Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996, Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

FOREWORD

The transition in international relations that began with the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Empire 

and the huge increase in East Asian economic strength is still unfolding. As is the case in any 

realignment among the great powers, the ways in which this upheaval will rearrange world politics 

cannot be foretold in reliable detail. But certain reasonable assumptions about the limits within which 

states would operate and likely alternatives for the future are possible. 

The authors advance a view that is at once familiar and unfamiliar. It is familiar in the sense that great 

powers would remain the dominant actors in world politics, that failed states or general chaos in the 

developing world would be unlikely to spark large scale warfare involving the developed world, and that 

alliances and coalitions would remain only as durable as the common interests on which they are 

founded. Their view is unfamiliar in the sense that a revolution in military affairs might transform 

warfare two decades hence principally by tilting the balance between offense and defense. The authors 

feel that the United States should focus its external policy on relations with the major power centers of 

the next century, actively encouraging cooperation among the great powers and discouraging 

developments antithetical to international peace and thus to American interests.

Drawing on the research expertise of NDU's interdisciplinary research arm, the Institute for National 

Strategic Studies, this work looks ahead to the year 2015 and beyond, seeking to understand how the 

American armed forces might contribute better to the nation's future security. The authors try to 

conceptualize how a transformed world situation twenty years from now could affect U.S. security. They 

describe the most plausible changes likely to develop--not as prophecy nor as an intelligence forecast, 

but as a considered statement of those recognizable trends that portend the greatest influence on U. S. 

security. By being cognizant of such plausible alternatives, American policy makers would have the 

chance to pursue or avoid them. During the Cold War, American leaders often had little choice but to 

react to crises. In the more fluid post-Cold War international system, however, the authors believe that 
the leaders of the world's only superpower can create opportunities both to advance the interests of the 

United States and preserve the peace of all humankind.

ERVIN J. ROKKE 

Lieutenant General, USAF 

President, National Defense University

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Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

Acknowledgments

The 2015 Project was begun under the leadership of Colonel Paul Rapalski, USAF, while he was at 

theInstitute for National Strategic Studies. He was instrumental in the most difficult stage--deciding how 

toapproach our investigation of the future security environment: what topics to consider and what 

methods touse. Any shortcomings in the final product are due to our inability to maintain the high 

standards he set. Weare also grateful to Captain Michael Martus, USN, who saw the project through to 

its completion; and theofficers and academics who contributed to this project by preparing background 

papers on specific topics,participating in two workshops (one on alliances and one on the environment), 

making time in their busyschedules to discuss issues with us, or reading earlier drafts. Without their 

input, this publication would bemuch the poorer.

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Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

Prologue

Evolutionary developments are relatively easy to forecast, but the course of revolutionary events is 

inherently unpredictable. We live in the midst of a still-unfolding revolution in international relations. It 

began with the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Empire and the huge increase in East Asian economic 

strength in the 1980s. This revolution is virtually certain to continue for decades, as the relations among 

countries are realigned based on their new ratios of strength and weakness. 

As is the case with any revolution, the ways in which this upheaval will rearrange the shape of the world 

cannot be foretold in detail, but educated guesses about the near-term future can be made, using the 

building blocks with which people construct history. History offers many patterns, but the patterns are 

based on the same pieces rearranged in different designs. In terms of the history of diplomacy, world 

economics and war, the essential pieces have been countries, their populations, and their governments. 

With sufficient knowledge of the ways in which states, peoples and leaders interact, we can determine 

possibilities and probabilities about how they will operate. This will not produce prophecy but it will 

suggest the more likely alternatives for the future.

A new factor has entered history in recent decades: accelerated technological change. Technology has 

influenced history for millennia, but the speed with which technology has been transforming our social 

and physical environment has accelerated since the advent of the industrial revolution two centuries ago. 

Recently, it has become obvious that the rate at which technology is transforming our lives is ever faster, 

with increasingly unpredictable implications for the future. 

One result is that the pace of economic development in countries able to take advantage of new 
technologies has reached astonishing velocity by historical standards. This means that the relationships 

among states can alter very quickly, with destabilizing results of unprecedented proportions; it is very 

difficult psychologically to adapt to ever-more-rapid contemporary transformations. Even at the greatly 

quickened pace brought on by industrialization, it took the United States and Prussia-Germany nearly a 

century to reach peer status with Britain. Russian industrialization, initiated much later in the 19th 

century, brought Russia up to roughly the level of Britain in approximately half a century. At the end of 

the 20th century, we may witness China perform the same feat in relation to the United States in only 25 

years or so. 

Likewise, the rate of relative decline has increased, because of the same set of factors. Consider the slow 

decline of Spain vis-a-vis France and Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries, and compare this to the 

change in British power since the end of the Second World War. Clearly, properly utilized technology, 

harnessed to wise economic policies, can make an enormous difference in the development rates of two 

countries beginning at the same level. One celebrated case is that of Ghana and South Korea in the mid1950s. At

the time, the two countries presented an astonishingly similar economic and demographic profile; 35 

years later, South Korea has left Ghana far behind.

The leadership of the U.S. Armed Forces is well aware of how technology has transformed the pace of 

military operations. As the Gulf War illustrated, the rapid communication of complete, accurate 

information and equally rapid decisionmaking and transmission of orders have become crucial for 

victory on the battlefield. But this is just a small example of a global phenomenon taking place on a far 

greater scale that will determine the rise or fall of entire nations. Decisions made at the national level 

today can have far-reaching consequences for a country's fate in a very short period of time. 

Modern history essentially has been determined by sovereign states and by the relations among such 

states. In fact, the history of our age largely has been the story of the struggle for power within and 

between states. One way to appreciate this is to consider the extent to which the contemporary person's 

life is devoted to the creation and acquisition of wealth. At every social level and in almost every place, 

wealth is being produced in unprecedented amounts compared to previous times. Then consider the 

proportion of individual wealth that is taxed by the state and spent as the state sees fit. This wealth, when 

coupled with the modern bureaucratic system and technologies developed since the industrial revolution, 

has given well-organized states enormous power over their citizens. More important for our purposes, it 

also has given the large and wealthy states enormous power over the small and poor states. As a result, 

the very largest and richest states, known as great powers, have been the primary forces shaping recent 

history.

From time to time, however, a great power has behaved in completely unexpected ways, generally 

because its population has been swept by an inspiring ideology or directed by an extraordinary leaders. 

France under Napoleon or Germany under Hitler present examples. Such occurrences are beyond 

anyone's ability to predict, but in the next several decades, if a charismatic genius were to gain control 
over one of the great powers while its population was mobilized by some overpowering idea, the 

consequences for the world either could be catastrophic or marvelous. Such events are rare, but in 

considering the range of likely possibilities for the great powers outlined below, such an unlikely 

eventuality should not be dismissed. History is filled with surprises.

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Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

I. WORLD OF GREAT POWERS

Brian R. Sullivan

1. THE WORLD OF 2015

In 20 years, the international system will be dominated by a group of great powers. Depending on 

circumstances, these may number as few as two or three, or as many as five or six. In any case, the 

United States will remain the greatest, but its supremacy may be challenged by one or more great 

powers, most likely to be Japan, Russia, India, and China. There may well be a non-state great power of 

a different nature: a European Confederation. Alternatively, if the European Union fails to achieve 

confederal status, a renationalized Germany might emerge as the mightiest state in Europe, although 

perhaps not quite enjoying the status of a great power. Finally, two other countries may be approaching 

great-power status in the year 2015: Indonesia and Brazil. But even under optimum conditions, neither 

likely could achieve true great-power status before the third decade of the 21st century, and probably not 

until a decade or two later.

THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM

One way to consider the possibilities for the world in which these states will interact is to reject the 

validity of some recent theories about the direction in which the international system is evolving. 

Contrary to one of those theories, history will not come to an end.(Note 1) Human nature scarcely has 

been altered by the resolution of the Cold War, and the age-old struggle among states over power and 
wealth will continue. Nor is it especially likely that wars over the next 20 years will be caused by a clash 

of civilizations.(Note 2) Conflicts between countries do not arise primarily from differences in religion 

or culture, nor are alliances generally built on such foundations. This is not to deny the great importance 

of religion or culture in shaping history, but, as the next chapter will elaborate, enmities or coalitions 

between states form, above all, on the basis of state interest (raison d',tat), not value systems. Consider 

how racist Nazi Germany allied with Japan in World War II, or how the atheistic, Communist Soviet 

Union allied with democratic, capitalist Britain and the United States in that same conflict. Future 

alliances and wars could easily present the same peculiar combinations.

A third popular theory suggests that the spread of democracy to all the great powers would prevent war. 

(Note 3) To be sure, democracy possibly may spread to all the great powers by 2015, but if it does, it 

will not preclude war among them. Democracy will no more necessarily prevent international rivalty 

among free states than it has prevented domestic struggles for power and wealth within democratic 

polities. So long as democratic states possess armed forces, if friction between two grows severe 

enough, it could lead to interstate violence. Young democracies seem particularly prone to war, as was 

the United States in the first half of the 19th century. Unlike an internal democratic system, the 

international system as we know it, even constructed entirely from democracies, will not always resolve 

major interstate disputes peacefully.

Finally, it is unlikely that the world will divide into two opposing camps based on wealth: a rich North 

and a poor South.(Note4) The weak states, even if they could overcome their myriad differences and 

unite against the strong, would be no match for them. Instead, in the future as before, the strong states 

will do largely as they wish; the weak states mostly will be forced to accommodate themselves to the 

balance of power.

EUROPEAN ANALOGY

Another way to envision the world of 2015 is to conceive of it as similar to the European system of 1648 

to 1945, but projected on a global scale. During those three centuries, Europe contained a number of 

great powers that used their superior military might and riches to divide most of the world among them 

as colonial empires or spheres of influence. These European countries engaged in ceaseless struggle and 

periodic war in an attempt by each to increase its power at the expense of the others. Although 

concentrated in Europe, these conflicts were waged outside of that continent as well, to the dismay of 

non-Europeans helpless to protect themselves. Eventually, two non-European countries gained the tools 

necessary to become great powers: the United States and Japan; initially in self-defense, they joined the 

great-power struggle.

After World War II, when European and Japanese power collapsed, the resulting global vacuum was 

filled for a time by the United States and the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, Europe and Japan 

recovered, while a number of new non-European countries acquired the technology and wealth to make 

dramatic increases in their power. The disintegration of the U.S.S.R. and American unwillingness to 

exercise world hegemony has created something of a new vacuum. This will be filled partly by the 
handful of great powers that have emerged or re-emerged during the final decades of the present century 

or that will do so in the first few decades of the 21st century. The new set of great powers will no longer 

be crowded in upon each other on the same continent as before. Technology will give each of them at 

least a hemispheric military reach over the next two decades, and their interests will conflict just as 

sharply as those of the Europeans once did. In other words, the history of the world for at least the next 

half century will flow logically out of and be a larger projection of European history since the mid-17th 

century.

But while the world of 2015 may witness great-power rivalry on a global scale, rather than merely on a 

continental scale, such a struggle likely would focus on Asia. Four of the potential great or near-great 

powers India, China, Japan and Indonesia will be Asian states and a fifth Russia is likely to still retain 

extensive Asian territories in 20 years. India, China and Russia are all in potential danger of 

fragmentation. Yet, alternatively, China and Russia could remain united, grow greatly in strength and 

embark on aggressive foreign policies 15 to 20 years from now. Furthermore, Indonesia, currently of 

rather negligible strength, may enjoy a great surge of power over the next three to four decades.

THE RISE AND FALL OF GREAT POWERS

Few other events so destabilize the international order as the appearance or disappearance of a great 

power. Therefore, with its concentration of five great powers on a single continent and the possibility 

that some of them may rise or fall precipitously, Asia presents the most likely locale for great power 

clashes in the 2015 period.

The world of the global great powers will present other mixtures of the new along with the familiar. The 

sovereign state, the foundation of the old international system, will remain strong in most regions of the 

world. In fact, the authority of governments of functioning states- a monopoly on armed force, the power 

to exploit a country's wealth, the ability to mobilize people, control over telecommunications - will in 

many ways increase because technological advances will enlarge the scope of these powers. For 

example, recent and forthcoming advances in communications technology will spread information faster 

and farther; the spread of information generates ideas; the spread of scientific ideas generates their 

practical application in new technologies; new technologies generate wealth. In areas where conditions 

are favorable, notably East Asia, this generation of wealth is resulting in economic growth at historically 

unprecedented rates. Governments that efficiently exploit such wealth can convert it into ever-greater 

power. Thus, the great powers, richest of all states, will enjoy immense economic and military might.

The most concentrated form of state power is well-armed military force. The most powerful arms are 

nuclear weapons. As nuclear and missile technologies become more accessible and an increasing 

number of states acquire high levels of wealth, the proliferation of nuclear weapons is sure to increase 

the number of nuclear powers. By 2015, 20 to 30 countries may possess nuclear arsenals. However, 

nuclear proliferation will severely limit their freedom to wage war. This will be perhaps the most 

significant change in the international system 20 years hence.
When midranking and even small states (not to be confused with weak, poor states) possess nuclear 

arms, the use of military power, even by great powers against small powers, will be severely 

circumscribed. Throughout history, great powers have had the ability to wage total war (the destruction 

of an opponent's armed forces, the occupation of its territory, the subjugation of an enemy to one's will). 

Such war could be waged between great powers and, even more easily, by great powers against lesser 

powers. After the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons, however, it quickly ceased to be practical for 

the United States and the U.S.S.R. to consider waging total war against each other. As the nuclear 

arsenals of the two countries grew, it became problematical for either to wage total war even against a 

weak ally of the other. But nuclear proliferation will extend this logic to an ever-increasing number of 

states by 2015. A great power will find it dangerous to wage anything other than limited war against 

even the least well-armed small state possessing nuclear weapons. This transformation of warfare, the 

worldwide extension of developments that began in 1945, may prove far more influential by 2015 than 

during any ongoing revolution in military affairs (e.g., in information-based warfare or long-range 

precision strike).

However, it can be anticipated that the great powers will not accept with resignation such severe limits 

on their ability to use force. By their very nature, states seek to preserve and expand their power, their 

spheres of influence and their autonomy of action. To have great military strength but to be unable to 

exercise it, even in the form of threat, is too contradictory a condition for a state government to endure. 

In consequence, given the great amounts of wealth that they will control and the ever-expanding 

capabilities of technology, the major states will undoubtedly fund programs both to devise defenses 

against nuclear weapons and to develop new means to wage total war. Whether or not such programs 

produce concrete results over the next quarter century will be a major determinant of the nature of the 

international system of that period.

2. A EUROPEAN CONFEDERATION

In 2015, the European Union likely will have developed into a European Confederation, although a 

relatively weak one. After nearly 40 years of strengthening, the ties binding the members of the EU have 

become so firm that there is a rather small chance of the union being broken over the next 20 years. By 

2015, European economic unification likely will be more advanced than political or military cohesion. 

Nonetheless, even the latter areas of European integration probably will be considerably more advanced 

than at present. For one thing, continued European economic unification, as well as cost pressures, will 

stimulate mergers among national defense corporations, fostering security and defense policy unification 

as an inevitable result. But if Europe were to come under a serious sustained threat, particularly from 

across the Mediterranean or from Russia, it is possible that the process of European defense and political 

unification could accelerate.

The European Confederation of 2015 may consist of about 25 countries(Note 5) with the membership of 

another 10(Note 6) or so pending. A firm Franco-German alliance may form the nucleus of the group. 

Based on that foundation, the center of the Confederation would be made up of a fully integrated core 

group of another four to eight states that could be rightly described as a European Federation. Around 
this federation would be two or three rings of other states in different stages of integration with the core 

group.

The Federation probably would be no firmer than the United States was before 1861 and probably less 

so. The larger Confederation probably would be unified no closer than the United States was under the 

Articles of Confederation. After centuries of history as sovereign states, the members of the European 

Confederation will find it difficult to surrender their independence to a higher authority, but the range of 

integration of the member states would be far wider than the two alternatives of statehood or territorial 

status familiar to Americans.

As American expansion westward altered the relations among the regions of the United States, so will 

the enlargement of the European Union (EU) to the east. German influence will grow now that the 

Twelve have become the Fifteen. It will increase even more so after the likely addition of Poland, 

Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia to the European Union. For that reason, further expansion of 

the EU probably will involve the same kind of coupled admissions that characterized the expansion of 

the American Union in the first half of the 19th century. France and its supporters would probably insist 

on the inclusion of such countries aligned more closely with them, such as Malta, Switzerland, Romania, 

and possibly Serbia, to balance the admission of states closer to Germany, such as some or all of the 

Baltic Republics and Croatia.

RELATIONS WITH RUSSIA

As the European Union both advances eastward and increases its internal cohesion, its relations with 

Russia will assume increasing importance. Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine and Moldova will come under 

increasing pressure to join either the Confederation or a Russian-dominated bloc. If Russian 

expansionism revives and pushes westward, it will give major impetus to the formation of a common 

European security and foreign policy system. In turn, European-Russian friction will force the 

Confederation to settle any still-outstanding questions about the role and nature of the Western European 

Union (WEU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the relationship between the 

two defense organizations. If a commitment to the defense of Europe is still seen by Americans as in 

their interest, the Europeans would welcome a revitalization of NATO as the best possible guarantee of 

transatlantic cooperation against an expansionist Russia. But NATO would probably be redrawn as a 

bilateral alliance (possibly trilateral, if Canadian unity survives) between the United States and the 

European Union. The WEU might replace NATO as the security link among the European states, 

absorbing the Partnership for Peace as well. (It is difficult to imagine that the European Confederation or 

the Russians would long tolerate a distinct American military role in areas likely to be divided between 

them in one manner or another.) Russian membership in the European Union anytime in the next 20 or 

even 30 years seems fairly unlikely, although not totally impossible. This is not to rule out an eventual 

European Federation stretching from the Azores to the Bering Strait, but such a development almost 

certainly lies beyond the period of this report. On the other hand, the economic ties between Russia and 

the European Union will probably grow much closer over the coming two decades, even if relations 

between the two are tense. Without exaggeration, one might compare the socioeconomic and political 

relationship of the Europeans to the Russians over the next century to that of Rome to western Europe in 
the period 100 B.C. to A.D. 300, or to that of the Christian missionaries to northern and eastern Europe 

in the early-Medieval period.

THE SOUTHERN PERIPHERY

A second, although lesser, potential threat to European security may lie to the south and southeast: North 

Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. If convulsed by war, revolution, religious extremism or 

economic chaos, these regions would pose fewer concrete challenges to the defense of Europe on 

military lines than would an expansionist Russia. They might, however, present a more serious political 

threat to the unification of Europe and to the maintenance of transatlantic ties. A renewed Russian threat 

would tend to unite Europe and probably bring a reinvigorated American commitment to European 

security. The Scandinavian and Germanic states are far less sensitive to troubles in the Mediterranean 

region than the European countries on the northern edge of that sea. Americans would almost certainly 

react far more strongly to a Russian merger with Belarus or to a Russian-Ukrainian crisis than to a wave 

of Arab refugees flooding into Spain, France, and Italy. The failure of the northern Europeans or 

Americans to offer sufficient assistance in the latter case to the southern Europeans could place the EU, 

NATO or both under immense strain.

Sub-Saharan Africa may also present a locale for friction between the Europeans and other great powers. 

Not only France but Britain, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Italy retain a range of ties to their former 

African colonies. A European Confederation would also be the closest great power to Africa, 

particularly sensitive to the security of its trade routes through the Strait of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean, 

the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. But French ties to Francophone Africa are the most important of these 

and could well determine the general nature of relations between the European Union and Black Africa. 

As partial compensation for the increase of German influence in a European Confederation, the French 

will probably receive a general Confederation commitment to the defense of their interests in Africa. If 

African states collapse in increasing numbers, such a relationship might involve no more than a leading 

European role in humanitarian assistance missions. Africa will remain a great depository of resources, 

regardless of the political and economic status of its inhabitants, and not all African states are 

necessarily doomed to a miserable future. Some may develop into attractive markets and trading 

partners. In either case, if the Europeans come to see Africa as their special preserve, possibly as their 

sphere of influence, they may clash with other great powers that refuse to recognize such an exclusive 

relationship.

The Europeans also might attempt to assume a predominant role in the Middle East. During the Cold 

War, European interests were often at odds with those of both the United States and the Soviet Union in 

the area, but the divided European states were no match for the United States and the Soviet Union in 

the struggle for regional influence. A united Europe, however, would be far more evenly balanced with a 

weakened Russia and a more lightly armed United States and would enjoy the advantage of superior 

geographic position. Expanded Indian and Chinese needs for oil because of far larger national 

economies and the requirements of a renationalized Japan for the same petroleum may force a limited 

Europe to exert other pressures on the Middle East. Such multisided rivalry could produce a variety of 

coalitions and antagonisms among the great powers, as well as between each of the great powers and the 
Middle Eastern states themselves.

Whatever aims the Europeans adopt, they will possess significant advantages in pursuit of their goals: 

rich cultural variety based on centuries of wealth, high levels of education and global experience. The 

European Confederation of 2015 could consist of two dozen diverse countries engaged in an 

invigorating process of continental rejuvenation. This wide, creative heterogeneity at the service of 

unified goals will likely produce some astonishing successes.

In contrast to the other countries discussed in this chapter, Europe's future over the next 20 years seems 

more certain. Nonetheless, it violates common sense and ignores the unpredictable nature of history to 

insist that Western and Central Europe will inevitably coalesce into a confederation by 2015 and pull 

Eastern Europe into its orbit. While unlikely, alternatives to a European Confederation are possible over 

the next generation. Three alternative futures follow a recapitulation of the most likely future for Europe.

ALTERNATIVES

1. A European Confederation

Apart from unpredictable internally-generated decisions by the West Europeans themselves to decrease 

or increase the pace of their political integration, possible pressures on Europe from Russia or from 

across the Mediterranean may hasten the formation of a confederation, in response to one or another 

such threats.

2. The Disintegration of the European Union

Since the end of the Cold War, both nationalism and regionalism have revived noticeably in a number of 

the members of the European Union. Among the major members, these tendencies have shown special 

vigor in Britain, France, Spain, and Italy. Nonetheless, France remains rather firmly linked to Germany, 

forming the essential core of the EU. While the Franco-German relationship may become strained over 

the coming decade, it seems likely to endure, eventually to grow stronger yet. But there are some signs 

that nationalism or regionalism might grow stronger in Britain, Spain, and Italy. Either or both might 

disrupt or even end the cohesion of the EU.

The economic requirements that the EU will impose on its members as prerequisites for greater 

European integration might create strains on the different regions of Italy and Spain. Already, major 

differences divide northern and southern Italy, and Catalonia and the rest of Spain. Similar problems 

afflict Belgium. If the movement toward a European Confederation added to such tensions, three-way 

struggles might develop among regions, national governments and the EU. It is not entirely 

inconceivable that such splits might prompt one or more EU members to abandon membership rather 

than exacerbate national divisions. On the other hand, certain regions might attempt to break from their 

country rather than lose the benefits of EU membership. One or more political crises of unpredictable 

resolutions could result. Such an assault on national prerogatives might disrupt the process of European 
integration and even cause the disintegration of the EU itself.

National pride or socioeconomic interests might encourage one or more EU members to leave the 

Union. While remote, the chances for such a movement to capture majority support in Britain cannot be 

dismissed out of hand. Such a reaction in Britain might also influence one or more Scandinavian 

countries. The departure of one or more of its members would not necessarily cause the EU to crumble. 

In fact, the departure of those states less enthusiastic about deeper union might even encourage the 

remaining states to carry out an even more ambitious program of integration. But the departure of a 

major EU member might produce a chain reaction, leading to the death of the dream of European unity.

3. A Renationalized Germany

Germany is the major EU member most committed to the movement of Europe toward true federation. 

But even if the EU remains intact, it is conceivable that the combination of revived nationalism in 

Britain, France, and Italy might end progress toward deeper union and even reverse recent developments 

in that direction. Under such circumstances, the ironic result might be to cause a revival of nationalism 

in Germany.

If friction between the Russians and their neighbors over the next decade were to threaten the Germans, 

and if the United States were to disengage from Europe at the same time that the EU had halted its 

evolution toward greater union, the Germans might feel forced to seek other forms of protection. The 

most likely option might be for the Germans to form a smaller group of protectorates and satellites, mold 

a security pact among them, rearm and then face the Russians. Such a German-led pact might seek 

accommodation with Russia or, failing that, might rearm and confront Russia. Ukraine might become 

the object of intense rivalry between Germany and Russia, or Ukraine could decide to choose sides. 

Under one or the other circumstances, it is not entirely inconceivable that the Germans might even make 

the painful decision to acquire weapons of mass destruction as a means of defense.

While unlikely, such developments would completely disrupt whatever European unity remained. In a 

worst-case scenario, 2015 might even witness a Franco-Russian alliance against Germany and its 

coalition. Alternatively, France might be coerced into an alliance with Germany, prompting a security 

pact among Britain, Italy and Russia. In either case, Europe would re-experience the kinds of divisions, 

suspicions, and dangers it suffered throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

INDICATORS

o Success or failure to restructure the European Union, 1996_1997. If the European Union is to progress 

to confederation, its own institutions need to be strengthened at the expense of the intergovernmental 

bodies presently directing the Union. The recent admission of three new countries to the Union will 

make the present system even more unworkable than it already is. Most important would be increased 

authority for the European Parliament. If these developments occur, movement toward a common 

European security and foreign policy will follow, along with resolution of the questions regarding the 
WEU and NATO. Moreover, a central European core of states will form around France and Germany, 

tugging the rest of the Union behind them. But if nationalist sentiments triumph over Europeanism, the 

crucial Franco-German bond may begin to weaken. The outcome of the InterGovernmental Conference 

in 1996 will provide an important indicator of the direction in which the European Union is moving.

oGrowth of neo-Fascist parties over the next decade. Strong neo-Fascist parties would oppose the further 

integration of the European Union in favor of strong nationalist policies. Such parties would also oppose 

the diminution of the role of the state in the economy and the reduction of the large social welfare 

programs necessary to make Europe more competitive with the United States and Japan. The loss of jobs 

and benefits that will result from such reforms, however, could make neo-Fascist parties very attractive 

to the victims of such a restructuring of the European economies. A dominant or even strong neo-Fascist 

movement in one of the major EU members could cause serious friction within the Union and even 

block its progress toward greater cohesion. 

oThe appearance of a charismatic leader. The importance of this factor was stressed before; such a 

leader would be particularly influential in Europe over the next decade. The people of the European 

Union lack the exciting set of ideas necessary to mobilize their enthusiasms and lead them toward 

common goals. The appearance of a charismatic leader devoted to uniting Europe could move the 

continent toward confederation far more swiftly than otherwise. Likewise, a nationalistic leader of 

genius, opposed to the unification of Europe, especially if he or she appeared in France or Germany, 

could severely hamper or even wreck the process of European integration. 

oAdmission of the "Visegrad States" to the European Union by 2000. Such an expansion of united 

Europe eastward is essential to satisfy German security needs and to allow Germany's weak eastern 

neighbors to enjoy the protection of Europe, not just of Germany. Such a development would also make 

permanent some of the Russian losses in Europe and buttress the other potential targets of renewed 

Russian imperialism. It is unlikely, of course, that the Visegrad states could receive the levels of subsidy 

that the European Community supplied to Portugal, Spain, and Greece, so the admission of Poland, the 

Czech Republic, Hungary, and even Slovakia to the Union depends on the degree of economic reform 

and growth they can accomplish over the next 5 years. If these four states are left outside the European 

Union beyond the turn of the century, German dissatisfaction with the Union will grow and German 

renationalization may well result.

oExpansion of the European Union to include Baltic and Balkan States around 2010. Such an increase in 

Union territorial expanse would decisively tip the balance of power in Europe against the Russians. It 

would increase the chances for Ukraine to remain independent (although if it survives for the next 15 

years, it may well be safe from Russian imperialism in any case). Such expansion might even precede 

Ukraine joining the Union sometime around 2015. Baltic, Balkan and Ukrainian membership in a 

European Federation could reduce German influence decisively and create a truly European great power. 

Such a federation would be more populous, richer and potentially more powerful militarily than the 

United States. Its existence would even raise the possibility of a Russo-American security alliance as a 

counterweight or, alternatively, the eventual admission of Russia to the European Federation.
3. RUSSIA

Unlike Europe, the future of which can be envisioned as an evolution toward or away from greater unity, 

the choices open to Russia are far more revolutionary. In terms of foreign and security policy, the 

essential question the Russians must answer is whether or not to break with their centuries-old tradition 

of expansion into territories inhabited by non-Russians. Almost as important, they must determine their 

national identity. Are they Europeans, Eurasians or uniquely Russians? The various possible answers to 

the first and second questions are closely linked in their potential influence on the country. The Russians 

are well aware of their present weakness and its certain continuation for several decades. Thus, even if 

they choose re-expansion, logically they must focus their ambitions within the confines of the 

achievable. For example, re-expansion as Russians would suggest Belarus or Kazakhstan as targets, with 

a need for the best possible relations with China and Japan to protect Siberia and the Russian Far East. 

The consequences of such a Russia for Europe have been referred to above. On the other hand, a 

Russian sense of solidarity with Europe, a rejection of irredentism and a concentration on developing the 

huge resources within Russia's present borders would lead to good relations with the former Soviet 

republics and lay the foundation for eventual Russian admission to a European Federation, although well 

beyond 2015.

Without an additional national catastrophe to persuade them otherwise, the Russians will continue to 

think of themselves as an exceptional people; in that, they are not much different from Americans, 

Indians, Chinese or Japanese. This Russian national feeling, however, is linked to their history of heavy 

reliance on military force to express their sense of superiority. This tradition suggests that they will be 

sorely tempted to retake at least some of their recent territorial losses. In a few months in 1991, the 

Russians lost lands conquered slowly over three centuries and paid for with incalculable suffering, the 

loss of tens of millions of Russian lives and huge amounts of treasure. To expect the Russians to accept 

the loss of what they had bought so dearly and in which they had invested so much of their sense of 

national pride, is to ask a great deal. One can argue that the Germans came to accept a similar defeat 

after 1945, but Germany had been ground into rubble by the time World War II ended and then was 

divided and occupied for decades. This debacle had a permanent and largely beneficial influence on the 

German national psyche. The Russian Empire, on the other hand, has slipped away as if in a dream, and 

most Russians do not have the vaguest understanding of how it happened, nor are they reconciled to the 

fact.

Still, economic reality has made it clear to most Russian citizens and leaders alike, that their country is 

in no condition to initiate wars of conquest any time soon. The wreckage caused by 70 years of Soviet 

economic mismanagement, environmental pillage and mass murder is impossible to calculate. As a 

comparison, the eastern German states are going to need $1.5 to 2 trillion over 15 to 20 years to be 

brought up to the level of western Germany. By extrapolation, it would require all the investment capital 

of the entire human race, spent over a generation on Russia alone, to raise it to the economic level of 

Western Europe. Obviously, no such miracle is going to happen, and Russia is going to remain 

backward compared to Western Europe for a long time to come. One can assume that it would take until 

about 2035 at the very soonest, with the consistent application of sound economic policy, for the average 
Russian to enjoy a standard of living approaching that of the typical Western European or Japanese.

In the shorter run, over the next 20 years Russia's need to concentrate on internal development will 

likely give its larger neighbors a respite from any possible Russian revival of expansionism. (However, 

some of Russia's smaller neighbors may suffer the fate of the Chechens.) This period will also be crucial 

for the creation of new Russian political structures and for giving the Russian people an opportunity for 

reflection and debate about their national purpose. For all the heavy pressures that culture and geography 

inflict on the Russian soul, they still face a range of genuine choices. Furthermore, thanks to the collapse 

of totalitarianism and to the development of new communications technologies, Russians enjoy far 

better access to the outside world (and the outside to them) than ever before in history. Thus, Russians 

will have the opportunity to make informed decisions about their future. Despite their past, tragedy is 

not inevitable for the Russians. Let us consider what appear to be their realistic alternatives by 2015, 

beginning with a bleak one.

ALTERNATIVES

1. Declining Russia

The Russian Federation may decay, because of failure of economic reform, strong regional tendencies, 

the strength of organized crime, and the success of local cliques to ignore instructions from the central 

government. The military might remain relatively powerful politically as an autonomous force but 

decline technologically because of a lack of funding. Some areas, such as St. Petersburg, the Black Sea 

coast, and Vladivostok might enjoy prosperity; others, including Central Russia and the Urals might 

decline into penury. These regions would still be tied to Moscow by vague nationalist sentiments, 

however. Areas like Tatarstan, Yakutia and the Far East might attain a highly-autonomous status 

because of local ethnicity, wealth or the lure of powerful neighbors on the other side of Russia's borders. 

Moscow would possess little power in a country with a weak overall economy, high unemployment, 

wretched social welfare programs, low levels of public health, powerful criminal gangs, and loyalties 

tied to communal and local authorities.

Such a Russia would pose a threat to Eurasian stability not as predator but as prey. This Russia would be 

a haven for international organized crime. It might sell its U.N. Security Council veto to the highest 

bidder. China might attempt to regain the Russian Far East, lost in the 19th century through the so-called 

"Unequal Treaties." Alternatively, if China also fell victim to regionalism, a new state in the Far East 

might emerge composed of both former Chinese and Russian territories. Such a new country might turn 

to Japan for aid and bring back Japanese influence to the Asian mainland, as in the period 1905 to 1945.

Of course, such a Russia would pose no threat of reconquest to the former Soviet Republics. Those in 

Europe would naturally gravitate toward the European Confederation and be well along the road to 

membership by 2015. The Russian armed forces would be incapable of significant power projection 

abroad. They would probably be based on a small, all-volunteer army to protect the heartland, serve as a 

Praetorian Guard for the central government and beat down the weaker secessionist movements. The 
autonomous regions would create their own militaries in the guise of territorial militias. While small, 

such forces in the richer regions might be quite capable.

The strategic nuclear forces would likely decline because of Moscow's inability to fund new military 

technologies. Still, over the next 20 years, Russia would continue to possess enough nuclear weapons to 

wreak havoc on other great powers. Given Russian poverty, the temptation for either the state or 

individuals to sell nuclear weapons to others would be great. This danger might make "Declining 

Russia" a major threat to world peace.

2. The United States of Eurasia

Russia might begin to decline as described above but be saved from such degradation along the way. 

Moscow might be able to reassert some of its authority under a charismatic leader or movement, 

especially if Russians felt threatened by China. Nonetheless, many of the problems previously 

mentioned would limit the central government's options. Moscow would be less able to force the regions 

into submission than to negotiate a new political arrangement. Russian officials might propose the 

creation of a Eurasian counterpart to the European Confederation.

Such an appeal might be extended to some of the former Soviet Republics as well. Pragmatic and 

sentimental arguments might be combined. The economic structures of the tsarist empire and the Soviet 

Union still connect such countries and could be rebuilt along healthy lines. If the Russian economy 

enjoys stronger growth than the other ex-Soviet republics, the latter might see many benefits in linking 

their economies to that of Russia even more closely. Moscow would cease to threaten its non-Russian 

neighbors and the far-flung Russian regions in the context of a true confederal system. A Eurasian 

confederation could afford to maintain armed forces powerful enough to defend all, unlike the weak 

forces of several smaller states. Moscow's nuclear umbrella would be extended to the confederation, too. 

Many ex-Soviet Republics have no real sense of nationalism and are driven internally by ethnic 

differences - but they do have a history of union within the Russian Empire dating back a century or 

more. Membership in a United States of Eurasia could be attractive for these reasons. In contrast, 

membership in a European Confederation of wealthy, culturally Catholic and Protestant powers 

ultimately might prove less appealing for historical reasons to the ex-Soviet states than would a loose 

union with an economically developing group of poorer but more equal Orthodox and Moslem states.

Beyond 2015, such a confederation might roughly duplicate the history of the United States by 

transformation into a centralized federation. Under those circumstances, Russian dominance might well 

reassert itself. But by the mid-twenty-first century, Russia might be bordered on the west by a powerful 

European Federation and on the east by a mighty Chinese superpower. Under those circumstances, the 

opportunities that Russia had in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries for expansion would not exist. In order 

to expand, Russia would have to ally with one against the other, with potentially terrible consequences 

for humankind. Or, content with a huge and potentially prosperous federation, the Russians might very 

well choose peaceful economic competition as the preferable new form of Russian expansion. But these 

possibilities take us beyond the time frame of this study.
3. A Russian Nation-State

Russia may develop into a democratic and liberal capitalist state, but to do so would require Russia to 

abandon the legacies of its Tsarist and Soviet past. Such a Russia would probably be organized along 

federal lines, much like contemporary Germany. This would almost certainly mean a contraction of 

Russian territory, giving freedom to those who do not feel a sense of Russian nationalism. To include 

such non-Russians in a new "free Russia" would require forms of coercion incompatible with 

democracy. Realistically, such a democratic Russia could probably be born only out of a major disaster 

like a lost war with the Chinese or an unsuccessful intervention into Ukraine. These kinds of serious 

reversals, such as those suffered by the Axis Powers in World War II, can lead to revisions of identity 

and national rebirth.

This Russia would no longer be a multiethnic empire but a true national state of overwhelmingly 

Russian character. It would probably extend no farther than western Siberia and no farther south than the 

Volgograd region. A national Russia would receive an influx of millions of Russians departing former 

areas of Russian conquest and would be reconciled to the permanent loss of the Baltics and Ukraine. But 

such a Russia might very likely include Belarus, with its heavily Russian culture and ethnicity, and even 

might include the heavily Russian-inhabited areas of northern Kazakhstan.

A reduced Russia would face serious economic and resocialization challenges. By 2015, however, it 

could enjoy a high level of political and economic stability. Such a Russia might be quite democratic but 

still suffer from occasional outbreaks of xenophobia and racism. The relatively small non-Russian ethnic 

minorities even could be treated like second-class citizens, but Russia would possess more defensible 

borders than at present and would no longer have the problem of large, potentially disloyal non-Russian 

minorities. On the other hand, the mass migration of Russians out of the northern Caucasus, eastern 

Ukraine, eastern Siberia, and possibly northern Kazakhstan might destabilize those regions and bring 

chaos along Russia's new borders. China might penetrate the area of the former Russian Far East. 

Ukraine and Poland would enjoy positions far closer to equality with Russia than at present. Under these 

circumstances, Russia would be forced to court Europe and could even move into a European 

Confederation by 2015, but it would have to address its possible human rights problems and vestiges of 

hypernationalism in order to qualify for admission.

4. Imperial Russia

The pull of the past may prove too strong for the Russians to escape over the next 20 years. They may 

abandon their experiment with democracy, rally to an authoritarian government, and renew their ancient 

attempts to impose their hegemony over Eurasia. The regions and the non-Russians within the revived 

empire would be subjugated to harsh central rule. Russia would remain capitalist but with large state 

participation in the economy. This Russia would be, or would approximate, a neo-Fascist state. 

Nonetheless, it is not inconceivable that such a Russia would restore the monarchy as a powerful symbol 

of Russian imperialism and divine right to rule over vast territories inhabited by non-Russians.
By 2015, the economy of this Russia would be weak, and Russian technology outmoded. Repression and 

authoritarianism do not blend well with information-based creativity. Imperial Russia would present an 

aggressive and bombastic facade to the world. But it would probably be unable to take much effective 

action to back up its attitudes toward the other great powers; instead, the Russians would put severe 

pressure on their weaker neighbors. Reincorporation of Belarus would be the priority and the 

Belarussians might be persuaded to accept a bloodless Anschluss. Because of their large Russian 

populations, Ukraine and Kazakhstan might be invaded and would be at least subjected to Russiansupported terrorism and insurgency. The Transcaucasian and Central Asian republics would be heavily 

pressured into accepting protectorate status.

Imperial Russia could not be easily contained or appeased by its immediate neighbors. The ideological 

basis for such a regime virtually would require Russian confrontation with states on their borders. Wars 

of conquest would be highly attractive to such a state to gain prestige and wealth, and to siphon off 

unstable and criminal elements dangerous at the center. Russian aggression would be met by ostracism 

and hostility by the other great powers. This would reinforce deep-seated Russian xenophobia and 

paranoia, driving the regime even further into imperialism to gain resources and create a military 

defense in depth.

Imperial Russia would be too weak to engage directly the other great powers over the next 20 years. 

These Russians would offer the United States and the Europeans recognition of their spheres of 

influence in return for similar recognition. Imperial Russia would seek agreement to demilitarize at least 

part of Eastern Europe as a buffer zone between it and the European Confederation. Influenced by 

racism, historical enmity and geographical proximity, Imperial Russia would view India, China and 

Japan as rivals and potential victims. While seeking peace with the United States and Europe, it would 

concentrate it armed forces in Central Asia and the Far East.

This Russia would be able to draw on some strong national traditions and considerable indigenous 

resources, but it would probably not long survive. By 2015, it would be facing many of the same 

problems that led to Soviet collapse in the 1980s and for largely the same reasons. Imperial Russia might 

overplay a weak military hand with China and be crushed in an ensuing war. Even if it escaped military 

defeat, Imperial Russia would find the costs of empire impossible to sustain for long, especially in a 

world in which it fell technologically ever more behind. But the leaders of such a state would be unlikely 

to depart as meekly as Mikhail Gorbachev did. The last Soviet Party Secretary undoubtedly would be 

held up as a vile example of treason and cowardice. His successors in an Imperial Russia could revert to 

mass slaughter rather than allow their empire to slip away from them. At some point, such crimes and 

the anarchy they would unleash would probably force European, Indian and Chinese intervention, with 

unpredictable and dangerous consequences, but this nightmare would probably not occur until sometime 

after 2015.

INDICATORS

oThe Russian Birthrate. Demographics will have a crucial influence on the Russian future. Russian 
births have declined severely for the past decade, and this drop has become more pronounced with each 

passing year. Recently, Russia has been experiencing an actual decline in population as deaths 

outnumber births. If this situation continues or grows worse, Russia will lack the population necessary to 

deal with its economic problems and to create large armed forces. Furthermore, a continuing 

demographic decline will indicate deep pessimism on the part of the Russian people. If the population 

begins to grow again, however, it will indicate a return of optimism and more promising signs of the 

return of Russian power in 20 years' time.

oThe Restructuring of the Economy. It is difficult to imagine that any future Russia would revert to 

Stalinism; its failure remains blatantly obvious. But if the state does not privatize to a significant degree 

or, worse, seeks to regain control of more of the economy, this degree of interference in daily life could 

signal a move toward Imperial Russia. At the other extreme, libertarian policies, placing the economy at 

the mercy of organized crime and greedy multinational corporations, would pauperize Russia. This 

would herald Declining Russia.

oThe Fate of Democracy. Prolonged Russian exposure to millenarian and messianic ideologies, whether 

tsarist or Communist, has made many susceptible to extremist politics. If neo-Fascists or neomonarchists 

gain major support, this may indicate the arrival of Imperial Russia. Excessive pragmatism would also 

endanger Russian democracy by justifying "short-term" authoritarian measures to hold the country 

together or force the regions to pay their fair share of taxes to the center. In the absence of a strong 

democratic tradition, it is difficult for the Russians to know where to stop such measures. If Boris 

Yeltsin or his successor were to revert to such methods, Russian democracy would probably be doomed.

oThe Influence of Russian History. The way in which Russian history is interpreted and taught, 

particularly at the primary and secondary school levels, may be an important indicator of the intentions 

at the center. A lumping together of Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Alexander Suvorov, Vladimir 

Ilyich Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Marshal Georgiy Zhukov as all great heroes of the Russian nation would 

suggest the arrival of Imperial Russia. This would be particularly true if the crimes of the Soviet period 

were explained as sad but necessary actions to expand the power of the state. Alternatively, if the Soviet 

period is damned but the Tsarist era is embraced with a mythologized nostalgia, this would indicate 

Declining Russia. If local regions begin to rediscover (or invent) histories totally independent of the 

center, this would be an even stronger indicator of decline. Russian democracy depends on an open and 

critical assessment of all periods of Russian history, one prepared to acknowledge the virtues and vices 

of both but enthusiastic about building a third, better national tradition. German and Italian 

historiography after 1945 provides models of what a democratic Russia needs in its schools.

oThe Center's Power of Taxation. At present, the center is being deprived by the regions of sufficient tax 

revenues. If this continues, expect a declining Russia. A complete reversal, in which the center deprives 

the regions of any taxation power, would indicate the coming of imperial Russia. A democratic Russia 

would require a consensual deal with the regions on taxation or, better yet, a limited degree of 

reimposition of central control over taxation, perhaps accompanied by a revenue-sharing plan.
oThe Role of the Military. If civil control of the military is established, especially under a civilian 

defense minister and with genuine parliamentary scrutiny of the military, the cause of democracy will 

have been greatly advanced. Other signs of democratization would include reduced defense budgets and 

new military doctrine that reduce the role of the armed forces in foreign and domestic policy. However, 

if the military doctrine introduced in 1993 is retained, but the center lacks the will and resources to apply 

it, this indicates a declining Russia is coming. Finally, if the doctrine is maintained, defense budgets 

increased, the military restructured for offensive operations and force projection, Imperial Russia is a 

likelihood.

oThe Powers of the Political Police. The successor agencies to the KGB remain powerful. If they escape 

significant reform that places strict limits on their powers or are placed beyond effective public and 

parliamentary scrutiny, this would represent a real danger to democracy. If the Russian presidency 

retains direct and complete control over the secret police, even in the name of a crackdown on organized 

crime, this would suggest the advent of Imperial Russia.

oSiberia and the Far East. If the Far East and, more important, Siberia, experience strong secessionist 

movements, the reaction of Moscow will provide indicators about Russia's future. A brutal crackdown 

would suggest an imperial Russia. A passive reaction accompanied by futile verbal protests would 

suggest a declining Russia. The breaking of ties as a deliberate policy by the center would suggest the 

emergence of a Russian nation-state.

4. INDIA

Economics and demographics will govern India's success or failure at becoming a great power by 2015. 

At present, India resembles two countries superimposed on the same territory: a modernizing and rapidly 

developing middle-class India of some 200 to 300 million and a traditional, impoverished India of some 

600 to 700 million. In some ways, the gap between these two groups is widening. From 1950 to 1980, 

the growth of the Indian Gross National Product (GNP) averaged only 1.4 percent per year, hardly 

enough to keep up with population growth. From 1980 to 1990, economic growth rates improved, 

averaging 3.3 percent. But this growth was heavily concentrated in the upper third of the population. The 

resulting socioeconomic tension is a major cause of both the rise of Hindu extremism and the violent 

regional separatism which could threaten India's internal stability. The major challenge to overcome, if 

India is to solve these pressing problems and become a great power, is to close its great social divide by 

creating a vast Indian lower middle class and industrial working class. India has a relatively short time to 

raise the standard of living of its poorer citizens before the problem becomes virtually insuperable. With 

well over half its population under 25, the Indian economy must create hundreds of millions of jobs over 

the next two decades. Furthermore, the population is rapidly increasing. By 2015, India will have at least 

1.2 billion inhabitants.

A closely related difficulty preventing India from becoming a major world power is the heterogeneous 

nature of its population. India is a subcontinent not only because of its size but also because of the 

conglomeration of cultures, ethnicities and language groups gathered under the Indian flag. India is the 
largest piece of the old British Indian Empire, itself largely carved out of the Mogul Empire. As a 

country descended from two empires, India is not a nation-state, but a third version of the older empires 

disguised as a democratic federal republic.

The Congress Party, the nationalist organization that gained Indian independence from the British in 

1947, tried and failed to maintain the unity of the entire Indian Empire. Instead, independence occurred 

simultaneously with partition from Pakistan and what would later become Bangladesh. For most of the 

history of India since then, the republic has been ruled by a Congress Party elite of English-speaking, 

Western-oriented aristocrats and civil servants. This group vaguely resembles the French-speaking 

aristocrats who governed Russia in the 18th century - a privileged group alienated culturally from the 

vast majority of the people they rule. But it has served as the glue binding together the republic's many 

peoples for the last half-century. Based both on the heritage of Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" 

Gandhi and on national necessity, the Congress Party stressed toleration and respect for India's large, 

non-Hindu minorities.

The cosmopolitan Indian ruling class has been reinforced over the past several decades by ties with the 

Indian diaspora. The English-speaking diaspora of professionals, merchants, and business people is 

scattered throughout the former British Empire, as well as in Britain itself, the United States, and the 

Middle East. The diaspora had gone abroad in the days of the British Empire, seeking advantages that 

poverty-ridden India could not offer. They prospered, thanks to the money they could borrow through 

family connections at home, hard work, skills, and cultural advantages. But the diaspora was 

discouraged from returning to India after independence, because of the Soviet-inspired Socialist 

economic policies of the Congress Party. Beginning in the late 1980s, however, India adopted freemarket economics, creating greater opportunities at home. Part of the Western-oriented diaspora has 

returned to India, bringing back their high level of skills, education, and wealth. Among other 

accomplishments, they have created a kind of Indian Silicone Valley on the southern plateau of the 

Bangalore region. The returning diaspora has reinforced and given substance to the Congress Party 

elite's determination to raise India to great-power status.

However, India has succeeded well enough with its post-independence programs of mass education, 

autarchic industrialization, public works, agricultural development and expansion of the civil service and 

armed forces to create a second middle class. This group is heavily concentrated in the Hindi-speaking 

Hindu population of the northern Ganges Valley. It resents the Congress Party elite for its privileges and 

envies its power; it has been actively seeking to unseat it for the past few years. Taking advantage of 

India's democratic politics, some leaders of the Hindi middle class have been using the appeal of 

extremist Hinduism and Hindi nationalism to appeal to the poor masses of the Ganges Valley. These 

politicians advocate an exclusivist, Hindi-speaking Hindu India, antagonistic to the tolerant Western 

cosmopolitanism of the Congress Party elite, to the Indian Moslem, Sikh, and Christian populations of 

some 150 million and even to the large Tamil-speaking Hindus of the south, the Marathi-speaking 

Hindus of the west, and the Bengali-speaking Hindus of the northeast. Such divisive national politics 

threaten to make a bad situation worse. India already is plagued by three separatist insurgencies: by 

Sikhs in the Punjab, Moslems in Kashmir and various tribes in the northeast each seeking independence. 

Despite brutal repression by the Indian Army and national police, none of these uprisings has been 
stifled.

Added to India's internal problems are the closely related foreign problems caused by the collapse of the 

Soviet Union, the spectacular growth of the Chinese economy, and Pakistan's acquisition of a nuclear 

weapons capability. Despite some improvement in relations since the Sino-Indian border war in 1962, 

Indian leaders continue to view China as a grave, long-term threat to Indian security and to Indian 

aspirations to supremacy in South Asia. India's adoption of free-market economics has improved the 

growth of its GNP to about 4 percent per annum over the past few years, but this hardly matches China's 

recent economic growth rate, which averaged 9.4 percent during the 1980s and hovered at about 12 

percent during 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1995. Indian leaders are well aware that if these disparities in 

growth rates continue, Chinese power will dominate all South Asia within a decade. Caught between 

China's allies to the west and east (Pakistan and Burma) with China firmly in control of Tibet, India 

could be forced into quasi-vassalage.

Between the mid-1960s and 1991, India counterbalanced China and Pakistan by alliance with the Soviet 

Union (from which it received both cheap arms and cheap oil) and greatly strengthened itself militarily 

with successful nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and satellite programs. But the disintegration of the 

USSR and the development of Pakistan's own nuclear capability have deprived India of its previous 

advantages. India can only rely on itself, particularly on the potential of a powerful economy, to reverse 

its decline relative to China.

oIndia's internal and external difficulties can appear so daunting that the idea of India advancing to greatpower status in 20 years' time may seem preposterous. India does possess, however, advantages that 

could lead to a great surge in its power:

oThe country has hundreds of millions of relatively well-educated citizens fluent in English. It also 

possesses a fine English-language university system that for decades has been educating excellent 

scientists, engineers and technicians. In an age of information-based technology, such widespread access 

to the world's primary commercial and scientific language gives India a huge advantage over China. 

oThrough the centuries, Indians have displayed a remarkable degree of entrepreneurial skill and 

financial acumen. While the Socialist economy of the 1947-1991 period inhibited Indian economic 

growth, it never snuffed out the age-old Indian capitalist tradition.

oThe Indian state already has in place the tax system, the banking and lending networks, the commercial 

statutes and business structures necessary for the smooth running of a capitalist economy.

oFinally, India has huge numbers of small and large business owners, managers, accountants, financiers, 

and lawyers prepared and eager to take full advantage of a free market, giving India another great 

superiority to China.

If India realizes its economic potential, it will produce the technology base and tax revenues necessary to 
make it a first-class military power. The Indian armed forces already possess excellent traditions, pride 

and discipline. Properly funded and armed, such forces could draw upon a huge mass of manpower to 

make India the supreme power in the Indian Ocean region. All this will depend on the choices the 

Indians make between now and 2015.

ALTERNATIVES

1. Divided India

India may fail to develop its economic potential sufficiently and fall victim to overpopulation. Certain 

Indian regions, primarily those between Bombay and Bangalore, might become quite prosperous and 

secede to enjoy their wealth in isolation. Overwhelmed by massive national poverty, the central 

government might collapse and the country fragment into several states based on local language and 

religion. For example, the Punjab might emerge as an independent Khalistan closely aligned with 

Pakistan; Kashmir might unite with Pakistan; Hindu Bengal might merge with Bangladesh; and the 

Tamils might declare independence and seize the Tamil-inhabited region of Sri Lanka. However, the 

Indian Army might manage to keep the country united within a weak confederal structure. Foreign 

enemies might be kept at bay by a nuclear-armed Indian Air Force still loyal to the center.

Of course, without sufficient revenue, it would prove impossible for the army to remain strong enough 

to keep such an India united, and the air force could not long maintain its nuclear arsenal. India might 

struggle on as a confederation by consent of the regions or fragment completely sometime after 2015. In 

any case, under such conditions, it could not be counted among the great powers.

2. Hindu India

Hindi-speaking Hindus number only about 30 percent of the population. So long as India remains a 

democracy, such a group cannot gain control of the government. But if Hindu nationalism swept the 

Marathis, Bengalis, Tamils, Gujaratis, Sindhis, and other language groups of Hindu religion, Indians 

could elect an intolerant authoritarian government ruled by Hindu extremists. Under such circumstances, 

large numbers of the cosmopolitan upper classes might flee and the Western-oriented diaspora cease 

returning to India. The fate of the Moslems would be truly miserable, judged by recent attacks by Hindu 

mobs on mosques and Moslem neighborhoods in Indian cities. Some would be massacred, some would 

flee to Pakistan, and the rest would be reduced to servitude. However, such an India could still emerge 

as a great power, if it pursued economic policies that encouraged high rates of growth.

A Hindu India would likely be a highly bellicose, nationalistic state motivated by a form of Fascist 

ideology. This India would attempt to crush the insurgencies in the Punjab and Kashmir with 

unrestrained brutality. It would spend heavily on arms, especially on weapons of mass destruction, to 

overawe Pakistan and to deter China. Such a government would lay claim to the Indian Ocean as a mare 

nostrum. It would call for American withdrawal from Diego Garcia and demand recognition of the 

Indian Ocean and its littoral as an Indian sphere of influence. It might use the Tamil-Sinhalese conflict 
in Sri Lanka as an excuse for military intervention in the island. It would try to pressure Bangladesh into 

becoming an Indian dependency.

This India would demand a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council as its due. However, 

its belligerent behavior would make China and the Western powers opposed to such membership. 

Depending on Russian reaction, such an Indian bid could disrupt the United Nations indefinitely until 

the matter were settled.

A Hindu India might provoke war with Pakistan, perhaps unintentionally. But assuming a small but 

growing Pakistani nuclear arsenal, it seems more likely that India would try to use its growing economic 

and military power to pull Pakistan into its orbit as a protectorate. Depending on international rivalries, 

such an India might try to barter its neutrality or military support to America or China. In return, it might 

demand the abandonment of Pakistan to Indian conquest. Such an India would probably seek a strategic 

alliance with Russia, as well.

A Hindu India would probably be hostile to Iran, particularly if it allied with China, supported Pakistan, 

and aided the extremists in Afghanistan and the insurgents in Kashmir. If Iran were seen as a significant 

threat in New Delhi, Hindu India would probably react by investing in a major naval building program 

and strengthening any strategic alliance with Russia to subdue the Central Asian republics, Iran, 

Pakistan and Afghanistan. In such circumstances, Turkey could be forced to ally with China, Iran, and 

Pakistan.

Hindu India might seek expansion in East Africa. Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania were used by the British 

as colonies for the settlement of excess population from the Subcontinent; this policy came to an end 

with Indian independence, but large ethnic Indian populations remain in the region. If AIDS and new 

epidemics were to sweep through East Africa and depopulate the area, the ethnic Indians might survive, 

thanks to their higher standard of living and superior access to health care. An aggressive Hindu India 

might take advantage of the ensuing opportunity to intervene to "restore order" or provide "humanitarian 

assistance," only to remain as a de facto neocolonial occupier. Such policies would undoubtedly result in 

serious friction with South Africa and the Arab states.

However, if the Chinese threat grew severe enough, a Hindu India would be forced to abandon such 

imperialism, soften its anti-Islamic policies and seek a grand alliance with Indonesia, the smaller states 

of Southeast Asia, Japan, and Russia to contain Chinese expansion. Depending on the degree to which 

China was threatening its neighbors, such an anti-Sinitic alliance might seek ties with the United States.

3. Democratic India

An economically successful India that rejected Hindu extremism might nonetheless adopt many of the 

policies described for a Hindu India, but such an India would pursue these policies in a less 

confrontational and more diplomatic manner. Such an India would stress its democratic ideals as one of 

the bases for an anti-Chinese understanding with the United States and Japan, should a powerful China 
disturb the tranquillity of Asia. However, even if China were to develop into a peaceful democracy, 

Chinese-Indian rivalry would continue, even if pursued primarily along economic and political lines.

A strong but democratic India would still display unease with an American naval presence in the Indian 

Ocean. Depending on the degree of Indian and Chinese dependence on Middle East oil, such an India 

would seek to be the master of the sea lines of communication in the Indian Ocean. Democratic India 

would press the argument on the United States that it was a reasonable and peace-loving state that could 

be trusted to protect American interests in the ocean and to help the United States bear the heavy burden 

of safeguarding world peace. Democratic India would seek and likely receive a permanent seat on the U.

N. Security Council. It would participate enthusiastically in peacekeeping operations both to expand its 

international influence and to gain favor with American public opinion.

Democratic India would still seek to dominate its region and the Indian Ocean, but it would do so 

primarily by economic and diplomatic means and through cultural ties to the numerous Indian ethnic 

communities scattered throughout Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Democratic India might 

seek special links to South Africa and Australia. It could stress its sincere desire for tranquillity in the 

Indian Ocean, the powerful tool it possessed in the Indian navy and its interest in security cooperation 

with the other democracies that lie at the two extreme ends of the ocean.

Even a democratic India sincerely devoted to peace in South Asia might still pursue policies aimed at the 

effective destruction of Pakistan. Indians of every religion and region are united over the necessity to 

retain control of Kashmir. They view Pakistan's very existence, and certainly Islamabad's aid to the 

Kashmiri insurgents, as a threat to Indian unity. If India were to lose a substantial number of its Moslem 

citizens, it might encourage other Islamic separatist movements in India and also strengthen the appeal 

of Hindu extremists.

But a democratic India might seek to overwhelm Pakistan by kindness, instead of by force of arms. Over 

a period of decades, India might seek to alleviate the basic causes of Indo-Pakistani hostility, to stress 

the common cultural and political origins of the two states, to promote the Western-oriented views of 

Pakistan's English-speaking elite and to encourage bilateral trade and technological cooperation. A 

similar Indian effort might be aimed at Bangladesh. While hardly certain and certainly slow, in any case, 

by 2015, some movement toward the creation of a confederation eventually linking the three states 

might be perceived.

INDICATORS

What indicators can be listed of the directions in which India might move over the next 20 years? The 

following should provide some solid clues.

oImmigration and emigration patterns. The permanent departure of large numbers of well-educated 

Indians would signify a loss of hope about the economy and/or fears of a rise of religious and regional 

strife. The return to India of large numbers of the ethnic Indian elite would suggest the opposite.
oThe price and availability of oil. The growth of the Indian economy will depend a great deal on world 

oil prices and on discoveries of offshore Indian oil fields. Cheap, abundant oil will help India become a 

great power. Without that, the Indian economy could falter or even collapse.

oAttitudes toward nuclear and missile proliferation. The degree to which India agrees or refuses to 

cooperate with efforts to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction will indicate its degree of 

suspicion and hostility toward the United States. Indian reaction to an American offer to adhere formally 

or informally to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Missile Technology Control 

Regime (MTCR) in return for American technical assistance in such matters would be highly revealing.

oArmaments programs and foreign sources of arms. Since independence, India has begun a number of 

ambitious, indigenous arms programs, only to repeatedly fail or fall far short of goals. Recently, taking 

advantage of the return of many Western-educated scientists and technologists, India has initiated a 

series of expensive ventures with military applications. These include research and development of 

computers, robotics, fiber optics, radar, microwave applications, superconductivity, composite materials, 

air-breathing propulsion, stealth technologies and sensors. A monitoring of the progress of these 

programs will give a good indication of how powerful the Indian military might be in 20 years.

oIndo-Pakistani contacts on their nuclear arsenals, employment doctrine, and safeguards. Indian 

willingness to conduct negotiations with Pakistan with regard to their nuclear weapons and their doctrine 

for employment would be a good omen that India sincerely wished to avoid war and develop 

cooperative relations with Pakistan.

oThe status of Moslems and Sikhs. An early sign of the rise to power of Hindu nationalism would be 

widespread persecution of adherents to India's major non-Hindu religions. The government might try to 

prevent such attacks. But if they continued despite police protection of the minorities, it could signify a 

Hindu nationalist victory at the polls sometime thereafter.

oRenewal of the Indo-Russian strategic relationship. India and Russia could rebuild their alliance in a 

defensive or offensive manner. In the face of Chinese threats, such an alliance might be in America's 

interest. But if the coalition were to be recreated in a period of Chinese weakness or benevolent 

international behavior, it could signify Indian and Russian plans for expansion and aggression.

oPolicies toward states adjacent the Indian Ocean. Indian claims to supremacy in the ocean that bears its 

name would be an unmistakable signal of Indian imperialism, especially if it were accompanied by 

pressure on such island countries as the Seychelles and Maldives. Indian overtures to South Africa and 

Australia could signify a less aggressive but still ambitious policy of domination in the region. Good 

Indian relations with Indonesia and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations 

(ASEAN) would suggest friendly Indian intentions toward Pakistan.

oIndian policy toward the Tamils in Sri Lanka. After covert assistance to the Tamil rebels in the 1980s, 

New Delhi has ceased such actions. A renewal of this aid would signify an Indian attempt to gain 
dominance over Sri Lanka and the rise of Indian imperialism.

oAttitudes toward U.S. military presence on Diego Garcia and American- Pakistani ties. Indian 

arguments that the American military and security presence in the Indian Ocean area is a provocation or 

threat to peace would be a sure sign that India was contemplating some form of expansion or aggression 

in its region. Indian acceptance of such an American regional role would indicate willingness to live at 

peace with Pakistan and its other neighbors.

oThe size and composition of the navy. India has greatly reduced its ambitious naval building plans of 

the 1980s. If India renews its attempts to acquire Indian-built aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, it 

would signal Indian attempts to dominate the Indian Ocean. Such developments should be viewed in the 

context of the Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean and the degree of Chinese-Burmese naval 

cooperation at the time. Indian naval developments should also be assessed in light of Indian relations 

with South Africa, Indonesia, Australia, and the United States. A lack of Indian naval cooperation with 

the latter countries and an absence of a Chinese naval threat in the Indian Ocean, combined with a major 

expansion of the Indian navy, would be a sign of coming Indian aggression.

oThe United Nations. India will undoubtedly seek a permanent Security Council seat if its economy 

projects it firmly into great-power status. The manner in which India seeks this reorganization of the 

Security Council will offer indications of India's purposes. India might want to play a constructive role 

in fostering regional and world peace, or might seek to gain a veto over U.N. attempts to restrain Indian 

aggression. Depending on international circumstances, Indo-Russian cooperation over such matters 

would be revealing of the intentions of both countries.

oActivities within the nonaligned movement. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Nonaligned 

Movement has lost its purpose, except perhaps as a forum for anti-Americanism. If India, a leader in the 

Movement, attempts to focus it against the United States, it could signify an Indian attempt at hegemony 

in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.

5. CHINA

The sleeping dragon is awakening and, as Napoleon predicted, the world is beginning to tremble. Given 

the People's Republic of China's admixture of enormous potential and huge problems, the possibilities 

for the country in 2015 vary greatly. Whether China emerges as a highly aggressive great power, 

evolves into a powerful country following a reasonable foreign policy or fails to solve its problems and 

falls into decline will be one of the two or three most important world events of the next two decades. It 

is clear, however, that the capitalist reforms of the past 15 years have unleashed revolutionary forces in 

China. The country is undergoing the greatest political changes since the 1949 Communist victory in the 

Chinese Civil War.

The obstacles to China becoming a great power are the opposite of India's. If the new Chinese market 

economy develops too quickly (but unevenly in terms of regional distribution of wealth), the center may 
lose some control over the provinces because of their growing power relative to that of Beijing. The 

major reason is that the central government currently lacks the infrastructure, the legal and tax systems, 

and the financial institutions necessary to collect sufficient revenues from the ever-richer coastal areas 

and to maintain controls over the national economy. The challenges facing Beijing include raising the 

living standards of all Chinese in a manner perceived as generally equitable, building an adequate 

communications and transportation infrastructure, replacing the old social welfare system based on stateowned enterprises with a system compatible with a market economy, arranging a new relationship 

between the center and the provinces and between rural and the rapidly expanding urban areas, and 

creating adequate new legal and financial arrangements. Success or failure to achieve these goals will 

depend greatly on the abilities of the person who will succeed Deng Xiaoping as China's next supreme 

leader.

Whatever his intentions, the economic reforms initiated by Deng have undermined the dictatorship to a 

large degree. Deng's successor is almost certain to be an authoritarian rather than a totalitarian leader. 

Totalitarian governments rely on protecting their monopoly on power by maintaining strict control over 

the economy. By abandoning such controls and allowing large amounts of private wealth to be 

accumulated, Deng has permitted independent power centers to be created. Deng still retained 

considerable personal power, thanks to his reputation as the last of the great revolutionaries. No 

Communist successor will have such prestige, and therefore will possess less power, or is likely to enjoy 

Deng's influence with the People's Liberation Army (PLA).

Short of the necessary funds, Deng's government has ordered the PLA to raise part of its own revenues. 

It is estimated that the PLA now receives less than half its budget from Beijing, accumulating the rest 

through commercial ventures. By going into business on a huge scale, the PLA has been seriously 

degraded as a fighting force. At the same time, its enterprises have wedded some PLA regional 

commands to the booming provincial economies of the coast. If this process were to continue 

unchecked, local PLA commanders might not be able or be willing to force the rich provinces back 

under the strict control of the center. However, the PLA as a whole remains highly nationalistic and 

would undoubtedly battle to protect China's unity from threats of outright provincial secession. 

Furthermore, despite the conversion of many units into business enterprises, the PLA still possesses a 

formidable fighting core. But short of overt national fracture, under some circumstances, the PLA might 

preserve its own unity by merely observing either a post-Deng succession struggle at the center or a 

major redistribution of power between Beijing and the provinces.

Chinese Communism is dead as an ideology, and the Party survives only as a tool for national 

government. The collapse of Soviet Communism and the Chinese reversion to capitalism has thoroughly 

discredited Marxism in China. The Party has lost its moral authority and is rapidly losing its political 

authority, as capitalism allows power bases to develop independent of the Party. As a result, Beijing is 

being deprived of one of its major controls over the provinces.

Lacking the ability to extract sufficient revenues from the richer provinces, Beijing is also losing some 

control over the poorer inland provinces. It can no longer supply them with the services necessary to 

command their loyalty. The central government has created a new paramilitary organization, the 
People's Armed Police (PAP), to maintain order, but Beijing's shortage of funds has made it difficult to 

sustain this force. Moreover, government bureaucrats and police cannot survive on the low salaries paid 

by Beijing and are increasingly relying on graft to support themselves. This has tended to discredit the 

central government, especially in the poor inland provinces, because the inhabitants cannot easily afford 

to pay bribes for government services or for protection.

Meanwhile, the richer provinces are making trade deals with foreign governments, controlling their own 

energy supplies, fashioning their own broadcasting systems and building autonomous governments. 

Most notably, wealthy Guangdong with its 65 million people and an extraordinary annual GNP growth 

of 20 percent now enjoys considerable autonomy. In several provinces, the tendency toward autonomy 

has been strengthened further by investments flowing into the coastal provinces from the overseas 

Chinese communities. The overseas Chinese, largely descended from immigrants from the coastal 

provinces, in many cases retain strong regional loyalties. They invest not just in China but in the 

province or even the village of their ancestors. The 50 to 60 million overseas Chinese are estimated to 

control $1.5 to 2 trillion in assets. A significant portion of this money has flowed back into the coastal 

provinces over the past 15 years and helps explain the huge boom in the economy of eastern China; such 

investment increases provincial independence from Beijing's control. Taiwan has played a major role in 

these developments as a way to try to weaken Beijing's authority and to create a special relationship 

directly with the southern Chinese coastal provinces. (More quietly, Japan has been doing the same with 

Japanese money funneled into the northern coastal provinces.) But whether or not these efforts at 

subversion will succeed remains highly uncertain.

In contrast to the population of the coastal provinces, the 100 million non-Han Chinese national 

minorities within the PRC now present little danger to the unity of the country. Tibet harbors the 

strongest nationalist movement, but the 2 million Tibetans are no match for the local PLA garrison. The 

different ethnic groups in Xinjiang have been more restive since the disintegration of the Soviet union 

and the independence of the Central Asian Republics; resultant violence has been contained by the PLA 

and the PAP. However, if the center were to lose enough control over the provinces in some future 

power struggle, Tibet and Xinjiang might make a bid to break away from the PRC.

Despite the challenges to its control over the country, the central government is exhibiting increasing 

signs of self confidence. One of the paradoxes confronting China watchers is this contrast between the 

reality of increasing provincial autonomy and the rhetoric emerging from Beijing. In fact, following 

Deng's death, a new Chinese leader or leadership may emerge, skillful and forceful enough to wrest back 

power from the provinces. Even now, the central government is clearly buoyed by its realization of 

China's astounding surge of economic strength and the prospects that continued growth may propel the 

country past the United States in terms of GNP sometime in the first quarter of the twenty first century. 

If the center can channel a part of this national wealth to the PLA, China could roughly balance 

American military power in 20 to 30 years.

Chinese government spokesmen, diplomats, and military officials increasingly speak of determination to 

avenge past humiliations of Chinese pride and to use force, if necessary, to defend or assert important 

territorial claims. In addition to the well-known Chinese claims to the Spratly Islands and to sovereignty 
over Taiwan, Beijing has certain claims on parts of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kirgizstan and Siberia. 

Already, the growth in the Chinese economy is exerting a powerful attraction on the ex-Soviet territories 

along the Chinese border. Illegal Chinese emigration into Siberia and the Russian Far East is also 

considerable. Previous Russian fears about Japanese designs on Siberia have been replaced by worries 

about Chinese intentions toward that gigantic, resource-rich but underpopulated region.

As nationalism has replaced communism as the government's ideology, there have been signs of a return 

by some Chinese officials to old attitudes of superiority. If such attitudes were to become widespread 

among Chinese leaders at a time when China had become even more powerful, the Chinese could 

attempt to reduce their small neighbors to protectorate status and to insist on the treatment of China as a 

superior by India, Russia, and Japan. As a result, China may firmly oppose Indian and Japanese efforts 

to obtain permanent U.N. Security Council seats. Further, Chinese attempts to ring its abundant borders 

with a band of friendly states for defensive reasons might be interpreted in New Delhi, Moscow, and 

Tokyo as creating spheres of influence at Indian, Russian or Japanese expense.

Given the huge and growing Chinese population, the contrasts between the rich east and the poor west, 

the uncertainties of the post-Deng succession, and the amazing growth of the Chinese economy, the 

range of possibilities for China in 20 years is enormous.

ALTERNATIVES

1. Weak China

China has enjoyed spectacular economic success over the past 15 years, but the growth of the Chinese 

economy has been heavily concentrated in the industrial sector; the agricultural sector has grown hardly 

at all. This imbalance has created tensions between the cities and the countryside that might lead to 

serious social unrest. If China lacks an effective central leadership, it could fail to address these social 

problems. As a result, industrial growth could falter or cease. Foreign investment, so vital to Chinese 

development, might slacken or even cease. In that case, China could fall into serious, prolonged 

economic depression. Popular loyalty to the government could be undermined.

Under such circumstances, the central government still might remain powerful, command the support of 

the PLA and pursue highly nationalistic policies. Beijing might even seek an international crisis, if only 

to try to win back the loyalty of the Chinese population. For example, Beijing might create a pretext to 

confront Taiwan, Vietnam, or Russia, or some neighbor of China's might act provocatively, mistakenly 

believing that Beijing no longer had the will or means to respond effectively. Whether it provoked a war 

or was itself provoked, the government might suffer a humiliating defeat. The general population, 

already restive due to poor economic conditions, might become unruly. Such defiance of the center, 

followed by the use of the PLA to restore central authority, might set off considerable violence in the 

Chinese heartland and even trigger revolts in Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.

Such a national crisis might not be resolved quickly or neatly. In 2015, China might be in a state of 
internal disunity, although not so serious as that of the early 20th century. Organized crime, piracy, and 

drug trafficking could flourish in some provinces, forcing outside powers to intervene to deal with these 

threats in coastal regions. The control of Chinese nuclear weapons might be in dispute, creating an even 

greater danger for the world, but outsiders might be deterred by such weapons from major involvement 

in Chinese civil turmoil and from attempting to detach pieces of Chinese territory. If agriculture and the 

distribution of food were disrupted, large parts of the Chinese population might be in danger of 

starvation. On the other hand, the central government might act decisively, even brutally, in order to 

restore order.

China's weak economy, the flight of foreign capital, the concentration of the PLA on internal security 

duties, and lack of support from the general population for the government might leave China unable to 

pursue an active foreign policy. The PLA would be strong enough to defend China, but China would 

play no significant role in the affairs of East Asia. Such a China would not be a great power.

2. Provincial China

China might suffer from ineffective or misguided leaders after Deng's death. Nonetheless, parts of China 

might continue to enjoy significant prosperity. The richer provinces could gain effective autonomy from 

Beijing before 2015, but national sentiment, fear of foreign powers, desire to avoid civil war and a 

recognition of the advantages of maintaining some form of central government could result in the formal 

unity of China being preserved. No formal arrangement for such a system might be developed; instead, 

Beijing would be involved in a separate, less authoritative, relationship with the richer provinces than 

with the poorer ones. The richer provinces might pay significant taxes to Beijing but be effectively 

independent of many forms of central authority. The poorer provinces would be under tighter central 

control, while struggling to grow wealthy enough to gain more autonomy. The non-Han Chinese areas 

might remain under firm PLA control, paid for by the richer provinces. Alternatively, Tibet might enjoy 

no more than a confederal link to Beijing.

Provincial China would have neither a single political system nor a successor to the defunct Communist 

Party. Some provinces might have authoritarian governments; others might have liberal or political 

systems. Such a varied political landscape would be inherently unstable, suggesting an evolution to more 

uniform political arrangements in the future. In 2015, however, whatever the arrangements in the 

provinces, the central government would remain an authoritarian bureaucracy.

This China might possess a formidable nuclear arsenal, subsidized by all the provinces as a form of 

protection, but Beijing's ability to project conventional force beyond its borders might be quite limited. 

The richer provinces might have their own militia forces to deal with piracy, smuggling and border 

control. In a vague way, Provincial China might resemble the Japan of the 1980s: a great power only 

economically. However, lack of an effective nation-wide system of laws, banks, courts, transport, 

welfare, and other components of modern capitalism could inhibit the continuation of high rates of 

economic growth, and China would not realize its full potential.
Such a China would probably enjoy amicable relations with its neighbors, based on the coastal 

provinces' desire for protecting their trade and prosperity. Such circumstances would make it easy for 

Taiwan to negotiate a formal submission to rule from Beijing, while enjoying almost the same degree of 

independence it presently has. Provincial China might even welcome a strong American presence in East 

Asia and the Pacific as a form of protection against both Japan and Russia. The degree of Chinese 

prosperity, the willingness of the richer provinces to contribute to national defense and the relative 

power of the Russian armed forces would determine the nature of the Russian-Chinese relationship. So 

would the degree to which Chinese security and prosperity mattered to Japan and the United States, who 

might even serve as Provincial China's active protectors against a predatory Russia. On the other hand, a 

severe enough threat from Russia might be the impetus to lead the Chinese to transform their country 

into a true federal state or even to accept a new form of authoritarian central rule.

3. Liberal China

By 2015, China could be in the process of moving toward the establishment of a multiparty elected 

system of government, something like that of Western European states in the mid-19th century. Beijing's 

leaders would be concerned about achieving popular support, recognizing the enhanced power gained 

from having a willing national consensus to carry out policies. A Liberal Chinese political system would 

undoubtedly be imposed from above, unlike the process in the United States in 1787-88. China would 

remain quasi-authoritarian in some ways but the foundation would have been laid for evolution into a 

broadly liberal and, eventually, into a democratic state. In 2015, however, China would hardly be 

democratic, although power would be shared between the central and provincial governments, basic 

human and civil rights would be protected, and all Chinese would live under the firm rule of law.

The central government of such a China would remain highly concerned with strong defense, active 

foreign policy, and some regulation of the national economy. Such a wealthy, internally peaceful, 

culturally, and intellectually dynamic China would produce self-confident but not unreasonable leaders. 

They would prove willing to compromise with other great powers over conflicts and carry out a 

cooperative foreign policy to maintain world peace. But China would strongly assert itself when it felt 

its rights threatened - and it would have a rather nationalistic sense of what its rights were. After the 

liberal political system had been erected, Beijing could resolve the issues of revenue collection and 

distribution, pass laws to govern the economy and create the other prerequisites for a well-functioning 

capitalist system. This would allow for continued high rates of growth, social peace, and heavy 

government spending.

Chinese culture lacks a Western legal tradition, the necessary precondition for an effective federal 

system. However, given unprecedented Chinese access to ideas from the outside world and the sweeping 

changes possible in a prosperous post-Communist China, the Chinese might still conduct a successful 

political-legal-administrative transformation of their governmental structures. A federal system would 

provide an ideal means to regulate relations between the provinces and the center, and among the 

provinces. However, even if the Chinese were to adopt such a system, it would be a Chinese adaptation 

of federalism to their conditions, not an imitation of Western systems. Such a China would be strong 

enough to use force if Taiwan were to seek full independence. It would repress independence 
movements in Tibet and Xinjiang, although it might give those regions a form of limited autonomy 

within a federal system. It might seek predominance in East Asia by a combination of economic and 

military strength, but without crudely bullying its neighbors. Russian, Japanese, Indian, and American 

influence in Central and Southeast Asia and Korea might be resisted and resented, but Beijing would try 

to avoid disrupting the trade upon which its prosperity would rest.

4. Authoritarian China

Nationalism may replace Communism as a burning political faith for the Chinese. A post-Deng 

government might produce one or more charismatic, authoritarian leaders who could mobilize the 

loyalty of the Chinese people, direct continued vigorous economic growth and resolve distribution of 

power questions very much in favor of Beijing. Such a China could be very dangerous. It might be 

motivated by the type of aggressive need to assert itself that afflicted Italy, Germany and Japan before 

World War II. Or it might simply view attempts to bring China into a cooperative relationship with the 

other great powers as an infringement on its sovereignty. Beijing might be involved in a continuous 

series of confrontations, one of which might spark an armed conflict. Such a China could take advantage 

of a vigorous economy to pour large amounts of money into the armed forces and then embark on an 

offensive foreign policy, seeking undisputed predominance in Asia. By 2015, such a China could be 

seeking to become a truly global power.

If an authoritarian China were confronted by an imperial Russia, a major war between the two could 

follow. If India were allied to Russia at the time, all mainland Asia might be dragged into the conflict. 

On the other hand, if Russia presented no threat to China, strong nationalism still might motivate Beijing 

to attempt to recover the territories north of Manchuria lost to Russia in the so-called "Unequal Treaties" 

of the nineteenth century. A militarist, expansionist China could drive Russia, Japan, Indonesia, and 

India into an anti-Chinese alliance designed to contain Beijing's expansionism. Such a coalition could be 

supported and even joined by the United States.

If an authoritarian China could create the legal, administrative, social and financial structures necessary 

to sustain economic growth in a modern market economy, the Chinese government might enjoy the 

world's largest national budget by 2015. Under some circumstances, China might present a significant 

menace to world peace. True, an authoritarian China would not be driven by ideology to try to conquer 

the world as the Nazis or Communists were. But Chinese nationalists could be motivated by old 

resentments to settle scores with the Russians, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Indians, and Americans. If 

China proved victorious, it would be hegemon over Eurasia. Even if China demanded no more than 

recognition of its supremacy in the Eastern Hemisphere, this could present a threat to the security and 

prosperity of Japan or the United States.

INDICATORS

The list of indicators that follow provide ways to make educated guesses about the direction in which 

China may be headed.
oA popular democratic movement. Such a political phenomenon would lead to revolutionary changes in 

every aspect of Chinese society. In the short run, a transformation to democracy would probably 

convulse China through internal conflict. If the forces of democracy won, China would emerge as an 

extremely dynamic state. Filled with a youthful enthusiasm, it would likely rise to preeminence among 

the great powers.

oEmergence of a charismatic national leader. Given the threats that exist to Chinese unity and to the 

creation of a national consensus, an inspiring leader could concentrate the country's resources and 

energies in dramatic ways. Such a leader might be a force for good or evil. But he would likely make 

China a more significant international force than it would be otherwise.

oAir, water, and soil quality. In many ways, the development of the Chinese economy resembles the 

environmentally destructive process carried out in nineteenth-century Europe. But given its limited 

arable land and the heavy concentration of the Chinese population, such methods will produce 

catastrophe if not checked. China will have a population of about 1.5 billion people by 2015. The more 

the Chinese degrade their soil and water, the more food they will be forced to import. True, the Chinese 

may pay for food imports by industrial production, but if the process creates unbreathable air in 

overcrowded cities, the Chinese will be caught in a vicious circle. If the Chinese do not drastically 

reduce the damage they are inflicting on their environment, they will suffer social and economic disaster.

oChinese oil supplies. Continued Chinese economic development will require ever larger amounts of oil. 

The Chinese may discover enough new petroleum sources in the Tarim Basin, other inland fields, or in 

undisputed offshore areas. Under such circumstances, its economic prospects would improve greatly 

without disrupting China's relations with neighboring states. But discovery of oil in disputed areas off 

the Chinese coast, especially in the South China Sea, might involve China in conflict with its neighbors, 

sharply heighten tensions in East Asia, and prompt a major regional arms race. If China remains 

dependent on imports of Middle East oil, particularly if its needs increase dramatically, the Chinese will 

undoubtedly begin a major expansion of their navy. Given Chinese vulnerability under such 

circumstances to having its SLOCs cut, India and Indonesia would probably also expand their navies 

significantly. In other words, the prospects for peace in Asia over the next 20 years could be enhanced if 

the Chinese discover oil in areas under their uncontested control, but much would depend on the type of 

China that exists in the 2015 period. If China becomes highly nationalistic, secure oil supplies would 

enhance its power yet also endanger Asian security from the period 2010 onward.

oCreation of a federal system. A formal division of powers between the central government and the 

provinces, and the creation of an effective revenue collecting system would indicate a growing degree of 

control by Beijing over the country. It would also provide the basis for a greater flow of funds to the 

armed forces.

oWillingness to join and participate in international organizations. The Chinese government has shown 

little interest in joining such organizations, apparently seeing them as offering restraints on Chinese 

sovereignty. Nor has it shown much enthusiasm for United Nations peace operations. A positive change 
in Chinese attitudes toward the United Nations, the ASEAN Regional Forum, or a new subregional 

security organ would signal that China was making major efforts to ensure regional and world peace.

oCloser economic interdependence between China and Taiwan. The more that the prosperity of the two 

countries becomes intertwined, the less the danger of an armed conflict between the two.

oDeclaration of independence by Taiwan. Under almost any circumstances, this would trigger an armed 

response from China. If China were unable to respond with force, it would indicate a severe weakening 

of central authority.

oSeparatism in Central Asia. Greater restiveness in Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia would indicate a 

breakdown in central authority or the inability of the central government to provide services or subsidies 

to the outlying regions.

oResolution of the Korean problem. The degree to which China helps or hinders the peaceful resolution 

of the North Korean nuclear issue and aids or obstructs Korean unification will be highly indicative of 

Chinese benevolence or hostility toward the United States and Japan. If China seeks to dominate a 

united Korea, it would suggest an attempt to use that country against Japan.

oIncreased activity by secret societies, piracy and drug trafficking. Crime is on the rise in China. One 

indication of a change in the balance of power between the central government and the provinces is the 

amount of major crime that can flourish in the absence of effective central police powers. High rates of 

major crime, particularly kinds that effect commerce and transport, would also indicate brakes on the 

Chinese economy. More public activity by organized criminal entities such as the "Triads" would 

indicate other signs of the reduction of Beijing's power.

oViolation of trade agreements between the central government and foreign states. Many of the recent 

Chinese trade violations are not the fault of the Beijing regime. Rather, they indicate decisions on the 

provincial level or the influence of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan on the provincial economies. But an 

increase in such violations would indicate that the authority of the central government was being further 

eroded.

oThe Transformation of ASEAN into a collective defense organization. ASEAN has shown little ability 

to transform itself into the NATO of Southeast Asia because of the nationalism of its individual 

members. If the organization put aside such considerations in the cause of common defense, however, it 

could suggest a severe Chinese threat to the region.

oThe sale or transfer of nuclear weapons and/or ballistic missile technology. Continued Chinese 

activities along these lines can be interpreted as extremely hostile to the United States. The Chinese have 

made it plain that the more countries that possess weapons of mass destruction, the more it inhibits the 

United States from using its power.
oA naval buildup. If the Chinese begin a major naval armaments program, especially to produce aircraft 

carriers, nuclear submarines, and cruisers, it would suggest at least an attempt to put pressure on Japan, 

the Southeast Asian states, and India.

oThe development of an amphibious warfare capability. At present, the Chinese armed forces possess 

little ability to invade Taiwan or to project military power into the Southeast Asian islands. If the armed 

forces embark on programs to improve such capabilities, particularly by creating a large amphibious 

force, it could indicate aggressive intentions on the part of the Chinese government.

oChinese arms sales in Southeast Asia. The quality of Chinese conventional arms has been low. If there 

is a significant increase in the volume of Chinese conventional arms sales in Southeast Asia, it would 

indicate either a considerable increase in Chinese influence in the region or a great improvement in the 

quality of Chinese military equipment.

oRelations between Israel and China. Israel has been willing to give China considerable access to Israeli 

advanced military technology. As a quid pro quo, the Chinese have limited the sale of arms to Israel's 

enemies. But China may grow increasingly dependent on imports of Middle East oil and seek ways to 

improve its relations with the Arab states. The nature of Israeli-Chinese relations would provide 

evidence of the state of both Chinese energy supplies and of its attempts to upgrade the quality of its 

armaments.

6. JAPAN

Rich, politically stable, technologically advanced, protected by surrounding seas and a large modern 

navy, allied to the United States, the world's paramount power, Japan would appear to be certain to 

enjoy security and strength in 2015. Nonetheless, the Japanese have many worries about their future. 

The end of the Cold War, signs of isolationism in the United States and American-Japanese friction over 

trade imbalances raise questions about the duration of the American-Japanese security relationship. 

These concerns are heightened by the strong possibility that China will be a major economic and 

military power in fewer than 20 years. China could possibly be overwhelmed by its huge and growing 

population, but Japan faces the opposite problem. In 2015, its inhabitants will number only about 135 

million, less than one-tenth of the Chinese population at the time. Furthermore, the Japanese population 

will be aging, the Chinese population youthful. China could conceivably outnumber Japan in militaryage manpower by a ratio of fifteen to one.

Given its high density of population in a few urban areas, Japan is extremely vulnerable to nuclear 

attack. As few as three or four thermonuclear explosions could totally devastate Japan. To inflict 

equivalent damage on Russia or China, Japan would need to hit back with 100 or more warheads. Japan 

is almost as vulnerable against conventional attack, lacking strategic depth and possessing a long, 

vulnerable coastline. As World War II demonstrated, at a time when Japan was far less dependent on 

imports than it will be over the next 20 years, it is also vulnerable to blockade and to interruption of its 

SLOCs. The Japanese would be hard pressed to build a navy large enough to protect them and such an 
effort would cause major economic dislocations. Thus, even the faint possibility of an end to the 

American defense of Japan is enough to cause worry.

Japanese competitiveness is decreasing for myriad reasons, including a graying population, rising 

welfare, social security and health costs. But the principal challenge to Japanese competitiveness may 

stem from Japan's unprecedented over investment in its financial and corporate markets and the yen's 

over appreciation. These facts force an excessive allocation of resources towards production and away 

from domestic consumption, despite the younger generation's demand for more comforts and less toil 

than their hardworking parents and grandparents experienced. Much increased travel abroad over the 

past 10 years has made it clear to the Japanese that their lives are far harder than in supposedly poorer 

European and North American countries. Thus, the end to monolithic Liberal Democratic party rule and 

the emergence of a true multiparty system are also a threat to Japanese competitiveness.

Although both defense spending and military activity continue to face severe political restraints in Japan, 

the emergence of a multiparty system may eventually lead to an marked increase in the size, mission and 

capability of the Japanese Self Defense Forces. The Socialists, the party representing the core of 

Japanese antimilitary and pro-isolationist sentiments, have already largely abandoned these attitudes in 

order to remain a political force. More significant is that, despite deep-seated pacifism among most 

Japanese adults, younger Japanese do not have personal memories of the Second World War or the hard 

years of the Occupation. They are far more willing for Japan to act as a "normal country," with 

"multidimensional" powers, within certain cautious limits. The older Japanese bureaucracy is even more 

cautious in such matters. Nonetheless, it seems very likely that the Japanese constitution will be 

reinterpreted, and possibly amended, in the next 10 to 15 years, in order to permit the government more 

freedom in defense matters and in the use of armed force.

But there seems to be no question that, regardless of Japanese foreign and security policy over the next 

20 years, Japan will remain a healthy democracy. In fact, as the outline of a stable multiparty system 

emerges after two or more general elections, Japan is likely to embark on the next century as one of the 

world's great free-market democracies.

The continuing possibility of upheaval on the Korean peninsula, as well as the longer-term possibility of 

a united and nuclear-armed Korea, is also pushing the Japanese toward a strengthening of their armed 

forces, greater participation in regional and world affairs, and a desire to gain a permanent seat on the 

Security Council. Korean-Japanese antagonism remains strong, and many Japanese think that they can 

no longer be certain of indefinite American protection and mediation between them and the Koreans. 

The more Japan enjoys the attributes of a normal great power, the less reason it has to fear Korea or even 

a possible anti-Japanese Korean-Chinese alliance. However, the possibility of such a coalition aimed at 

Japan undoubtedly has made some Japanese think seriously about the security implications.

Another motive for major Japanese increases in defense spending is their worry over the future of 

Russia. Either the breakup of Russia or its return to imperialism would threaten Japanese interests. 

Russia remains the world's major potential source of nuclear proliferation. In the longer term, the 
disintegration of Russia would remove a significant counterweight to Chinese military power in Asia. 

On the other hand, given the historic hostility between Russians and Japanese and the ongoing Japanese 

claims to the Russian-occupied southern Kuriles, an expansionist Russia would be perceived as a grave 

threat in Japan.

The Sino-Japanese relationship could very well replace that between Japan and the United States as the 

most important concern of Japanese foreign policy by 2015. This could be true, even if the AmericanJapanese security relationship were strengthened in response to a Chinese military threat. The growth of 

the Chinese economy is paralleled by the growth of Sino-Japanese economic links; a stable and 

prosperous China is in the Japanese national interest. But if the Chinese economy does advance to the 

degree that some analysts predict by 2015, it would dwarf and even threaten the Japanese economy. A 

rich China would almost certainly be a very powerful China. Underneath even the closest economic 

cooperation between such a China and Japan, mutual antagonism and competition would remain strong. 

Japan will have to learn how to manage such a relationship on its own. For the moment, at least, Chinese 

leaders are very skillful at manipulating the historic legacy of Japanese guilt to their own ends. The 

trauma of 1945 continues to make the Japanese extremely uncertain of the degree to which they can trust 

themselves to behave rationally in an independent national manner. The Japanese are probably even 

more aware than foreigners of how strong Japanese nationalism, racism, and xenophobia still are. But as 

uncomfortable as the Japanese are at making their own decisions and acting as world leaders, they will 

have little choice over the next two decades. Despite great efforts to avoid it, the Japanese must now 

import rice, a fact with immense symbolic meaning for the Japanese. Seafood is becoming more scarce 

in nearby Japanese waters and must be harvested in sea areas claimed by others. As mentioned, although 

the degree of interdependence between the Japanese and Chinese economies is growing greater by the 

day, Japan cannot afford to lose its American markets. Thus, even to feed themselves and their 

industries, the Japanese will depend on good relations with China, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, and the 

United States.

The Japanese face tremendous pressure not to remain neutral in case of a conflict on the Korean 

peninsula or a crisis between China and Taiwan or between China and the United States. Nor can they 

necessarily just follow the American lead in such circumstances. Japanese and American interests might 

differ too greatly. There are a number of signs that the Japanese leadership is quite aware of the need to 

forge a completely independent foreign and security policy. Already, in the past 5 years or so, East 

Asians have been noting a far greater degree of Japanese assertiveness than at any time since 1945. This 

change in attitude is beginning to penetrate into the average Japanese mentality, although it may take a 

decade or longer to make a significant difference.

Nonetheless, even if Japan assumes all the responsibilities of a completely sovereign state and takes on 

all the characteristics of a great power, it likely will seek to maintain its close security relationship with 

the United States. The Japanese will remain aware that any alternative to the preservation of the 

American-Japanese alliance offers them far more disadvantages than advantages. What is far less certain 

is whether or not the United States will preserve that relationship. Thus, there are several alternative 

possibilities for the future of Japan in 2015.
ALTERNATIVES

1. Japan, an American Ally

Japan might remain allied to the United States, but the partnership would probably be a far more equal 

one - although still probably not more symmetrical in 2015. In cooperation with its ally, Japan might 

have acquired a theater antimissile defense system and could maintain a reconnaissance satellite system. 

The American naval presence in the Western Pacific could have relatively diminished capability next to 

that of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. Japan may not have any other formal military 

alliances, but it probably would have close ties to the ASEAN states and would cooperate militarily with 

several of them, especially Thailand and Indonesia. Japanese-Australian security cooperation could also 

be close. And, depending on the challenge posed by either Russia or China, Japan could even have a 

cooperative military relationship with Seoul.

The Japanese constitution could have been reinterpreted to allow combat operations in the event of 

regional crises, but the prohibition of war as an instrument of national policy would probably be 

maintained (a more symbolic gesture than one of real value.). Japan would have gained a permanent seat 

on the Security Council and would participate routinely in U.N. military operations, but to offset its 

increased power projection capabilities, the Japanese government would try to avoid any military 

measures that upset its neighbors. In particular, the Japanese would be very solicitous of Chinese 

feelings. Because of the increase in the size of the Japanese navy over the previous 20 years, Japan 

would try to avoid actions suggesting cooperation with the Indian or Indonesian navies to threaten 

Chinese SLOCs.

Japan would respond to a Chinese or Korean threat by adhering more closely with the United States, but 

the Japanese would do nothing militarily to take advantage of Chinese or Korean weaknesses, in case 

problems developed on the Asian mainland. Unless China proved vulnerable, Japan would avoid 

involvement in any Russo-Chinese imbroglio. If the United States did become involved, Japan would 

offer diplomatic and economic support, but would avoid committing forces of its own. Only in the case 

of dire threat from China would Japan take decisive action on its own. This might involve taking part in 

an anti-Chinese alliance linking Japan to Indonesia, India, Russia, possibly Korea, and possibly the 

United States as a full member of the coalition. The United States would usually defer to Japanese 

interests in Asia, and Japan would follow the American lead in other parts of the world.

Despite its alliance with the United States, this Japan might have closer economic ties with China. The 

Chinese economy might have grown larger than the American and the volume of Sino-Japanese trade 

might exceed that between the United States and Japan. Furthermore, Japan might be extending China a 

great deal of technical assistance to control pollution, to increase crop yields, to improve transport and 

communications and to conduct geological surveys. The Japanese also might do what they could to 

encourage liberalization and democratization in China. The more China approached the status of a 

liberal democratic consumer society, the better it would be for Japanese security and prosperity.
To an extent, Japan would be enhancing its independence by balancing its security relationship to the 

United States with its economic and political relationship with China. China, as the rising power, would 

undoubtedly find it beneficial to play the world's two leading free-market democracies against one 

another. Whenever serious American-Chinese friction threatened, Japan might offer itself as the 

mediator. To a great extent, the peace of the world would rest on the triangular Beijing-TokyoWashington balance of economic and military power.

2. A Renationalized Japan

For a variety of reasons, the U.S.-Japan security relationship might not survive until 2015. Under such 

circumstances, Japan would have to see to its own defense. So long as the American-Japanese 

relationship was not a hostile one and Japan did not feel particularly threatened by Russia or China, 

Japanese rearmament might be held within moderate limits, at least at first. But the very fact that Japan 

had decoupled from the United States might create great fear in East Asia and prompt a regional arms 

buildup. In turn, particularly if Korean and Chinese armament levels upset Japanese public opinion, a 

full-scale arms race might break out in East Asia. Japan and China might seek allies against each other 

and all Asia might be divided into two mutually hostile coalitions.

Historical and cultural attitudes could determine how East Asia would divide. Those countries that had 

suffered most at Japanese hands before or during World War II or had close cultural ties with China 

would likely side with Beijing: Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Cambodia, and Burma. Countries 

with close economic ties to Japan, with populations of strong anti-Chinese bias, or with reason to fear 

Beijing might side with Japan: Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. Some countries like Taiwan or 

Malaysia would try desperately to remain neutral but might find that impossible.

Under the circumstances, it would be likely that Japan would acquire weapons of mass destruction. 

While the Japanese might consider alliance with a nuclear power like Russia or India as an alternative, 

their experience with the United States as an ally would almost certainly dissuade them. As a way to try 

to minimize the impact of such a move on the Japanese population and to reduce the chances of a 

Chinese nuclear strike against Japanese territory, the Japanese might base their weapons of mass 

destruction entirely in space.

Japan might try to surround China with a coalition of Indonesia, India, Russia and itself. Given its 

manpower shortages but technological and economic advantages, the major Japanese contributions to 

the alliance would be money and its air, maritime and space forces. The Russians and Indians would 

provide the bulk of the land forces. The Japanese navy, along with those of Indonesia and India, would 

threaten China with the interruption of its access to outside oil supplies. Japan would likely build nuclear 

submarines and aircraft carriers.

Given the preexisting antagonisms between China and Japan, such a bipolar division of Asia would be 

very dangerous, particularly if the United States reduced its military engagement in the region. If one or 

the other country sensed an imminent change in the balance of power between them, fear could trigger a 
conflict. The results might prove disastrous for the entire world.

3. Japan, A Great Power

Japan might retain its alliance with the United States but still pursue far more autonomous foreign and 

security policies than it has over the past 50 years. Suspicions about anti-Japanese feelings in the United 

States, anti-American feelings in Japan, trade friction, fear that the United States might come to see 

China as a more valuable partner than Japan, increased Japanese national pride, and a sense that 

American society was slowly decaying might all combine to lessen Japanese respect for the United 

States and raise doubts about its reliability. But the Japanese are prudent_they might consider the 

continuation of the American-Japanese security relationship useful for the moment and dangerous to end 

abruptly. At the same time, the Japanese might take steps to allow them to break with the United States 

and provide for their own defense, if necessary.

The resulting American-Japanese relationship might be marked by a peculiar mixture of honesty and 

deceit, of cooperation and rivalry. The Japanese might greatly expand their intelligence organizations 

and create an independent surveillance satellite system, relying far less on American support in these 

matters. They might conduct major offensive intelligence operations in the United States. The Japanese 

might engage in covert cooperation with the Russians and Chinese, sometimes to the detriment of 

American interests. The Japanese might hide the true size of their defense spending from the Americans, 

burying military expenses in the budgets of other agencies and ministries. At the same time, to alleviate 

American concerns about burden sharing, the Japanese could still greatly increase their participation in 

their own defense, particularly by an expansion of their fleet. The reach of the Japanese navy could be 

extended far beyond the 1,000-mile limit. The navy might purchase sea-control carriers and sealift ships 

and the air force might acquire long-range transport and aerial refueling capabilities The Japanese might 

even begin a covert nuclear weapons program, or perhaps a new kind of unconventional weapon of mass 

destruction, as insurance against a collapse of their alliance with the Americans.

Yet the Japanese might continue to rely heavily on the American nuclear umbrella and on the U.S. Navy 

for protection. Japan could benefit in its relations with other Asian countries from the appearance of 

being kept under control by the Americans. Japanese defense expenditures might rise above the virtually 

sacred limit of one percent of GNP, but still not to the level of American expenditures, thereby saving 

the Japanese a great deal of money. In case of serious threats to American and Japanese interests in the 

Western Pacific, the two countries could still rally to each other's assistance, but in the ordinary course 

of events, the allies might be quite competitive. Such a relationship might continue indefinitely past 

2015. Or it might mark a station on the Japanese road to renationalization. Much would depend on the 

degree to which China might challenge Japan and Japanese perceptions of American reliability in such a 

case.

INDICATORS

Some indicators can be listed to help gauge the future toward which Japan is going.
oA stable two-party political system. As the next few elections test and promote recent electoral reforms, 

the outline of a stable multi-party democratic system may take hold in Japan as it begins the twenty-first 

century. If so, this development could make it easier for Japan to gradually expand its contributions to 

regional and global security.

oThe acquisition of "balanced" self-defense force capabilities. If the SDF shifts its priorities to the 

acquisition of more "balanced" capabilities, permitting more autonomous military capabilities, this could 

presage a more assertive Japan in regional or global affairs. Such capabilities - e.g., long-range airlift, 

sealift, theater missile defense, etc. - could be advantageous to U.S. interests if they were developed and 

used within the context of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty and did not unduly upset Japan's 

neighbors.

oIncreasing frictions in the Japan-United States security relationship. Despite growing tensions over the 

trade imbalance and other economic issues, the U.S.-Japan security relationship has remained healthy. 

Nonetheless, there increasingly could be spillover from economic tensions into the security relationship. 

Even if a $60 billion trade imbalance is not deemed to be significant in economic terms, it would be 

bound to have a corrosive effect on the long-term viability of the alliance. Similarly, growing tensions 

over security or political issues--such as the production of Japan's FSX fighter, two-way technology 

flow, regional security architecture, or alliance roles and missions--could also indicate that the alliance 

was facing serious trouble.

oJapanese breakthroughs in technology. If the Japanese were to succeed in solving one or more of their 

major national problems with a dramatic advance in technology, their power and independence could 

significantly increase. Some examples of developments that would greatly alter Japan's international 

status include cold fusion power, superconductivity and robotics. These particular advances in 

technology would end Japanese dependence on imported oil and solve problems caused by Japan's 

manpower shortages. Japanese economic and military power would be greatly enhanced and it might 

detach itself from its close relationship with the United States as a result.

oJapanese behavior during a major crisis. The degree to which Japan supported or opposed American 

policies during such threats to the peace of East Asia as a major crisis on the Korean Peninsula or 

between Taiwan and China would provide major evidence of Japanese attitudes toward the United 

States, China and their own security. If the American and Japanese responses to a major regional or 

international crisis was at sharp variance, then the result would likely be to promote major political 

change in Japan and to accelerate Japan as a more normal nation. Depending on the dexterity of leaders 

managing the alliance, such political change could be either a fillip to the bilateral alliance or lead to its 

abrupt demise.

o A Japanese nuclear weapons program. The significance of such a drastic change in Japanese policy 

would be self-evident. Presumably such a departure from Japan's postwar policy of three non-nuclear 

principles would be preceded by the perceived failure or termination of the U.S. nuclear umbrella to 

Japan. It is hard to imagine how an independent nuclear option on the part of Japan could be anything 
but highly destabilizing.

oA covert military space program. A clandestine military space program would indicate that the 

Japanese no longer believed that they could rely on the United States for protection or the sharing of 

satellite intelligence. The development of "dual-use" space technology by the Japanese would indicate 

an attempt to hide their plans for military uses of space.

oEmbellished portrayal of national symbols. The degree to which the Japanese Emperor acts and is 

treated as a typical constitutional head of state is significant. Any increase of Emperor worship or even 

excessively reverential treatment would be a sign of growing Japanese nationalism. The more the truth is 

admitted about Hirohito's role in approving Japanese aggression in the 1930s and 1940s, the better it 

would be from the American perspective. But a distinction between justifications for Japanese 

aggression against the Chinese and the West would be of particular significance. Moreover, increasing 

visits by Japanese officials to the Yasukuni Shrine, especially by defense and foreign ministry officials, 

would indicate disregard for Chinese, Korean and American sensitivities and possibly indicate a 

dangerous rise in Japanese militarism.

oThe sale of Japanese weapons abroad. A departure from Japan's postwar policy prohibiting the sale of 

weapons abroad (other than to the United States) would suggest a far more confident and nationalistic 

Japan. Such a policy could concomitantly be the result of U.S. pressure to see Japan play a more active 

security role and also signify that the Japanese were preparing to erect a security system independent of 

the United States. The more arms - or even information-based technologies that could support modern 

military forces - the Japanese sold abroad, the more of a danger signal it would represent. Sales to 

enemies of the United States in the Middle East would be particularly significant.

oA greatly increased intelligence capability. This may or may not be another sign that the Japanese were 

preparing to separate from the United States. Once again, the key would be whether or not the Japanese 

shared their intelligence with us. Similarly, the enhancement of indigenous weapons programs would 

suggest that the Japanese were losing trust in the United States and were preparing to be fully 

independent of American arms sources.

oRescindment of the tacit 1-percent-of-GNP limit on defense spending. This could represent a major 

sign of an increase in Japanese nationalism and self-confidence. Depending on the circumstances, if the 

increases were great enough, it would indicate a resurgence of Japanese militarism and aggression. But 

clearly this would depend on the level of threat--for instance, from an assertive China - and the degree to 

which it was done within the context of the bilateral security framework.

oThe creation of a true general staff and/or the upgrading of the defense agency to ministry level. Such 

moves could be made only with the approval of the Japanese people. They would indicate a great 

upsurge in national feeling, a great sense of vulnerability, or both. Since the United States has opposed 

the elevation of the Defense Agency, such a decision could be interpreted as anti-American.
oThe degree of Japanese investment in China. The signals that such high investment would offer would 

depend on Chinese foreign and security policies. If these investments went to an aggressive China, they 

might indicate Japan was forging a relationship with China at American expense. In times of good 

Chinese behavior, such investments would indicate a Japanese attempt to create a healthy, restraining 

influence on China.

oElevation to permanent United Nations Security Council membership. Such an event would signal that 

Japan had become a normal nation again. Recently, Japanese diplomats have come close to demanding a 

seat but insisting that they are remorseful for Japan's aggression against China and for its responsibility 

for starting the Great Pacific War. A real indicator of where Japan is headed would be their actions and 

attitudes once ensconced permanently in the Security Council. Obviously, if the Japanese acquire their 

seat, they would be obliged to participate in U.N. military operations. But Japanese behavior during such 

missions would be highly suggestive. One tendency to watch for would be Japanese use of such 

missions to camouflage nationalistic intervention in Asian affairs. How would the Japanese use their 

veto? If they opposed the United States in the Security Council, the frequency of the use of the Japanese 

veto and issues over which they employed it would be very illustrative of their foreign and security 

policy intentions.

oThe return of the southern Kurile Islands to Japan. For Russia to do this would indicate that Russia was 

in great need of Japanese assistance and that the Japanese had indicated that they were prepared to grant 

such aid. Such an event might signal a decision by Russia and Japan to cooperate against China.

oIncreased Japanese naval cooperation with Indonesia and India. This would also indicate Japanese 

preparations for cooperation against China. But if such joint training exercises or other cooperation took 

place while India was demanding American withdrawal from Diego Garcia, it would suggest strongly a 

Japanese return to the doctrine of "Asia for the Asians," a thinly disguised version of Japanese neoimperialism.

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What's New 
Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

BRIAN R SULLIVAN

Brian R. Sullivan is a social science analyst for the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National 

Defense University. Previously he taught military history at Yale University and strategy at the Naval 

War College. He is the co-author of Il Duce's Other Woman (William Morrow, 1993) and numerous 

articles on Italian military, naval, diplomatic, and colonial history. Dr. Sullivan received his Ph.D. in 

modern European history from Columbia University. 
Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

II. ENVIRONMENT

Patrick L. Clawson

1. DEMOGRAPHIC STRESSES

Part I examined the great powers and the challenges they might pose to U.S. interests. Part II also examines 

potential sources of conflict: conflicts stemming from broad, environment-related stresses involving disturbances 

in the ecological balance between humanity and nature.

Society can be stressed by population growth but also by other population dynamics, such as the structure and 

distribution of population. To a demographer, population structure means the distribution of a given population 

by age and gender. Distribution refers to the spatial distribution of population, such as rural-urban or regional 

balance within a country or the movement of people among countries. This section examines three types of 

stresses: from population growth, from changing population structure (the bulge in working-age adults), and 

from population distribution (mass migration).

POPULATION GROWTH

The global rate of population growth is slowing and is likely to continue to slow for decades to come. Table 1 

shows that the world's population grew 1.90 percent between 1954 and 1974, fell to 1.73 percent from 1974 to 

1994 and is on track to fall further to 1.35 percent from 1994 to 2014. These data are from the U.S. Census 

Bureau; the estimates from the other two major sources of population data, the World Bank, and the United 

Nations Fund for Population Activities, are quite similar. (Note 1) 

The explanation for the declining rate of population growth is a fall off in birth rates. The number of children a 

woman will have during her lifetime is called the fertility rate. According to World Bank data, the global average 
fertility rate declined by one-third from 1970 to 1992: women formerly had 4.9 children on average, but only 3.1 

by the end of the period. The fertility rate in the developed world fell from 2.4 to 1.7, below the replacement rate 

of 2.1-2.2. But there was also a systematic decline in fertility in developing countries in every part of the world. 

That decline started in the 1970s in East Asia, with remarkable declines in South Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong 

Kong, Singapore. It later spread to South Asia and Latin America. Middle East fertility rates plummeted quickly 

from the mid-1980s. Sub-Saharan African fertility rates have declined the least of any part of the world, but they 

too have fallen.

This trend led to this conclusion: (Note 2) 

The developing world is undergoing a reproductive revolution.... Recent evidence suggests that birth rates in the 

developing world have fallen even in the absence of improved living conditions. The decrease also proceeded 

with remarkable speed. Developing countries appear to have benefited from the growing scope of familyplanning programs, from new contraceptive technologies and from the educational power of mass media.

While the population growth rate has fallen, the absolute number of people being added each year to the world 

population is still increasing. As table 1 shows, the global population increased 1,637 million from 1974 to 1994 

and it will increase 1,744 million from 1994 to 2014. The explanation is "demographic momentums" the number 

of women entering child-bearing years is rising fast enough to offset the drop in the number of children per 

woman. The demographic momentum will continue in and beyond 2015. In the next 20 years, the number of 

births each year will grow only slowly, from about 130 million in 1994 to about 140 million in 2015. That slow 

growth will reflect the expected continuing decline in fertility rates, offset by the 20 percent increase in the 

number of women entering child-bearing years (from 51 million to 62 million).
If the falling population growth rate is the big news, the more often-told population story is the change in the 

distribution among regions. In the next 20 years, the share of the developed world in global population will 

decline from 22 to 18 percent. Of more interest, the generally mid-income or high-growth developing regions 

will also see their share of world population decline, from 39 to 36 percent. The area that will increase its share 

in world population is the "poverty belt" that extends from Bangladesh west across the Middle East and south 

across Africa to the Gape of Good Hope. Its proportion of world population will increase from 39 percent in 

1994 to 46 percent in 2015; it will account for 68 percent of world population growth during those 20 years.

The change in the distribution of the world's population is, as such things go, quite dramatic. There is an 

intuitively appealing notion that those countries with more rapidly growing population will want to take 

resources away from those states with less rapidly growing population. However, the parts of the world with the 

most rapid population growth are generally the poorest areas with the least military might. That suggests the 

rapidly growing states are not well positioned to cause conventional military problems for the slow-growing 

states. Furthermore, the states with rapid population growth are grouped in one swath of the world, which means 

that only a few such states have borders with the slow population-growth states. The potential for conventional 

military conflict seems greatest along that border, which runs from the Indian Ocean along the eastern edge of 

India, across the southern edge of the former Soviet Union, and through the Mediterranean out to the Atlantic.

THE BULGE IN WORKING-AGE ADULTS

As a result of the rapid population growth in the last few decades plus the more recent slowdown in the rate of 

growth, the age structure of the world population is going to change over the next 20 years. Table 4 shows that 

the number of children is unlikely to experience significant growth. The number of those turning age 2 will go 

from 127 million in 1994 to 139 million in 2015, a growth of only 12 million or 9 percent. On the other hand, the 
number of elderly will be growing rapidly. Those turning age 67 numbered 27 million in 1994 but should be 45 

million in 2015, an increase of 18 million or 67 percent. In absolute numbers, the largest growth will be in the 

age groups in their prime earning years, between the late teens and the mid fifties. For instance, those turning 52 

will increase from 45 million in 1994 to about 77 million in 2015.

The effect of this change in age structure will be to create a much larger group of working-age adults. The 

International Labor Office (ILO) made an estimate of how this will change the world labor force, factoring in 

expected changes in the percent of men and women of working age who are in the labor force (what economists 

call the labor force participation rate). At first glance, it does not seem that the period 1995-2015 will be very 

different from the period 1974-1994: in the next 20 years, the world labor force will grow by 783 million, while 

in the last 20 years, it grew by 767 million. In other words, it looks like the increase in the number of the elderly 

will offset the increase in the number of young adults.
But the picture changes sharply when we look at the numbers more closely. What we find is two groups of 

countries going very different ways. The first group is the developed world and China, in which the labor force is 

going to be growing slowly. In this group of countries, the population is aging: many people are retiring, and 

there are relatively few young adults because births fell off by the 1970s. The situation is entirely different in the 

second group of countries, i.e., the developing world outside of China. These countries are experiencing an 

explosion in the labor force. In the period 1950-1970, their labor force grew by 10 million people a year; in the 

period 1970-1990, their labor force grew by 20 million people a year; and in the period 1990-2010, it will grow 

by 30 million people a year. Over the 20-year period 1950-1970, that translates into 206 million; 1970-1990, 406 

million; and 1990-2010, 604 million.
The developing world outside of China is unlikely to be able to create sufficient jobs to absorb the 30 million 

people joining the labor force each year. Keeping up with the labor force growth was difficult enough in the 

period 1950-1970, when there were only 10 million new workers a year and when the world economy was 

expanding at a rapid rate. In the period 1970-1990, as the world economy (outside of East Asia) slowed and as 

the number of new workers rose steeply, unemployment and underemployment grew.

Perhaps an increase in unemployment and underemployment in the period 1990-2010 can be avoided, if world 

economic activity grows more rapidly, if developed countries permit more imports of labor-intensive products 

like garments, and if developing country governments adopt policies to promote job creation (for instance, 

encouraging labor-intensive industries instead of showcase, capital-intensive projects). However, the most likely 

prospect for the next 20 years is a substantial increase in those looking in vain for productive employment in the 

developing world outside of China. Many of these people will fill their time with peddling or offering to do odd 

jobs. They may not be unemployed in a strict sense, but they will be so severely under employed, at such a lowincome level relative to their potential, that they might as wed be considered unemployed.
The problem of unemployment and underemployment is likely to be concentrated among young adults, unable to 

get a start in the working world, rather than among middle-aged or older workers (layoffs of older workers has 

been rather uncommon in the developing world). Unemployed young adults can pose a serious political problem, 

because this is the group with the fewest ties to the established order (e.g., fewer family obligations) and most 

sympathetic to idealistic political radicalism. An example of this problem can be seen in the violence in Algeria, 

which has its roots as much in youth unemployment as in any religious fervor. Under the base-case scenario, in 

the developing world outside of China we can expect an increase in domestic political violence from under 

employed youths under the influence of radical extremists.

In those developing countries where the bulge in the working-age population is put to effective use, the economic 

future is bright. The demographic transition offers an opening for rapid growth during the generation when the 

proportion of those in the labor force is at a record high the proportion of children have fallen, while the share of 

the elderly in the population has not yet risen. Demography makes use of the concept of the dependency ratio, 

that is, the ratio of the population not in the labor force to the population in the labor force. China, which is in the 

midst of the demographic period favorable to growth, has a dependency ratio of 0.66 (463 million not in the 

labor force; 699 million in it), according to the World Bank (World Development Report 1994; data for 1992). 

sub-Saharan Africa has a dependency ratio of 1.45 (321 million not in the labor force; 222 million in it). That 

means every three people in the Chinese labor force support two dependents, while every three Africans in the 

labor force support four dependents. That difference explains part of the reason that China's economic growth 

rate has been more rapid than Africa's. In 2015, numerous developing countries will be in the favorable 

demographic situation China now enjoys. Some of these developing countries may be able to make effective use 

of the opportunity provided by the low dependency ratio.

Turning from the working-age population to the elderly, the immediate effect of the fall in the fertility rate can be 
positive. The elderly can do very well, because their adult children with few children of their own can readily 

afford to support their parents. This phenomenon is quite common in contemporary China. By 2015, China will 

face a new demographic situation, which other developing countries will reach some decades later: the elderly 

will be such a significant proportion of, the population that they will have to sustain themselves from their own 

savings, rather than relying on support from their adult children. Generating those savings will be a major 

challenge. If sufficient savings can be set aside now, investment funds will permit more rapid job growth now 

and will generate earnings that can sustain the elderly later. On the other hand, a savings shortfall could lead to 

unrest later as the elderly's needs place a heavier and heavier burden on society. China, the developing country 

now facing most acutely this savings challenge, has risen to the occasion. Numerous other developing countriese.g., much of Latin America will by 2015 be in the situation China is in today. It is not clear if they will have the 

same SUCCESS China has had at generating the necessary savings to create jobs and to provide for the elderly 

later.

These forecasts about world population are based on the consensus forecast of the impact of AIDS and other 

global epidemics. If in fact the incidence of such epidemics is greater than expected, the effect would be to 

reduce the population growth rate faster than expected, which would reduce population pressures even more 

rapidly than in the base case considered here. Those most likely to die would be the young, especially infants, 

though that may be somewhat less true for AIDS than for other epidemics. However, in the developing world, 

AIDS kills primarily infants affected at birth and sexually active young adults, who die in their thirties. 

Epidemics also affect the elderly, but the greatest expected impact of epidemics would be in the countries with 

the poorest medical systems, where the elderly form a small part of the population. Because those who die in 

epidemics are most likely to be the young, the share of the elderly in the world population would probably be 

greater than in the base case. The effect on the labor force is not as clear. To the extent that future epidemics kill 

the retired elderly, they would not affect the labor force at all; to the extent they kill infants, they would not affect 

the labor force until after 2015; but to the extent that they kill the sexually active young, they would reduce the 

labor force immediately.

MIGRATION

One important aspect of international migration is and will continue to be the steady movement of people 

seeking a better life abroad. The number of such migrants is likely to grow for various reasons. Borders are 

becoming more porous because of the spread of liberal values like freedom of movement; few governments have 

the tight control on foreign travel common to the old communist bloc. Technological advances are making 

communication and transportation easier and cheaper. Migrant communities in host countries develop social 

networks across borders, creating a social infrastructure for further migration. Migrants are driven by the 

deterioration in economic circumstances in the unsuccessful states and by the increasing disparity between the 

unsuccessful and the successful economies. Furthermore, political unrest is becoming more common in 

unsuccessful states, from the fringes of the old Soviet empire to sub-Saharan Africa.

While such migrant flows are undoubtedly an important social problem, it is not obvious that the U.S. military 

will be asked to play a major role in responding to that problem. Consider the migrant flow into the United 

States. A large part of the flow into the United States is by legal migrants, for which there is no military role. The 

most likely area for a military role is guarding the border from illegal crossings, more of a police function than a 

conventional military role, especially since it is unlikely that those crossing the border will use weapons (other 

than side arms and the occasional rifle) to fend off those patrolling the borders. Since World War II, quasi-police 

functions have been rarely performed by the U.S. military, other than by the Coast Guard and the National Guard.
The most likely role for the U.S. military is in responding to refugee problems, especially sudden waves of 

refugees. These waves can produce humanitarian disasters that are brought to the world's attention by television 

coverage that emphasizes horrific images. It is instructive that those conflicts that cannot be covered by 

television, such as the conflict in southern Sudan, receive less attention from policy makers than do those from 

which pictures are beamed into our living rooms. Policy makers, leery of intervention, can find themselves 

forced by television-generated public pressure to send in military units. In other words, the U.S. military may be 

asked to respond to refugee waves anywhere in the world. 

Such mass exoduses will occur more often for several reasons: O Better communication allows large groups to 

learn quickly of impending political troubles, and therefore to flee at about the same time.

O From experiences like those of Hutus in Rwanda fleeing to Zaire or the Kurds in Iraq fleeing to Turkey, people 

the world over have learned that mass movements are a good way to get the world's attention and to overwhelm 

controls in the destination countries.

O Some governments will provoke refugee flows. (Note 3) Assaults on the food supply have been a key military 

strategy in some African conflicts as a means to deprive rebel movements of recruits and to force the exodus of 

civilians from the conflict zone. The threat of causing a refugee outflow can be used as a bargaining chip to 

secure economic aid or political concessions from the likely destination countries or the international 

community. Refugees can be used to assert de facto control over the areas to where they move (e.g., across the 

border into a neighboring country

O Some governments will welcome refugee inflows. The presence of famine has brought international relief, the 

diversion of which became a key source for financing wars in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and Mozambique.

O Some rebel groups will encourage refugee departures at times. Refugee camps provide fertile grounds for their 

propaganda and for recruiting soldiers. Refugee camps can also serve as useful base camps for "refugee 

warriors," providing safe areas for recuperation and training as well as a potential logistics center.

Sources of Migrants

Over the past two decades there has been an alarming increase in refugees in the world. The total rose from 2.8 

million in 1976, to 8.6 million in 1980 to over 19 million in 1994. According to the United Nations High 

Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), during 1994 an average of 10,000 people a day became refugees, even 

using the narrow definition of refugee contained in the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention. The number of refugees 

is likely to grow.

While the risks of future East-West refugee movements are considerable, most migration experts believe that, in 

the long term migratory pressure to the North from the South will be far stronger than from the East. Most future 

refugee movements will occur either as a result of demands for democratization in many parts of the developing 

and post Communist worlds or as a result of the communal violence and the fragmentation of existing states 

caused by nationality disputes and ethnic and religious conflicts. Political upheavals in unstable regions will be 

exacerbated by the diffusion of weapons via the amps trade from the advanced to the developing world.

Middle East. European policy makers in particular are concerned that large-scale immigration from North Africa 
and the Middle East will have dangerous social and political consequences. Opposition to migrants is a major 

feature of contemporary European politics. To many Europeans the presence of large Islamic communities raises 

key questions about nationality and cultural pluralism. Fear of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, increasing 

violence between migrants and local populations, and the growing popularity of extremist right-wing, antiimmigrant political parties are impeding the assimilation of the millions of Muslim migrants and their families 

now living in Western Europe. In 1950, Muslim refugees represented only 12 percent of the world's refugee 

population. In 1970, they made up 50 percent. In 1990, almost 75 percent of the world's refugees were Muslim. 

Given the likely future increase in the number of Islamic Fundamentalist movements both in the former Soviet 

Union and elsewhere, the total number of Muslim refugees could represent well over 90 percent of the world's 

forcibly displaced people by the end of first decade of the 21st century. Future domestic and regional instability 

in the Middle East is also likely to generate new flows of refugees to neighboring countries and Europe. Most 

regimes in the region lack legitimacy and are moving toward domestic crises as they fail to meet popular 

demands for improved economic and social conditions or pressures for more political participation. Future 

political change in the region will in turn provoke major social change as old elites lose their grip on power and 

are forced to give way to new groups, including ethnic and religious minorities. Political changes of this kind 

usually produce large refugee movements consisting of entire classes of people who are linked to the old order.

Western Hemisphere. Several countries have the potential to expel refugees or to generate forced migrants. 

Haiti and Cuba present the gravest risk of uncontrolled mass movements to the United States in the near future. 

However, the United States, with the highest standard of living in the Western Hemisphere and a tradition of 

political freedom, will draw many aliens from all over the world to its borders.

China. The increased smuggling of Chinese nationals into the United States by international criminal rings is 

perhaps the most dramatic example of the global "pull" of the United States. Continued Chinese emigration in 

the years ahead is extremely likely given the political instability and the breakdown of central control that will 

probably occur in China after the death of Deng Xiaoping. Dramatic economic and social change in China is 

already spurring an annual exodus of tens of thousands of Chinese seeking opportunity or political freedom 

abroad. China's internal migrant population, made up mainly of unemployed peasants, has grown to more than 

100 million and is increasing by perhaps 13 million a year. If these internal migrants are unable to find 

employment, they will look to emigration as an increasingly attractive and viable option. Indeed, the Chinese 

government will come to see out-migration as a safety valve against overpopulation, unemployment and internal 

migration from the countryside to the cities.

Africa. Even if democratization succeeds in Africa, it does not mean that there will be an end to ethnic conflicts 

and Refugee movements. Indeed, democratization may in fact be destabilizing-especially if the process of 

liberalization gives free rein to demands from national minorities for greater autonomy or secession. Thus, it is 

likely that with the end or weakening of authoritarian regimes across Africa, long-repressed factional grievances 

and antagonisms will result in increased conflicts as groups contend for control of the political systems.

Absorption

Migration has always been a major component in U.S. population growth, and it has in this century become an 

important factor in the population growth of most northern European countries. The willingness, if not eagerness, 

of these countries to accept a continuing flow of migrants is not likely to change. The southern European 

countries are in the process of becoming significant destinations for migration, leaving Japan as the odd man out 

among the industrial countries in attitude towards migration.
In the last 20 years, developing countries have been host to most of the world's refugees; indeed, they have been 

the largest recipients of migrants as a whole. That is primarily a function of proximity to the migrant and refugee 

sources. For instance, when 50,000 Tadzhik refugees fled to Afghanistan during the Tadzhik civil war in autumn 

1992, that was not because of a strong desire to live in Afghanistan. Because Africa and the Middle East are 

likely to continue to be the sources of most of the world's migrants and refugees, their countries are also likely to 

continue to host most of the world's migrants and refugees. An important political and social issue will be 

whether the large number of Chinese now on the move will start heading into the traditional countries of Chinese 

emigration in Southeast Asia, which could create both social and political tensions in countries with important 

Chinese business communities that hold little political power at present (e.g., Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and 

Vietnam).

The willingness of the host countries to absorb migrants is likely to fall significantly short of the demand for 

spaces, and the demand is likely to rise. At the same time, unemployment problems in the industrial nations are 

likely to continue for at least another decade under the most optimistic scenarios, while in the developing world, 

job creation will probably fall significantly short of need.

This gap between migrant demand for reception and industrial country willingness to supply space will pose a 

particular problem in the event of a sudden refugee exodus. In theory, most countries have accepted the 

obligation to permit entry without limit to those fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country 

and to allow temporary residence until the danger of persecution at home passes. In practice, this right was aimed 

at refugees from Communist lands and only applied to others as convenient (e.g., by Somalia's government in the 

1970s and 1980s to ethnic Somalis from Ethiopia). With the end of the Cold War, the right to asylum has been 

significantly eroded and is not likely to be restored. European nations have used a variety of mechanisms to 

prevent granting asylum to those fleeing what is obviously a well-grounded fear of persecution in the former 

Yugoslavia. The United States has adopted much stricter regulations with regard to asylum-seekers from Haiti 

and Cuba, among others.

In theory, refugees are temporary and will be repatriated eventually. That in fact does happen to significant 

numbers of refugees to developing countries, who are less prone to integrate themselves into their host societies 

than are those who are accorded asylum in industrial nations.. In 1992, 2.4 million refugees returned home, 

including 1.5 million to Afghanistan and 178,000 to Mozambique. Repatriation is generally voluntary; forcible 

repatriation, as with Vietnamese boat people in the late 1980s and Haitians in 1994, has been on a smaller scale. 

Increasing the return flow involves providing logistical assistance for the move, setting up on-site reception 

centers at the resettlement locations, and furnishing help in reintegrating refugees. It may also require a 

continuing international military presence to protect returnees from violence and persecution.

Intervention

While the United States does not have a security interest (narrowly defined) in responding to every refugee 

exodus or the situation that provoked it, the suffering offends our values, and therefore Washington is likely to 

provide aid. Furthermore, American public opinion tolerates poorly a selective policy of responding to only some 

refugee disasters. The lack of response in April and May 1994 to the slaughters in Rwanda raised concerns that 

the United States was being less sensitive to the death of blacks than it would have been to the death of those of 

other races. In the end, the United States and the world community found themselves compelled to intervene in 

Rwanda, having to use a larger force than might have been necessary had action been taken earlier. Based in part 

on this experience, the United States and the international community are moving towards a consensus that the 
world's governments have an obligation to provide relief in every humanitarian disaster, including refugee mass 

exoduses and even civil wars.

None of the options for dealing with refugee flows is attractive:

O Forceful interception sits poorly with the U.S. self-image as a land of refuge and as open country. Even when 

interception commands widespread popular support, as in the summer 1994 Haitian and Cuban cases, the action 

is on the front pages of the newspapers and generates challenge in the courts.

O Providing permanent resettlement is not practical given the reluctance to accept large numbers of immigrants, 

as well as the experience with Vietnamese boat refugees which demonstrates that resettlement encourages more 

refugees.

O Temporary asylum is not popular in industrial countries because of concerns that refugees will stay for the 

long term, as seen in European reactions to the refugees from the former Yugoslavia.

O Establishing refugee camps in border zones is a race against death, as so tragically demonstrated by the 

Rwandan refugees in Zaire.

O Dealing with the problem of displacement in the country of origin requires a presence in failed states, which 

runs the risk of escalating into intervention into a civil war. Examples of steps to be taken are: helping to provide 

assistance to victims of ethnic conflict as close to their homes as possible, creating havens or secure areas where 

displaced persons can get help in relative safety, deploying troops to prevent the expulsions of civilians in some 

areas, and protecting relief workers who are caught in the cross-fire between opposing sides.

In many cases, the most successful approach is likely to be the last, that is, resolving the crisis provoking people 

to want to leave. A recent Trilateral Commission study concluded, "A broad consensus is developing in Trilateral 

countries [North America, Western Europe, and Japan that receiving countries must be attentive to pre-refugee, 

pre-migration circumstances in sending countries. Conflict prevention and other political and assistance 

initiatives must be mobilized quickly and early to prevent them from becoming crises. (Note 4) The early 

intervention may be combined with bottling up the refugee flow in the interim, as was done in the Haitian case. 

The bottling-up approach, as important as it may be in the short run, is unlikely to be successful in the long run 

unless the underlying crisis ends. After all, not even the Berlin Wall worked in the end.

The problem is how to take sufficient measures to end the crisis provoking the refugee flight without having to 

become involved in resolving all the deep-rooted conflicts in a failed state. If too little is done, the military and 

the relief agencies can be bogged down in protracted humanitarian operations. If too much is attempted, the 

military can be perceived by one side to have intervened in a civil war on behalf of its enemies. That in turn can 

lead to taking casualties and a loss of U.S. public support for the intervention.

While the principal responsibility for responding to mass refugee exoduses will continue to fall to nongovernmental organizations supplemented by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees and the U.

S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, the U.S. military will be called upon repeatedly. It has instant access to 

a range of material and logistical resources in transportation, communications and medical services which are 

simply not available to humanitarian organizations. That said, the military is not likely to be the first choice in 
responding to mass refugee exoduses or similar disasters. The consensus view appears to be, "Military assets 

should be employed in a humanitarian emergency intervention only when they have a comparative advantage 

over other relief organizations." (Note 5) 

2. POLLUTION AND RESOURCE STRESSES

GLOBAL POLLUTION

In recent decades the world has increasingly been beset by global environmental problems that involve the use 

and management of global common property like the oceans and the atmosphere that are in some sense owned 

collectively by all nations rather than being the Sovereign territory of any single nation. From this common 

territory, valuable resources can be harvested or extracted, and this common territory is often used as a repository 

for waste. As is typical with a resource available without charge, the "global commons" has been overused 

without adequate concern for its long-term maintenance. Concern about misuse has focused on 

chloroflourocarbons (CFCs), global warming, and acid rain. These and other concerns are unlikely to disappear 

over the next 20 years.

The problems of the global commons often involve intangible values, such as some kinds of environmental or 

ecological stress, as distinct from tangible, priced resources. This is not a legitimate conceptual distinction to 

economists, who would argue for recognizing the economic cost of air or water pollution no less than the cost of 

buying fuels and investing in equipment to generate electricity. But the pathways by which economic activity 

generate environmental damage are in many cases still mired in scientific uncertainty; certainly no money value 

can be assigned to damages. ("Let's see you prove that China is responsible for acid rain over Japan" or "Show 

me that building this or that dam will seriously disrupt the flyway of migrating bird species.") Thus, for genuine 

or disingenuous reasons, it is easy to obstruct settlement of global environmental disputes.

Because the "service" provided by the global commons (like clean air) is outside the market system, there is little 

prospect that global environmental conflicts will be resolved through price adjustment or other automatic market 

measures, of the sort that can do so much to resolve shortages of raw materials. Similarly, unilateral national 

regulatory action is unlikely to be helpful, since in most cases the essential problem is beyond the regulatory 

reach of any single country. The major action likely to be effective in dealing with global environmental 

problems almost surely will be international agreements, not any application of military force or any threat to use 

military force.

The ozone problem shows what can be done to resolve such problems. CFCs are chemical compounds with wide 

application in aerosol propellants, coolants in refrigeration and air conditioning, foam-blowing agents, and 

solvents for cleaning electrical compounds. In the 1970s, scientific evidence began to mount that these 

compounds, long thought to be benign, could cause depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer which shields the 

earth from damaging ultraviolet radiation. As a result, in 1987, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete 

the Ozone Layer was signed by 24 countries. There have been some implementation problems, such as India's 

unwillingness to cooperate. Nevertheless, this was a model case for a global environmental problem that can be 

easily resolved because: (1) the damages were identified and generally accepted as serious by the scientific 

community; (2) the negative effects would be expected to be experienced by all countries (all losers, no gainers); 

(3) the cost of resolving the problem (phasing out CFCs), while substantial, was not prohibitive; and (4) the firms 

producing the offending product were able to develop alternatives that allowed them to preserve their profits.
The global warming problem, said to be caused by the buildup of carbon into he atmosphere, is in some respects 

similar to the ozone problem, but with a less ready solution. The scientific evidence is more ambiguous. Some 

countries may experience a beneficial climate change from global warming; it is not clear who would be the 

gainers and who the losers, nor how much they would gain or lose. The costs of mitigating carbon buildup in the 

atmosphere can potentially be very high, since it could require reductions in fossil-fuel burning. For all these 

reasons, it is not surprising that the only international accord on global warming the 1992 Framework 

Convention on Climate change is vague and experiencing significant problems in implementation.

Much like global pollution problems, regional pollution issues are also most likely to be addressed through 

international agreements. Not without fits and starts, and with a fair amount of contentiousness, the 12-member 

European Community (now European Union) has progressed far in adopting timetables and standards for 

controlling SO2 and NOx releases from power plants and other combustion facilities. Acidification of 

Scandinavian lakes and forest decay in Germany's almost mythically venerated Black Forest are among the more 

publicized examples of the damage believed to be brought about by these gases. Consensus on mitigation was no 

doubt helped by the fact that most of the EU member countries are economically well off and so are inclined to 

accord environmental remediation a relatively high priority. But just as important, at least in Western Europe, is 

the fact that these emissions are significant sources of both internal and external pollution. Internally, this helps 

ensure domestic political support for adopting abatement policies and meeting their cost. Externally, the 

ubiquitousness of pollution creates a kind of "mutually assured (environmental) destruction" evoking a degree of 

cooperation that might not prevail under different circumstances.

There is considerable potential for conflict among states about how to address global environmental problems. 

There are at least two kinds of situations in which some countries may be unwilling to cooperate. The simple 

case is the that of the "free rider." A country may recognize that something should be done about a particular 

problem, but chose not to do what it may acknowledge (in private) is its fair share, believing that even if it does 

not participate, the other countries will satisfactorily address the problem and the non-cooperating country will 

benefit, without incurring any costs. The more complex case occurs when a country believes that the global 

community is willing to induce their cooperation with various types of payoffs. For example, some East 

European countries may expect that the developed world will provide the resources required to reduce carbon 

emissions.

RESOURCE SHORTAGES

Twenty years ago, in 1975, security analysts were concerned about the world running out of energy, minerals, 

and foodstuffs, ad of which were at record-high prices. Twenty years before that, in 1955, analysts were 

concerned that the United States was becoming dependent on foreign sources for strategic minerals. Neither of 

these concerns turned out to be justified; neither of the issues that so absorbed analysts came to be problems 20 

years later on. The principal lesson should be caution about how well we can forecast. That said, let us look at 

what seems to be the most reasonable forecast based on the information now available.

Minerals and Agricultural Products

The conventional wisdom is that the world is running out of many natural resources and that in the future it will 

be more difficult to obtain the mineral and agricultural products necessary for the continuation of economic 

development. (Note 6) By contrast, in the view of most economists, the evidence suggests that mineral and 

agricultural products are if anything becoming more readily available. Economists look at the real (inflation-
adjusted) price as the best measure of economic availability or scarcity. A rising real price indicates growing 

economic scarcity while a declining real price indicates increasing relative availability. In studies by Potter and 

Christy, updated by Manthy, the long-term inflation adjusted price trends for a whole series of mineral and 

agricultural products were found to be stable and declining, with a few exceptions (notably lumber and fish). The 

graph of prices of oil in 1967 dollars per barrel and of corn in 1967 dollars per bushel illustrates this flat or 

slightly declining character of commodity prices (oil is the line on top, with higher spikes and lower valleys).

During the 1970s, many argued that the period of stable mineral and agricultural prices was being replaced by an 

increasing resource scarcity as reflected in the rising real prices for a broad range of products, not just for 

petroleum. However, any belief that the pattern of the 1970s was permanent was shattered by the price pattern of 

the 1980s, during which the price of resource-based commodities declined and then stabilized at or below the 

levels that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, World Bank data in the graph below show that the period 

1985-1992 was characterized by ample supply conditions for many raw materials with historic low prices and 

unused capacity in many agricultural and mineral products. It would be unwise to assume this trend will persist. 

It is more appropriate to read the last 30 years as a period of high variance around stable prices, with 5 years of 

very high prices (1973-1978) and 10 years of relatively low prices (1985-1994).

The explanation for the long-term price stability of most mineral and agricultural products is probably found in 

the effect of technology on production costs. New production techniques allow: (1) use of what previously would 

have been discarded as waste; e.g., wood processing now utilizes a greater portion of each log and foresters 

harvest tree species that once were left to rot or burn; (2) exploitation of reserves that would have previously 

been uneconomical to exploit, e.g., in petroleum, oil fields found at greater depths or offshore in deeper water, 

plus fields in which the oil is at low pressure or too viscous to flow readily. In some sense the global situation 

can be viewed as a race between technology and demand. Over the past 200 years, technology has been winning.
In addition, higher prices for a certain specific raw material in certain periods generate economic incentives for 

the development of products that use less of that raw material, perhaps by substituting other raw materials. When 

one commodity comes into short supply, there is a natural shift to use others. For instance, fiber optics that utilize 

abundant resources for making glass are replacing scarce and expensive copper.

The trend for stable commodity prices in the last 200 years is a fact of history. This does not mean the trend will 

persist for the next 20 years; the record is full of forecasts of sudden shifts. There appears little reason to expect a 

shift in the fundamental balance that has allowed for the expansion of raw material use without increased real 

resource prices, however. Indeed, population growth is slowing, which should reduce the rate of expansion of 

raw material demand. A reasonable judgment for the world is that of the Resources for the Future study team, 

writing in 1964 about the prospects for the U.S. to 2000: (Note 7) 

The rest of the twentieth century affords the prospect of sustained economic growth in the United States 

supported by adequacy of resource materials-provided technological advances and economic adaptation 

continue, provided foreign sources of raw materials remain open through maintenance of a viable world trading 

system, and provided government resource policies and private management of resource enterprises improve in 

farsightedness, flexibility and consistency.

One might ask what type of warning would we have of an increasing long-term global scarcity for resourcebased raw materials. A critical signal would be rising real prices. However, short-term price rises need not 

necessarily be disturbing, for raw material prices typically rise during a business boom and fall during a 

recession. However, should a real price rise persist, this could be indicative of growing relative long-term 

scarcity.

Of all commodities about a shortage of which we may worry, oil may be most troubling for several reasons. One 

is the high value of world oil trade: $200 billion per annum, equal to 5 percent of the world's exports of goods 

and services (though it is less than 1 percent of the world's GDP). Another is that nearly half of all oil produced 

in the world is exported from one country to another, unlike most commodities for which there is a large reserve 

of production that could be diverted if needed to meet a shortage in the international trade circuits. A third factor, 

perhaps the most important, is that oil production is highly concentrated in one region, and a politically unstable 

one at that. In 1994, the Persian Gulf provided 25 percent of world oil output. Furthermore, if the price of oil 

stays low, as seems most likely, then dependence on Persian Gulf oil will increase, because it is the lowest cost 

oil to produce. Ashland Oil forecasts that in 2010, world oil demand will be 76 to 87 million barrels per day 

(mbd), compared to million in 1994. (Note 8) Non-Persian Gulf producers could, Ashland estimates, provide 47 

to 57 mbd of that demand. In the event that world oil demand rises at the high end of the estimate and non-Gulf 

production remains at the low end, then the Gulf could be called upon to supply 40 mbd out of a world demand 

of 87 mbd. Such a high level of dependence on one region, and especially on Saudi Arabia, would make the 

world economy vulnerable to political shocks in the Gulf.

Note that the issue is not one of the world running out of oil, but instead of an increasing concentration on supply 

from one region. Consider that world oil reserves in 1994 were about 1,000 billion barrels. The practice in the 

best-run U.S. fields is to produce each year about 7 percent of reserves, which if done on a worldwide, would 

imply a production capacity of 190 mbd, more than twice the expected 2010 demand (Persian Gulf producers 

prefer to produce at a much lower rate in order to keep supply limited and prices high). And reserves have a way 

of increasing. Consider that in 1937, world proved oil reserves were 40 billion barrels; in 1960, 300 billion 

barrels; (Note 9) in 1994, 1,000 billion barrels. The demand-to-reserve ratio has, been roughly constant for 60 
years.

So much for the 1970s concern about raw material scarcity worldwide. What about the 1950s worry about the 

safety of supply for imported raw materials? The high degree of development and integration of the world's raw 

material markets suggest that, under most circumstances, countries can have ready access to raw materials 

through markets: imports suffice if local production is low. The open global trading system is widening to 

incorporate more and more states, and it is deepening through development of institutions (like the World Trade 

Organization) and agreements that guarantee more and more openness.

Given that many important materials are found throughout the globe and are being sold by many producers on 

well-established world markets, individual countries have limited ability to disrupt the world market for most 

raw materials, especially over longer time periods. For example, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting 

Countries (OPEC) has seen its market power erode substantially since the mid-1980s as a result of dissension 

among its members and development of alternative suppliers. Thus, although petroleum resources are vital to 

modem economies, the control of petroleum reserves is by no means a necessary or sufficient condition for either 

economic prosperity or national security. The presence of well-developed international petroleum markets allows 

any country access to the commodity, even during times of conflict.

Many economists have argued that the most cost-effective way for the U.S. to deal with the risk of petroleum 

disruption is through the promotion of increased private and public inventory stocks. The role for the government 

would be to both create its own strategic reserves and to establish incentives for private stocking. These stocks 

would reduce the need to intervene with force in order to ensure the flow of oil during a crisis; the stock would 

provide a flow during the months when alternative energy sources are brought into play (shifting electricity 

generation from oil to coal in dual-fuel-capable boilers, bringing into production oil wells temporarily not in use, 

etc.). Indeed, this stocking strategy is that adopted by the U.S. government, including the Strategic Petroleum 

Reserve, and by the industrial countries as a whole acting through the International Energy Agency (IEA). IEA 

members are pledged to maintain petroleum stockpiles equal to six months' imports.

Some countries are still worried about dependence on world markets for vital goods. A number of states argue 

that they need self-sufficiency in key foods, e.g., Japan with regard to rice. Such economic ignorance is 

politically harmless if it leads countries to waste their money on subsidizing domestic production of the 

supposedly vital commodity. But there is an important and politically troubling case. China has gone from being 

a petroleum exporter to being a petroleum importer. Given its economic growth rates and its vigorous steps since 

1993 to promote automobile ownership by private individuals (which could lead to 25 million more cars by 

2015), China is likely to import at least 2 mbd in 2015, even if it develops the oil fields in its isolated interior 

regions. China's current government does not seem to be fully comfortable with dependence on world markets 

for a vital input and may therefore seek a political alliance with an oil exporting state or states, on the expectation 

this would provide China with a more secure source of oil. The problem from the U.S. perspective is that China 

would probably decide that it could not make such a political alliance with the oil producers who are closely 

linked to the United States. China's most likely partners are the Middle East rogue states of Iran, Iraq, and Libya. 

Any such alliance could give these states access to some of China's advanced armaments. The most worrying 

scenario would be if the rogue states were able to take aggressive actions while under some sort of a Chinese 

nuclear umbrella (least plausibly, nuclear weapons sold to them by China; more plausibly, an implicit Chinese 

threat that an attack on the rogue states would draw a Chinese reaction).

The Natural Resource Base
A major concern today is the degradation of the globe's natural resource base, such as cultivable land and tropical 

forests. A related issue is the irreplaceable loss of bio-diversity as species and local crop types become extinct.

The degradation of the natural resource base seems to occur during the early stages of industrialization and 

urbanization but to be reversed at a later stage of development. This V-curve can be seen clearly in the U.S. 

experience. In the United States during the 19th century, there was a sharp reduction in forested area, a depletion 

of soils from planting of marginal areas, and a conversion of range land into wastes because of overgrazing. 

(Note 10) By contrast, in the last several decades, the quality of the natural environment in the United States has 

been on the upswing. A survey of renewable resources such as croplands, range lands, forests, water, and 

wildlife, concluded: (Note 11) 

Some valuable soil and water resources have for practical purposes been permanently depleted or degraded, and 

wetlands continue to be lost. In some cases, the introduction of new technologies has contributed to the decline 

and degradation of resources. Nevertheless, many of the earlier concerns over the demise of our renewable 

resources have faded. Threats of impending timber famine are now seldom heard. Typhoid epidemics from 

contaminated water supplies are a distant memory. In addition, many wildlife populations have recovered from 

the depths reached earlier in this century. Aquatic systems, forests, wildlife, range land, and cropland have 

demonstrated a remarkable capacity to restore themselves either naturally or in combination with sound 

management, once abuse and exploitative uses are reduced.

In addition to the economic issue of the natural resource base, there is the question of values: i.e., what priorities 

to accord the environment. The judgment of 1960 forecasting to the year 2000 seems appropriate for 1995 

forecasting to 2015: (Note 12) 

In contrast to the supply of resource materials, where problems will be the exception rather than rule, maintaining 

and improving the quality of land and water resources will be of increasing concern. Broadly speaking, this 

question of the natural environment is one of pleasant surroundings, although health and comfort are also 

involved.

Each year, the center of U.S. public opinion gives more weight to pleasant surroundings, partly because rising 

income creates more demand for such luxuries and partly because of changing attitudes. Indeed, the view that 

wildlife has as much right as humans has gone in the U.S. from being a fringe radical notion to being at the edge 

of the mainstream, and it is likely to become more acceptable in the future. That implies more priority for 

wildlife relative to humans. For instance, the major increase in the demand for water in the U.S. is for 

environmental purposes, such as letting fish thrive, rather than for human consumption. It is unlikely that the 

priorities on this matter in the United States (and to a lesser extent Europe) will be shared in most developing 

countries, where economic development is seen as more important by most of the population.

U the United States decides that there exists a serious problem in the deterioration of the world's natural resource 

base and in a loss of global bio-diversity, the most likely remedial steps would be the same, as in the case of 

global pollution, that is, international agreements. It is difficult to identify ways in which the U.S. military would 

become involved in addressing the problem, other than in monitoring and information collection about the global 

environment as a byproduct of the military's on-going intelligence collection (e.g., from satellites). In theory, the 

military could be asked to enforce international agreements, e.g., those protecting endangered whales. However, 

any such use of military force could erode international support for the underlying agreement, thereby becoming 
counterproductive.

TRANSBORDER RESOURCES

Some resources such as water naturally cross state borders. Water supplies naturally flow from one location to 

another, and water evaporates from lakes and streams in one country and falls back to earth as rain in another 

country. Water supplies are therefore fugitive resources that belong to no one until captured or withdrawn for 

use. For this reason, it is difficult to establish clear property rights over such resources. When ownership is 

established only by use, individuals as well as countries have an incentive to use the resource before it moves 

beyond their grasp or jurisdiction. In such circumstances, some of the costs of using water are imposed on other 

potential users within the hydrologic region in the form of diminished water quantity and quality.

About 200 river basins are shared by two or more countries. Thirteen are shared by five or more countries, and 

four - the Congo, Danube, Nile, and Niger - are shared by nine or more countries. Shared watersheds comprise 

about 47 percent of the global land area and more than 60 percent of the area on the continents of Africa, Asia, 

and South America. Groundwater resources are also frequently shared by two or more countries. Some river 

basins in which water conflict exists are the Euphrates, Jordan, Nile, Ganges, and Mekong. (Note 13) 

The development of markets and market-based prices provides for the peaceful transfer of most resources among 

countries. Under some very restrictive conditions, markets lead to an efficient distribution and use of a resource. 

And under a wide range of conditions, the market process contributes to a more efficient allocation and 

management of these resources. Markets can provide individual people as well as countries with increased 

opportunities and incentives to develop, transfer, and use a resource in ways that would benefit all parties. Two 

conditions must be satisfied for the development of efficient markets. There must be well-defined and 

transferable property rights in the resource being transferred and the full benefits and costs of the transfer must 

be borne by the buyers and sellers. Both conditions are likely to be violated for water resources. The fugitive 

nature of the resource makes it difficult to establish clear property rights, and the interdependencies among users 

make it likely that external factors or third-party impacts will result when the use or location of the water is 

changed.

The lack of clear property rights to international water resources is an obstacle to more efficient resource 

management and to the resolution of water conflicts. Property rights establish the initial conditions from which 

different parties can then negotiate to improve their positions.. International law provides two opposing doctrines 

relating to property rights over international waters. The doctrine of unlimited territorial sovereignty states that a 

country has exclusive rights to the use of waters within its territory. This doctrine allows a country to deplete and 

pollute with no obligation to compensate adversely affected parties.. The contrasting doctrine of unlimited 

territorial integrity states that one country cannot alter the quantity and quality of water available to another. This 

doctrine greatly constrains how the upstream country can use the resource. In the absence of bargaining, both of 

these doctrines are likely to lead to inefficient outcomes. For example, under the first doctrine a country 

depleting or contaminating a shared resource has no incentive to mitigate the impact on the other countries 

regardless of the relative magnitude of the damages imposed and the costs of abatement. On the other hand, 

under the second doctrine the polluting country would have to mitigate all impacts regardless of how high the 

costs of mitigation and how small the impacts.

In practice, international water disputes have moved away from the extreme positions implied by these two 

doctrines and toward a doctrine of equitable and reasonable use. Although this narrows the likely range of 
disagreement, it does not provide clear property rights. In the absence of enforceable property rights, the 

strongest, most clever, and most advantageously positioned countries can claim and use the resource with little 

concern for the impact on others. Opportunities for coordinated management may be lost in the acrimony over 

rights to the resource and obligations to mitigate any adverse effects imposed on others. When the 

interdependence among countries is unidirectional, such as with the impacts of an upstream user on the quantity 

and quality of water downstream, the upstream country may have little incentive to limit its use of the river other 

than the threat of retaliation by the downstream user. But even when the interdependence is mutual and all 

countries could benefit from a cooperative development and allocation of a basin's water resources, the incentive 

to arrive at an efficient and mutually agreeable strategy may not exist.

The institutions controlling water use are often rooted in an era when the resource was not considered to be 

scarce and transfers were viewed as unnecessary or unimportant. Cultural and religious considerations that view 

water as too important or too sacred to have its use determined by the impersonal outcome of markets may 

inhibit the evolution of institutions that view water as a scarce resource that must be allocated among competing 

uses. Equity considerations and historical use have been more important than efficiency in the management of 

both domestic and internationally shared water resources. There are relatively few precedents that demonstrate 

the potential advantages of efficient integrated management of an entire hydrologic unit. Yet, as water becomes 

increasingly scarce, the potential benefits of integrated management and of institutions that enable scarce 

resources to be transferred among competing uses in response to changing conditions will grow. Institutions that 

perpetuate inefficient water use will become increasingly costly and unstable. Inflexible and inefficient 

international agreements, which must be self-enforcing, may not be sustainable.

3. CONCLUSION

Based on the above analysis of the demographic, pollution, and resource situation likely to prevail in twenty 

years, we can examine what tasks will arise for the U.S. military in 2015 arising out of environmental stresses. 

We start with the least likely and proceed to the most probable.

GENERAL CHAOS

Since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict seems to be less a clash of states or political movements and more 

a struggle among ethnic groups over control of land in resource-poor areas. If the prototypical 1980s conflicts 

were the Iran-Iraq war and the Afghanistan or Nicaraguan civil wars, the stereotypical mid-1990s conflicts seem 

to be the slaughter in Rwanda, the battles between tiny ethnic groups in the Caucasus region, or the ethnic 

cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Warfare there seems pre-modern: a clash of peoples rather than armies, with 

no organized structure to the fighting forces, no clear separation between civilians and soldiers, and no political 

decisionmakers able to dictate strategy and negotiate a peace.

This may indeed be the trend of warfare, but it is by no means clear that this has anything to do with population, 

pollution, and resource problems. Rolling all these developments into one ball can make for dramatic reading, as 

in Robert Kaplan's widely noted article about "the coming anarchy(Note 14) Kaplan seems to suggest that the 

community of sovereign states could dissolve into chaos, as governments are unable to respond effectively to a 

global resource crunch, to ever more powerful transnational forces (benign and malign), and to fragmentation of 

the state into local communities and ethnic groups. Overwhelmed by burgeoning populations and declining 

resources, the state will become unable to contain social conflicts that boil up as crime gangs and ethnic 

cleansers. Some have therefore suggested, that our overriding national security task should be "preventing the 
causes of global chaos.''(Note 15) 

The dissolution of the world into anarchy does not seem to be a plausible development by 2015. It is difficult to 

see how the community of prosperous and democratic nations could be overwhelmed within the next 20 years, 

given that there are few indications in 1995 that any such resource shortage is affecting the advanced industrial 

states. Whether chaos could overwhelm the world order after 2015 is beyond the scope of this report, but it is 

worth noting that the general trend identified here is for human social problems, from global warming to the 

population explosion, to evoke corrective responses, both through government action and through changes in 

private behavior.

An appealing part of the chaos story is that the world is facing escalating pollution and resource-depletion 

problems. That may be the case. However, that does not imply that the U.S. military will have an important role 

in responding to such problems. The potential for peaceful conflict resolution was discussed above. In the event 

that negotiations lead to an impasse, the U.S. military is still unlikely to get involved in responding to global 

pollution issues. In order to secure compliance from noncooperating countries, the most likely route is to use a 

variety of economic sanctions and rewards, e.g., trade restrictions and privileges. In other cases, the majority of 

countries may simply feel that it is not worth the effort to gain cooperation and will simply absorb the additional 

costs among themselves. Military force is not likely to be useful in most cases because of the diffuse source of 

the problem and the probable judgment that any loss of life would not be worth the benefit gained. There are 

some causes where the use of force to redress a problem might be deemed technically feasible: for instance, if the 

pollution were caused by a small number of highly defined sources (say, Indian CFC production facilities) and if 

the offending sites were located in a small number of countries (say, China as the source of nearly all the foreigncaused acid rain failing on Japan). Overall, however, the political prospect that the U.S. Armed Forces would be 

assigned any such mission seems highly unlikely.

FAILED STATES

While general chaos is unlikely in 2015, it is quite probable that there will be a number of countries in which the 

state has failed--the government is unable or unwilling to guarantee the safety of the populace from disasters, 

natural, human (e.g., ethnic slaughter), or a mixture of the two (e.g., famine).

It seems intuitively obvious to connect state failure with environmental stress. The classic theory of state collapse 

generated by population and resource pressures is that of Homer-Dixon, Boutwell, and Rathjens. (Note 16) Their 

framework is helpful because of its simplicity, clarity and flexibility. They argue that population growth and 

unequal access to resources lead to increased scarcity of resources like cropland and water. Scarcity of resources 

decreases economic productivity and increases migration to cities. The growing urban population and the 

agricultural productivity decline reduce the state's revenue and increase its spending as it deals with the 

deteriorating circumstances. The result is to weaken the financial and political stability of the state. The 

combination of problems weakens the state, which eventually leads to ethnic conflict and social disorder.

What is missing from the Homer-Dixon et al. framework is the role of governance, social values, and ethnic or 

religious tensions. These are variables that interact with economic and resource-availability factors in ways that 

are hard to estimate or predict. However, they seem to be on the forefront of the reasons that most state failures 

to date have occurred. It is instructive to observe the collapse of the state in mid-income countries with failed 

governments like Yugoslavia or Lebanon, both richer and better endowed with resources than some of their 

stable neighbors. Contrast this to the experience of some of the world's most resource-short and overpopulated 
countries, like Bangladesh and Malawi, that have had better governance. Democracy lets India-a country racked 

by poverty, vicious ethnic and religious splits, and rapidly-growing population in a densely-packed land-contain 

its conflicts.

The Homer-Dixon et al. model plays down plays what may be the most stressful environmental factor in the next 

20 years: the challenge of creating productive employment for the growing number of young adults. With the 

labor force in developing countries growing by 30 million each year, there is a real potential for mass youth 

unemployment that could feed radical populist movements. The unrest in Algeria may be a harbinger of the 

problems that will arise in countries that do not successfully meet the job-creation challenge.

Based on current trends of which states have serious problems with governance, social values, ethnic/religious 

tension, and environmental stress, it seems likely that most of the failed states in 2015 will be in Africa, South, 

Asia, and the greater Middle East (including its northern edges on the fringes of the ex-Communist world: the 

Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia). On the whole, these are not areas close to the United States in any 

important strategic sense: geographically, historically, economically, or politically. It is therefore not obvious 

what vital strategic UPS. interests will be threatened by most developing-world state failures. There could of 

course be some failed states near to the United States or in areas of historic and strategic U.S. interest - e.g., the 

Caribbean basin or those parts of the Middle East of most interest to the United States (the Persian Gulf and 

Israel and its neighbors).

Even though most failed states will not threaten U.S. strategic interests, they may challenge important U.S. 

values, such as democracy and human rights. The United States may be drawn to intervene militarily in some 

such cases because the offense to our values and because of the scale of the suffering. However, it does not seem 

likely that, in this time of reduced resources and increased concern about problems at home, the United States 

will make a commitment to intervene in every such case. The United States may well encourage other major 

powers to act in those countries that are more important historically and strategically to them than to the United 

States If the United States faces other demands on its military power that are immediately related to national 

strategic interests, those are likely to take priority over intervention in a failed state. In short, U.S. intervention in 

failed states is likely to be selective, not automatic.

Failed states may well produce refugee exoduses. The risk of such mass migrations will be an important factor in 

the decision to intervene in a failed state. The U.S. military is most likely to be engaged in circumstances that 

threaten to produce large migrant flows to the United States However, sudden mass migrations not involving the 

United States may still concern U.S. strategic interests if they threaten to convert the internal problems of one 

failed state into a crisis involving several states.

TENSIONS AMONG STATES

Environmental stresses could involve the U.S. military by making tensions among sovereign states more likely 

and more intense. In most cases, these tensions will be resolved well short of armed conflict. Peaceful conflict 

resolution mechanisms seem more likely to be employed (with varying degrees of success), in part because it is 

not obvious how military force would be useful in resolving many demographic, pollution, or resource problems. 

In environmental disputes, the pressure applied by one state against another is much more likely to be economic 

than military.

However, some environmental stresses may contribute to armed conflict among states. Transborder resource 
conflicts could well have this effect for three reasons:

O Peaceful conflict-resolution mechanisms are inadequate

O The conflicts stir strong emotions

O Military force can be applied for a clear and specific purpose, i.e., gaining control over the disputed resource.

Perhaps the shortage of some resource, such as oil, will tempt one nation to grab part of the territory of another, 

though the poor success rate of such ventures would surely give pause to any rogue state contemplating 

aggression.

While environmental stress may be a contributor to interstate conflict, it is not likely to be the fundamental cause. 

A transborder conflict is unlikely to escalate into warfare unless the states in question have generally bad 

relations, for otherwise they are likely to work out some kind of modus vivendi. A resource grab occurs only in 

the case of an aggressive government, which has much more to do with political failure than with any 

environmental factor.

Three areas in which there could well be transborder resource disputes are regions of intense concern to the 

United States. First is the Persian Gulf, where the great riches of the oil reserves raises the temperature in the 

tensions between Persian and Arab civilizations and in the dynastic border disputes involving each of the states 

in the Arabian Peninsula. Second is the Arab-Israeli theater, where water supplies are scarce and political ill-will 

abundant. Third is the South China Sea, which may contain large oil deposits (as suggested by the $30 billion 

project in nearby Indonesia waters, which will be in full production by 2015) and where nationalist fervor is 

matched only by the importance of the region as a transit zone for commercial shipping.

While the prospects are low for open warfare in 2015 over transborder resources, the stakes in these three areas 

at the least will be sufficiently high that the U.S. military could well be tasked to maintain a presence in order to 

contribute to regional stability and to be ready to project power on a large scale if needed to come to the aid of 

Regional states challenged by an aggressor.

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What's New 
Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

PATRICK L. CLAWSON

Patrick L. Clawson is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic'Studies and the author of 

Iran's Strategic Intentions and Capabilities (McNair Paper 29); Iran's Challenge to the West (1993); and 

Uprooting Leninism, Cultivating Liberty, with Vladimir Tsmaneanu (1992). Dr. Clawson is also the 

editor of Strategic Assessment (NDU Press), the annual Institute survey of U.S. Security challenges in 

the post-Cold War period. A past editor of Orbis, Dr. Clawson was a senior economist at the World 

Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

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Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

III. COALITIONS

Stephen M. Walt

1. The Necessity of Coalitions

Part III provides a framework for thinking about the future formation and management of U.S. military 

coalitions and alliances. History has shown that the formation, management, and performance of 

military coalitions can have powerful effects on both the security of individual states and the stability of 

the international system. Over the centuries, city-states, empires, feudal fiefs, and modern nation-states 

have joined forces to increase their power and enhance their security. In fact, such arrangements appear 

to ubiquitous in the relations between political units. The ability to form effective military coalitions is a 

formidable asset for any great power, which means that prudent strategic planning requires careful 

consideration of the forces that are likely to bring states together or drive them apart.

The United States is no exception to this basic strategic principle. Despite its isolationist traditions, the 

United States has relied upon allied support on numerous occasions in the past, especially since its rise 

to great-power status at the end of the 19th century. The United States was a key member of the 

victorious coalitions in both world wars and subsequently led the coalition that fought the Korean War 

under the auspices of the United Nations. Support from allies in Europe and Japan was a major U.S. 

asset throughout the Cold War (especially when compared with the Soviet alliance system), and the 

United States has also profited from its ties to states such as Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi 

Arabia, and others.(Note 1) The value of allied support was reaffirmed during the 1991 Gulf War; 
although the United States provided the bulk of the military power, support from other states either 

facilitated military action or enhanced the legitimacy of U.S. intervention, or both.

The end of the Cold War has reopened the issues of U.S. alliance management and its preparations for 

coalition warfare. During the Cold War, the clarity of the Soviet threat and the basic stability of 

international political structures held the main coalitions constant for nearly four decades, and 

realignments were usually due to internal factors (such as a radical regime change) rather than external 

events.(Note 2) The collapse of the Soviet Union has drastically reduced, if not vitiated, the original 

rationale behind many existing alliances and coalitions (e.g., NATO); iover the next two decades, the 

United States is likely to face a diverse array of lesser threats instead of a single, overriding adversary. 

The Gulf War, the ill-fated intervention in Somalia, peace operations in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Haiti, 

and the ongoing diplomatic alignment with regard to North Korea's nuclear program suggest that major 

international issues will have to be dealt with in the context of some kind of coalition. Indeed, because 

sustained military interventions by democracies must have broad public support, political leaders are 

quick to orchestrate multinational responses to crises around the globe. As such, coalition operations are 

becoming a standard operating procedure, and there is little evidence that even strong-minded political 

leaders will be able to buck this trend in the next 20 years (see chart). Moreover, although the United 

States will remain the only power capable of major military action on a global scale for some time to 

come, the relative decline of U.S. military power is already making it more difficult for the United States 

to act unilaterally. Thus, the assumption of this report is the following: if the United States wishes to 

maintain an active overseas presence into the 21st century, its foreign policy and military strategy will 

have to be tailored to coalition warfare. Indeed, unilateral action could further undermine existing 

alliances and even precipitate the formation of anti-U.S. coalitions. Conversely, an excessive American 

retrenchment from its postwar alliance leadership role could render such alliances and coalitions "paper 

tigers" incapable of meaningful military action. Another alternative, at least for conflicts in which no 

vital U.S. interests were at stake, could entail a sharper division of labor between the U.S. and its 

coalition partners. That division of labor is captured by the term "vertical coalition," marked by an 

asymmetrical burden-sharing arrangement in which the U.S. provides information and informationbased systems and America's coalition partners supply the troops and weapons systems. Part III focuses 

on four issues. 

Why do states join coalitions? What are the different theories that explain a decision to join a coalition? 

What do they imply for U.S. efforts to form and/or lead them in the future? 

What are the main obstacles to forming an effective coalition? Even when several states have a clear 

incentive to join forces, why do some coalitions succeed and others fail? 

What are the different structural characteristics of different coalitions, and how do these features affect 

their performance? 

How are these issues likely to evolve over the next two decades? Even if perfect prediction is 

impossible, what are the areas of certainty and uncertainty that will shape the formation and 
performance of future coalitions, and what lessons should U.S. strategic planners draw from these 

considerations?

To clarify basic terminology, a military coalition is used here to denote a formal or informal 

arrangement for joint military action by two or more states. This definition assumes a tangible 

commitment to mutual (though not necessarily identical) support and assumes that severing the 

relationship or failing to honor it would be costly. This definition includes both formal alliances (where 

the nature of the commitment and each member's contributions are precisely demarcated in a formal 

treaty) and informal or ad hoc agreements for security cooperation that arise in response to some 

immediate contingency. Including both formal and informal arrangements makes sense because states 

may be willing to provide extensive support to one another even in the absence of a formal treaty, and 

because the presence of a formal agreement often says relatively little about the actual degree of 

commitment.(Note 3)

This definition focuses on agreements to cooperate in the use of military force, including United Nations 

Chapter VI and Chapter VII peace operations. However, it excludes cooperation that is purely economic 

or commercial in nature; states with extensive economic links are not necessarily part of a coalition. It 

also excludes cooperation for purely humanitarian purposes (such as disaster relief) as well as 

cooperation in purely diplomatic activities (such as voting behavior in the United Nations General 

Assembly or negotiating positions in other international forums), unless such arrangements are 

accompanied by a decision to collaborate in the use of military force.

Recent Coalitions:

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has found coalition partners from all over the globe. 

Some of the more significant recent coalitions were:

Desert Shield/Storm: In 1990, the United States deployed 500,000 troops to the Persian Gulf as part of a 

U.S.-led coalition force to defend Saudi Arabia. In January 1991, the U.S.-led coalition commenced a 

6week military campaign that liberated Kuwait and crushed the Iraqi armed forces. Coalition forces, 

particularly from key NAT0 allies, such as Britain and France, played an important military role in the 

victory.

Southern Watch: Since 1992, U.S. and coalition aircraft have enforced a no-fly zone over southern Iraq.

Provide Comfort: Under way since the end of the Gulf War, this operation maintains a secure 

environment that permits humanitarian assistance to flow to the endangered Kurdish population of 

northern Iraq. Multinational operations include approximately 1,500 U.S. military personnel and some 

50 aircraft sorties per day, on average, from NATO bases in Turkey.

Vigilant Warrior: In October 1994, after two Iraqi Republican Guard divisions massed on the Kuwaiti 

border, the United States deployed a Marine Expeditionary Unit, elements of a heavy Army division, a 
carrier task force, and additional land-based aircraft to reinforce security partners Kuwait and Saudi 

Arabia.

Uphold Democracy: In September 1994, the United States entered Haiti peacefully to oversee the return 

of the country's popularly elected government (ending President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's 3-year exile) 

and the departure of the nation's military leaders. The use of U.S. military power in an effort to restore a 

democratically elected government was the first such operation in the Western Hemisphere ever 

authorized by the United Nations. Various regional nations pledged support to help provide civil control 

after the U.S. military operation reined in the armed forces, police, and paramilitary groups.

Deny Flight: Beginning in April 1993, about 1,700 U.S. military personnel stationed in Europe 

participated with NATO allies to enforce a ban on military flights over Bosnia, monitoring the U.N. 

protection areas and providing close air support to U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia when called upon.

Able Sentry: Since the spring of 1993, about 500 U.S. troops have participated in the U.N. observer 

force, now called the U.N. Preventive Deployment in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, 

providing a stabilizing presence and preventing the conflict in other regions of the former Yugoslavia 

from spilling over into Macedonia.

Sharp Guard: Starting in April 1993, three U.S. naval vessels and approximately 7,800 U.S. personnel 

participated regularly with NATO allies in maritime enforcement of sanctions against Serbia in the 

Adriatic Sea, with intermittent support from other assets of the U.S. Sixth Fleet. As with Deny Flight,

Sharp Guard was teriminated in December 1995 with the establishment of IFOR.

Support Hope: From June through September 1994, some 2,000 U.S. military personnel from Europe 

deployed to Africa to organize and carry out emergency humanitarian relief operations for refugees 

fleeing a brutal civil war in Rwanda. While the U.S. operation was unilateral, it directly supported 

multinational governmental and nongovernmental efforts at providing humanitarian support. Moreover, 

as the U.S. pulled out in the autumn of 1994, its major Asian ally, Japan, dispatched peacekeeping forces 

to support refugee camps in Zaire.

Provide Relief: From August 1992 until March 1993, the U.S. conducted a military airlift from 

Mombasa, Kenya, to deliver goods to Somali refugees. The U.S. also led the Unified Interim Task Force 

from December 1992 to May 1993, which was a large-scale coalition effort to stem mass starvation.

Why do states join coalitions, and what determines the partners they will prefer? As stated in Chapter 

One, alliances and coalitions are the means by which states pursue common or at least complementary 

interests. In other words, the primary purpose behind most coalitions is to combine the members' 

capabilities in ways that promote their respective interests. Coalitions can take many forms (e.g., 

offensive or defensive, symmetrical or asymmetrical, formal or informal), but the common thread in 

virtually all such arrangements is each member's desire to improve its relative position by collaborating 

with at least one other state.(Note 4)
2. THEORIES OF COALITION FORMATION

BALANCING BEHAVIOR

Despite the end of the Cold War, or perhaps increasingly because of it, the U.S. and other states will 

form coalitions over the next two decades for much the same fundamental reasons they have in previous 

decades. The most fundamental reason to form a coalition is to oppose an external threat. In particular, 

states form coalitions in order to balance against the most threatening state (or coalition) that they face. 

The rationale for this tendency is straightforward: because no supreme authority exists to protect states 

from each other, states facing a possible threat will join forces with others in order to amass sufficient 

power to deter or defeat an attack. Nor is such a supreme authority likely to be created in the span of the 

next 20 years.

The foregoing explanation is usually framed in terms of power; states with lesser capabilities are 

presumed to combine against stronger powers in order to prevent them from dominating.(Note 5) As 

Stephen Walt has shown, this view is useful but incomplete, because it neglects several other factors that 

leaders will consider when making alliance decisions. For example, a state may prefer to ally with the 

stronger of two powers if the weaker side is more dangerous for other reasons. Thus, it is more accurate 

to say that states form coalitions to balance against threats, and power is only one element in their 

calculations. In general, the level of threat that states face will be a function of four distinct factors: 

aggregate power, geographic proximity, offensive capabilities, and aggressive intentions.

Aggregate Power

Other things being equal, the greater a state's total resources (e.g., population, industrial capacity, 

military strength, etc.), the greater harm it can inflict on others. Thus, the greater a state's aggregate 

power, the larger the potential threat. Recognizing this, the traditional aim of U.S. grand strategy has 

been to prevent any single power from controlling the combined resources of Eurasia, because such an 

agglomeration of power could pose a serious threat to U.S. security. England's traditional reliance on a 

balance of power policy reflected the same motivations, and contemporary concerns over China's 

economic and military growth betray a similar sensitivity. A state's aggregate power is not the sole 

determinant of threat, of course, but it is always an important one. 

Geographic Proximity

Because the ability to project power declines with distance, states that are nearby are usually more 

dangerous than those that are far away.(Note 6) As a result, states are more likely to form coalitions in 

response to threats from their neighbors, and they will prefer allies that are geographically separate. 

Students of diplomatic history have long been taught that "neighbors of neighbors are friends," and the 

tendency for coalition networks to resemble checkerboards was observed by the Indian political 

philosopher Kautilya in the fourth century.(Note 7) During the Cold War, this factor helps explain why 
regional powers usually preferred to rely on support from a distant superpower rather than on 

cooperation with other regional actors. The reason was obvious: the superpower could do more to help, 

and allying with a neighbor can be dangerous if that neighbor becomes too strong as a result. This 

motive also explains why the superpowers' efforts to recruit regional clients were only partly successful. 

Although Moscow and Washington sought allies primarily to counter each other, their clients in the 

developing world were usually more worried about regional or internal threats and relatively 

unconcerned about the global balance of power.(Note 8)

Offensive Capabilities

States with large offensive capabilities--defined as the ability to threaten the sovereignty or territorial 

integrity of other states--pose a greater threat than states whose capabilities are designed primarily to 

defend their own territory. As a state's offensive capabilities increase, therefore (either because its 

military expenditures are growing or because its armed forces are being tailored for offensive warfare), 

other states will be more inclined to form a coalition against it. The ability to undermine other regimes 

via propaganda or subversion can be a potent source of threat as well, which explains why revolutionary 

states espousing universalist ideologies are usually regarded as dangerous even when they are militarily 

weak.(Note 9)

Offensive Intentions 

States with aggressive aims are obviously more dangerous than states that are satisfied with the status 

quo. A weak state with bellicose ambitions, such as Libya or Iran, is likely to find itself isolated as other 

states join together to contain the danger. Other things being equal, therefore, the belief that a state 

harbors offensive intentions will increase the likelihood that a countervailing coalition will form against 

it.

Taken together, these factors explain why potential hegemons like Napoleonic France, Wilhelmine 

Germany and Nazi Germany eventually faced an overwhelming opposing coalition: each of these states 

were great powers lying in close proximity to others and each combined large offensive capabilities with 

extremely bellicose aims. The same factors explain why the Soviet Union was overmatched during the 

Cold War: it was the second most powerful state in the system, it lay in close proximity to the medium 

powers of Europe and Asia, it possessed a large military establishment whose forces and doctrine were 

tailored for offensive wars of conquest, and it never publicly abandoned its commitment to world 

revolution. Although the United States had greater overall capabilities, its distance from the other 

centers of world power made it the perfect ally for the medium powers that were most directly 

threatened by the Soviet Union. 

"Balance-of-threat" theory also explains why the United States was able to assemble such a large and 

cohesive coalition during the Gulf War. Although Iraq was not a great power, its military forces were 

growing, its conquest of Kuwait threatened Western oil supplies, and Saddam Hussein's foreign and 

domestic conduct suggested that he had extremely aggressive ambitions and was willing to run 
impressive risks to achieve them. Adroit diplomacy helped bring the coalition into existence, and to 

sustain it in spite of myriad asymmetries among the coalition partners, but the essential pre-conditions 

for an effective coalition were clearly present as well.(Note 10)

BANDWAGONING BEHAVIOR

Although the desire to balance threats is the main reason why coalitions form, some states may prefer to 

"jump on the bandwagon" and join forces with the dominant (or most threatening) power rather than 

attempting to form a coalition against it. This may be done either for defensive or offensive reasons: 

some states may seek the stronger side in order to appease it while others join the strong side in order to 

profit from its victory. 

Several factors will affect a state's propensity to bandwagon. First, weak states are more inclined to 

bandwagon than strong states, because they can do little to affect the outcome and must choose the 

winning side at all costs.(Note 11) The likelihood of bandwagoning also increases when a state faces an 

imminent threat and potential coalition partners are unavailable. Even if such a state prefers to balance, 

it may be forced to bandwagon if it cannot obtain adequate allied support. Third, bandwagoning is more 

likely to occur in the latter stages of a war, when the outcome is clear and states rush in either to curry 

favor with the victor(s) or to extract spoils from the vanquished. Lastly, highly revisionist states will be 

more inclined to bandwagon, because they are especially interested in reaping the benefits from victory 

and must take pains to pick the likely winners.(Note 12) Benito Mussolini's declaration of war against 

France in 1940 offers an example of all three factors; Italy was a comparatively weak state yet had 

highly revisionist aims, and Mussolini waited until France's defeat was apparent before declaring war.

Although statesmen commonly fear that potential partners will align with the strongest or most 

threatening power (i.e., many statesmen seem to believe that bandwagoning is extremely common), this 

fear receives relatively little historical support. Since the Thirty Years' War, every attempt to achieve 

hegemony in Europe has been thwarted by a powerful balancing coalition, and similar examples from 

recent history include the Gulf War coalition, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the 

Sino-American rapprochement in the 1970s, the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the U.S. 

tilt against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, and the coalition of Front-Line States against South Africa 

during the 1970s and 1980s.(Note 13) Although such a hypothesis may seem overly mechanistic for a 

description of interstate behavior, this tendency should not surprise us; balancing should be preferred for 

the simple reason that no national leader can be completely sure what others will do. Bandwagoning is 

dangerous because it increases the capabilities available to a threatening power and requires placing trust 

in its continued benevolence.(Note 14) Because perceptions of intent are often unreliable and intentions 

can change overnight, it is usually safer to balance against potential threats rather than taking their 

continued forbearance on faith.

OTHER MOTIVES FOR COALITION FORMATION

Although the desire to balance threats is the main reason why states join coalitions, several other 
motives can play a role as well. Some coalitions are inspired by ideological solidarity, where states with 

similar domestic orders join forces for largely idealistic reasons. Indeed, democracies may well fight 

other democracies on occasion, but it seems axiomatic that democracies tend to ally with other 

democracies far easier than with authoritarian states. This ideological solidarity motive helps explain U.

S. efforts to support fledgling democracies and earlier Soviet support for "progressive forces" in the 

developing world, as well as Iran's willingness to back Islamic fundamentalists in Sudan, Lebanon and 

elsewhere. Ideological solidarity is usually a relatively weak glue; most states will abandon this criterion 

when serious external threats arise. Moreover, a common ideology can also be a potent source of 

contention, as the Sino-Soviet split and the sorry history of the pan-Arab movement both suggest.(Note 

15) An important partial exception to this generalization may well pertain to America's inner-circle 

alliances. Leaving aside the normative question as to whether U.S. policy should be determined in such a 

manner, it seems self-evident that, to a degree far greater than most European or Asian major powers, 

the United States makes alliance policy on the basis of both values and interests. There are many reasons 

for this, the chief one perhaps being that the perpetuation of liberal Western values is viewed as virtually 

inseparable from vital U.S. interests. 

Another reason to form a coalition is to enhance one's influence over the other members. By offering 

support or protection to a weaker state, great powers can manipulate their conduct in order to advance 

their own interests.(Note 16) This motive is closely related to balancing behavior; the weaker side in 

effect gives up some of its autonomy in exchange for its patron's protection, while patrons use security 

guarantees, economic and military aid and other forms of persuasion if not bribery to cement the 

relationship and enhance their own influence. These mechanisms rarely create a coalition by themselves, 

however, and care will be needed to prevent efforts to manipulate one's clients from generating a hostile 

backlash.(Note 17)

A third reason to form a coalition is to dampen conflict within the international system as a whole. This 

type of coalition can take the form of a large-scale collective security system (like the League of 

Nations) or a more limited great-power concert (like the Concert of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars). 

Instead of forming a coalition against a particular threat, such arrangements seek to prevent war by 

threatening a collective "all for one" response to any overt act of aggression, even if one of the members 

of the coalition is responsible. Concert systems also seek to check suspicions by providing a mechanism 

for peaceful consultation and negotiation, thereby dampening the "security dilemma" and facilitating the 

peaceful resolution of disputes. 

Although history suggests that both collective-security and concert approaches should be viewed with 

great skepticism, they remain a popular prescription for the post-Cold War security environment 

(especially in Europe). Indeed, the rhetoric of "collective security" is still invoked to justify actions, such 

as Operation Desert Storm, that were actually taken largely for self-interested reasons.(Note 18)

IMPLICATIONS

Two important implications may be drawn from the analysis thus far. First, the ability of the United 
States to forge and manage future coalitions will be largely a function of the external security 

environment. States do not join coalitions and fight wars for altruistic or sentimental reasons; rather, 

vital decisions such as these ordinarily reflect careful considerations of self-interest. Although shared 

values and similar political systems can facilitate negotiation for an alliance and smooth potential rifts 

within the resulting coalition (suggesting that shared interests and shared values make for the strongest 

alliances), we should not expect other states to join us unless they believe it is in their interest to do so. 

This means that if other states do not see themselves as threatened, the United States will not be able to 

entice (or coerce) them into a coalition. Of course, if the external environment is benign, we will have 

less need to. However, in a reversal of the Cold War era, the post-Cold War era seems more likely to see 

states attempting to ally with the U.S. when, from an American perspective, there may be scant reason to 

do so. The current debate over whether to expand NATO--e.g., to incorporate the Visegrad states of 

Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia--is a case in point. These states undoubtedly would 

like a NATO security umbrella and they may indeed be threatened one day; but the near-term threat to 

their security is far from apparent, a fact suggested by the diminished defense budgets of these Central 

European states. 

Second, the U.S. ability to form and lead future coalitions will depend on its own capacity to contribute 

to these arrangements. Although states prefer to balance against threats, they will find this option less 

appealing if they do not believe it will succeed. Thus, even if the United States gradually relies less on 

formal alliances such as NATO and more on flexible and ad hoc coalitions, it will still have to possess 

the military assets that have made it an attractive partner in the past. Nothing could be more quixotic 

than for the United States to reduce its leading-edge warfighting and power-projection capabilities-- 

including the essential forward-based posture that makes our unique global reach possible, while 

pursuing an ephemeral objective of multinationalism for its own sake. In short, coalition support should 

be seen as an adjunct to U.S. military power, not a substitute.

It does not follow, however, that the United States must or should contribute in the same ways to future 

coalition partners that it has to previous coalition partners. As power-projection becomes increasingly 

costly and/or dangerous for the United States, and where American interests are deemed less than vital, 

it will be increasingly attractive for the United States to resort to what might be called "vertical 

coalitions." Because future conflicts may be heavily dependent upon information and information 

systems, in some situations in which the U.S. Armed Forces are called upon to assist coalition partners it 

may be in the U.S. interest to limit its contribution to information-intensive support. In contrast, 

coalition partners generally may be expected to provide the bulk of soldiers and weaponry. The concept 

of vertical coalitions is elaborated upon in Part IV, which examines the future impact of informationbased warfare on the U.S. Armed Forces.

(Continuation)

Return to NDU Homepage 

INSS Homepage 

What's New 
Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

STEPHEN M. WALT

Stephen M. Walt is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He has been a Resident 

Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings 

Institution and has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the U.S. Institute for Peace. 

Dr. Walt is the author of The Origins of Alliances (Cornell 1987), which received the 1988 Edgar S. 

Furnis National Security Book Award, and Revolution and War (Cornell 1996). Dr. Walt received his B.

A. From Stanford University and his master's and doctoral degrees from the University of California at 

Berkeley.
Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

IV. TECHNOLOGY AND WARFARE

Martin C. Libicki

1. INTRODUCTION

Forecasts about tomorrow's battlefield depend on one's answer to a fundamental question: are the world's 

armed forces seeing a revolution in conventional military power driven by information technology? An 

answer first requires a clear definition of information-based warfare, a vision of the role technology 

plays in promoting military revolutions and an understanding of the changing rates at which 

improvements occur in the developmental cycle of a particular technology. 

DEFINING INFORMATION-BASED WARFARE

Information-based warfare is that which utilizes information, especially computer-processed 

information, to impose one's will on an enemy. While all aspects of war are evolving rapidly, those 

driven by the computer-communications revolution are evolving the fastest. Thus, the description that 

follows of what warfare might be like in twenty years will concentrate on the changes in warfare 

wrought by the information revolution. This chapter considers technology holds--particularly 

information technology--to influence 21st warfare. 

Information-based warfare's roots go back several decades. Already, the combined application of 

precision-guided munitions, long-range airborne and space-based sensors, and the development of 

tandem Global Positioning System and Inertial Navigation Systems (GPS/INS) guidance packages 
means that any target that can be located and identified can be engaged and disabled. These weapon 

systems have accentuated the importance of hiding and seeking. Over time, the offense will expend 

increasing effort seeking targets. After detection, their destruction will become ever more likely because 

of precision strike missiles. The defense will spend more resources on hiding, in camouflage, in trying to 

mimic background or civilian objects and in masking its signatures. The traditional warfare principles of 

firepower and maneuver may become far less relevant.

But other factors are also increasing the importance of information in warfare. These include command 

and control, mission planning, simulation, intelligence, and psychological operations. Each aspect of war 

is being transformed by the ever-greater speed and ever-lessening cost of collecting, processing,, and 

transmitting information.

WILL THE MTR BECOME AN RMA?

A Military-Technical Revolution (MTR) encompasses radical innovations in weapons or military 

equipment, and such technologies are or soon will be available on the world market, despite the present 

American lead in applications of information MTR,. American forces may be able to use such 

technology to gain a decisive advantage over their potential foes, but this will depend on whether they 

can employ the current MTR to initiate a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). An RMA results when 

a nation seizes an opportunity to transform its military doctrine, training, organization, equipment, 

tactics, operations and strategy in a coherent pattern in order to wage war in a novel and more effective 

manner. Examples of RMAs are the levée en masse of the revolutionary French Republic, the 

development of the blitzkrieg by the German Army and Air Force, and innovations in carrier warfare 

developed by the U.S. Navy. The underlying technologies utilized in all three RMAs were available to 

many countries at the time, but in each case only one country combined and employed them in a unique 

and successful manner to gain a decisive advantage in war. 

The difficulty with predicting whether an RMA will emerge from the current MTR (and whether it will 

be ours or someone else's) originates in the search for a strategic rationale for an RMA. If the three 

examples above are indicative, an RMA emerges from a well-defined strategic problem. The levée en 

masse, for instance, was the response of Revolutionary France to invasion by the forces of the ancien 

régime. Military innovations carried out or proposed under the defunct Royal Army were wedded to the 

immense national energies unfettered by the revolution. The result was the huge French armies of 

unprecedented offensive power that smashed their way across Europe for 20 years. The Blitzkrieg 

permitted Germany to seize and hold the initiative and avoid the morass of slow-motion trench warfare. 

The U.S. Navy needed a method to conduct operations across the Earth's largest body of water.

Currently, the United States possesses the technology for a Revolution in Military Affairs, but it lacks a 

pressing strategic challenge to create one. Might the United States be motivated by the need to deter or 

defer a potential peer competitor? Such a problem does not necessarily have a military solution, nor is it 

generally viewed as an urgent priority. Would the United States look for innovative ways to wage war 

with minimal American casualties? Is the United States focused on figuring out how to project power 
without overseas bases, and, if so, is the RMA irrelevant to conflicts near existing bases? The more 

possible reasons one raises for an American RMA over the next 20 years, the less clear the focus 

becomes on a specific motivating challenge. Consequently, the likelihood of generating an American-led 

RMA from the information MTR remains highly uncertain. The only basis left for believing it will 

nevertheless take place is the generalized fear that complacency in its technological prowess will, more 

than any single factor, put United States armed forces at risk.

Will another country generate an RMA by 2015? Others may have clearer strategic objectives by the 

very nature of their geostrategic circumstances (e.g., the presence of so many potential great powers in 

the Asian Arc). However, if their most pressing challenge is to defeat a power much weaker than the 

United States, their response may be irrelevant to American concerns. Barring a direct military 

confrontation between the United States and a peer or near-peer competitor, the United States might 

confront an adversary facing two simultaneous strategic problems. Such an adversary might seek to 

defeat a local enemy at acceptable cost and also prevent or confound the intervention of the United 

States or another distant great power. Military units (e.g., massed tanks) that can do the first may be an 

easy conquest for our style of warfare. Military units that can do the latter (e.g., irregular units) may be 

unable to overcome conventional defenses at low cost. An even more difficult challenge to the United 

States would be provided by a state that used conventional force against local foes and threatened to use 

weapons of mass destruction to deter great power intervention. Consider the problem for the United 

States if Iraq had possessed nuclear capabilities in 1990 or if a nuclear-armed North Korea initiated a 

second war on the peninsula. Any U.S. response likely would combine counter-proliferation approaches 

with preemption, and even strategic deterrence, but this would hardly constitute an RMA. 

CAVEATS OF MIDTERM FORECASTING

This report maintains that the emergence of a peer military competitor is not likely during the next 10 or 

20 years, but it is considerably more likely after the year 2015. Under foreseeable circumstances, U.S. 

Armed Forces are likely to retain their present general superiority over those of any other state. 

However, they may not be invincible. It is possible that foreign forces may develop innovative ways of 

warfare that, at least temporarily, could grant them tactical or operational advantage. Even general 

American military superiority would not necessarily mean quick or easy victory in every case. We might 

suffer from other disadvantages, as well--we may be more sensitive to casualties, and we will almost 

certainly be farther from battlefields of 2015 than our potential foes. Furthermore, forecasting the degree 

of our superiority in a particular case requires knowledge of the military sophistication of a particular 

opponent. There is no way to know this in advance. 

We can make some reasonable projections about the highest levels of military technological 

development in 20 years. To field a weapon system by 2015 would require the initiation of its 

development cycle by 2000 or so. Five years from now is barely time enough for a radically new 

invention to be proven and win the confidence necessary to justify a major development program. The 

capital replacement cycle for major weapons systems will also affect future inventories. For example, 

even if a new American tank program were initiated before 2000, it would not reach the field until 

roughly 2010. Barring accelerated procurement, such a hypothetical tank would account for only a low 
percentage of the Army's main battle tanks in 2015. To be sure, this example is not universally 

applicable. The upgrades that reify information warfare have faster development cycles. The Ballistic 

Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) has demonstrated that completely new equipment can be built in 

a 2-year cycle. A number of complex weapons systems, such as the airborne Joint Surveillance and 

Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) have proven usable as early as 5 years prior to initial full 

operational capability. Nonetheless, most American and foreign equipment that would appear on the 

2015 battlefield already exists or would be a recognizable development of existing systems.

Project 2015 starts with existing inventories, programs, and technologies and work forward 20 years to 

estimate how they might be used in the field and what opportunities they offer for doctrinal innovation. 

Yet, such forecasts require assessments of the likelihood and timing of technological advances. For 

instance, will the United States have, by 2015, a system capable of shooting down a tactical ballistic or a 

cruise missile (or a flock of them)? Assessing how well existing defensive systems can combat existing 

tactical ballistic missiles is hard enough, but predicting the relative course of two competing trend lines 

(better tracking/fuzing versus decreasing missile observability) involves even more uncertainties. The 

answers are critical because they affect the viability

of a number of weapons platforms, such as surface ships. If the latter remain effective, certain 

operations, such as precision fire, may be best moved offshore. If no surface ships remain viable, the 

Navy will need to fundamentally rethink the way it contributes to warfare. 

Such uncertainties about the future of warfare are increased by the growing importance of proliferation 

in determining the capabilities of whatever enemies we might face. Because the Soviet Union 

fundamentally armed itself from its own technological base (albeit with some purloined information), its 

likely progress could be debated within well-formed parameters. Proliferation regimes, however, extant 

and proposed, now cover a large variety of weaponry. Political decisions about how to extend current 

regimes, and under what circumstances they are observed, are difficult to foresee over a 20-year period. 

One even could assume that all currently fielded nonnuclear foreign weapons will be available on world 

markets sometime between now and 2015.

Predicting the range of results of information-based warfare is complicated further by the type of 

conflict involving such systems. When the order of battle was derived from learning the number of 

enemy divisions or battleships, the fundamental units for calculating opposing strength were visible and 

countable. As "hiding and seeking" becomes more important, however, enemy capabilities to see or be 

seen increasingly are being kept secret and are harder for us to divine. (Consider the secrecy with which 

we envelop the capabilities of our own spy satellites.) No foe will reveal beforehand how he intends to 

spoof our sensors. Indeed, we are unlikely to know the degree of his success at such measures, short of 

their employment.

RATES OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

The fundamental force driving the information revolution has been the rapid and consistent rate at which 
silicon-based devices have continued to improve. Between 1981, when IBM's original personal 

computer was introduced, to 1996 with today's 200MHz Pentium Pro machines, processor speeds for 

personal computers have risen several hundred-fold,, doubling every 2 years. The personal computer has 

had comparable increases in standard memory configurations (from 64,000 to 8,000,000 bytes), hard 

storage systems (from 10 megabytes in 1984 to the more common gigabytes today) and modem speeds 

(from 300 bits/second to 28,000 bits/second). In communications, phone-line trunk capacities have 

increased from 1.5 million bits per second to 155 million bits per second (using synchronous optical 

networks).

Such improvements in capacity will not cease--but will such rapid rates of change continue into the 

future, and how important will such improvements be? The answers lie in an understanding of the 

history of rates of development of particular technologies. Often the pattern has been an S-curve of slowfast-slow improvement. For example, although the first commercial synthetic polymer, bakelite, was 

created in 1909, new polymer products initially entered the market slowly. Most of the major 

commodity polymers (plastics precursors) were commercialized in the 1950s and 1960s. After painfully 

slow development, the Germans and Italians flew the first successful jet-powered aircraft in 1939-1940. 

Led by British and American designs, jet engine performance improved radically between the mid1940s and the mid-1960s. However, as these two examples illustrate, at some point, progress in the 

development of a technology slows. Although the range of available polymers or the capabilities of 

modern jet engines are both far greater than 25 years ago, these more recent advances have been of 

degree rather than of kind.

At the time of rapid development of a particular technology, hopes for such continued improvements 

extending indefinitely may seem reasonable. In retrospect, one can see that expectations had erred 

toward extreme optimism. As a result of past experience, most contemporary observers anticipate the 

same fate will befall information devices. Disagreement concentrates only on the question of when this 

slowdown will occur.

Another S-curve pattern illustrates the correlation of capabilities with underlying power. Early personal 

computers, for example, were poorly suited to word processing. They had 40-character screens and were 

so slow that typists were forced to pause while keystrokes were laboriously processed into text. 

Improvements followed rapidly, and increased speeds, hard disks, and spell-checking programs made 

word processing progressively easier to accomplish on computers. However, further improvements in 

computers are unlikely to alter the utility of computers for word processing. This provides another 

illustration of the fact that, after a certain point, even rapid changes in technology permit only modest 

increases in functionality.

Thus, as important to modern warfare as information capability has become, it now takes several orders 

of magnitude improvement to make a significant difference in capability. For example, a system capable 

of generating imagery accurate to the inch is not necessarily 144 times better than one capable of 

generating accuracy to the foot, even though the former reveals 144 times as much information, in the 

technical sense. This is not true for some other aspects of warfare. For example, tank guns that can be 

aimed accurately from 4,500 meters give overwhelming advantage to an armored force engaging an 
opponent with tanks armed with guns accurate to only 1,500 meters. In this case, the 3-to-1 superiority 

alone provides a decisive difference. The performance of Soviet tanks with their Iraqi crews in combat 

with their American counterparts in the Gulf War made that clear.

What do these two S-curve rates of technological development portend for American security? That 

depends on the stage of development. Let us suppose that the United States enjoys a 10-year lead in a 

certain area. If the technology were in its laboratory stage of development, it would provide the United 

States with little or no military advantage. After the technology was applied to military equipment, the 

10-year advantage would provide the United States with a decisive advantage. However, after the rate of 

technological development slowed down for the United States, it would stillbe increasing at a rapid rate 

for the nearest American competitor. Our advantage would be considerably narrowed and eventually 

rendered relatively insignificant. 

KEY QUESTIONS

In estimating the technology components of the national security environment in 2015, this chapter 

focusses on two questions. First, what will be the important differences between what American forces 

will be able to do then, compared to what they can do now? Second, what will be our advantages over 

our best potential military rival? While the capabilities of military systems adapted from commercial 

systems can be anticipated with a fair degree of certainty from expected developments in the latter field, 

the capabilities of purely military systems--a category which includes many sensors--are far harder to 

guess.

The primary source of uncertainty about future foreign military systems arises from difficulties 

determining the strategy for which they will be developed. Important new military capabilities are likely 

to be created by a relatively small number of foreign countries: more likely, the West Europeans, Russia 

and China; less likely, Japan and India; perhaps some of the East Europeans, Korea, Taiwan, Israel, 

Brazil, and South Africa. On what strategic basis would they do so? Some may take advantage of 

American protection and seek to develop complementary capabilities. Others may orient their programs 

toward export sales.Yet others may concentrate on building capabilities against threats from the 

developing world. The answers to other questions are even harder to guess. Will suchcountries feel 

impelled to adapt to the information MTR or will they compete directly with capabilities that the United 

States will be demonstrating over the next twenty years? If the latter, will they be content to keep their 

innovations to themselves or, once they have mastered them, will they seek customers for such new 

technologies? What types of capabilities will the world's other advanced military powers pursue? A state 

that seeks to dominate its neighbors may develop conventional heavy weapons, but one that wishes to 

deter American involvement in a region may prefer lighter information-based systems. Without knowing 

the details of great-power rivalry in 2015, the easiest answers to these questions would arise from 

following commercial developments adapted to military use. Developments initiated by foreign 

militaries are far more difficult to foresee. 

Finally, a distinction needs to be drawn between information-based warfare, the primary concentration 
of this chapter, and information warfare, a somewhat different topic. Although information warfare 

includes information-based warfare, it also includes other subtopics: the influence of information on 

national decisionmaking, and the conduct of conflict through non-violent attacks on computer systems, 

such as through viruses, worms, and "Trojan Horses." In addition, although information technologies 

can affect national security through other means--such as law enforcement against state-sponsored 

crime, struggle in the cultural-economic realm, and the formation and influence of transnational 

communities--this chapter does not discuss such subjects in order to avoid distraction from its focus on 

how progress in information technologies likely will improve the ability to prosecute warfare. 

2. SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGIES

One way of looking at how technology might influence national security is to begin with the three great 

technical revolutions of our time: information, biology, and materials. All three result from the ability to 

microfabricate, that is, to manufacture on a scale as small as the atomic level. Microfabrication makes 

possible the creation of chips of greater speed and complexity, hence greater information-processing 

capacity. The ability to design and replicate complex biological molecules may permit increasingly 

sophisticated drugs and other medical treatments. The ability to build composites atom by atom may 

result in affordable and lightweight materials of extremely high strength and resilience.

Of these three revolutions, the information revolution is furthest advanced and thus most likely to 

influence the conduct of warfare 20 years hence. In time, biological and materials technology also may 

play a large role in warfare. For instance, the biological revolution may permit warriors to be 

psychologically or physiologically manipulated from afar. It may also permit the invention of terrible 

diseases to wreak havoc on mankind or nature. The materials revolution may enable the fabrication of 

armor far stronger and lighter than anything yet imagined. With biology and materials, however, such 

developments are speculative; capabilities imagined for more powerful compounds may be incompatible 

with physical laws. The information revolution, though, has actually occurred. True, it faces some 

scientific limits, such as a limited radio spectrum and chemical limits on battery power, but the world's 

militaries will face enormous challenges, as well as enjoy huge potential, over the next 20 years from 

innovations that already have been demonstrated and disseminated.

CAN THE VISIBLE BE KILLED?

The two fundamental issues of information-based warfare are: 

Can the visible be destroyed and, if so, under what conditions? 

What can be made visible and what can be kept hidden? 

The development and refinement of Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs) suggests that anything that can 

be detected, classified, and assigned to a weapon can be destroyed. Many types of PGMs will soon be 

able to be guided to coordinates using GPS receivers, perhaps supplemented by INS guidance. The 
United States is fitting cruise missiles with such capabilities and also testing the Joint Direct Attack 

Munitions (JDAM), a completely new generation of PGMs with enhanced capabilities. GPS/INS 

guidance kits for Mk-82 bombs are already being installed for a few thousand dollars each; units under 

development in American laboratories ultimately may be available for below $1,000. Defense 

intelligence estimates have warned that countries such as Syria, Iran, India, or China will have GPS/INSguided, low-observable missiles by 2000 or shortly thereafter.

Positional GPS/INS guidance retains two advantages over the self-contained sensor packages that 

currently guide PGMs.(Note 1) First, it works against known targets with weak signatures or against 

targets with intermittent signatures, such as a sputtering radar. Secondly, positional guidance packages 

use far less artificial intelligence; thus, at some point in their development, they promise to be much less 

expensive than at present. Missiles so equipped could be made cheaply enough to use in overwhelming 

numbers in saturation attacks against high-value targets such as ships, command and control sites, and 

logistics facilities--but GPS updates to positional guidance systems would become dependent on the 

maintenance of communications with a central system. This creates a key vulnerability.

Three types of defense for visible objects are available: range/speed, armor/burial, and counterattack. 

Range helps to protect some of the more valuable American systems, such as the Airborne Warning and 

Control System (AWACS) and JSTARS, because they can operate while flying beyond the strike limits 

of current anti-air missiles. But these systems generate obvious signals and cannot maneuver very well 

to avoid missiles. Twenty years from now, they are likely to be more vulnerable to PGMs with the 

ranges of cruise missiles, although only a few countries are likely to have such PGMs. Even in 20 years, 

speed will protect reconnaissance aircraft and submarines against PGMs with limited speed and range.

Armor is likely to improve by 2015. However, barring a breakthrough in materials technology, armor 

will provide no panacea. The newest thinking on how to protect tanks is for its skin to react to 

information on an incoming round to shape itself and so blunt the missile's impact. Even if this approach 

succeeds in practice, however, it will be available for very few tanks by 2015. Furthermore, such armor 

may still be vulnerable to heavy weapons, fast penetrators, or saturation attacks. Burial and bunkering 

offer primitive but effective protection for command posts and stores, but such methods cannot protect 

moving targets. The United States has produced some bunker-busting bombs, but a truly effective 

nonnuclear burrowing bomb is unlikely to appear by 2015.

The Defense Department is funding generously the development of counterattack technologies to defend 

high-value targets against long-range missiles, but initial results have been mixed. In retrospect, the 

Patriot missile was not as successful in the Gulf War as initially believed. Upgraded and new defensive 

missiles both can appear impressive in one-on-one test engagements. But they will not insure against a 

determined saturation attack against a valuable target. Offensive missiles are also growing stealthier, 

making their intercept increasingly difficult. European missile manufacturers are reportedly applying 

radar-reducing finishes to their tactical missiles, such as the Penguin and FOG-M.

Target areas could also be defended by local electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or microwave burst to cripple 
the electronics on incoming missiles. But such defenses could be overcome by the use of older 

technologies such as mechanical fuzes or terminal trajectories. Counterelectronics weaponry could 

nevertheless be devised during the next decade that would confuse the systems on offensive missiles. 

Eventually, this could force the expensive replacement of many missile fuzes.

Over the next 20 years, certain characteristics of missiles are likely to evolve. Future missiles will be 

somewhat lighter and thus longer ranged than present models.(Note 2) More missiles will be guided by 

fire-and-forget systems and armed with more sensitive target discrimination mechanisms. For special 

needs, such as the disabling of an installation with a high density of electronic systems, missile warheads 

could be armed with microwave-kill capabilities. Extremely long-range artillery could replace selfpowered missiles for a number of tasks when effective elecromagnetic guns are developed. 

In sum, by 2015, visibility is even more likely to equal death on the battlefield. Some American 

platforms will enjoy a high level of protection because of their stand-off range, armor, or self-defense 

systems. This would force our opponents to expend considerable ingenuity and resources if they wished 

to overcome our defenses. On the other hand, American forces will have high rates of success in 

destroying enemy targets after we detect them. Thus, the game of hide-and-seek will continue to grow in 

importance in clashes between conventional forces.

SEEKING AND HIDING

Seeking and hiding will determine the parameters of the battlespace of 2015. American abilities in these 

regards will be higher than that of those restricted to using only commercial or widely available military 

technologies. American detection capabilities will be determined by the performance of our sensors and 

integrators. 

The purpose of sensing is to evaluate the battlespace environment for strategic, operational, and tactical 

purposes; the three tasks are interconnected. The integration of pieces of tactical information into a 

composite picture is a long-established intelligence method to assess a potential or actual opponent's 

strength and possible intentions. Awareness of the general situation, in turn, permits small-scale 

surveillance to focus on what is deemed particularly relevant. Modern sensor technology divides this 

latter task into a three-step process. One set of sensors indicates that an object justifies identification and 

tracking. Next, filters help focus on certain readings, to the exclusion of others. Finally, targets are 

pinpointed for prosecution. Often the last task is performed through yet other sensors. For the 

foreseeable future, synoptic pinpointing--finding targets by surveying everything at sufficiently high 

resolution--is unlikely to be possible except under very specialized conditions. Nonetheless, by 2015, 

some combination of sufficiently powerful computers and discriminating filters may automate a large 

share of what is currently accomplished only by human intelligence. The United States is likely to lead 

in such applications, but even our systems will tend to find only what they are looking for where they 

are programmed to look.

Sensors can be divided into two categories: stand-off systems that operate from space or the sea, and 
intrusive systems that operate from the air and the ground. The farther away a sensor operates from 

enemy-controlled area, the more survivable it is and the easier to deploy in circumstances short of war, 

or where the United States is not directly involved. Sensor employment is also influenced by the concept 

of plausible deniability. A high-flying reconnaissance aircraft can be used in peacetime without 

diplomatic risk only if it can avoid coming down in the territory it is observing. Similarly, a sensor that 

cannot be traced has greater political potential for use than one with an obvious national origin. By 2015, 

American forces may also have access to the information that states are routinely collecting by sensors 

monitoring their own activities, such as airport or seaport operations. Such access would be expected to 

fall off as international tensions mounted.

SPACE-BASED SENSORS

There are two types of current satellite surveillance systems: low-earth orbit and geosynchronous. Lowearth orbit satellites can take detailed pictures in the visible, infrared, and microwave bands, using 

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). Such satellites can stay over one point for only a few minutes and can 

return only every few days. The tactical employment of such satellites is limited further because their 

flight schedules provide knowledge of surveillance times to those wishing to hide or cease activities 

during those periods. Geosynchronous satellites, used to scan most of a hemisphere, can provide 

continuous observation of specific spots, but they provide poor image resolution from their 35,000-

kilometer-high orbits. Geosynchronous satellites generally are used for electronic intelligence and to 

search for infrared signatures of ballistic missiles. As surveillance satellites are adapted for tactical and 

operational, rather than strategic, use, placing them in medium-earth orbits may permit the combination 

of adequate resolution and continuous observation capabilities. If four Hubble-class sensors were placed 

in a 7,000- kilometer-high equatorial orbit, they could observe most points between 60 degrees north and 

south with a 2-meter resolution.(Note 3) Molniya orbits (north-south elliptical) also have some 

advantages if the area of interest is limited, such as the Northern Hemisphere.

Alternatively, the success of the Ballistic Missiles Defense Organization's multiple-sensor technology 

integration (MSTI) and Clementine spacecraft suggests that inexpensive light satellites can provide 

adequate resolution in low-earth orbits. Each cost roughly $30 to $50 million, had multiple sensors, 

weighed roughly a kilogram in weight and was capable of image resolution down to 20 meters.(Note 4)

A sufficiently large fleet of such satellites with software-linked sensors from many different sources 

could keep any one location under near-constant surveillance. Using many of such satellites to look at a 

single point would render useless attempts at hiding from observation. 

While the United States is currently more advanced than other countries in building surveillance 

satellites, how secure is that lead? Russia and France are not far behind in sophistication, and. China and 

Japan are catching up. By 2015, India (whose IRS satellites have fairly advanced sensors), Israel, Korea, 

and Canada also may have made significant advances. Several satellites that were designed for 

environmental monitoring already work at the 20-meter resolution level and the possible proliferation of 

a 1-meter resolution capability is not unimaginable. After all, at present, three American companies are 

vying to sell 1-meter systems on the world market. By 2005, France, Russia, and perhaps Japan may 
possess such satellite capabilities.

By 2015, commercially available satellites will have capabilities close to those of contemporary 

American military satellites. Obviously, military usefulness would be greatly enhanced by the delivery 

of images faster than even American satellites can now provide; current image-processing times from 

many American systems limit military responses to transient data. American forces have recently 

arranged to receive real-time data from France's Spot satellite. Indeed, military use of third-party 

satellites, even those configured for environmental purposes, will rise substantially over the next 20 

years.

A significant reduction in the cost of lifting a kilogram into low-earth orbit could allow far more orbital 

and suborbital launches by 2015. Currently the lowest cost--using payloads of 10 metric tons or more--is 

roughly $10,000 per kilogram ($20,000 per for small payloads). Although, several aerospace contractors 

tout reusable launch vehicles that could cut this cost to perhaps $1,000 a kilogram,(Note 5) how well 

grounded are these estimates? The Space Shuttle originally was predicated on low costs and frequent 

launches but resulted in few economies relative to older technologies. Still, some aerospace engineers 

claim that reusable launch vehicles (of which single-stage-to-orbit are one type) could become available 

in 10 years if the U.S. Government chose one and invested as little as $4 billion in its development. 

More conservatively, NASA has estimated it would require 25 years and $20 billion. Meanwhile, Orbital 

Sciences Corporation, the world leader in light launchers, is striving to reuse 75 percent of its rocket 

components. If successful, its per-kilogram launch costs could be as little as $5,000 for small, 

individually launched payloads.

Might American manufacturers alone be able to cut launch costs by such large margins? It is unlikely 

that the other major space-faring countries--by 2015, Russia, France, China, Japan and perhaps India--

would permit the United States to maintain such advantage. As followers, their research and 

development path to cheap space transport will be substantially reduced by learning from American 

successes and failures. One can assume that it would take them about 10 years from when the first U.S. 

reusable launch system appeared to possess the same capability themselves.

What would substantially cheaper access to space imply for American national security? Lower launch 

costs might increase the number of satellites in orbit, but how much it would do so would depend on 

whether the freedom to make satellites heavier would equate to making them cheaper. Other factors 

would keep the population of satellites under control, such as limited spectrum or geosynchronous 

"parking spaces". Conversely, very cheap space launch costs might enable the creation of buckshot-style 

antisatellite systems.

The largest single military result of lower launch costs might be cheaper ordnance delivery. A cost of a 

$10,000-per-kilogram launch to low-earth orbit means, in theory, that a 200-kilogram bomb (e.g., a Mk82) could be dropped on any location on earth for $2 million. Still, this price is only barely competitive 

with a cruise-missile delivery. Military effectiveness of low-orbit ordnance delivery also would require 

surmounting other obstacles: the lead times for launch preparation, the cost of keeping a rocket on the 
launch pad long enough for sufficient target opportunities to justify a cost-effective ordnance payload, 

the potential for confusing a conventional launch for a ballistic missile attack, vulnerabilities to spacebased lasers, and plasma plumes that could limit midcourse corrections on missiles as they reenter the 

atmosphere.

If the $2 million launch cost were $200,000, however, the number of targets that could be allocated cost 

effectively to such rockets would be very large. By 2015, if reusable spacecraft are cheap, easy and 

quick to launch (particularly if they are untethered from fixed-launch facilities), range could greatly 

diminish as a factor in heavy conventional warfare. Of course one has to consider current treaty 

restrictions against space-based weaponry and fractional orbital bombardment systems, as well as limits 

on the number of strategic rockets and on the range of tactical rockets.

NAVAL SYSTEMS

Unless a rivalry develops between two great naval powers, the next 20 years are unlikely to produce 

dramatic improvements in deep-ocean nuclear submarine technology. Instead, underwater technology 

developments will focus on shallow-water capabilities and nonnuclear boats, particularly those driven by 

air-independent fuel-cell systems. Non- nuclear boat designs are producing quieter submarines and ones 

capable of longer sustained operations. The proliferation of small attack submarines of European design 

is likely to make littoral operations increasingly risky. Even so, the current generation of submarines in 

developing-world navies is below the technology level at which the U.S. Navy can honestly profess 

great concern. But the prospective improvement in the next generation of European designs--and the 

likelihood of equally sophisticated Asian-designed submarines appearing--suggests that the U.S. Navy 

will have some cause for worry from both the quality and numbers of nonnuclear foreign submarines by 

2015.

By 2015, mine warfare is likely to pose graver risks to large warships operating near shore and in 

shallow waters. Although not a widely reported fact, antiship mines caused more damage to allied 

warships in the Gulf War than any of the other more highly publicized systems. Future shallow-water 

mines (e.g., plastic mines) are likely to be increasingly difficult to detect and defeat, particularly if they 

are cued by independent sensor systems. Those who design such mines will strive to give them the 

acoustic signature of rocks. Their true character would be revealed only when fired. At that point, they 

would take on the characteristics of torpedoes, capable of sinking even the largest ships when used in 

concentration. The only impediment to the increasing sophistication of mines over the next 20 years is 

that most Western countries--with the exception of Italy--are not pressing the development of such 

technology. Advances are more likely to come from developing-world maritime states.

Naval systems used as sensors have certain advantages. They can be legally deployed prior to 

engagement. Standing offshore, they can pick up electronic intelligence and, through acoustic sensors, 

can monitor port operations. They can oversee the flight operations of coastal cities, peer into 

mountainous terrain and, from some locations, acquire radar signatures that hug the earth. These 

functions do have limits. For example, line-of-sight needs require naval sensors to be 30-meters high to 
observe the closest shoreline or small vessels in harbor at a distance of some 20 kilometers offshore.

Nevertheless, by 2015, bringing a large ship to within 20 kilometers of another nation's coastline to 

monitor activities may be both risky and inefficient. Risk would come from being a visible target within 

range of many land-based systems. Inefficiency would result from the limited range of any single 

platform. Still, naval air launched from a single platform would extend the observation coverage the 

platform could provide by an order of magnitude. But inefficiency also would stem from the difficulty of 

sustaining operations for any length of time without rotating ships. Generally, three ships are required to 

keep one on station indefinitely, but for some areas remote from North America, such as the Indian 

Ocean, this figure may be closer to five-to-one for sustained American naval operations. Thus, a series 

of buoys, possibly complemented by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), might prove far more efficient 

at collecting signatures. Buoys do not stand as tall as ships but, in sufficient combination, might offer a 

radar "dish" of sufficient strength to simulate effectively today's land-based, over-the-horizon 

backscatter radars. Distributed buoys would have to pass large quantities of data back and forth to form 

a coherent picture. Still, by 2015, such a capability could be possible with enough improvements in 

computing power.

A future variant on the acoustic naval sensor may be the seismic sensor that detects otherwise 

inaccessible vibrations caused by surface movement of large vehicles. It would take considerable 

practice before such signals could be translated into comprehensible patterns. As with offshore buoys, 

large numbers of sensors coordinated with high-bandwidth links and plenty of exercises would be 

required before usable information routinely could be expected to be collected from such systems.

AIRBORNE SENSORS

Unmanned aerial vehicles are the subject of a number of Defense Department programs aimed at the 

creation of many different types for a wide array of missions. Although they set the standards for 

endurance and capabilities, 30 other countries also make UAVs of varying degrees of sophistication (e.

g., in terms of sensor package, system integration and platform stealthiness). As a result, the United 

States does not have the overwhelming lead in this technology that it possesses in space sensors. UAVs 

function much closer to a given surveillance area than satellites can. Thus, a sensor package on a 

satellite with a 10-meter resolution can offer a 0.1-meter resolution when mounted on a UAV. Of course, 

the field of view from a UAV also is far smaller. But UAVs enjoy the enormous advantage over spacebased optical sensors of being able to operate under cloud cover. Given their special capabilities, UAV 

sensors can identify an object, when sensors on a satellite can only spot it.

However, UAVs have great disadvantages. Because they violate airspace, they can create political 

problems when flown in other than wartime circumstances. UAVs are manpower intensive to operate 

and require that operators be within relatively close range of the battlefield. If spotted, UAVs can be 

blinded or destroyed. While UAVs can be stealthier than aircraft when flown at night, they are far more 

observable by day, and the air turbulence they create also may reveal their presence. Unlike stealth 

aircraft, UAVs are useless if not communicating. Since most UAV communication is through imagery, 
they need to use fairly high-power, high-bandwidth channels for transmission. This increases the risk of 

their detection. Alternatively, UAVs can carry film cameras, but that delays the delivery of useful 

imagery. Current acquisition doctrine seems to favor long loitering times and high levels of stealth. Both 

increase UAV costs. An alternative doctrine of many, cheap, short-loiter UAVs may prove preferable.

GROUND-BASED SENSORS

Within the next 20 years ground-based sensors are likely to be greatly improved. Ground-based sensors 

would be useful for picking up signatures carried through the atmosphere, notably sound and vapors. For 

example, a bomber flying low to evade radar may leave a very distinct signature pattern among densely 

placed acoustic sensors.

Very sensitive chemical sensors are under active development for civilian and military purposes alike. 

"Sniffers" could detect the presence of human soldiers, as well as the emissions of mechanical objects. 

The movement of metal objects can also be detected through their effect on magnetic fields (in the same 

way that stop lights are prepped by vehicle movements). Gravimetric sensors are being developed to 

differentiate among passing vehicles such as empty, lightly loaded or densely packed trucks.

Long-range and short-range sensors will require different deployment doctrines. Short-range sensors can 

only provide wide area coverage if they are employed in large numbers. Thus, they must be inexpensive 

to be cost-effective. Adequate resolution, such as for triangulation of signature sources, requires they be 

networked in real time. Short-range sensors will work best as adjuncts to other sensors, for confirmation 

and for complicating the work of opponents charged with eliminating offensive signatures. 

The human senses coupled to the human brain provide the best ground-based sensor. The soldier of 2015 

is likely to be equipped with a portable supercomputer, coupled with digital radio-based 

communications capable of relatively reliable video data exchange. Such a soldier could conceivably 

navigate with high-resolution, near-real-time photographic maps, perhaps linked with portable expert 

systems and might even operate using systems capable of simulating alternative courses of action, 

allowing the evaluation of possible consequences in advance.

INTEGRATION

It is one thing to gather all sorts of signature information about the battlefield; it is quite another to 

integrate such information into a coherent picture. Systems integration has gained a notorious reputation 

for taking longer and working more poorly than previously planned. Many weapon systems, for 

instance, carry electronics whose system parameters had to be frozen (and thus grew obsolescent) over 

the many years required to tie all the subsystems together. 

Systems integration may fare better in the future than we have a right to believe. Substantial progress 

has been made in understanding the problems of systems integration. Data fusion, an application which 

puts great pressure on systems integration, is recognized as a skill that must be mastered to survive on 
the future battlefield. The great value of reliable software was emphasized by the controversy over the 

Strategic Defense Initiative. A mix of open-systems design philosophy, object-oriented programming, 

megaprogramming, tools integration, and Computer Assisted Software Engineering (CASE) may 

generate reliable techniques for managing complexity. Although the American defense industry base is 

being severely reduced, a large number of American defense-oriented systems personnel may be able to 

exercise their talents in nondefense projects. These range from designing public infrastructure, such as 

intelligent vehicle and highways, and earth observation, to intelligent manufacturing, and outfitting the 

global information infrastructure. Simulation is evolving into a technology through which systems 

integration concepts can be tested. Finally, the American armed forces are beginning to understand how 

the failure to interwork information systems from the various warfighting communities hinders the 

exploitation of the information collected. Continued emphasis on supporting joint and combined 

operations puts pressure on each service to exchange information with the rest. 

The United States is likely to remain the world leader in systems engineering, as indicated by its 

substantial lead in software exports. A conservative estimate is that the United States will retain a 

modest advantage over Europe, a notable lead over Japan, and a wide edge over the three other potential 

great powers: Russia, China, and India. These advantages, however, will be most evident only with very 

large, world-class systems. Foreign countries are rapidly improving their software capabilities, whether 

measured in terms of software maturity or clever algorithms. To the extent that useful military systems 

can be constructed with medium-scale software, American advantages could be less significant by 2015 

than at present.

Nonetheless, to a great extent, systems integration can be purchased abroad rather than developed at 

home. A country does not need an extensive higher educational infrastructure for that purpose if the 

graduate schools of the United States can educate that state's engineering elite. More than half of 

engineering doctorates awarded in this country are conferred on non-Americans, most from developing 

countries. While some remain and strengthen American society, most eventually return home.

Similarly, a nation can buy systems integration technology through purchase of an entire complex. 

Examples include highly sophisticated process control machinery (e.g., a modern refinery) or air traffic 

control systems, which resemble tomorrow's command-and-control systems. In 10 to 20 years, countries 

may be purchasing even more sophisticated energy complexes. A country's engineers may be able to 

decrypt the techniques that make systems integration work at the highest level. After that, if they could 

match the software and the successively lower levels of aggregation, they could acquire a total systems 

expertise almost at American levels. Brazil's $1.5 billion Amazon monitoring contract, recently won by 

Raytheon, may be a prototype of a system that can monitor a nation's entire defense zone.

COMMERCIAL CAPABILITIES

It would be very difficult to maintain the distinct American advantage in information-based warfare over 

the next 20 years. The relevant technologies are decreasingly the products of classified militaryindustrial complexes and increasingly the products of the commercial marketplace. Over the next 10 
years, a sophisticated opponent will be able to buy or lease a wide panoply of capabilities from around 

the world: in GPS, surveillance, communications, direct broadcast, systems integration, internetworking, 

cryptography, and air-based imaging. Furthermore, the costs of such purchases will progressively 

decrease. While the U.S. military still may enjoy a lead in each of these areas of information-based 

warfare, our lead may have decreased considerably compared to 1995 Despite having been purchased at 

a large cost multiple.

For example, GPS is now universally available. Signals can be received by devices costing a few 

hundred dollars. In theory, the American military could degrade GPS signals so that our forces could 

determine locations far more closely that our adversaries, limited to 100 meter accuracies, can. In 

practice, three factors militate against this safeguard. First, the U.S. Government has promoted the use of 

GPS for civilian purposes, most notably commercial aviation. Only a major and prolonged crisis could 

justify the global degradation of information that we have persuaded others to rely upon for their safety.

(Note 6) But accurate GPS data could enable a rocket attack against U.S. forces deployed in smaller 

contingencies. Since U.S. forces have access to the classified GPS signal, we might find it useful to jam 

the unclassified signal locally, but this is no panacea either. Second, GPS may be complemented by 

other navigation systems, such as Glonass and future additions to the Inmarsat and other 

communications constellations. Europeans are mulling the value of their own navigational capabilities. 

Third, the development of differential GPS means that if a set of fixed points near a target can be 

ascertained with precision, the target can be located with similar precision. Differential GPS systems are 

likely to proliferate throughout North America, Europe, and East Asia by 2000. Their accuracy exceeds 

that of Military Specification systems without differential correction.

GPS coupled with sufficiently good surveillance data theoretically places virtually every fixed facility at 

risk. Although U.S. forces employ camouflage and other deceptive tactics for many field installations, 

most logistics dumps, barracks, and command headquarters cannot be well hidden. Many such facilities 

could be identified and located if someone knew their general vicinity. In fact, if the facility were public, 

a terrorist with a portable GPS device would suffice to target it.

Overhead surveillance can locate fixed facilities with accuracy to within a meter or two. At present, the 

United States and the Russians alone can perform such detailed surveillance, but with the fall of the 

Soviet Union, a vigorous market has developed in Russian 2-meter imagery. The decision to permit sales 

of one-meter imagery from U.S. satellites would present any government or terrorist organization with 

the ability to collect a considerable volume of intelligence (until the United States exercises its 

prerogative of shutting it off). Over the next 20 years, the sale of satellites with such capabilities would 

permit many countries to acquire and transmit such imagery in near-real time. The obvious advantages 

offered by imagery to our forces in the Gulf War have prompted many states to consider acquiring better 

surveillance satellites, notably the French, the Gulf states, and the Japanese--the latter under the cover of 

disaster monitoring.

Another rapidly burgeoning information-gathering capability flows from the use of digital video 

cameras mounted on UAVs. For the last 10 years, an American company has been exporting digital-
imaging systems that can collect high-resolution imagery 50 miles to each side with real-time data-links 

to ground locations. Video cameras are inexpensive, but the resolution of the mid-1990s (just under 300 

lines) is relatively imprecise. The advent of high-definition television will create a market for highresolution cameras, offering two-to-three times the line density. Their digitization will certainly take 

place by 2015. Electronic still cameras have been slow coming to market but they are already being sold 

and thier popularity should rise sharply within 10 years. Digital cellular telephony is already available 

through several technologies. By 2015 it will be both ubiquitous and capable of sufficiently high 

bandwidth to transmit imagery directly. Any number of Asian companies will make them commercially 

available.

American forces might attempt to deny an enemy such communications capability by blocking access to 

third-party satellites, but such an attempt could present several problems of a political nature. If every 

satellite owner were to cooperate, then access by our opponent to satellite links might be blocked, but 

what if cooperation were denied? Jamming signals to and from geosynchronous satellites frequently 

requires being in the line of sight. Global low-earth-orbit cellular systems would make it even more 

difficult to deny communications. A system's managers could refuse to transmit signals into and out of a 

region but doing so would eliminate service for nonbelligerent neighboring states. Jamming signals also 

could limit local use of global cellular systems However, it could be very difficult to shut down a system 

used by irregular forces operating inside a friendly country or to interrupt a primitive command and 

control system based on citizen's band radio. Similar difficulties would arise in interrupting another 

nation's air traffic control network without also interfering with international air traffic control 

operations in the general vicinity. 

The rapid expansion of cellular communications may complicate targeting even further. At present, 

cellular systems use mobile terminals but fixed switches. The latter can be targeted easily. Yet, as 

electronic components continue to be reduced in size, future switches may themselves become mobile. 

Already, the development of personal communication systems points in this direction. One American 

company has managed to put the electronics for a modest-size cellular switch inside a large briefcase. 

The smaller the cell, the less power is required to operate it and the smaller its electronic signature. 

Thus, by 2015, some nodes may be virtually impossible to find and target.

Even without sensor proliferation, increasing global communications connectivity will decrease the 

chances for military activity to occur unnoticed. The daylight movement of an infantry platoon past a 

village can be kept secret from those outside the area if it is not connected electronically with the wider 

world. But as developing-world hinterlands become tied into the global communications network, such 

movements are more apt to be reported. Indeed, the marriage of digital video cameras with digital 

cellular, the products of which should be widespread throughout the Americas and Eurasia by 2015, 

means that many military movements are potentially liable to detection.

Direct broadcast satellite (DBS) television satellites may become ubiquitous in most areas of the 

developing world over the next decade. Most such satellites broadcasts reach several countries at once. 

Thus, jamming a particular channel would entail international complications. Again, unless the 

ownership of these satellites is heavily concentrated, some owner likely would be willing to provide 
television signals for even international outlaw states.

The Internet provides another broad conduit of data. An enemy that has retained phone connections can 

retain Internet service and thus the ability to broadcast messages internationally. As electronic 

commerce moves onto the Net, even a country facing an "information blockade" could get its software 

cast into a chip in any one of the world's many silicon foundries. More generally, the ubiquity of Internet 

connections makes it easier to acquire the world's knowledge of unclassified technical information.

What prevents the United States from destroying an opponent's space systems? One obstacle would be 

presented by an enemy using a third party's satellites. Unless every country with surveillance capability 

agrees not to sell its imagery, a route from neutral satellites to recipients hostile to the United States 

would not be difficult to create. In the Gulf War, it was sufficient to reach agreement with Russia to 

protect our "left hook" maneuver into Iraq from being reported to Baghdad. But with every passing year 

there will more satellite operators, making such embargoes increasingly difficult to maintain. Moreover, 

we may not always be in conflict with a pariah state like Iraq. Ostensibly neutral powers may 

surreptitiously help our opponent. The same logic applies to communications satellites. Unless every 

transponder's owner is careful to avoid uplinks from our foes, transmission will occur. And there are 

more than 1,000 transponders within sight of every point on the globe. The United States could demand 

positive proof that the owners of every possible space system is cooperating with us and destroy the 

satellites of those who refuse--but would we be willing to enforce this dictum in any conflict short of a 

global war?

HIDING

Although the balance between hiders and seekers is likely to tilt towards seekers, hiders also will be able 

to take advantage of new technologies such as stealth. Successive generations of U.S. equipment will 

incorporate increasing degrees of stealth; this is already true in regard to high performance aircraft and 

submarines. Stealth principles are being extended even to helicopters, certain surface ship classes and 

even to tanks. Current techniques include radar-absorbing materials, specially crafted surfaces, and false 

signal generators. Soon, noise-suppressing devices, the kind being engineered for vacuum cleaners, will 

be added to the stealth armory. Although the United States enjoys a strong lead in the area, component 

technologies already are understood in Europe, Russia and Japan.

Stealth, however, is no panacea. Many platforms use stealth not to hide but to delay detection, lowering 

their exposure time beneath the enemy engagement cycle. Information technologies are reducing the 

period required to engage a target, however, as sensors of increasing variety, number, and acuity appear, 

the cost of achieving a given level of stealthiness will increase. It take considerable maintenance to keep 

stealth aircraft stealthy. The more expensive the platform the fewer can be bought, the more they need to 

be protected, the stealthier and more complex they become, and so on. By 2015 the types of platforms 

that can made stealthy in a cost-effective manner may be roughly the same as they are in 1995: 

submarines, night-attack aircraft, and certain special operations forces equipment.
Other methods of hiding are operational: the proper employment of force elements, taking advantage of 

terrain, darkness and weather, and the use of decoys and camouflage. Operational and tactical 

adaptations to ever-improving and proliferating sensors, and the way sensors will be employed, are 

difficult to anticipate. Success against sensors will vary by national doctrine, and even from unit to unit. 

Electronic decoys designed to disguise force concentrations may be employed at the tactical, 

operational, and strategic level.(Note 7) But platform decoys are likely to degenerate in effectiveness as 

sensors improve. Decoys for smaller weapons and sensors may increase in utility by 2015. 

Another opeational route to stealth is to disguise military platforms as commercial ones. Thus trucks 

could be used to carry missiles, merchant ships could host hidden naval guns, and bombings could be 

carried out by wide-bodied aircraft. As information processing elements become smaller, they can more 

easily fit within such platforms without distorting their shapes into distinctly recognizable profiles. An 

enemy whose assets are so hidden forces the other side to target assets not exclusively by signature but 

by more operational attributes (e.g., any truck here must be up to no good). In the end, the enemy must 

engage far more targets, but at the risk of blurring the distinction between what is and is not considered 

fair game. The more bombs, the heavier the logistics trail, and the greater the number of vulnerabilities 

associated with supply operations. Trees may come to be better protected by sticking them in the forest 

rather than by building an obvious brick wall around them. 

(Continuation)
Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

MARTIN C. LIBICKI

Martin C. Libicki is a Senior Fellow of the Advanced Command Technologies program, INSS, National 

Defense University. He is a specialist in the application of information technologies to national security 

issues. He has written extensively on information warfare, information technology standards, and the 

revolution in military affairs. Dr. Libicki received his doctorate in industrial economics from the 

University of California, Berkeley.
Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

V. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1. CONCLUSIONS

With the end of the Cold War, the United States has begun a new period in its history. The country has 

entered a fourth era of national security policy. In the first period, the United States defended and 

preserved its new independence based on a "perpetual" alliance with France. But the permanent linking 

of their country's fortune to the affairs of Europe left many Americans uneasy. In 1793, fear of being 

drawn into European conflicts led George Washington to abrogate the alliance. With that, the United 

States began the long period of isolationism from Europe, broken only by the First World War and 

Woodrow Wilson's brief flirtation with the League of Nations concept. During the century and a half of 

Isolationism, the United States did prosper thanks to its geographical separation from the quarrels of the 

great powers, liberal immigration policies and exploitation of the immense resources of North America. 

By the eve of World War II, the country had grown from a weak, sparsely populated agricultural state 

into the richest and potentially most powerful country in the world.

The attack on Pearl Harbor forced Americans to abandon Isolationism. In December 1941, the United 

States began what would become a 50-year struggle to prevent totalitarian powers from achieving world 

supremacy. After victory in World War II, most Americans would have preferred to return to 

Isolationism, but the new Soviet threat forced the United States to come to the defense of Western 

Europe and Eastern Asia. Despite several bitter wars and intermittent periods of weariness, the United 

States maintained its commitments for over 40 years. 

The collapse of the Soviet empire unexpectedly brought to a close the long struggle to defend the United 
States and its allies from aggression. Feeling secure from this victory, some Americans favored slashing 

national security expenditures and turning inward to concentrate on domestic problems, but the outbreak 

of various conflicts in the immediate post-Cold War years, as well as global economic interdependence, 

made clear the disadvantages of such retreat. The American people realized that they would have to 

engage their power to maintain a degree of world stability. Furthermore, the products of the huge 

American economy could no longer be absorbed by the domestic market alone. Economic necessity had 

intertwined American interests with those of the global population. The United States had to conduct its 

national security policy accordingly. The end of the Cold War, however, had altered fundamentally the 

position of the United States in the world. As a result, the American people now face a question unique 

in their history. As citizens of the world's single superpower, they are free to follow a completely active, 

rather than a defensive, national security policy. But what goals should they pursue? How should they 

achieve them? To begin answering those questions, they must anticipate the dangers and opportunities 

that lie before them.

Readers will have noted the curious absence of the United States from many of the speculations made in 

this study. Surely the United States would prevent some of the more threatening developments described 

from taking place. This omission of American action is deliberate, to accentuate the consequences both 

of American action and inaction over the next 20 years. In a world of great powers, the United States 

must act or submit to being acted upon. Yet when the United States would employ its might, it would 

likely be most effective within a coalition or alliance. Group action would greatly increase American 

diplomatic clout and provide the practical and symbolic advantages conferred by collective security 

arrangements. However, to function well, alliances and coalitions require compromise by their members, 

even the strongest. To avoid having its enormous power perceived as threatening by its partners or by 

the international community, the United States must employ it in a restrained and cooperative manner. 

Paradoxically, the American people must practice a degree of self-restraint in order to reach the aims of 

a reasonable national security policy. 

This study also argues that many of the dire predictions about resource and environmental catastrophe 

predicted for the next two decades could overstate the dangers to American interests. This is not to deny 

that tens millions of people may suffer dreadfully from want in coming decades. 2015 suggests that the 

United States and other great powers may command the means to mitigate such tragedies, but they may 

rarely need the intervention of combat forces to deal with such crises. Despite rapid population growth 

over the next twenty years, resulting pressures are unlikely to overwhelm American ability to respond 

effectively. When the United States does, it could do so primarily by nonviolent means, as directed by 

prudent policy . 

War will likely remain a danger to the human race over the next 20 years. Because of the increasing 

accuracy of weaponry, warfare may wreak ever more havoc, even without the employment of weapons 

of mass destruction. Yet if the arguments made in chapter four prove correct, the defense may prove 

superior to the offense should wars be waged by advanced powers in the early twenty-first century. This 

shift in the type of warfare would present severe challenges to American national security. In the 19th 

century, the United States rose to a position of world power while shielded by a period of defensedominant warfare. When in 1917 the United States intervened militarily in the affairs of the great 
powers, it coincided with the offense regaining the advantage in warfare. This period in military history 

may be coming to an end. If future decades present ever-greater obstacles to projecting forces against 

technologically sophisticated hostile states, the United States would find it increasingly difficult to 

intervene abroad. In order to protect its interests and to deter aggression, the United States would have to 

invent new strategic, operational and tactical concepts_as well as the innovative weapons and equipment 

to wage such warfare.

Despite such potential problems, this study strongly suggests the wisdom of taking an active role in 

world affairs. It strongly suggests the wisdom of preventing potential problems, rather than reacting to 

them only after they materialize. To a great extent, this requires a new approach to maintaining the 

security of the United States that is neither isolationist, defensive, or confrontational.

No one can yet characterize the next era in American national security policy. That must wait until 

national aims have been agreed upon, the obstacles to them identified, and the measures to overcome 

them devised. Once the shape of future policy has become clearer, its major features will suggest its 

name. The new era likely will be identified by the anxieties, the sense of limits, and the recognition of 

international responsibilities that have replaced the brief euphoria of 1989-91. 

The majority of the American people currently still support a range of U.S. engagement across the globe. 

Yet they are increasingly concerned by the stagnation or decline in the economic and social well-being 

of the majority of their fellow citizens. Domestic realities necessarily influence national security policy. 

Still, 2015 indicates the dangers of U.S. inaction abroad, however attractive such detachment might 

appear to those who prefer to focus on domestic issues. In the past, the American people have dealt 

successfully with major internal and external problems simultaneously. Certainly they possess the 

energy, determination, and ingenuity to do so again. As a rough guide to how they might best apply such 

resources to the challenges that may face them beyond the borders of the United States, the authors of 

2015 offer the following recommendations.

2. RECOMMENDATIONS

1: Prepare to confront opponents more challenging than mid-size regional powers. The present 

focus on two nearly simultaneous Major Regional Contingencies is based on the international situation 

of the early 1990s. In coming decades, the American defense planners should consider the possibility of 

confrontation with a technologically sophisticated major power. By or beyond 2015, the United States 

might face a hostile great power, even a hostile great power coalition. Such questions might be 

considered during the quadrennial strategy review recommended by the Roles and Missions 

Commission. 

2: De-emphasize large military platforms as the basis for force structure, organizing forces and 

devising operational concepts and plans. Rapidly developing sensor and weapon technology make 

large military platforms easier to detect, track, target, and destroy. By 2015 large military platforms as 

we know them today likely will be approaching an untenable level of vulnerability on the battlefield. 
Therefore, in planning for the future they probably should not occupy the central place they do today in 

the arsenals of leading military powers nor play a dominant role in the organization and operations of 

military forces. It is unrealistic for the United States to shed all of its large military platforms within the 

next two decades: some will continue to be useful against less sophisticated foes, informationtechnology upgrades will improve their performance, and stealth will provide varying degrees of 

survivability. However, long-term recapitalization of the armed forces should not concentrate on 

iterative improvement of the large military platforms, organization and operational concepts of the past. 

The future for United States military forces is to be able to see, understand and strike an enemy without 

giving him anything vital to exploit, corrupt or destroy. This will drive military force structure toward a 

mix rich in networked sensors and information processors, long-range precision weapons. A force 

possessing robust capacity to move into crisis areas but not necessairly having to enter combat zones to 

engage the enemy. A flat organization of highly trained, specialized forces possessing distributed 

firepower capable of operating independently or in conjunction with indigenous forces. 

3: Increase information sharing and training with allies and potential coalition partners. Increased 

information sharing and training could help the United States maintain its lead in information-based 

warfare, improve interoperability with allies and facilitate creation of ad hoc coalitions. To the extent 

feasible, the United States should develop technologies and doctrine to support vertical coalitions. In 

these, local forces would supply more of the firepower and infrastructure, Americans would provide 

more of the information, associated systems and stand-off weapons. Thus, the United States should be 

preparing its allies to make the best use of the weapons it alone can offer them. But it must remain 

prepared to defend with American combat forces those allies too weak to do so themselves. On the other 

hand, the United States also should begin planning for contingencies when long-standing security 

relationships may prove of limited utility and new ones need to be created.

AFTERWORD

This study does not predict the outbreak of another world war, nor does it argue the inevitability of the 

rise of a future peer military competitor with the United States. However, 2015 does emphasize the 

crucial importance over the next two decades of channeling the competition among the great powers in 

non-violent directions. To do so necessarily requires educated guesses about the ongoing changes in 

warfare.

How much will the global security environment alter between 1996 and 2015? The warfare and weapons 

of 2015 conceivably could present little more than evolutionary developments of what was witnessed in 

the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Furthermore, war between great powers may not occur anywhere in the 

world. Instead, the major states may well pursue their interests and settle their differences in peaceful 

ways. Today's principal alliances may endure. Failed and outlaw states may remain the central concern 

of American defense contingency planning.

But the international situation in 2015 could differ sharply from that of 1986 or 1996. At least some of 

the great powers could be locked in an increasingly antagonistic relationship, making the problems of 
the developing world seem relatively insignificant as far as American national security was concerned. 

Ad hoc coalitions might supplant permanent alliances in importance. Increasing numbers of medium 

powers might be gaining access to information technologies with military applications and to precisiondeliverable weapons of mass destruction. In other words, the world of 2015 could be one of far less 

certainty than that of the Cold War and of far greater danger than that which the United States faces at 

present. We find this latter world view plausible and one that offers a far more prudent basis for 

American defense planning in the late 1990s.

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Institute for National Strategic Studies

2015: 

POWER and PROGRESS

July 1996

Edited by Patrick M. Cronin

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Patrick M. Cronin is a Senior Fellow at the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic 

Studies, where he directs the Asia-Pacific affairs research team. Dr. Cronin also serves a Professorial 

Lecturer in international relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International School of 

Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University, as well as Associate Editor of the 

journal, Strategic Review. Prior to joining the University, he held research positions at the Center for 

Naval Analyses, SRI International, and the Congressional Research Services. Dr. Cronin, earned his 

master's and doctoral degrees at Oxford University, served as the overall editor for this study.