This book is about national security strategy: what it is, what its
objectives are, what problems it seeks to solve or at least manage,
and what kinds of influences constrain and create opportunities for
the development and implementation of strategies. The heart of the
problem with which national security strategy deals is the series
of threats-normally military, but increasingly semi- or nonmilitary
in character-that the country must confront and somehow overcome or
contain. When the original version of this book1 was published in
1988, the set of threats facing the United States was reasonably
static-those problems associated with the Cold War confrontation
with a communist world led by the Soviet Union-even if there were
signs of change on the horizon. In the ensuing decade and a half,
that configuration of problems largely dissolved, along with the
concrete parameters within which we operated. In its place is a
much more diffuse, shifting, and controversial set of problems that
is simultaneously simple, compelling, and arguable. Making strategy
is no longer a simple, straightforward process, if it ever were.
The making and implementation of strategy at the national level is
largely an exercise in risk management and risk reduction. Risk, at
that level, is the difference between the threats posed to our
security by our adversaries and our capabilities to counter or
negate those threats. Assessing risk and resolving it has two
primary dimensions. The first is the assessment of risk itself:
what conditions represent threats to our security, and how serious
are those threats relative to one another and to our safety? The
answers to these questions are not mechanical and obvious but are
the result of subjective human assessments based on different
political and philosophical judgments about the world and our place
in it. The other dimension is the adequacy of resources to counter
the threats that we identify. In circumstances of plenty, where
there are adequate resources (manpower, materiel, perceived will,
etc.) to counter all threats, this is not a problem. In the real
world, each of these dimensions presents a real set of issues,
which we must acknowledge up front.
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