the regional tasks involved is of our own
    choosing.

But to achieve the tasks implied in this approach will mean that the
United States must likewise forge three important new rule sets:

1)  Internally, the U.S. must rebalance its own force to reflect the new
    focus on operations other than the now classic short, highly
    technological "effects-based" war meant to take down a regime and
    its military;

2)  Externally, the U.S. must recast its national security strategy to
    reflect the overriding goal of extending globalization, or the
    connectivity associated with the global economy, thus abandoning a
    balance-of-power mentality vis-à-vis other putative peer or
    near-peer competitors in the military sphere (not the economic); and

3)  Within the community of advanced nations, the U.S. must work to
    establish an A-to-Z rule set (e.g., international organizations with
    generally recognized procedures) for the managing of politically
    bankrupt states, i.e., those that are utterly corrupt or suffering
    some other crisis of governance.

The sequencing of these new rule sets is of great importance. The United
States must first demonstrate a commitment to seeding a "peace-waging"
force within its ranks that may ultimately constitute a main instrument
of power projection across those regions logically targeted in a Global
War on Terrorism. With that commitment demonstrated, the U.S. should
subsequently enjoy greater success in attracting coalition partners for
the "back half" (post-conflict) nation-building efforts associated with
otherwise successful military interventions involving regime change.
Once that full-spectrum capacity is demonstrated, the global community
will be able to move in the direction of enunciating the logical global
rule set describing how politically-bankrupt states may be successfully
rehabilitated and reintegrated into the global economy.

What that sequencing argument really says is that it all begins with the
Defense Department generating the required institutional capacity for
"peace-waging" that it already possesses for warfighting. Absent that
effort, the political leadership may be greatly constrained in its
ability to forge the new security alliances required to successfully
contain and ultimately shrink the sources of mass subnational and
transnational violence in the global community. Without those alliances
coming into being, the system as a whole will remain handicapped in its
ability to reduce the number of political bankrupt states, and this
negative status quo will ultimately settle into a sort of
"civilizational apartheid" whereby the frontiers of the global economy
demarcate---in a lasting fashion---the divide between the "connected"
regions and those areas that remain fundamentally "disconnected" from
globalization's advance.

# The Historical De-Escalation of Mass Violence

The post-Cold War era has witnessed an amazing "downshifting" of the
source of threats to global stability. In this short span of history,
the world has moved from an era in which global nuclear war was the
dominant threat, through a transitional era in which it seemed that
regional rogues would become the primary source of system instability,
to one in which it is increasingly recognized that transnational or
non-state actors will constitute the main source of violence \-\--
sometimes of a mass nature \-\-- that has the capacity to perturb, even
in a significant fashion, the functioning of the global economy. In
effect, America's definition of the threat has de-escalated from an
"evil empire" to "evil regimes" to "evil actors."

Today, in the Global War on Terror, the United States faces the
fundamental prospect of waging wars on individuals---not states and
their armies, nor grand security alliances and whatever "civilization"
they might represent. Consider the major military interventions the U.S.
has made since 1989, the pivotal year in which the Soviet bloc began to
unravel:

-   In the Panama intervention, the U.S. went in after just one
    man---Manuel Noriega

-   In Somalia, U.S. attention effectively settled on the disruptive
    actions of the so-called warlords---Mohammed Farah Aideed in
    particular

-   In the former Republic of Yugoslavia, the Serbian regime's hostile
    actions were effectively ended with the downfall of Slobodan
    Milosevic and his ruling clan

-   Going into Afghanistan, our targets focused overwhelmingly on the
    ruling Taliban leadership and that of al Qaeda

-   In the takedown of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the main goal of
    U.S. forces was to capture and/or kill a "deck of cards"---or
    roughly 50 senior members of the governing elite.

In none of these interventions did the United States or the associated
multinational coalition declare war on the nation in question, but
merely its senior leadership---or the bad actors embedded within the
regime targeted for change. Nor, in any of these instances did the
United States military face sustained and/or effective resistance from
conventional military forces, either because no such resistance was
possible on the part of the extant opposition forces or because the
security situation featured no such organized force. To the extent that
U.S.-led military coalitions have faced failure in any of these
interventions, the failures have been concentrated overwhelmingly in the
post-conflict phase of the intervention---namely, the reconstruction or
nation-building effort that inevitably follows any combat intervention.

The problems that the U.S. military currently faces in successfully
pursuing a Global War on Terrorism are therefore logically located at
the level of "bad actors," and not at the level of inter-state war
(which has effectively disappeared across the post-Cold War era) or
system-level war (to wit, the U.S. no longer faces an effective military
threat from another great power, but merely the potential threat from
some putative downstream "near-peer competitor"). In effect, the
challenges we face today in taking on the task of increasing global
stability reflect the immense success the U.S. has had in eliminating
past sources (real or potential) for mass violence throughout the world.
Other system-level powers no longer exist to threaten global peace, as
the U.S. remains the world's sole military superpower and the stability
of nuclear balances among the world's advanced nations is essentially
unquestioned (because if it were, where are the new efforts to negotiate
strategic arms control among these countries?). With state-on-state wars
effectively disappearing, in large part thanks to the demonstrated
willingness of U.S.-led coalitions to reverse any regional hegemon's
attempt to expand through military conquest, the locus of the most
salient threats to global stability are logically found at the level of
individual actors, whether they are already embedded within existing
failed states or seek to capture political control of such a state.

**The Ever-Retreating Resistance to the Spread of the Global Economy---
a Boundable Problem Set**

The definition of "state failure" needs to be reflect the fundamental
struggle of the age: a state is "failing" if it either cannot attract or
build itself the connectivity associated with globalization's
progressive advance or if it essentially seeks to retard or deny the
development of such connectivity out of desire to maintain strict
political control over its population. The former situation reflects the
usual definition of "state failure," meaning the regime in question
cannot generate sufficient stability (from physical all the way up to
financial) within its borders to allow for effective economic
transactions with the outside world, whereas the latter reflects the
willful pursuit of some level of disconnectedness from the outside world
(and typically the "corrupt" influences it imposes) as a method of
maintaining authoritarian rule.

Terrorist networks are likely to seek out the most disconnected/failed
states in order to set up bases for a variety of reasons:

-   If the regime in question lacks control over its own borders or
    territory, the country offers the potential for sanctuary (e.g.,
    Pakistan, Afghanistan still)

-   If the country in question is experiencing civil strife, it offers
    the potential for recruitment and regime change leading to new
    political leadership that can be co-opted for cooperation with and
    support to the terrorists (this situation may be reappearing in
    Sudan, and could appear in more sub-Saharan African states in coming
    years).

-   If the regime in question is solidly in power and exercises
    authoritarian control over its population, it often offers
    opportunity---sometimes on a cash and carry basis and sometimes as a
    result of genuine ideological affinity---for specific avenues of
    cooperation/support (e.g., Liberia\'s Charles Taylor offering
    sanctuary in return for bribes, the Iranian government\'s systematic
    support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia\'s back-door attempts
    to bribe terrorists to engage in jihad anywhere other than in Saudi
    Arabia).

But the main reason why we can associate---in a strategic sense---failed
states (whether they oversee chaotic internal conditions or engage in
repressive rule) with the more general threats represented by global
terrorism is because terrorism is---like all politics (recalling Tip
O\'Neill\'s description)---derived from the local situation, not the
global situation. The global driver in the current era of transnational
terrorism is not America\'s perceived role as \"imperial hegemon,\" nor
its continued support for the state of Israel, but rather the historical
reality of globalization\'s progressive advance into traditional Islamic
societies. There, people exist who are motivated to fight this
penetration in the manner of all-out war they are capable
of---essentially terrorist warfare, with its bombing attacks on
civilians, including suicide attacks.

Viewed in this manner, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are just the latest
version of an exclusionary/rejectionist ideology that demands from its
members that they do everything within their power to halt the spread of
the \"corrupt\" capitalist world economy. By doing so, they would
successfully break off from that system\'s creeping embrace some portion
of humanity that they, in the manner proscribed by their ideology,
believe they have \"liberated\" and \"preserved.\" They would do this
through a combination of repressive internal political controls (police
state), strict separation in terms of political boundaries
(bloc-versus-bloc demarcations), and a generally hostile security stance
vis-à-vis the outside world in general, but specifically against the
most powerful military power within that \"corrupt\" capitalist
world-system (Britain for Lenin and the Bolsheviks' network, the United
States for bin Laden and the al Qaeda network).

Understanding that the current era\'s Global War on Terrorism is nothing
more than the continuation of a long historical arc associated with the
expansion of the functioning core of the global economy (traditionally
defined by the market economy, free expression, and the opportunities
they entail) is crucial to determining both the length of the strategic
struggle ahead, as well as its likely pathways.

So far, we have seen the anti-capitalist forces in the world
progressively retreat across history:

-   Having failed to hijack Germany with a Communist insurrection during
    and just after the first World War, Lenin and the Bolsheviks
    initially retreated to a pre-capitalist environment in order to
    successfully break off a nation (Russia) from the capitalist world
    system (though 10 years later they began to build an industrial
    system).

-   Other Communist successes followed historically, other than those
    generated by the Soviet Union\'s military successes in World War II
    (i.e., the conquering and subjugation of Eastern Europe), and were
    based on even further retreats back into the past---namely, Mao\'s
    peasant-based revolutions (and all the variants that followed in
    various Third World locales, with varying levels of success),

-   The peak of this retreat, as far as the Communists were concerned,
    was seen in the Soviet Union\'s shift to support of "Countries of
    Socialist Orientation" following the Cuban missile crisis. In
    effect, the Communists experimented with the notion that future
    successes were to be had in breaking societies off from the
    capitalist world system and would involve the world\'s poorest and
    most economically backward states. This experiment failed miserably,
    and with it, the grand historical retreat of the Communists'
    influence began in the early 1980s, abetted by the rise of internal
    reformist leaderships in both the Soviet Union and China.

-   With the end of the Cold War, strategic thinkers in the West tended
    to assume that no coherent resistance to the then-rapidly enlarging
    market world order would emerge again---or the notion voiced by
    Francis Fukuyama of an \"end of history.\" In retrospect, this was a
    fundamental misreading of history. History was simply resuming after
    the Communist planned-economy interlude, with the locus of violent
    resistance to the global economy\'s spread shifting to the
    traditional cultures of the Middle East.

-   To the extent the United States and its allies succeed in connecting
    the Middle East to the global economy beyond the slim bond currently
    offered by the energy trade (which results in wealth for elites but
    no broad economic development), those elements committed to violent
    resistance against the spread of the \"corrupt,\" Western-derived
    global economy (the threat of \"Westoxification\") may yet again
    retreat into the past by targeting ever-more pre-globalized
    societies as their next venues for revolution/jihad. In other words,
    as we succeed in the Middle East, we may be setting ourselves up for
    the next historical round in sub-Saharan Africa.

This gets us to the question of the historical sequencing of the tasks
that lie ahead---namely, in what sequence are those regions currently
not well-connected to the global economy to be integrated into the
larger, more stable whole. It is in this grand historical process that
we might find the solution to subnational and transnational violence, as
well as shifting the battle lines in the Global War on Terrorism.

**Scenario Pathways for Ffuture Integration of Ddisconnected Regions
into the Global Eeconomy**

Four broad regions can be currently identified as suffering a
disproportional lack of broad technological, social, economic and
political connectivity to the global economy. As such, it is within
these regions that all of the internal and terrorist violence since the
end of the Cold War can be located, as well as more than 90 percent of
U.S. military interventions over the same time period (for details on
this mapping of instability and \"disconnectedness\" across the world,
see my *The Pentagon\'s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First
Century* (New York: G.P. Putnam\'s Sons), 2004). These four regions can
be loosely described as Southwest Asia/Greater Middle East, Asia
Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Caribbean Rim/ Central America/
northern Andes region.

Stipulating that the current administration\'s focus on generating a
\"big bang\" of political change in the Greater Middle East will mean
that efforts by the United States to integrate these disconnected
regions will begin---in a sequential fashion---with that region, then
six alternative scenario pathways can be described (listed below in the
chart):

+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+------------+
| **ORDER   | *        | **        | **       | **FINAL  | *          |
| OF        | *INITIAL | SECONDARY | TERTIARY | EFFORT** | *SHORTHAND |
| LIK       | FOCUS**  | EFFORT**  | EFFORT** |          | DES        |
| ELIHOOD** |          |           |          |          | CRIPTION** |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+------------+
| 1         | Greater  | Asia      | C        | Sub      | Rogue      |
|           | Middle   |           | aribbean | -Saharan | State      |
|           | East     | Pacific   |          | Africa   | Focus      |
|           |          |           | Rim      |          |            |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+------------+
| 2         | Greater  | Asia      | Sub      | C        | Islamic    |
|           | Middle   |           | -Saharan | aribbean | Arc Focus  |
|           | East     | Pacific   | Africa   |          |            |
|           |          |           |          | Rim      |            |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+------------+
| 3         | Greater  | Su        | Asia     | C        | Failed     |
|           | Middle   | b-Saharan |          | aribbean | State      |
|           | East     | Africa    | Pacific  |          | Focus      |
|           |          |           |          | Rim      |            |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+------------+
| 4         | Greater  | Caribbean | Asia     | Sub      | Homeland   |
|           | Middle   |           |          | -Saharan | Defense    |
|           | East     | Rim       | Pacific  | Africa   | Focus      |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+------------+
| 5         | Greater  | Su        | Asia     | C        | Natural    |
|           | Middle   | b-Saharan |          | aribbean | Resources  |
|           | East     | Africa    | Pacific  |          | Focus      |
|           |          |           |          | Rim      |            |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+------------+
| 6         | Greater  | Caribbean | Sub      | Asia     | Hu         |
|           | Middle   |           | -Saharan |          | manitarian |
|           | East     | Rim       | Africa   | Pacific  | Aid Focus  |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+----------+------------+

Discussing each of those six scenarios in turn, in order of judged
likelihood, and understanding that some U.S. effort will be made at all
times across all four regions, but likewise realizing that a sense of
successful sequencing is necessary if political support for such
interventions is to be maintained among the public (i.e., avoiding a
sense of accumulated responsibilities beyond our national capacity to
manage):

1.  **Rogue State Focus**: In this scenario, the United States focuses
    on dealing with the so-called "axis of evil" regimes, a process that
    began with Iraq and would subsequently focus on Iran and North
    Korea.

-   Stipulating a strong U.S. focus on Iran in conjunction with the
    ongoing effort in pacifying and rehabilitating post-Saddam Iraq, the
    question would then be, at what point does the situation in the
    Persian Gulf permit a new focus on regime change in North Korea and
    a ramping up of efforts across Southeast Asia as a whole to deal
    with the threat of transnational terrorism and
    ideologically-inspired insurgencies there?

-   Beyond the East Asia/Pacific region, the next choice for significant
    interventions designed to disable dangerous, rogue-like situations
    would logically be the long-running failed state of Colombia.

-   In this scenario, U.S. attention would turn to Africa last,
    primarily because of the lack of any rogue regimes there capable of
    mounting even indirect threats to either the United States\'
    homeland or the functioning of the global economy.

The advantage of this approach is that by moving fastest against the
existing rogue regimes, strong precedents would be set with regard to
future potential regimes of that sort. The major disadvantage would be
the global community\'s lack of an A-to-Z rule set on how best to handle
a politically-bankrupt regime, meaning the system\'s major powers could
experience significant divergence of opinion regarding the utility of
preemptively disabling these regimes, in large part because of the huge
military and nation-building resources that would be entailed while the
other advanced countries struggle with stagnant economies and aging
populations.

2.  **Islamic Arc Focus:** A focus on integrating the Islamic world as a
    whole would yield a sequence beginning with the Greater Middle East,
    and then an eastward shift toward the major Islamic populations of
    South and Southeast Asia.

-   Africa would follow next, given the slow but steady penetration by
    Islam in societies there that has been going on since around 1100
    (see Ibn Khaldun).

-   The Caribbean Rim region, overwhelmingly Christian in religious
    preference, would constitute the final effort in this historical
    pathway if it were necessary.

The advantage of this approach is that it speaks most directly to the
fears of major powers the U.S. desires as allies in a Global War on
Terrorism (Europe, Russia, India, China), as all these political
entities have their own concerns about being able to integrate Islamic
sub-populations. The major disadvantage is obvious: a clash of
civilizations approach carries, among other things, heavy racial
overtones, which would make political support at home in the U.S. hard
to maintain, thus raising the attraction for many people of accepting
the offer of \"civilization apartheid\" from Islamic radicals, that is,
containing them and walling them off.

3.  **Failed State Focus**: Following a focus on the Greater Middle
    East, which would last at least through the stabilization and
    functioning of a Palestinian state:

-   This pathway would wind next through Africa---ground zero for failed
    states in general.

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-   Beyond Africa, arguments can be made for a subsequent focus on Asia
    Pacific rather than the Caribbean Rim on the basis that state
    failure in the former has greater potential negative impact on the
    global economy than that in the latter (which tends to generate
    economic refugees migrating toward the U.S.---not itself a problem
    and in many ways an economic benefit).

The major advantage of this pathway is that it focuses on the most
disconnected regions first and foremost (Middle East and Africa),
thereby achieving the greatest good in terms of advancing globalization
most quickly to those regions most in need of broader economic
connectivity. The major disadvantage is that we tackle the toughest nuts
to crack first, raising the question of America\'s staying power in this
long-term effort, not to mention that of other advanced countries who
may not see much economic gain in pursuing this pathway beyond securing
the flow of energy coming out of the Persian Gulf.

4.  **Homeland Security Focus:** Following the initial effort to deal
    with Middle East-inspired transnational terrorism:

-   This pathway shifts focus to the Caribbean Rim and the dangers
    presented by instabilities closest to our borders. This pathway
    would be driven, therefore, by internal perceptions derived from the
    inflow of Latinos, Jamaicans, and Haitians into the U.S. population,
    and the need to maintain America\'s internal coherence against the
    \"threat\" Sam Huntington thinks is posed by multiculturalism.

-   Asia Pacific would form the tertiary focus here, simply because,
    after those coming from our own hemisphere, Asians will constitute
    the fastest-growing minority in the U.S. in coming decades.

-   Africa would therefore be stuck in last place in this historical
    pathway.

The major advantage to this approach is the possibility of maintaining
popular support for the security effort over time. The major
disadvantage is the flip side: America is perceived as isolationist and
overwhelmingly concerned with its national defense as opposed to
international stability in general. (This option is included simply for
logical sequence. As Herman Kahn once said, you have to include the
jokes in a sequence if you want to identify the real options.)

5.  **Natural Resources Focus:** This pathway basically focuses on
    access to energy, beginning with the Greater Middle East:

-   And then shifting to Africa and the additional energy sources that
    are being developed there for us.

-   The Caribbean Rim would constitute the tertiary focus,

-   With Asia Pacific receiving the least attention.

In many ways, this pathway could be described as the new colonialism
whereby the functioning parts of the global economy (West plus East)
fundamentally focus on bringing order first and foremost to those
regions that possess crucial raw materials for the growth of the global
economy. The major advantage here is the economic logic, whereas the
major disadvantage is the popular cynicism such an approach would
engender.

6.  **Humanitarian Aid Focus:** this last scenario sees the United
    States focusing on humanitarian aid efforts following its successful
    pacification of the Middle East. This would translate into a
    secondary focus on the Caribbean Rim (due simply to proximity and a
    larger domestic constituency pushing for such aid) and a tertiary
    focus on sub-Saharan Africa. Asia Pacific would receive the least
    focus because of the better economic development situation there.
    The major advantage here would be the logic of focusing on the
    underlying conditions that give rise to subnational violence
    (societies in economic distress), and the major disadvantage would
    probably be the difficulty of achieving discernible progress except
    over a very long term.

**Major Rule Set Changes Required to Deal Effectively With All Potential
Pathways**

The first and most obvious rule-set change must occur within the Defense
Department itself: moving off the paradigm of the near-peer competitor
as a force-sizing principle. So long as the Pentagon views the Global
War on Terror or interventions in internal conflicts as \"lesser
included,\" sufficient resources would not be devoted to those
capabilities within the military required to deal with the operational
challenges of eradicating the local, root causes of subnational and
transnational violence. In effect, planning for war against a near-peer
competitor must be demoted to the position of a hedging strategy,
possibly requiring no more than one-third of the investment in R&D and
procurement the U.S. makes, with the bulk of such investment prioritized
to the areas of small-scale contingency warfighting and long-term
nation-building and peace-keeping roles and missions\-\--including the
shift of DOD funds to other agencies.

Unless the U.S. military effectively \"seeds\" the \"back half\" force
designed to win the peace, having the world\'s preeminent \"first
half,\" or war-winning force yields little strategic advantage over our
enemies in this Global War on Terrorism. Moreover, until the United
States demonstrates the commitment to nation-building and peace-keeping
following any major combat intervention overseas, it will not attract
the coalition partners who can augment U.S. forces with the numbers of
ground troops required to follow through on any effort for
nation-building.

Not having that \"back half\" capability sufficiently in place restricts
the ability of U.S. political leaders to argue the utility of preemptive
war for regime change and preemptive war within the larger context of
the Global War on Terrorism, primarily because prospective coalition
partners will not believe our declared intention of successfully
concluding the intervention by making the long-term effort at
integrating the successor regime into the global community of states.
Instead, our efforts at preemptive war will be viewed as nothing more
than \"drive-by regime changes\" or worse, the geopolitical equivalent
of \"revenge killings.\"

The failure to attract sufficient coalition partners for the back-half
effort would, over the long run, deny the United States the ability to
make ad hoc responses to rogue regimes, with each effort considered
unique by the global community, and would not lead over time to an
enunciation of an A-to-Z rule set, complete with attendant international
organizations to guide the process.

What would such a global A-to-Z rule set look like? I can---in a very
cursory fashion---describe it as follows:

1.  The existing United Nations Security Council functions primarily as
    a sort of global \"grand jury\" that is able to indict parties
    within the global community for acts of egregious behavior

2.  What is needed next in the process is a sort of functioning
    executive body, made up of the world\'s advanced nations, to issue
    effect \"warrants\" for the arrest of the offending party. This body
    is logically located within the existing community of the G-8 (or
    better yet, G-20) states, because not only do these states wield the
    majority of the world\'s military power, but their financial
    resources are required for the successful implementation of the
    \"back half\" effort of nation-building.

3.  At that point of agreement among the world\'s great powers, a
    U.S.-dominated warfighting coalition engages in whatever variation
    of force-on-force effort is required, apprehending the indicted
    elements within the targeted battlespace.

4.  Following the cessation of major hostilities, a more balanced
    international security force, including U.S. constabulary units,
    could replace the U.S.-dominated warfighting force in-theater.

5.  Once sufficient security was generated, peace-keeping and
    nation-building efforts would ensue under the auspices of an
    internationally recognized organization whose constitutional make-up
    and procedural approach is roughly equivalent to that of the
    International Monetary Fund in the rescue of economically-strapped
    states.

6.  The final step in the process would be the legal processing of those
    actors identified in the original indictments within whatever
    specific procedures might be established by the International
    Criminal Court.

# Conclusion

This paper has argued that subnational and transnational violence will
represent the fundamental focus of U.S. national security efforts in the
coming decades, but that this development represents tremendous progress
in the institution of a global security system within which neither
system-level nor state-on-state war remains a viable or widespread
threat.

The major obstacle for the U.S. in dealing with this threat is its own
inherent tendency---through the mechanisms of its long-range national
security planning---to require that a worst-case scenario involving
another great power serve as the \"greater inclusive\" force-sizing
principle. Until the U.S. national security establishment moves from
this outdated paradigm of focusing on the greatest hypothetical threat
and toward a more purely capabilities-based planning paradigm focused on
managing that strategic environment as a whole, the tasks associated
with subnational and transnational threats arising from the Global War
on Terrorism will continue to be viewed---both programmatically and
politically---as an additional or cumulative burden that may then be
regarded as simply too great to bear over the long run.

In reality, such a judgment is completely unwarranted, because it
reflects an institutional unwillingness by U.S. administrations to
persuade the military establishment and its immediate supporters to
recognize and take advantage of this country\'s past overwhelming
successes in reducing the threat of system-level war and the incidence
of state-on-state war. This inability to exploit past successes will
continue to deny us future ones so long as the U.S. national security
establishment subscribes to the view that the present global security
situation is one of \"chaos\" and "uncertainty," without any specifics,
and thus cannot be remedied by any long-term pursuit of a grand strategy
designed to generate a successful conclusion to the Global War on
Terrorism.