By John T. Correll, Editor in Chief Strategy for the Nearsighted History is littered with assumptions that turned out to be colossally wrong.
War has a way of surprising the optimists.
The Senator did not expect a real answer. His question was rhetorical and loaded. As he knows perfectly well, General Powell cannot predict what wars, if any, the US armed forces of the future will have to fight. That idea, gussied up in different language, has appeal for the public, which is disposed to believe that all threats ended with the cold war. He makes some allowance for the unexpected but pegs his calculations basically to requirements that can be anticipated and specified.