Национальная оборонная стратегия
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Национальные оборонные стратегии США являются дополнением к Стратегиям национальной безопасности США – одному из важнейших документов в сфере внешней и оборонной политики США, в части касающейся национальной безопасности. Стратегия национальной безопасности США представляет собой документ, в котором обозначаются приоритетные направления внутренней и внешней политики США, а также указываются основные угрозы безопасности страны и ее национальным интересам за рубежом, вследствие чего, она имеет общий директивный характер[1]. Впоследствии ее конкретизируют другие документы – в первую очередь Национальные оборонные стратегии и Национальные военные стратегии.
Национальная оборонная стратегия США (National Defense Strategy, NDS) – это концептуальный документ, который разрабатывается Министерством обороны США на основе Стратегии национальной безопасности, утверждаемой Президентом США.
В отличие от Стратегий национальной безопасности США, Национальные оборонные стратегии США появляются гораздо реже. В течение 2005-2018 гг. было разработано 4 Национальных оборонных стратегий США: в период президентства Дж. Буша-младшего («Национальная оборонная стратегия Соединённых Штатов Америки» (2005 г.), «Национальная оборонная стратегия Соединённых Штатов Америки» (2008 г.)), Б. Обамы («Обеспечивая глобальное лидерство США: приоритеты обороны XXI века» (2012 г.)) и Д. Трампа («Национальная оборонная стратегия Соединённых Штатов Америки» (2018 г.)).
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В Электронном издании «Национальные оборонные стратегии США» представлены тексты Национальных оборонных стратегий США.
Документы размещены в хронологической последовательности.
В настоящей версии Электронного издания «Национальные оборонные стратегии США» представлена подборка наиболее важных документов на английском языке.
Представленные документы представлены в полном объеме.
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Сборник «Национальные оборонные стратегии США» опубликован в форме электронного издания с целью ознакомления с важнейшими историческими документами, отражающими деятельность руководства США в сфере политики национальной безопасности.
2005
Национальная оборонная стратегия
Соединённых Штатов Америки
(Вашингтон, март 2005 г.)
The National Defense Strategy
The United States of America
March 2005
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
I. AMERICA'S SECURTTY IN THE 21 CENTURY
A. AMERlCA'S ROLE IN THE WORLD
B. A CHANGING SECURITY ENVIRONMENT
II. A DEFENSE STRATEGY FOR THE 21' CENTURY
A. STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
B. HOW WE ACCOMPLISH OUR OBJECTIVES
C. IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES
III. DESIRED CAPABILITIES AND ATTRIBUTES
A. KEY OPERATIONAL CAPABILITIES
B. ATTRIBUTES
FOREWORD
We live in a time of unconventional challenges and strategic uncertainty. We are confronting fundamentally different challenges from those faced by the American defense establishment in the Cold War and previous eras. The strategy we adopt today will help influence the world's strategic environment, for the United States is an unusually powerful player in world affairs. President George W. Bush is committed to ensuring the security of the American people, strengthening the community of free nations, and advancing democratic reform, freedom, and economic well being around the globe.
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The Department of Defense is implementing the President's commitment to the forward defense of freedom as articulated in the National Security Strategy. This National Defense Strategy outlines our approach to dealing with challenges we likely will confront, not just those we are currently best prepared to meet. Our intent is to create favorable security conditions around the world and to continue to transform how we think about security, formulate strategic objectives, and adapt to achieve success.
This strategy emphasizes the importance of influencing events before challenges become more dangerous and less manageable. It builds upon efforts in the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) to develop an adaptable, global approach that acknowledges the limits of our intelligence (in all senses of the term), anticipates surprises, and positions us to handle strategic uncertainty.
Since the QDR was released, events have confirmed the importance of assuring allies and friends, dissuading potential adversaries, deterring aggression and coercion, and defeating adversaries. The war on terrorism has exposed new challenges, but also unprecedented strategic opportunities to work at home and with allies and partners abroad to create conditions favorable to a secure international order.
When President Bush took office four years ago, he gave us the mission to prepare the Department of Defense to meet 21St century challenges. This strategy is designed to fulfill that mission. Knowing the dedication and capabilities of our uniformed men and women and of the civilians who support them, I am confident we will succeed.
Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
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March 1, 2005
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
America is a nation at war. We face a diverse set of security challenges.
Yet, we still live in an era of advantage and opportunity.
The National Defense Strategy outlines an active, layered approach to the defense of the nation and its interests. It seeks to create conditions conducive to respect for the sovereignty of nations and a secure international order favorable to freedom, democracy, and economic opportunity. This strategy promotes close cooperation with others around the world who are committed to these goals. It addresses mature and emerging threats.
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
Secure the United States from direct attack. We will give top priority to dissuading, deterring, and defeating those who seek to harm the United States directly, especially extremist enemies with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Secure strategic access and retain global freedom of action. We will promote the security, prosperity, and fieedom of action of the United States and its partners by securing access to key regions, lines of communication, and the global commons.
Strengthen alliances and partnerships. We will expand the community of nations that share principles and interests with us. We will help partners increase their capacity to defend themselves and collectively meet challenges to our common interests.
Establish favorable security conditions. Working with others in the U.S. Government, we will create conditions for a favorable international system by honoring our security commitments and working with other nations to bring about a common appreciation of threats; a broad, secure, and lasting peace; and the steps required to protect against these threats.
HOW WE ACCOMPLISH OUR OBJECTIVES
Assure allies and friends. We will provide assurance by demonstrating our resolve to fulfill our alliance and other defense commitments and help protect common interests.
Dissuade potential adversaries. We will work to dissuade potential adversaries from adopting threatening capabilities, methods, and ambitions, particularly by developing our own key military advantages.
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Deter aggression and counter coercion. We will deter by maintaining capable and rapidly deployable military forces and, when necessary, demonstrating the will to resolve conflicts decisively on favorable terms.
Defeat adversaries. At the direction of the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing-setting the conditions for future security.
IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES
Four guidelines structure our strategic planning and decision-making.
Active, layered defense. We will focus our military planning, posture, operations, and capabilities on the active, forward, and layered defense of our nation, our interests, and our partners.
Continuous transformation. We will continually adapt how we approach and confront challenges, conduct business, and work with others.
Capabilities-based approach. We will operationalize this strategy to address mature and emerging challenges by setting priorities among competing capabilities.
Managing risks. We will consider the full range of risks associated with resources and operations and manage clear tradeoffs across the Department.
NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
I. AMERICA'S SECURITY IN THE 21st CENTURY
A. AMERICA'S ROLE IN THE WORLD
America is a nation at war. We face a diverse set of security challenges.
Yet, we still live in an era of advantage and opportunity. We also possess uniquely effective military capabilities that we are seeking to transform to meet future challenges.
As directed by the President in his 2002 National Security Strategy, we will use our position "to build a safer, better world that favors human freedom, democracy, and free enterprise." Our security and that of our international partners-our allies and friends-is based on a common commitment to peace, freedom, and economic opportunity. In cooperation with our international partners, we can build a more peaceful and secure international order in which the . sovereignty of nations is respected.
The United States and its allies and partners have a strong interest in protecting the sovereignty of nation states. In the secure international order that we seek, states must be able to effectively govern themselves and order their affairs as their citizens see fit. Nevertheless, they must exercise their sovereignty responsibly, in conformity with the customary principles of international law, as well as with any additional obligations that they have freely accepted.
It is unacceptable for regimes to use the principle of sovereignty as a shield behind which they claim to be free to engage in activities that pose enormous threats to their citizens, neighbors, or the rest of the international community.
While the security threats of the 20'h century arose from powerful states that embarked on aggressive courses, the key dimensions of the 21st century-globalization and the potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction-mean great dangers may arise in and emanate from relatively weak states and ungoverned areas. The U.S., its allies, and partners must remain vigilant to those states that lack the capacity to govern activity within their borders. Sovereign states are obligated to work to ensure that their territories are not used as bases for attacks on others.
Despite our strategic advantages, we are vulnerable to challenges ranging from external attacks to indirect threats posed by aggression and dangerous instability. Some enemies may seek to terrorize our population and destroy our way of life, while others will try to 1) limit our global freedom to act, 2) dominate key regions, or 3) attempt to make prohibitive the costs of meeting various U.S. international commitments.
The United States follows a strategy that aims to preserve and extend peace, freedom; and prosperity throughout the world. The attacks of 9/11 gave us greater clarity on the challenges that confront us. U.S. officials and the public saw then that, without resolute action, even more harmful attacks would likely occur in the future. A reactive or defensive approach would not allow the United States to secure itself and preserve our way of life as a free and open society. Thus, the United States is committed to an active defense of the nation and its interests. This new approach is evident in the war on terrorism.
The United States and its partners have made progress in the war on terrorism through an unprecedented level of international cooperation. More than 170 countries are engaged in activities ranging from freezing terrorist assets to sharing intelligence to providing combat forces for coalition operations. In Afghanistan, a multinational coalition defeated a regime that provided one of the world's principal havens for terrorists. In Iraq, an American led effort toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein a tyrant who used WMD, supported terrorists, terrorized his population, and threatened his neighbors.
Experience in the war on terrorism has underscored the need for a changed defense establishment one postured both for extended conflict and continuous transformation. This demands an adaptive strategy, predicated on creating and seizing opportunities and contending with challenges through an active, layered defense of the nation and its interests.
B. A CHANGING SECURITY ENVIRONMENT
Uncertainty is the defining characteristic of today's strategic environment. We can identify trends but cannot predict specific events with precision. While we work to avoid being surprised, we must posture ourselves to handle unanticipated problems-we must plan with surprise in mind.
We contend with uncertainty by adapting to circumstances and influencing events. It is not enough to react to change. This strategy focuses on safeguarding U.S. freedoms and interests while working actively to forestall the emergence of new challenges.
1. MATURE AND EMERGING CHALLENGES
"America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few." - National Security Strategy, September 2002
The U.S. military predominates in the world in traditional forms of warfare. Potential adversaries accordingly shift away from challenging the United States through traditional military action and adopt asymmetric capabilities and methods. An array of traditional, irregular, catastrophic, and disruptive capabilities and methods threaten U.S. interests:
Traditional challenges are posed by states employing recognized military capabilities and forces in well understood forms of military competition and conflict.
Irregular challenges come from those employing "unconventional" methods to counter the traditional advantages of stronger opponents.
Catastrophic challenges involve the acquisition, possession, and use of WMD or methods producing WMD like effects.
Disruptive challenges may come from adversaries who develop and use breakthrough technologies to negate current U.S. advantages in key operational domains.
These categories overlap. Actors proficient in one can be expected to try to reinforce their position with methods and capabilities drawn from others.
Indeed, recent experience indicates that the most dangerous circumstances arise when we face a complex of challenges. For example, our adversaries in Iraq and Afghanistan presented both traditional and irregular challenges. Terrorist groups like al Qaeda are irregular threats but also actively seek catastrophic capabilities. North Korea at once poses traditional, irregular, and catastrophic challenges. Finally, in the future, the most capable opponents may seek to combine truly disruptive capacity with traditional, irregular, or catastrophic forms of warfare.
Traditional challenges. These challenges are most often associated with states employing armies, navies, and air forces in long-established forms of military competition. Traditional military challenges remain important, as many states maintain capabilities to influence security conditions in their region. However, allied superiority in traditional domains, coupled with the costs of traditional military competition, drastically reduce adversaries' incentives to compete with us in this arena.
As formidable as U.S. capabilities are against traditional opponents, we cannot ignore the challenges that such adversaries might present. Traditional challenges require us to maintain sufficient combat capability in key areas of military competition.
Irregular challenges. Increasingly sophisticated irregular methods e.g., terrorism and insurgency challenge U.S. security interests. Adversaries employing irregular methods aim to erode U.S. influence, patience, and political will. Irregular opponents often take a long term approach, attempting to impose prohibitive human, material, financial, and political costs on the United States to compel strategic retreat from a key region or course of action.
Two factors have intensified the danger of irregular challenges: the rise of extremist ideologies and the absence of effective governance.
Political, religious, and ethnic extremism continues to fuel conflicts worldwide.
The absence of effective governance in many parts of the world creates sanctuaries for terrorists, criminals, and insurgents. Many states are unable, and in some cases unwilling, to exercise effective control over their territory or frontiers, thus leaving areas open to hostile exploitation.
Our experience in the war on terrorism points to the need to reorient our military capabilities to contend with such irregular challenges more effectively.
Catastrophic challenges. In the face of American dominance in traditional forms of warfare, some hostile forces are seeking to acquire catastrophic capabilities, particularly weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Porous international borders, weak international controls, and easy access to information related technologies facilitate these efforts. Particularly troublesome is the nexus of transnational terrorists, proliferation, and problem states that possess or seek WMD, increasing the risk of WMD attack against the United States.
Proliferation of WMD technology and expertise makes contending with catastrophic challenges an urgent priority. Even a single catastrophicattack against the United States or an ally would be unacceptable. We will place greater emphasis on those capabilities that enable us to dissuade others from acquiring catastrophic capabilities, to deter their use and, when necessary, to defeat them before they can be employed.
Disruptive challenges. In rare instances, revolutionary technology and associated military innovation can fundamentally alter long-established concepts of warfare. Some potential adversaries are seeking disruptive capabilities to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities and offset the current advantages of the United States and its partners.
Some disruptive breakthroughs, including advances in biotechnology, cyber operations, space, or directed energy weapons, could seriously endanger our security.
As such breakthroughs can be unpredictable, we should recognize their potential consequences and hedge against them.
2. CHANGING RELATIONSHIPS
Alongside the four security challenges are far reaching changes in the international system:
We continually adapt our defense partnerships.
Key states face important decisions that will affect their strategic position.
Some problem states will continue to pose challenges, while others could realize that their current policies undermine their own security.
Hostile, non state actors have substantial numbers, capability, and, influence.
International partnerships. International partnerships continue to be a principal source of our strength. Shared principles, a common view of threats, and commitment to cooperation provide far greater security than we could achieve on our own. Unprecedented cooperation in the war on terrorism is an example of the benefit of strong international partnerships.
Today, the United States and its partners are threatened not just by enemies who seek to oppose us through traditional means, but also by an active spectrum of non traditional challenges. Key U.S. relationships around the globe are adapting and broadening in response to these changes. Also, we have significantly expanded our circle of security partners around the world.
Key states. Several key states face basic decisions about their roles in global and regional politics, economics, and security, and the pace and direction of their own internal evolution. These decisions may change their strategic position in the world and their relationship with the United States. This uncertainty presents both opportunities and potential challenges for the United States. Some states may move toward greater cooperation with the United States, while others could evolve into capable regional rivals or enemies.
Over time, some rising powers may be able to threaten the United States and our partners directly, rival us in key areas of military and technological competition, or threaten U.S. interests by pursuing dominance over key regions. In other cases, if adverse economic, political, and demographic trends continue, large capable states could become dangerously unstable and increasingly ungovernable, creating significant future challenges.
While remaining alert to the possibility of renewed great power competition, recent developments in our relations with states like Russia and China should encourage a degree of hope. As the President's National Security Strategy states, "Today, the international community has the best chance since the rise of the nation state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepare for war."
Problem states. Problem states will continue to undermine regional stability and threaten U.S. interests. These states are hostile to U.S. principles. They commonly squander their resources to benefit ruling elites, their armed forces, or extremist clients. They often disregard international law and violate international agreements. Problem states may seek WMD or other destabilizing military capabilities. Some support terrorist activities, including by giving terrorists safe haven.
As recently demonstrated by Libya, however, some problem states may recognize that the pursuit of WMD leaves them less, not more, secure.
Significant non state actors. Countering the military capabilities of state competitors alone cannot guarantee U.S. security. Challenges today emanate from a variety of state and non state sources. The latter are a diverse collection of terrorists, insurgents, paramilitaries, and criminals who seek to undermine the legitimate governance of some states and who challenge the United States and its interests.
3. ASSUMPTIONS FRAMING THE STRATEGY
This strategy is built on key assumptions about the world, the nature of U.S. strengths and vulnerabilities, and the opportunities and challenges we may see in the coming decade.
OUR STRENGTHS
The United States will continue to enjoy a number of advantages:
We will retain a resilient network of alliances and partnerships.
We will have no global peer competitor and will remain unmatched in traditional military capability.
We will maintain important advantages in other elements of national power-e.g., political, economic, technological, and cultural.
We will continue to play leading roles on issues of common international concern and will retain influence worldwide.
OUR VULNERABILITIES
Nevertheless, we have vulnerabilities:
Our capacity to address global security challenges alone will be insufficient.
Some allies and partners will decide not to act with us or will lack the capacity to act with us.
Our leading position in world affairs will continue to breed unease, a degree of resentment, and resistance.
Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism.
We and our allies will be the principal targets of extremism and terrorism.
Natural forces of inertia and resistance to change will constrain military transformation.
OUR OPPORTUNITIES
The future also offers opportunities:
The end of the Cold War and our capacity to influence global events open the prospect for a new and peaceful state system in the world.
Positive developments in Iraq and Afghanistan strengthen U.S. influence and credibility.
Problem states themselves will increasingly be vulnerable to the forces of positive political and economic change.
Many of our key partners want to deepen our security relationships with them.
New international partners are seeking integration into our system of alliances and partnerships.
OUR CHALLENGES
In the framework of the four mature and emerging challenges outlined earlier, we will contend with the following particular challenges:
Though we have no global peer, we will have competitors and enemies-state and non state.
Key international actors may choose strategic paths contrary to the interests of the United States.
Crises related to political stability and governance will pose significant security challenges. Some of these may threaten fundamental interests of the United States, requiring a military response.
Internationally-even among our closest partners-threats will be perceived differently, and consensus may be difficult to achieve.
II. A DEFENSE STRATEGY FOR THE 21st CENTURY
This National Defense Strategy outlines how DoD will support broader U.S. efforts to create conditions conducive to a secure international system as the President's National Security Strategy states, a balance of power that favors freedom. Such conditions include the effective and responsible exercise of sovereignty, representative governance, peaceful resolution of regional disputes, and open and competitive markets.
Our strategic circumstances are far different today from those of the Cold War.
Today, we enjoy significant advantages vis-à-vis prospective competitors, including an unprecedented capacity for constructive international leadership.
However, as described in Section I, we remain vulnerable to security challenges. We have learned that an unrivaled capacity to respond to traditional challenges is no longer sufcient. The consequences of even a single catastrophic attack, for example, are unthinkable. Therefore, we must confront challenges earlier and more comprehensively, before they are allowed to mature.
We aim, by various means, to preclude the emergence of the gravest dangers. The Defense Department's capabilities are only one component of a comprehensive national and international effort. For example, battlefield success is only one element of our long term, multi faceted campaign against terrorism. Our activities range from training and humanitarian efforts to major combat operations. Non military components of this campaign include diplomacy, strategic communications, law enforcement operations, and economic sanctions.
A. STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
1. SECURE THE UNITED STATES FROM DIRECT ATTACK
The September 11th attacks caused the United States to recognize it was at war. Our enemy is a complex network of ideologically driven extremist actors. They have used various means-and some are working to develop catastrophic capabilities-to terrorize our population, undermine our partnerships, and erode our global influence. The danger of catastrophic violence dictates a new strategic imperative: we will actively confront-when possible, early and at safe distance-those who directly threaten us, employing all instruments of our national power.
We will give top priority to dissuading, deterring, and defeating those who seek to harm the United States directly, especially extremist enemies with weapons of mass destruction.
2. SECURE STRATEGIC ACCESS AND RETAIN GLOBAL FREEDOM OF ACTION
The United States cannot influence that which it cannot reach. Securing strategic access to key regions, lines of communication, and the global commons:
Promotes the security and prosperity of the United States;
Ensures freedom of action;
Helps secure our partners; and
Helps protect the integrity of the international economic system.
We will promote the security, prosperity and freedom of action of the United States and its partners by securing access to key regions, lines of communication, and the global commons.
3. STRENGTHEN ALLIANCES AND PARTNERSHIPS
A secure international system requires collective action. The United States has an interest in broad based and capable partnerships with like minded states. Therefore, we are strengthening security relationships with traditional allies and friends, developing new international partnerships, and working to increase the capabilities of our partners to contend with common challenges.
We will expand the community of nations that share principles and interests with us, and we will help partners increase their capacity to defend themselves and collectively meet challenges to our common interests.
4. ESTABLISH FAVORABLE SECURITY CONDITIONS
The United States will counter aggression or coercion targeted at our partners and interests. Further, where dangerous political instability, aggression, or extremism threatens fundamental security interests, the United States will act with others to strengthen peace.
We will create conditions conducive to a favorable international system by honoring our security commitments and working with others to bring about a common appreciation of threats; the steps required to protect against these threats; and a broad, secure, and lasting peace.
B. HOW WE ACCOMPLISH OUR OBJECTIVES
1. ASSURE ALLIES AND FRIENDS
Throughout the Cold War, our military presence and activities abroad upheld our commitment to our international partners. We shared risks by contributing to their physical defense. Now, given new challenges, we aim to assure a growing and more diverse community of partners of that same commitment.
We will provide assurance by demonstrating our resolve to fulfill our alliance and other defense commitments and help protect common interests.
2. DISSUADE POTENTIAL ADVERSARIES
Would be opponents will seek to offset our advantages. In response, we seek to limit their strategic options and dissuade them from adopting threatening capabilities, methods, and ambitions.
We will work to dissuade potential adversaries from adopting threatening capabilities, methods, and ambitions, particularly by sustaining and developing our own key military advantages.
3. DETER AGGRESSION AND COUNTER COERCION
We remain committed to the active deterrence of aggression and coercion. Deterrence derives from our recognized capacity and will to defeat adversaries' attacks, deny their objectives, and dominate at any level of potential escalation. However, as the character and composition of our principal challengers change, so too must our approaches to deterrence.
During the Cold War our deterrent was based necessarily on the threat of a major response after we suffered an attack. In the current era there are many scenarios where we will not want to accept the huge consequences of an attack before responding. Therefore, our deterrence policy in this new era places increasing emphasis on denying enemy objectives by seeking to:
Prevent attacks (e.g., by destroying terrorist networks); and
Protect against attacks (e.g., by fielding missile defenses).
While it is harder to deter certain non state actors, such as terrorists and insurgents inspired by extremist ideologies, even these actors will hesitate to commit their resources to actions that have a high likelihood of failure. Our deterrent must seek to influence these actors' cost/benefit calculations, even as we continue prosecuting operations against them.
We will deter by maintaining capable and rapidly deployable military forces and, when necessary, demonstrating the will to resolve conflicts decisively on favorable terms.
4. DEFEAT ADVERSARIES
When deterrence fails or efforts short of military action do not forestall gathering threats, the United States will employ military power, together with other instruments of national power, as necessary, to defeat adversaries. In doing so, we will act with others when we can.
In all cases, we will seek to seize the initiative and dictate the tempo, timing, and direction of military operations. Bringing military operations to a favorable conclusion demands the integration of military and nonmilitary actions. When combined, these measures should limit adversaries' options, deny them their means of support, defeat organized resistance, and establish security conditions conducive to a secure peace.
This strategy is intended to provide the President a broad range of options. These include preventive actions to deny an opponent the strategic initiative or preempt a devastating attack; combat operations against a capable and organized military, paramilitary, or insurgent adversary; and stability operations that could range from peacekeeping to substantial combat action.
Today's war is against terrorist extremist networks, including their state and non state supporters. These entities are hostile to freedom, democracy, and other U.S. interests; and use terrorism, among other means, to achieve their political goals.
Victory on battlefields alone will not suffice. To win the Global War on Terrorism, the United States will help to create and lead a broad international effort to deny terrorist extremist networks what they require to operate and survive. To defeat the enemy, we must deny them what they need to survive; in the meantime, we are denying them what they need to operate.
The United States will target eight major terrorist vulnerabilities:
Ideological support key to recruitment and indoctrination;
Leadership;
Foot soldiers-maintaining a regular flow of recruits;
Safe havens-ability to train, plan, and operate without disruption;
Weapons-including WMD;
Funds;
Communications and movement-including access to information and intelligence; ability to travel and attend meetings; and command and control;
and Access to targets-the ability to plan and reach targets in the United States or abroad.
Our strategy consists of three elements:
Protecting the homeland. Each partner nation in the coalition against terrorist extremism has a special interest in protecting its own homeland. The Defense Department contributes to protecting the U.S. homeland by sustaining the offensive against terrorist organizations by:
Conducting military missions overseas;
Sharing intelligence;
Conducting air and maritime defense operations;
Providing defense support to civil authorities as directed; and
Ensuring continuity of government
Countering ideological support for terrorism. The campaign to counter ideological support for terrorism may be a decades long struggle, using all instruments of national power to:
Delegitimate terrorism and extremists by, e.g., eliminating state and private support for extremism.
Make it politically unsustainable for any country to support or condone terrorism; and
Support models of moderation in the Muslim world by:
Building stronger security ties with Muslim countries;
Helping change Muslim misperceptions of the United States and the West;
and Reinforcing the message that the Global War on Terrorism is not a war against Islam, but rather is an outgrowth of a civil war within Islam between extremists and those who oppose them.
The debate within the world of Islam between extremists and their opponents may be far more significant than the messages that non Muslim voices transmit to Muslim audiences.
Countering the ideological appeal of the terrorist network of networks is an important means to stem the flow of recruits into the ranks of terrorist organizations. As in the Cold War, victory will come only when the ideological motivation for the terrorists' activities has been discredited and no longer has the power to motivate streams of individuals to risk and sacrifice their lives.
Disrupting and attacking terrorist networks. The Department disrupts and attacks terrorist networks by:
Identifying, targeting, and engaging such networks, particularly the Al Qaeda terrorist network;
Preventing the exploitation by terrorist organizations of large, ungoverned spaces and border areas;
and Improving the military counterterrorism capabilities of allies and partners.
At the direction of the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in the manner of our choosing setting the conditions for future security.
C. IMPLEMENTATION GUIDELINES
These are guidelines for the Department's strategic planning and decision making:
1. ACTIVE, LAYERED DEFENSE
The United States will seize the strategic initiative in all areas of defense activity-assuring, dissuading, deterring, and defeating. Our first priority is the defeat of direct threats to the United States. Terrorists have demonstrated that they can conduct . devastating surprise attacks. Allowing opponents to strike first-particularly in an era of proliferation is unacceptable. Therefore, the United States must defeat the most dangerous challenges early and at a safe distance, before they are allowed to mature.
Prevention is thus a critical component of an active, layered defense. We will aim to prevent destabilizing conflict. If conflict becomes unavoidable, we will strive to bring about lasting change to check the emergence of similar challenges in the future.
Preventive actions include security cooperation, forward deterrence, humanitarian assistance, peace operations, and non proliferation initiatives including international cooperation to interdict illicit WMD transiting the commons. Preventive actions also might entail other military operations for example, to prevent the outbreak of hostilities or to help defend or restore a friendly government. Under the most dangerous and compelling circumstances, prevention might require the use of force to disable or destroy WMD in the possession of terrorists or others or to strike targets (e.g., terrorists) that directly threaten the United States or U.S. friends or other interests.
The United States cannot achieve its defense objectives alone. Our concept of active, layered defense includes international partners. Thus, among the key goals of the National Security Strategy is to work with other nations to resolve regional crises and conflicts. In some cases, U.S. forces will play a supporting role, lending assistance to others when our unique capabilities are needed. In other cases, U.S. forces will be supported by international partners.
Another layer in an active, layered approach is the immediate physical defense of the United States. At the direction of the President, the Department will undertake military missions at home to defend the United States, its population, and its critical infrastructure from external attack. Our missile defense program aims to dissuade adversaries by imposing operational and economic costs on those who would employ missiles to threaten the United States, its forces, its interests, or its partners.
In emergencies, we will act quickly to provide unique capabilities to other Federal agencies when the need surpasses the capacities of civilian responders and we are directed to do so by the President or the Secretary. Under some circumstances, the
Department will provide support to outside agencies for one time events of limited scope and duration.
We will focus our military planning, posture, operations, and capabilities on the active, forward, and layered defense of our nation, our interests, and our partners.
2. CONTINUOUS TRANSFORMATION
Continuous defense transformation is part of a wider governmental effort to transform America's national security institutions to meet 21sst century challenges and opportunities. Just as our challenges change continuously, so too must our military capabilities.
The purpose of transformation is to extend key advantages and reduce vulnerabilities. We are now in a long term struggle against persistent, adaptive adversaries, and must transform to prevail.
Transformation is not only about technology. It is also about:
Changing the way we think about challenges and opportunities;
Adapting the defense establishment to that new perspective; and,
Refocusing capabilities to meet future challenges, not those we are already most prepared to meet.
Transformation requires difficult programmatic and organizational choices. We will need to divest in some areas and invest in others.
Transformational change is not limited to operational forces. We also want to change long standing business processes within the Department to take advantage of information technology. And, we are working to transform our international partnerships, including the capabilities that we and our partners can use collectively.
We seek to foster a culture of innovation. The war on terrorism imparts an urgency to defense transformation; we must transform to win the war.
We will continually adapt how we approach and confront challenges, conduct business, and work with others .
3. CAPABILITIES BASED APPROACH
Capabilities based planning focuses more on how adversaries may challenge us than on whom those adversaries might be or where we might face them. It focuses the Department on the growing range of capabilities and methods we must possess to contend with an uncertain future. It recognizes the limits of intelligence and the impossibility of predicting complex events with precision. Our planning aims to link capabilities to joint operating concepts across a broad range of scenarios.
The Department is adopting a new approach for planning to implement our strategy. The defense strategy will drive this top down, competitive process. Operating within fiscal constraints, our new approach enables the Secretary of Defense and Joint Force Commanders to balance risk across traditional, irregular, disruptive, and catastrophic challenges.
We will operationalize this strategy to address the spectrum of strategic challenges by setting priorities among competing capabilities.
4. MANAGING RISKS
Effectively managing defense risks is central to executing the National Defense Strategy.
The 2001 QDR is the Department's vehicle for risk assessment. It identifies the key dimensions of risk and enables the Secretary to evaluate the size, shape, posture, commitment, and management of our armed forces relative to the objectives of the
National Defense Strategy.. It allows the Secretary of Defense to assess the tradeoffs among objectives and resource constraints. The risk framework comprises: operational risk, future challenges risk, force management risk, and institutional risk:
Operationa l risks are those associated with the current force executing the strategy successfully within acceptable human, material, financial, and strategic costs.
Future challenges risks are those associated with the Department's capacity to execute future missions successfully against an array of prospective future challengers.
Force management risks are those associated with managing military forces fulfilling the missions described in this National Defense Strategy. The primary concern here is recruiting, retaining, training, and equipping a ready force and sustaining that readiness.
Institutional risks are those associated with the capacity of new command, management, and business practices.
We assess the likelihood of a variety of problems-most notably, failure or prohibitive costs in pursuit of strategic, operational, or management objectives. This approach recognizes that some objectives, though desirable, may not be attainable, while others, though attainable, may not be worth the costs.
Choices in one area affect choices in others. The Department will make deliberate choices within and across each broad category and will maintain a balance among them-driven by this National Defense Strategy.
We will consider the full range of risks associated with resources and operations and manage explicit tradeoffs across the Department.
III. DESIRED CAPABILITIES AND ATTRIBUTES
Our strategy requires a high quality, joint force. We remain committed to increasing levels of joint competency and capability.
Our goal is not dominance in all areas of military capability, but the means to reduce vulnerabilities while fortifying warfighting advantages. We will:
Develop and sustain key operational capabilities;
Shape and size forces to meet near and mid term needs;
Divest and invest for the longer term; and,
Strengthen our global defense posture to increase our ability to work with other countries on matters of common interest.
A. KEY OPERATIONAL CAPABILITIES
Eight operational capabilities are the focus for defense transformation:
1. STRENGTHEN INTELLIGENCE
Intelligence directly supports strategy, planning, and decision making; it facilitates improvements in operational capabilities; and it informs programming and risk management. Three areas, in particular, are priorities:
Early Warning. The first priority is to improve our capacity for early warning. Decision makers require early warning of imminent crises-e.g., instability, terrorist threat, or missile attack.
Deliver Exacting Intelligence. We will improve support to intelligence consumers through transformation in both organization and process. Specifically, we aim to increase our capabilities for collection; shift to a more consumer friendly approach; and better anticipate adversary behavior through competitive analysis.
Horizontal Integration. The intelligence community can play a central role in developing joint solutions. To the extent possible, we seek to fuse operations and intelligence and break down the institutional, technological, and cultural barriers that separate them. This will enable us better to acquire, assess, and deliver critical intelligence both to senior decision makers and to warfighters.
In addition, counterintelligence also directly supports our strategy, planning, and decision-making. Counterintelligence is critical to defending our information advantage in a number of areas (e.g., technology, operations, etc.)
We will strengthen our intelligence capabilities and integrate them into operations to inform decision making and resource planning.
2. PROTECTING CRITICAL BASES OF OPERATION
Our premier base of operation is the United States itself. Secure bases of operation make possible our political and military freedom of action, reassure the nation and its partners, and enable the timely generation and deployment of military forces worldwide. Securing critical bases requires actionable intelligence, strategic warning, and the ability to defeat threats-if possible before they.are able to mature.
The entire range of strategic threats can put at risk our bases of operation at home and abroad. While we can identify some-e.g., missiles and WMD-others, like those employed against the United States and its partners since 9/11, may be harder to identify. We need to improve defenses against such challenges and increase our capacity to defeat them at a distance.
We will protect critical bases of operation, including the US, homeland, against all challenges.
3. OPERATING FROM THE GLOBAL COMMONS
Our ability to operate in and from the global commons-space, international waters and airspace, and cyberspace-is important. It enables us to project power anywhere in the world from secure bases of operation. Our capacity to operate in and from the strategic commons is critical to the direct defense of the United States and its partners and provides a stabilizing influence in key regions.
Such capacity provides our forces operational freedom of action. Ceding our historic maritime advantage would unacceptably limit our global reach. Our capacity to operate from international airspace and outer space will remain important for joint operations. In particular, as the nation's reliance on spacebased systems continues to grow, we will guard against new vulnerabilities. Key goals, therefore, are to ensure our access to and use of space, and to deny hostile exploitation of space to adversaries.
Cyberspace is a new theater of operations. Consequently, information operations (IO) is becoming a core military competency. Successful military operations depend on the ability to protect information infrastructure and data. Increased dependence on information networks creates new vulnerabilities that adversaries may seek to exploit. At the same time, an adversary's use of information networks and technologies creates opportunities for us to conduct discriminate offensive IO as well. Developing IO as a core military competency requires fundamental shifts in processes, policies, and culture
We will operate in and from the commons by overcoming challenges to our global maritime, air, space, and cyberspace operations.
4. PROJECTING AND SUSTAINING FORCES IN DISTANT ANTI ACCESS ENVIRONMENTS
Our role in, the world depends on effectively projecting and sustaining our forces in distant environments where adversaries may seek to deny us access. Our capacity to project power depends on our defense posture and deployment flexibility at home and overseas, on the security of our bases, and on our access to the strategic commons.
Adversaries could employ advanced and legacy military capabilities and methods to deny us access. Ultimately, they may combine their most advanced military capabilities with future technologies to threaten our capacity to project power.
Other opponents may employ less sophisticated but effective means either to deny access to us or intimidate others to do so. Their options are numerous, including the innovative employment of legacy capabilities and indirect threats intended to impose unacceptable costs on friendly governments.
We will project and sustain our forces in distant anti access environments.
5. DENYING ENEMIES SANCTUARY
Adversaries who threaten the United States and its interests require secure bases. They will use great distance or the sanctuary created by ungoverned territory to their advantage. The more we hold adversaries' critical bases of operation at risk, the more likely we are to limit their strategic options.
A key goal is developing the capability to surge military forces rapidly from strategic distances to deny adversaries sanctuary. In some cases, this will involve discrete Special Operations Forces (SOF) or precision attacks on targets deep inside enemy territory. In others, sustained joint or combined combat operations will be necessary, requiring the comprehensive defeat of significant state and non state opponents operating in and from enemy territory or an ungoverned area.
To deny sanctuary requires a number of capabilities, including: persistent surveillance and precision strike; operational maneuver from strategic distances; sustained joint combat operations in and from austere locations, at significant operational depths; and stability operations to assist in the establishment of effective and responsible control over ungoverned territory.
We will deny our enemies sanctuary by conducting effective military activities and operations in and from austere geographic locations and at varying operational depths.
6. CONDUCTING NETWORK CENTRIC OPERATIONS
The foundation of our operations proceeds from a simple proposition: the whole of an integrated and networked force is far more capable than the sum of its parts. Continuing advances in information and communications technologies hold promise for networking highly distributed joint and combined forces. Network centric operational capability is achieved by linking compatible information systems with usable data. The functions of sensing, decision making, and acting which often in the past were built into a single platform now can work closely even if they are geographically distributed across the battlespace.
Bringing decisive capabilities to bear increasingly will rely on our capacity to harness and protect advantages in the realm of information. Networking our forces will provide the foundation. for doing so. Operations in the war on terrorism have demonstrated the advantages of timely and accurate information, while at the same time reinforcing the need for even greater joint, interoperable command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR).
Beyond battlefield applications, a networkcentric force can increase efficiency and effectiveness across defense operations, intelligence functions, and business processes by giving all users access to the latest, most relevant, most accurate information. It also enables "reach back" by more effectively employing people and capabilities without deploying them forward.
Transforming to a network centric force requires fundamental changes in processes, policy, and culture. Change in these areas will provide the necessary speed, accuracy, and quality of decision making critical to future success.
We will conduct network centric operations with compatible information and communications systems, usable data, and flexible operational constructs.
7. IMPROVING PROFICIENCY AGAINST IRREGULAR CHALLENGES
Irregular conflict will be a key challenge for the foreseeable future. Challenges from terrorist extremist organizations and their state and non state supporters will involve our forces in complex security problems for some time to come, redefining past conceptions of "general purpose forces."
Comprehensive defeat of terrorist extremists and other irregular forces may require operations over long periods, and using many elements of national power; such operations may require changes to the way we train, equip, and employ our forces, particularly for fighting terrorists and insurgents and conducting stability operations.
Working together with other elements of the U.S. Government, allies, and partners (including indigenous actors), we require the capabilities to identify, locate, track, and engage individual enemies and their networks. Doing so will require greater capabilities across a range of areas, particularly intelligence, surveillance, and communications.
In addition, we will need to train units for sustained stability operations. This will include developing ways to strengthen their language and civil military affairs capabilities as required for specific deployments.
We will improve our capability to defeat irregular challenges, particularly terrorism, by re-shaping and balancing the force.
8. INCREASING CAPABILITIES OF PARTNERS INTERNATIONAL AND DOMESTIC
Our strategic objectives are not attainable without the support and assistance of capable partners at home and abroad.
Abroad, the United States is transforming its security relationships and developing new partnerships. We are strengthening our own capabilities to support changing relationships, and we are seeking to improve those of our partners, through efforts like the Global Peace Operations Initiative. We want to increase our partners' capabilities and their ability to operate together with U.S. forces.
One of the principal vehicles for strengthening alliances and partnerships is our security cooperation program. It works by:
Identifying areas where our common interests would be served better by partners playing leading roles;
Encouraging partners to increase their capability and willingness to operate in coalition with our forces;
Seeking authorities to facilitate cooperation with partner militaries and ministries of defense; and,
Spurring the military transformation of key allies through development of a common security assessment and joint, combined training and education; combined concept development and experimentation; information sharing; and combined command and control.
Security cooperation is important for expanding international capacity to meet common security challenges. One of our military's most effective tools in prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism is to help train indigenous forces.
At home, we are increasing the capabilities of our domestic partners local, state, and federal-to improve homeland defense. This Department seeks effective partnerships with domestic agencies that are charged with security and consequence management in the event of significant attacks against the homeland. In doing so; we seek to improve their ability to respond effectively, while focusing the unique capabilities of this Department on the early defeat of these challenges abroad.
The U.S. Government created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the State Department to bolster the capabilities of U.S. civilian agencies and improve coordination with international partners to contribute to the resolution of complex crises overseas. The Department is cooperating with this new office to increase the capacity of interagency and international partners to perform nonmilitary stabilization and reconstruction tasks that might otherwise often become military responsibilities by default. Our intent is to focus our efforts on those tasks most directly associated with establishing favorable longterm security conditions.
To that end, the Department will work with interagency and international partners to improve our ability to transition from military to civilian led stability operations. We will capitalize on our security cooperation efforts by working with allies and partners to promote a secure environment in support of stabilization and reconstruction activities.
We will help international and domestic partners increase their capabilities to contend with complex issues of common concern.
B. ATTRIBUTES
To execute this strategy, U.S. military forces possess a number of attributes:
1. SHAPE AND SIZE OF MILITARY FORCES
The shape, size, and global posture of U.S. military forces are configured to::
Defend the U.S. homeland;1
Operate in and from four forward regions to assure allies and friends, dissuade competitors, and deter and counter aggression and coercion;
Swiftly defeat adversaries in overlapping military campaigns while preserving for the President the option to call for a more decisive and enduring result in a single operation; and,2
Conduct a limited number of lesser contingencies.3
These force planning standards have informed decisions to date on the force's overall mix of capabilities, size, posture, patterns of activity, readiness, and capacity to surge globally. This framework and these standards will be reviewed in the 2005 QDR.
The force planning framework does not focus on specific conflicts. It helps determine capabilities required for a range of scenarios. The Department analyzes the force requirements for the most likely, the most dangerous, and the most demanding circumstances. Assessments of U.S. capabilities will examine the breadth and depth of this construct, not seek to optimize in a single area. Doing so allows decisionmakers to identify areas where prudent risk could be accepted and areas where risk should be reduced or mitigated. Importantly, operations related to the war on terrorism span the breadth of this construct.
Defend the homeland. Our most important contribution to the security of the U.S. homeland is our capacity to identify, disrupt, and defeat threats early and at a safe distance, as far from the United States and its partners as possible. Our ability to identify and defeat threats abroad before they can strike-while making critical contributions to the direct defense of our territory and population is the sine qua non of our nation's security.
Operate in and from four forward regions. Our military presence abroad comprises tailored and increasingly rotational forces operating in and from four forward regions Europe, Northeast Asia, the East Asian Littoral, and the Middle East Southwest Asia. Complemented by our capabilities for prompt global action, our forces overseas help assure partners, dissuade military competition, and deter aggression and coercion.
Our forward deterrence capabilities, in particular, are adaptable forces able to respond rapidly to emerging crises and control escalation on our terms. These forces are complemented by immediately employable global strike, special operations, and information operations capabilities that provide additional options for preventing and deterring attacks.
Our military presence in the four regions does not constrain our capacity to undertake military missions worldwide, nor does it delimit our global interests. For example, we remain steadfast in our commitment to the security of the Americas, yet we require a very small military presence in Central and South America. Our current military presence abroad recognizes that significant U.S. interests and the bulk of our forward military presence are concentrated in the four regions, even as our forces are positioned to undertake military operations worldwide. Swiftly defeat adversaries and achieve decisive, enduring results. We cannot be certain in advance about the location and specific dimensions of future conflicts. Therefore, we maintain a total force that is balanced and postured for rapid deployment and employment worldwide. It is capable of surging forces into two separate theaters to "swiftly defeat" adversaries in military campaigns that overlap in time.
Further, recent experience highlights the need for a force capable of turning one of two "swift defeat" campaigns, if the President so decides, into an operation seeking more farreaching objectives. Accomplishing these goals requires agile joint forces capable of rapidly foreclosing an adversary's options, achieving decisive results in major combat actions, and setting the security conditions for enduring conflict resolution. We must plan for the latter to include extended stability operations involving substantial combat and requiring the rapid and sustained application of national and international capabilities spanning the elements of state power.
Conduct lesser contingencies. Our global interests require our armed forces to undertake a limited number of lesser contingency operations, perhaps for extended periods of time. Lesser contingencies include smaller scale combat operations such as strikes and raids; peace operations; humanitarian missions; and non combatant evacuations. Because these contingencies place burdens on the same types of forces needed for more demanding military campaigns, the Department closely monitors the degree and nature of involvement in lesser contingencies to properly balance force management and operational risks.
2. GLOBAL DEFENSE POSTURE
To better meet new strategic circumstances, we are transforming our network of alliances and partnerships, our military capabilities, and our global defense posture. Our security is inextricably linked to that of our partners. The forward posture of U.S. forces and our demonstrated ability to bring forces to bear in a crisis are among the most tangible signals of our commitment to the security of our international partners.
Through the 1990s, U.S. forces remained concentrated in Cold War locations-primarily in Western Europe and Northeast Asia. In the Cold War we positioned our forces to fight where they were stationed. Today, we no longer expect our forces to fight in place. Rather, operational experience since 1990 indicates we will surge forces from a global posture to respond to crises. This recognition, combined with rapid advances in technology, new concepts of operation, and operational lessons learned, is driving a comprehensive realignment of U.S. global defense posture.
The President stated, "A fully transformed and strengthened overseas force posture will underscore the commitment of the United States to effective collective action in the common cause of peace and liberty." Force posture changes will strengthen our ability to meet our security commitments and contend with new challenges more effectively. As we transform our posture, we are guided by the following goals:
Expanding allied roles and building new security partnerships;
Developing greater flexibility to contend with uncertainty by emphasizing agility and by not overly concentrating military forces in a few locations;
Focusing within and across regions by complementing tailored regional military presence and activities with capabilities for prompt global military action;
Developing rapidly deployable capabilities by planning and operating from the premise that forces will not likely fight in place; and,
Focusing on capabilities, not numbers, by reinforcing the premise that the United States does not need specific numbers of platforms or personnel in administrative regions to be able to execute its security commitments effectively.
Key changes to global defense posture. Key changes in global defense posture lie in five interrelated areas: relationships, activities, facilities, legal arrangements, and global sourcing and surge.
Relationships. Our ability to cooperate with others in the world depends on having a harmony of views on the challenges that confront us and our strategy for meeting those challenges. Strengthening defense relationships at all levels helps build such harmony.
Changes in global posture seek both to strengthen our relationships with partners around the world and to help cultivate new relationships founded on common security interests. We are transforming many of our alliances to contend with our new circumstances. Command structures are another important part of our relationships and are being tailored to address our new political and operational needs. We also will lower the operational vulnerability of our forces and reduce local social and political friction with host populations.
Activities. Our posture also includes the many military activities in which we engage around the world. This means not only our physical presence in key regions, but also our training, exercises, and operations. They involve small units working together in a wide range of capacities, major formations conducting elaborate exercises to achieve proficiency in joint and combined operations, and the "nuts and bolts" of providing support to ongoing operations. They also involve the force protection that we and our allies provide to each other.
Facilities. A network of forward facilities and capabilities, mainly in four critical regions, provides the United States with an unmatched ability to act globally. However, the threat posed by catastrophic challenges and the risks of surprise place an even higher premium on the ability to take rapid military action.
To strengthen our capability for prompt global action and our flexibility to employ military forces where needed, we require the capacity to move swiftly into and through strategic pivot points and remote locations. The new global posture-using main operating bases (MOB), forward operating sites (FOS), and a diverse array of more austere cooperative security locations (CSL)- will support such needs. In addition, our prepositioned equipment and stocks overseas will be better configured and positioned for global employment. We will make better use of "reach back" capabilities for those functions that can be accomplished without deploying forward.
MOBS are permanent bases with resident forces and robust infrastructure. They are intended to support training, security cooperation, and the deployment and employment of military forces for operations. The more austere facilities-FOSs and CSLs-are focal points for combined training and will expand and contract as needed to support military operations. FOSs are scalable, "warm" facilities intended for rotational use by operational forces. They often house prepositioned equipment and a modest, permanent support presence. FOSs are able to support a range of military activities on short notice. CSLs are intended for contingency access, logistical support, and rotational use by operational forces. CSLs generally will have little or no permanent U.S. personnel assigned. In addition to these, joint sea basing too holds promise for the broader transformation of our overseas military posture.
Increasing the flexibility and support provided by prepositioned equipment and materiel is another important aspect of our facilities infrastructure. A decade of operational experience indicates that a new, more innovative approach to prepositioned equipment and stocks is needed. Support materiel and combat capabilities should be positioned in critical regions and along key transportation routes to enable worldwide deployment.
Prepositioned capabilities afloat are especially valuable. In addition, singleservice prepositioned capabilities will no longer suffice. As in all other aspects of transformation, prepositioning must be increasingly joint in character.
The new posture will be enabled by "reachback" capabilities-support capabilities that are available remotely rather than in forward theaters. For example, intelligence support, including battle damage assessment, can be provided from outside the theater of operations. Leveraging reach back capabilities reduces our footprint abroad and strengthens our military effectiveness. We also seek to increase the involvement of our partners in reach back functions.
Legal arrangements. Many of the current legal arrangements that govern overseas posture date from an earlier era. Today, challenges are more diverse and complex, our prospective contingencies are more widely dispersed, and our international partners are more numerous. International agreements relevant to our posture must reflect these circumstances and support greater operational flexibility. They must help, not hinder, the rapid deployment and employment of U.S. and coalition forces worldwide in a crisis.
Consistent with our partners' sovereign considerations, we will seek new legal arrangements that maximize our freedom to:
Deploy our forces as needed;
Conduct essential training with partners in the host nation; and,
Support deployed forces around the world.
Finally, legal arrangements should encourage responsibility sharing between us and our partners, and provide legal protections for our personnel through Status of Forces Agreements and protections against transfers of U.S. personnel to the International Criminal Court.
Global sourcing and surge. Our military needs to be managed in a way that will allow us to deploy a greater percentage of our force where and when it is needed, anywhere in the world. Thus, the Department is transitioning to a global force management process. This will allow us to source our force needs from a global, rather than regional, perspective and to surge capabilities when needed into crisis theaters from disparate locations worldwide. Our global presence will be managed dynamically, ensuring that our joint capabilities are employed to the greatest effect.
Under this concept, Combatant Commanders no longer "own" forces in their theaters. Forces are allocated to them as neededsourced from anywhere in the world. This allows for greater flexibility to meet rapidly changing operational circumstances.
A prominent consideration in our global posture changes is to move our most rapidly deployable capabilities forward. For. example, heavy forces will return to the United States, to be replaced in large part by more expeditionary capabilities such as airborne forces and Stryker brigades. As a result, our immediate response times should be greatly improved
1 Homeland Defense activities represent the employment of unique military capabilities at home at varying levels to contend with those circumstances described at the conclusion of Section 11, C, 1.
2 Campaigns to "swiftly defeat" the efforts of adversaries are undertaken to achieve a circumscribed set of objectives aimed at altering an adversary's behavior or policies, swiftly denying an adversary's operational or strategic objectives, preventing attacks or uncontrolled conflict escalation, and/or rapidly re establishing security conditions favorable to the United States and its partners. "Swiftly defeating" adversary efforts could include a range of military activities-from stability operations to major combat that will vary substantially in size and duration. Examples of "swift defeat" campaigns include Operation(s) Desert Storm and Allied Force.
Campaigns to "win decisively" are undertaken to bring about fundamental, favorable change in a crisis region and create enduring results. They may entail lengthy periods of both major combat and stability operations; require regime change, defense, or restoration; and entail significant investments of the nation's resources and time. "Win decisive" campaigns will vary significantly in size and scope but will be among the most taxing scenarios. Examples of "win decisive" campaigns include Operations) Just Cause and Iraqi Freedom.
3 Lesser contingency operations are undertaken to resolve or ameliorate particular crisis circumstances and typically describe operations more limited in duration and scope than those outlined above. These operations include military activities like strikes and raids, non combatant evacuation operations, peace operations, and disaster relief or humanitarian assistance. Lesser contingency operations range in size from major undertakings like Operation(s) Restore Hope or Provide Comfort to the much smaller, episodic dispatch of U.S. forces to respond to emergency conditions.
2008
Национальная оборонная стратегия
Соединённых Штатов Америки
(Вашингтон, июнь 2008 г.)
The National Defense Strategy
The United States of America
June 2008
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
The Strategic Environment
The Strategic Framework
Objectives
Defend the Homeland
Win the Long War
Promote Security
Deter Conflict
Win our Nation’s Wars
Achieving Our Objectives
Shape the Choices of Key States
Prevent Adversaries from Acquiring or Using Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
Strengthen and Expand Alliances and Partnerships
Secure U.S. strategic access and retain freedom of action
Integrate and unify our efforts: A new “Jointness”
DoD Capabilities and Means
Managing Risk
Operational Risk
Future Challenges Risk
Force Management Risk
Institutional Risk
Conclusion
Foreword
The United States, its friends and allies face a world of complex challenges and great opportunities. Since the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington DC and Pennsylvania seven years ago, we have been engaged in a conflict unlike those that came before. The United States has worked with its partners to defeat the enemies of freedom and prosperity, assist those in greatest need, and lay the foundation for a better tomorrow.
Tackling our common challenges requires a clear assessment of the strategic environment and the tools available to construct a durable, flexible, and dynamic strategy. This National Defense Strategy outlines how we will contribute to achieving the National Security Strategy objectives and secure a safer, more prosperous world for the benefit of all.
This strategy builds on lessons learned and insights from previous operations and strategic reviews, including the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review. It represents the distillation of valuable experience across the spectrum of conflict and within the strategic environment. It emphasizes the critical role our partners play - both within the U.S. Gove rnment and internationally - in achieving our common goals. The United States will soon have a new President and Commander-in-Chief, but the complex issues the United States faces will remain. This strategy is a blueprint to succeed in the years to come.
Robert M. Gates
Secretary of Defense
Introduction
A core responsibility of the U.S. Government is to protect the American people - in the words of the framers of our Constitution, to “provide for the common defense.” For more than 230 years, the U.S. Armed Forces have served as a bulwark of liberty, opportunity, and prosperity at home. Beyond our shores, America shoulders additional responsibilities on behalf of the world. For those struggling for a better life, there is and must be no stronger advocate than the United States. We remain a beacon of light for those in dark places, and for this reason we should remember that our actions and words signal the depth of our strength and resolve. For our friends and allies, as well as for our enemies and potential adversaries, our commitment to democratic values must be matched by our deeds. The spread of liberty both manifests our ideals and protects our interests.
The United States, our allies, and our partners face a spectrum of challenges, including violent transnational extremist networks, hostile states armed with weapons of mass destruction, rising regional powers, emerging space and cyber threats, natural and pandemic disasters, and a growing competition for resources. The Department of Defense must respond to these challenges while anticipating and preparing for those of tomorrow. We must balance strategic risk across our responses, making the best use of the tools at hand within the U.S. Government and among our international partners. To succeed, we must harness and integrate all aspects of national power and work closely with a wide range of allies, friends and partners. We cannot prevail if we act alone.
The President’s 2006 National Security Strategy (NSS) describes an approach founded on two pillars: promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity by working to end tyranny, promote effective democracies, and extend prosperity; and confronting the challenges of our time by leading a growing community of democracies. It seeks to foster a world of well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. This approach represents the best way to provide enduring security for the American people.
The National Defense Strategy (NDS) serves as the Department’s capstone document in this long-term effort. It flows from the NSS and informs the National Military Strategy. It also provides a framework for other DoD strategic guidance, specifically on campaign and contingency planning, force development, and intelligence. It reflects the results of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and lessons learned from on-going operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. It addresses how the U.S. Armed Forces will fight and win America’s wars and how we seek to work with and through partner nations to shape opportunities in the international environment to enhance security and avert conflict.
The NDS describes our overarching goals and strategy. It outlines how DoD will support the objectives outlined in the NSS, including the need to strengthen alliances and build new partnerships to defeat global terrorism and prevent attacks against us, our allies, and our friends; prevent our enemies from threatening us, our allies, and our friends with weapons of mass destruction (WMD); work with others to defuse regional conflicts, including conflict intervention; and transform national security institutions to face the challenges of the 21st century. The NDS acts on these objectives, evaluates the strategic environment, challenges, and risks we must consider in achieving them, and maps the way forward.
The Strategic Environment
For the foreseeable future, this environment will be defined by a global struggle against a violent extremist ideology that seeks to overturn the international state system. Beyond this transnational struggle, we face other threats, including a variety of irregular challenges, the quest by rogue states for nuclear weapons, and the rising military power of other states. These are long-term challenges. Success in dealing with them will require the orchestration of national and international power over years or decades to come.
Violent extremist movements such as al-Qaeda and its associates comprise a complex and urgent challenge. Like communism and fascism before it, today’s violent extremist ideology rejects the rules and structures of the international system. Its adherents reject state sovereignty, ignore borders, and attempt to deny self-determination and human dignity wherever they gain power. These extremists opportunistically exploit respect for these norms for their own purposes, hiding behind international norms and national laws when it suits them, and attempting to subvert them when it does not. Combating these violent groups will require long- term, innovative approaches.
The inability of many states to police themselves effectively or to work with their neighbors to ensure regional security represents a challenge to the international system. Armed sub-national groups, including but not limited to those inspired by violent extremism, threaten the stability and legitimacy of key states. If left unchecked, such instability can spread and threaten regions of interest to the United States, our allies, and friends. Insurgent groups and other non-state actors frequently exploit local geographical, political, or social conditions to establish safe havens from which they can operate with impunity. Ungoverned, under- governed, misgoverned, and contested areas offer fertile ground for such groups to exploit the gaps in governance capacity of local regimes to undermine local stability and regional security. Addressing this problem will require local partnerships and creative approaches to deny extremists the opportunity to gain footholds.
Rogue states such as Iran and North Korea similarly threaten international order. The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism and is attempting to disrupt the fledgling democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology and enrichment capabilities poses a serious challenge to security in an already volatile region. The North Korean regime also poses a serious nuclear and missile proliferation concern for the U.S. and other responsible international stakeholders. The regime threatens the Republic of Korea with its military and its neighbors with its missiles. Moreover, North Korea creates instability with its illicit activity, such as counterfeiting U.S. currency and trafficking in narcotics, and brutal treatment of its own people.
We must also consider the possibility of challenges by more powerful states. Some may actively seek to counter the United States in some or all domains of traditional warfare or to gain an advantage by developing capabilities that offset our own. Others may choose niche areas of military capability and competition in which they believe they can develop a strategic or operational advantage. That some of these potential competitors also are partners in any number of diplomatic, commercial, and security efforts will only make these relationships more difficult to manage.
China is one ascendant state with the potential for competing with the United States. For the foreseeable future, we will need to hedge against China’s growing military modernization and the impact of its strategic choices upon international security. It is likely that China will continue to expand its conventional military capabilities, emphasizing anti-access and area denial assets including developing a full range of long-range strike, space, and information warfare capabilities.
Our interaction with China will be long-term and multi-dimensional and will involve peacetime engagement between defense establishments as much as fielded combat capabilities. The objective of this effort is to mitigate near term challenges while preserving and enhancing U.S. national advantages over time.
Russia’s retreat from openness and democracy could have significant security implications for the United States, our European allies, and our partners in other regions. Russia has leveraged the revenue from, and access to, its energy sources; asserted claims in the Arctic; and has continued to bully its neighbors, all of which are causes for concern. Russia also has begun to take a more active military stance, such as the renewal of long-range bomber flights, and has withdrawn from arms control and force reduction treaties, and even threatened to target countries hosting potential U.S. anti-missile bases. Furthermore, Moscow has signaled an increasing reliance on nuclear weapons as a foundation of its security. All of these actions suggest a Russia exploring renewed influence, and seeking a greater international role.
U.S. dominance in conventional warfare has given prospective adversaries, particularly non-state actors and their state sponsors, strong motivation to adopt asymmetric methods to counter our advantages. For this reason, we must display a mastery of irregular warfare comparable to that which we possess in conventional combat. Our adversaries also seek to develop or acquire catastrophic capabilities: chemical, biological, and especially nuclear weapons. In addition, they may develop disruptive technologies in an attempt to offset U.S. advantages. For example, the development and proliferation of anti-access technology and weaponry is worrisome as it can restrict our future freedom of action. These challenges could come not only in the obvious forms we see today but also in less traditional forms of influence such as manipulating global opinion using mass communications venues and exploiting international commitments and legal avenues. Meeting these challenges require better and more diverse capabilities in both hard and soft power, and greater flexibility and skill in employing them.
These modes of warfare may appear individually or in combination, spanning the spectrum of warfare and intertwining hard and soft power. In some instances, we may not learn that a conflict is underway until it is well advanced and our options limited. We must develop better intelligence capabilities to detect, recognize, and analyze new forms of warfare as well as explore joint approaches and strategies to counter them.
Increasingly, the Department will have to plan for a future security environment shaped by the interaction of powerful strategic trends. These trends suggest a range of plausible futures, some presenting major challenges and security risks.
Over the next twenty years physical pressures - population, resource, energy, climatic and environmental - could combine with rapid social, cultural, technological and geopolitical change to create greater uncertainty. This uncertainty is exacerbated by both the unprecedented speed and scale of change, as well as by the unpredictable and complex interaction among the trends themselves. Globalization and growing economic interdependence, while creating new levels of wealth and opportunity, also create a web of interrelated vulnerabilities and spread risks even further, increasing sensitivity to crises and shocks around the globe and generating more uncertainty regarding their speed and effect.
Current defense policy must account for these areas of uncertainty. As we plan, we must take account of the implications of demographic trends, particularly population growth in much of the developing world and the population deficit in much of the developed world. The interaction of these changes with existing and future resource, environmental, and climate pressures may generate new security challenges. Furthermore, as the relative balance of economic and military power between states shifts, some propelled forward by economic development and resource endowment, others held back by physical pressures or economic and political stagnation, new fears and insecurities will arise, presenting new risks for the international community.
These risks will require managing the divergent needs of massively increasing energy demand to maintain economic development and the need to tackle climate change. Collectively, these developments pose a new range of challenges for states and societies. These trends will affect existing security concerns such as international terrorism and weapons proliferation. At the same time, overlaying these trends will be developments within science and technology, which, while presenting some potential threats, suggest a range of positive developments that may reduce many of the pressures and risks suggested by physical trends. How these trends interact and the nature of the shocks they might generate is uncertain; the fact that they will influence the future security environment is not.
Whenever possible, the Department will position itself both to respond to and reduce uncertainty. This means we must continue to improve our understanding of trends, their interaction, and the range of risks the Department may be called upon to respond to or manage. We should act to reduce risks by shaping the development of trends through the decisions we make regarding the equipment and capabilities we develop and the security cooperation, reassurance, dissuasion, deterrence, and operational activities we pursue. The Department should also develop the military capability and capacity to hedge against uncertainty, and the institutional agility and flexibility to plan early and respond effectively alongside interdepartmental, non-governmental and international partners.
The Strategic Framework
Since World War II, the United States has acted as the primary force to maintain international security and stability, leading first the West in the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union and, more recently, international efforts to confront violent extremism. This has been accomplished through military, diplomatic, and economic means. Driving these efforts has been a set of enduring national interests and a vision of opportunity and prosperity for the future. U.S. interests include protecting the nation and our allies from attack or coercion, promoting international security to reduce conflict and foster economic growth, and securing the global commons and with them access to world markets and resources. To pursue these interests, the U.S. has developed military capabilities and alliances and coalitions, participated in and supported international security and economic institutions, used diplomacy and soft power to shape the behavior of individual states and the international system, and using force when necessary. These tools help inform the strategic framework with which the United States plans for the future, and help us achieve our ends.
The security of the United States is tightly bound up with the security of the broader international system. As a result, our strategy seeks to build the capacity of fragile or vulnerable partners to withstand internal threats and external aggression while improving the capacity of the international system itself to withstand the challenge posed by rogue states and would-be hegemons.
Objectives
To support the NSS and provide enduring security for the American people, the Department has five key objectives:
Defend the Homeland
Win the Long War
Promote Security
Deter Conflict
Win our Nation’s Wars
Defend the Homeland
The core responsibility of the Department of Defense is to defend the United States from attack upon its territory at home and to secure its interests abroad. The U.S. Armed Forces protect the physical integrity of the country through an active layered defense. They also deter attacks upon it, directly and indirectly, through deployments at sea, in the air, on land, and in space. However, as the spreading web of globalization presents new opportunities and challenges, the importance of planning to protect the homeland against previously unexpected threats increases. Meeting these challenges also creates a tension between the need for security and the requirements of openness in commerce and civil liberties. On the one hand, the flow of goods, services, people, technology and information grows every year, and with it the openness of American society. On the other hand, terrorists and others wishing us harm seek to exploit that openness.
As noted in the 2006 QDR, state actors no longer have a monopoly over the catastrophic use of violence. Small groups or individuals can harness chemical, biological, or even crude radiological or nuclear devices to cause extensive damage and harm. Similarly, they can attack vulnerable points in cyberspace and disrupt commerce and daily life in the United States, causing economic damage, compromising sensitive information and materials, and interrupting critical services such as power and information networks. National security and domestic resources may be at risk, and the Department must help respond to protect lives and national assets. The Department will continue to be both bulwark and active protector in these areas. Yet, in the long run the Department of Defense is neither the best source of resources and capabilities nor the appropriate authority to shoulder these tasks. The comparative advantage, and applicable authorities, for action reside elsewhere in the U.S. Government, at other levels of government, in the private sector, and with partner nations. DoD should expect and plan to play a key supporting role in an interagency effort to combat these threats, and to help develop new capacities and capabilities, while protecting its own vulnerabilities.
While defending the homeland in depth, the Department must also maintain the capacity to support civil authorities in times of national emergency such as in the wake of catastrophic natural and man-made disasters. The Department will continue to maintain consequence management capabilities and plan for their use to support government agencies. Effective execution of such assistance, especially amid simultaneous, multi-jurisdictional disasters, requires ever-closer working relationships with other departments and agencies, and at all levels of government. To help develop and cultivate these working relationships, the Department will continue to support the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is responsible for coordinating the Federal response to disasters. DoD must also reach out to non-governmental agencies and private sector entities that play a role in disaster response and recovery.
Win the Long War
For the foreseeable future, winning the Long War against violent extremist movements will be the central objective of the U.S. We must defeat violent extremism as a threat to our way of life as a free and open society and foster an environment inhospitable to violent extremists and all those who support them. We face an extended series of campaigns to defeat violent extremist groups, presently led by al-Qaeda and its associates. In concert with others, we seek to reduce support for violent extremism and encourage moderate voices, offering a positive alternative to the extremists’ vision for the future. Victory requires us to apply all elements of national power in partnership with old allies and new partners. Iraq and Afghanistan remain the central fronts in the struggle, but we cannot lose sight of the implications of fighting a long-term, episodic, multi-front, and multi-dimensional conflict more complex and diverse than the Cold War confrontation with communism. Success in Iraq and Afghanistan is crucial to winning this conflict, but it alone will not bring victory. We face a clash of arms, a war of ideas, and an assistance effort that will require patience and innovation. In concert with our partners, we must maintain a long-term commitment to undermining and reducing the sources of support for extremist groups, and to countering the ideological totalitarian messages they build upon.
We face a global struggle. Like communism and fascism before it, extremist ideology has transnational pretensions, and like its secular antecedents, it draws adherents from around the world. The vision it offers is in opposition to globalization and the expansion of freedom it brings. Paradoxically, violent extremist movements use the very instruments of globalization - the unfettered flow of information and ideas, goods and services, capital, people, and technology - that they claim to reject to further their goals. Although driven by this transnational ideology, our adversaries themselves are, in fact, a collection of regional and local extremist groups. Regional and local grievances help fuel the conflict, and it thrives in ungoverned, under-governed, and mis-governed areas.
This conflict is a prolonged irregular campaign, a violent struggle for legitimacy and influence over the population. The use of force plays a role, yet military efforts to capture or kill terrorists are likely to be subordinate to measures to promote local participation in government and economic programs to spur development, as well as efforts to understand and address the grievances that often lie at the heart of insurgencies. For these reasons, arguably the most important military component of the struggle against violent extremists is not the fighting we do ourselves, but how well we help prepare our partners to defend and govern themselves.
Working with and through local actors whenever possible to confront common security challenges is the best and most sustainable approach to combat violent extremism. Often our partners are better positioned to handle a given problem because they understand the local geography, social structures, and culture better than we do or ever could. In collaboration with interagency and international partners we will assist vulnerable states and local populations as they seek to ameliorate the conditions that foster extremism and dismantle the structures that support and allow extremist groups to grow. We will adopt approaches tailored to local conditions that will vary considerably across regions. We will help foster security and aid local authorities in building effective systems of representational government. By improving conditions, undermining the sources of support, and assisting in addressing root causes of turmoil, we will help states stabilize threatened areas. Countering the totalitarian ideological message of terrorist groups to help further undermine their potency will also require sensitive, sophisticated and integrated interagency and international efforts. The Department will support and facilitate these efforts.
The struggle against violent extremists will not end with a single battle or campaign. Rather, we will defeat them through the patient accumulation of quiet successes and the orchestration of all elements of national and international power. We will succeed by eliminating the ability of extremists to strike globally and catastrophically while also building the capacity and resolve of local governments to defeat them regionally. Victory will include discrediting extremist ideology, creating fissures between and among extremist groups and reducing them to the level of nuisance groups that can be tracked and handled by law enforcement capabilities.
Promote Security
The best way to achieve security is to prevent war when possible and to encourage peaceful change within the international system. Our strategy emphasizes building the capacities of a broad spectrum of partners as the basis for long-term security. We must also seek to strengthen the resiliency of the international system to deal with conflict when it occurs. We must be prepared to deal with sudden disruptions, to help prevent them from escalating or endangering international security, and to find ways to bring them swiftly to a conclusion.
Local and regional conflicts in particular remain a serious and immediate problem. They often spread and may exacerbate transnational problems such as trafficking in persons, drug-running, terrorism, and the illicit arms trade. Rogue states and extremist groups often seek to exploit the instability caused by regional conflict, and state collapse or the emergence of ungoverned areas may create safe havens for these groups. The prospect that instability and collapse in a strategic state could provide extremists access to weapons of mass destruction or result in control of strategic resources is a particular concern.
To preclude such calamities, we will help build the internal capacities of countries at risk. We will work with and through like-minded states to help shrink the ungoverned areas of the world and thereby deny extremists and other hostile parties sanctuary. By helping others to police themselves and their regions, we will collectively address threats to the broader international system.
We must also address the continuing need to build and support long-term international security. As the 2006 NSS underscores, relations with the most powerful countries of the world are central to our strategy. We seek to pursue U.S. interests within cooperative relationships, not adversarial ones, and have made great progress. For example, our relationship with India has evolved from an uneasy co-existence during the Cold War to a growing partnership today. We wish to use the opportunity of an absence of fundamental conflict between great powers to shape the future, and to prevent the re-emergence of great power rivalry.
The United States welcomes the rise of a peaceful and prosperous China, and it encourages China to participate as a responsible stakeholder by taking on a greater share of burden for the stability, resilience, and growth of the international system. However, much uncertainty surrounds the future course China’s leaders will set for their country. Accordingly, the NSS states that “our strategy seeks to encourage China to make the right strategic choices for its people, while we hedge against other possibilities.” A critical component of this strategy is the establishment and pursuit of continuous strategic dialogue with China to build understanding, improve communication, and to reduce the risk of miscalculation.
China continues to modernize and develop military capabilities primarily focused on a Taiwan Strait conflict, but which could have application in other contingencies. The Department will respond to China’s expanding military power, and to the uncertainties over how it might be used, through shaping and hedging. This approach tailors investment of substantial, but not infinite, resources in ways that favor key enduring U.S. strategic advantages. At the same time, we will continue to improve and refine our capabilities to respond to China if necessary.
We will continue to press China to increase transparency in its defense budget expenditures, strategies, plans and intentions. We will work with other elements of the U.S. Government to develop a comprehensive strategy to shape China’s choices.
In addition, Russia’s retreat from democracy and its increasing economic and political intimidation of its neighbors give cause for concern. We do not expect Russia to revert to outright global military confrontation, but the risk of miscalculation or conflict arising out of economic coercion has increased.
We also share interests with Russia, and can collaborate with it in a variety of ways. We have multiple opportunities and venues to mold our security relationship and to cooperate - such as in countering WMD proliferation and extremist groups.
At the same time, we will seek other ways to encourage Russia to act as a constructive partner, while expressing our concerns over policies and aspects of its international behavior such as the sale of disruptive weapons technologies and interference in and coercion of its neighbors.
Both China and Russia are important partners for the future and we seek to build collaborative and cooperative relationships with them. We will develop strategies across agencies, and internationally, to provide incentives for constructive behavior while also dissuading them from destabilizing actions.
Deter Conflict
Deterrence is key to preventing conflict and enhancing security. It requires influencing the political and military choices of an adversary, dissuading it from taking an action by making its leaders understand that either the cost of the action is too great, is of no use, or unnecessary. Deterrence also is based upon credibility: the ability to prevent attack, respond decisively to any attack so as to discourage even contemplating an attack upon us, and strike accurately when necessary.
For nearly half a century, the United States approached its security focused on a single end: deterring the Soviet Union from attacking the United States and our allies in what could have escalated into a global thermonuclear catastrophe. To that purpose we built our deterrent upon a diverse and survivable nuclear force, coupled with a potent conventional capability, designed to counter the military power of one adversary. Likewise, our assumptions and calculations for shaping deterrence were based largely upon our understanding of the dynamics and culture of the Soviet Union alone. All potential conflict was subsumed and influenced by that confrontation and the fear of escalation within it. Even so, there were limits. Military capabilities alone were, and are, no panacea to deter all conflict: despite the enormous strength of both the United States and the Soviet Union, conflicts arose; some were defused, while others spilled over into local wars.
In the contemporary strategic environment, the challenge is one of deterring or dissuading a range of potential adversaries from taking a variety of actions against the U.S. and our allies and interests. These adversaries could be states or non-state actors; they could use nuclear, conventional, or unconventional weapons; and they could exploit terrorism, electronic, cyber and other forms of warfare. Economic interdependence and the growth of global communications further complicate the situation. Not only do they blur the types of threats, they also exacerbate sensitivity to the effects of attacks and in some cases make it more difficult to attribute or trace them. Finally, the number of potential adversaries, the breadth of their capabilities, and the need to design approaches to deterrence for each, create new challenges.
We must tailor deterrence to fit particular actors, situations, and forms of warfare. The same developments that add to the complexity of the challenge also offer us a greater variety of capabilities and methods to deter or dissuade adversaries. This diversity of tools, military and non-military, allows us to create more plausible reactions to attacks in the eyes of opponents and a more credible deterrence to them. In addition, changes in capabilities, especially new technologies, permit us to create increasingly credible defenses to convince would-be attackers that their efforts are ultimately futile.
Our ability to deter attack credibly also reassures the American people and our allies of our commitment to defend them. For this reason, deterrence must remain grounded in demonstrated military capabilities that can respond to a broad array of challenges to international security. For example, the United States will maintain its nuclear arsenal as a primary deterrent to nuclear attack, and the New Triad remains a cornerstone of strategic deterrence. We must also continue to field conventional capabilities to augment or even replace nuclear weapons in order to provide our leaders a greater range of credible responses. Missile defenses not only deter an attack, but can defend against such an attack should deterrence fail. Precision-guided munitions allow us great flexibility not only to react to attacks, but also to strike preemptively when necessary to defend ourselves and our allies. Yet we must also recognize that deterrence has its limits, especially where our interests are ill-defined or the targets of our deterrence are difficult to influence. Deterrence may be impossible in cases where the value is not in the destruction of a target, but the attack and the very means of attack, as in terrorism.
We must build both our ability to withstand attack - a fundamental and defensive aspect of deterrence - and improve our resiliency beyond an attack. An important change in planning for the myriad of future potential threats must be post-attack recovery and operational capacity. This, too, helps demonstrate that such attacks are futile, as does our ability to respond with strength and effectiveness to attack.
For the future, the global scope of problems, and the growing complexity of deterrence in new domains of conflict, will require an integrated interagency and international approach if we are to make use of all the tools available to us. We must consider which non-lethal actions constitute an attack on our sovereignty, and which may require the use of force in response. We must understand the potential for escalation from non-lethal to lethal confrontation, and learn to calculate and manage the associated risks.
Win our Nation’s Wars
Despite our best efforts at prevention and deterrence, we must be prepared to act together with like minded states against states when they threaten their neighbors, provide safe haven to terrorists, or pursue destabilizing weapons. Although improving the U.S. Armed Forces’ proficiency in irregular warfare is the Defense Department’s top priority, the United States does not have the luxury of preparing exclusively for such challenges. Even though the likelihood of interstate conflict has declined in recent years, we ignore it at our peril. Current circumstances in Southwest Asia and on the Korean Peninsula, for example, demonstrate the continuing possibility of conflict. When called upon, the Department must be positioned to defeat enemies employing a combination of capabilities, conventional and irregular, kinetic and non-kinetic, across the spectrum of conflict. We must maintain the edge in our conventional forces.
Rogue states will remain a threat to U.S. regional interests. Iran and North Korea continue to exert coercive pressure in their respective regions, where each seek to challenge or reduce U.S. influence. Responding to and, as necessary, defeating these, and potentially other, rogue states will remain a major challenge. We must maintain the capabilities required to defeat state adversaries, including those armed with nuclear weapons.
Achieving Our Objectives
We will achieve our objectives by shaping the choices of key states, preventing adversaries from acquiring or using WMD, strengthening and expanding alliances and partnerships, securing U.S. strategic access and retaining freedom of action, and integrating and unifying our efforts.
Shape the Choices of Key States
Although the role of non-state actors in world affairs has increased, states will continue to be the basis of the international order. In cooperation with our allies and friends, the United States can help shape the international environment, the behavior of actors, and the choices that strategic states face in ways that foster accountability, cooperation, and mutual trust.
Shaping choices contributes to achieving many of our objectives. It is critical to defending the homeland by convincing key states that attacking the United States would be futile and ultimately self-defeating. Our deterrence posture is designed to persuade potential aggressors that they cannot meet their objectives through an attack on the United States and that such actions would result in an overwhelming response. Our posture and capabilities also contribute to deterring conflict of other types, particularly with potential adversary states. We can also promote security by helping shape the choices that strategic states make, encouraging them to avoid destabilizing paths and adhering to international norms on the use of force, the promotion of peace and amity, and acting as good stewards of the public good within their own borders.
We shall seek to anchor China and Russia as stakeholders in the system. Similarly, we look to India to assume greater responsibility as a stakeholder in the international system, commensurate with its growing economic, military, and soft power.
Prevent Adversaries from Acquiring or Using Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
There are few greater challenges than those posed by chemical, biological, and particularly nuclear weapons. Preventing the spread of these weapons, and their use, requires vigilance and obligates us to anticipate and counter threats. Whenever possible, we prefer non-military options to achieve this purpose. We combine non-proliferation efforts to deny these weapons and their components to our adversaries, active efforts to defend against and defeat WMD and missile threats before they are unleashed, and improved protection to mitigate the consequences of WMD use. We also seek to convince our adversaries that they cannot attain their goals with WMD, and thus should not acquire such weapons in the first place. However, as the NSS states, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising its right of self-defense to forestall or prevent hostile acts by our adversaries.
Reducing the proliferation of WMD and bolstering norms against their use contribute to defending the homeland by limiting the number of states that can directly threaten us and dissuading the potential transfer of these weapons to non- state actors. As we and our partners limit WMD proliferation, we will deny terrorists a potent weapon and contribute to bringing the fight against violent extremists to a successful conclusion on U.S. terms.
A number of hostile or potentially hostile states are actively seeking or have acquired WMD. Some may seek them for prestige or deterrence; others may plan to use them. Preventing such regimes from acquiring or proliferating WMD, and the means to deliver them, contributes to promoting security.
Fortunately, the ranks of the nuclear powers are still small, but they could grow in the next decade in the absence of concerted action. Many more countries possess chemical and biological weapons programs - programs that are more difficult to detect, impede, or eliminate. These countries will continue to pursue WMD programs as a means to deter, coerce, and potentially use against adversaries. Shaping the behavior of additional states seeking or acquiring weapons of mass destruction will require an integrated, international effort.
Technological and information advances of the last fifty years have led to the wide dissemination of WMD knowledge and lowered barriers to entry. Relatively sophisticated chemical agents, and even crude biological agents, are within the reach of many non-state actors with a modicum of scientific knowledge. Non-state actors may acquire WMD, either through clandestine production, state- sponsorship, or theft. Also of concern is the potential for severe instability in WMD states and resulting loss of control of these weapons. In these cases, the United States, through a concerted interagency and partner nation effort, must be prepared to detect, tag and track, intercept, and destroy WMD and related materials. We must also be prepared to act quickly to secure those weapons and materials in cases where a state loses control of its weapons, especially nuclear devices. Should the worst happen, and we are attacked, we must be able to sustain operations during that attack and help mitigate the consequences of WMD attacks at home or overseas.
Strengthen and Expand Alliances and Partnerships
The United States also must strengthen and expand alliances and partnerships. The U.S. alliance system has been a cornerstone of peace and security for more than a generation and remains the key to our success, contributing significantly to achieving all U.S. objectives. Allies often possess capabilities, skills, and knowledge we cannot duplicate. We should not limit ourselves to the relationships of the past. We must broaden our ideas to include partnerships for new situations or circumstances, calling on moderate voices in troubled regions and unexpected partners. In some cases, we may develop arrangements limited to specific objectives or goals, or even of limited duration. Although these arrangements will vary according to mutual interests, they should be built on respect, reciprocity, and transparency.
The capacities of our partners vary across mission areas. We will be able to rely on many partners for certain low-risk missions such as peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance, whereas complex counterinsurgency and high-end conventional operations are likely to draw on fewer partners with the capacity, will, and capability to act in support of mutual goals. We will support, train, advise and equip partner security forces to counter insurgencies, terrorism, proliferation, and other threats. We will assist other countries in improving their capabilities through security cooperation, just as we will learn valuable skills and information from others better situated to understand some of the complex challenges we face together.
We must also work with longstanding friends and allies to transform their capabilities. Key to transformation is training, education and, where appropriate, the transfer of defense articles to build partner capacity. We must work to develop new ways of operating across the full spectrum of warfare. Our partnerships must be capable of applying military and non-military power when and where needed - a prerequisite against an adaptable transnational enemy.
Secure U.S. strategic access and retain freedom of action
For more than sixty years, the United States has secured the global commons for the benefit of all. Global prosperity is contingent on the free flow of ideas, goods, and services. The enormous growth in trade has lifted millions of people out of poverty by making locally produced goods available on the global market. Low barriers to trade also benefit consumers by reducing the cost of goods and allowing countries to specialize. None of this is possible without a basic belief that goods shipped through air or by sea, or information transmitted under the ocean or through space, will arrive at their destination safely. The development and proliferation of anti-access technologies and tactics threatens to undermine this belief.
The United States requires freedom of action in the global commons and strategic access to important regions of the world to meet our national security needs. The well-being of the global economy is contingent on ready access to energy resources. Notwithstanding national efforts to reduce dependence on oil, current trends indicate an increasing reliance on petroleum products from areas of instability in the coming years, not reduced reliance. The United States will continue to foster access to and flow of energy resources vital to the world economy. Further, the Department is examining its own energy demands and is taking action to reduce fuel demand where it will not negatively affect operational capability. Such efforts will reduce DoD fuel costs and assist wider U.S. Government energy security and environmental objectives.
We will continue to transform overseas U.S. military presence through global defense posture realignment, leveraging a more agile continental U.S. (CONUS)- based expeditionary total force and further developing a more relevant and flexible forward network of capabilities and arrangements with allies and partners to ensure strategic access.
Integrate and unify our efforts: A new “Jointness”
Our efforts require a unified approach to both planning and implementing policy. Iraq and Afghanistan remind us that military success alone is insufficient to achieve victory. We must not forget our hard-learned lessons or allow the important soft power capabilities developed because of them to atrophy or even disappear. Beyond security, essential ingredients of long-term success include economic development, institution building, and the rule of law, as well as promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications. We as a nation must strengthen not only our military capabilities, but also reinvigorate other important elements of national power and develop the capability to integrate, tailor, and apply these tools as needed. We must tap the full strength of America and its people.
The Department of Defense has taken on many of these burdens. Our forces have stepped up to the task of long-term reconstruction, development and governance. The U.S. Armed Forces will need to institutionalize and retain these capabilities, but this is no replacement for civilian involvement and expertise. The United States must improve its ability to deploy civilian expertise rapidly, and continue to increase effectiveness by joining with organizations and people outside of government - untapped resources with enormous potential. We can make better use of the expertise of our universities and of industry to assist in reconstruction and long-term improvements to economic vitality and good governance. Greater civilian participation is necessary both to make military operations successful and to relieve stress on the men and women of the armed forces. Having permanent civilian capabilities available and using them early could also make it less likely that military forces will need to be deployed in the first place.
We also need capabilities to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Strategic communications within the Department and across government is a good example. Although the United States invented modern public relations, we are unable to communicate to the world effectively who we are and what we stand for as a society and culture, about freedom and democracy, and about our goals and aspirations. This capability is and will be crucial not only for the Long War, but also for the consistency of our message on crucial security issues to our allies, adversaries, and the world.
We will continue to work with other U.S. Departments and Agencies, state and local governments, partners and allies, and international and multilateral organizations to achieve our objectives. A whole-of-government approach is only possible when every government department and agency understands the core competencies, roles, missions, and capabilities of its partners and works together to achieve common goals. Examples such as expanding U.S. Southern Command’s interagency composition and the establishment of U.S. Africa Command will point the way. In addition, we will support efforts to coordinate national security planning more effectively, both within DoD and across other U.S. Departments and Agencies.
We will continue to work to improve understanding and harmonize best practices amongst interagency partners. This must happen at every level from Washington, DC-based headquarters to the field. DoD, in partnership with DHS, also will continue to develop habitual relationships with state and local authorities to ensure we are positioned to respond when necessary and support civil authorities in times of emergency, where allowable by law. Through these efforts we will significantly increase our collective abilities to defend the homeland. We will further develop and refine our own capabilities. We should continue to develop innovative capabilities, concept, and organizations. We will continue to rely on adaptive planning, on integration and use of all government assets, and on flexibility and speed. Yet we must not only have a full spectrum of capabilities at our disposal, but also employ and tailor any or all of them to a complex environment. These developments will require an expanded understanding of “jointness,” one that seamlessly combines civil and military capabilities and options.
Finally, we must consider further realigning Department structures, and interagency planning and response efforts, to better address these risks and to meet new needs. We will examine how integrated planning is conducted within the Department, and how to make better use of our own existing capacities.
DoD Capabilities and Means
Implementation of any strategy is predicated on developing, maintaining and, where possible, expanding the means required to execute its objectives within budget constraints. Without the tools, we cannot do the job. The Department is well equipped for its primary missions, but it always seeks to improve and refine capabilities and effectiveness. The challenges before us will require resourcefulness and an integrated approach that wisely balances risks and assets, and that recognizes where we must improve, and where others are better suited to help implement aspects of the strategy.
The Department will continue to emphasize the areas identified in the 2006 QDR, specifically improvements in capabilities for defeating terrorist networks, defending the homeland in depth, shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads, and preventing adversaries’ acquisition and use of weapons of mass destruction. Although these capabilities are not sufficient to address all the missions of the Department, they require particular attention.
The Department’s greatest asset is the people who dedicate themselves to the mission. The Total Force distributes and balances skills across each of its constituent elements: the Active Component, the Reserve Component, the civilian workforce, and the private sector and contractor base. Each element relies on the other to accomplish the mission; none can act independently of the other to accomplish the mission. The force has been severely tasked between operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and fulfilling other missions and assignments. Although we are already committed to strengthening our forces, we also should seek to find more ways to retain and tap into the unique skills and experience of the thousands of veterans and others who have served and who can provide valuable contributions to national security. We will continue to pursue the improvements in the total force identified in the 2006 QDR and elsewhere, including the expansion of special operations forces and ground forces and developing modular, adaptable joint forces.
Strategic communications will play an increasingly important role in a unified approach to national security. DoD, in partnership with the Department of State, has begun to make strides in this area, and will continue to do so. However, we should recognize that this is a weakness across the U.S. Government, and that a coordinated effort must be made to improve the joint planning and implementation of strategic communications.
Intelligence and information sharing have always been a vital component of national security. Reliable information and analysis, quickly available, is an enduring challenge. As noted in the 2006 QDR, DoD is pursuing improved intelligence capabilities across the spectrum, such as defense human intelligence focused on identifying and penetrating terrorist networks and measurement and signature intelligence to identify WMD and delivery systems.
Technology and equipment are the tools of the Total Force, and we must give our people what they need, and the best resources, to get the job done. First-class technology means investing in the right kinds of technology at the right time. Just as our adversaries adapt and develop new tactics, techniques, and procedures, we too must be nimble and creative. One area of particular focus is developing the means to locate, tag and track WMD components. We also must continue to improve our acquisition and contracting regulations, procedures, and oversight to ensure agile and timely procurement of critical equipment and materials for our forces.
Organization also is a key to the DoD’s success, especially as it brings together disparate capabilities and skills to wield as a unified and overpowering force. Concepts such as “net-centricity” can help guide DoD, linking components of the Department together and connecting organizations with complementary core competencies, forging the Total Force into more than the sum of its parts. The goal is to break down barriers and transform industrial-era organizational structures into an information and knowledge-based enterprise. These concepts are not a panacea, and will require investments in people as much as in technology to realize the full potential of these initiatives.
Strengthening our burgeoning system of alliances and partnerships is essential to implementing our strategy. We have become more integrated with our allies and partners on the battlefield and elsewhere. Whether formal alliances such as NATO or newer partnerships such as the Proliferation Security Initiative, they have proved their resiliency and adaptability. These relationships continue to evolve, ensuring their relevance as new challenges emerge. Our partners provide resources, knowledge, skills, and capabilities we cannot duplicate.
Building these partnerships takes resources. DoD has worked with its interagency partners and Congress to expand the portfolio of security cooperation and partnership capacity building tools over the last seven years and will continue to do so. These tools are essential to successful implementation of the strategy. We will also work with Congress and other stakeholders to address our significant concern with growing legal and regulatory restrictions that impede, and threaten to undermine, our military readiness.
DoD will continue to implement global defense posture realignment, transforming from legacy base structures and forward-garrisoned forces to an expeditionary force, providing greater flexibility to contend with uncertainty in a changing strategic environment.
Managing Risk
Implementing the National Defense Strategy and its objectives requires balancing risks, and understanding the choices those risks imply. We cannot do everything, or function equally well across the spectrum of conflict. Ultimately we must make choices. With limited resources, our strategy must address how we assess, mitigate, and respond to risk. Here we define risk in terms of the potential for damage to national security combined with the probability of occurrence and a measurement of the consequences should the underlying risk remain unaddressed. We must hedge against changes in the strategic environment that might invalidate the assumptions underpinning the strategy as well as address risks to the strategy.
First, there are risks associated with the indirect approach that is fundamental to the Long War. We must recognize that partner contributions to future coalition operations will vary in size, composition, competence, and capability. Some partners will have the political will and the capacity and capability to make significant contributions across the spectrum of conflict. Other partners will demonstrate more restraint in the type of operation (e.g., counter-terrorism, stabilization, traditional combat operations) in which they will participate. We must balance the clear need for partners - the Long War is ultimately not winnable without them - with mission requirements for effectiveness and efficiency. Additionally, the strategic shocks identified above could potentially change the rules of the game and require a fundamental re-appraisal of the strategy.
Second, the strategy must account for four dimensions of risk:
• Operational risks are those associated with the current force executing the strategy successfully within acceptable human, material, financial, and strategic costs.
• Future challenges risks are those associated with the Department’s capacity to execute future missions successfully against an array of prospective future challengers.
• Force management risks are those associated with managing military forces fulfilling the objectives described in this National Defense Strategy. The primary concern here is recruiting, retaining, training, and equipping a force and sustaining its readiness.
• Institutional risks are those associated with the capacity of new command, management, and business practices.
Operational Risk
To address the potential for multiple contingencies, the Department will develop a range of military options for the President, including means to de-escalate crises and reduce demand on forces where possible. Addressing operational risk requires clearly articulating the risks inherent in and the consequences of choosing among the options and proposing mitigation strategies.
U.S. predominance in traditional warfare is not unchallenged, but is sustainable for the medium term given current trends. The 2006 QDR focused on non-traditional or irregular challenges. We will continue to focus our investments on building capabilities to address these other challenges, while examining areas where we can assume greater risk.
Future Challenges Risk
An underlying assumption in our understanding of the strategic environment is that the predominant near-term challenges to the United States will come from state and non-state actors using irregular and catastrophic capabilities. Although our advanced space and cyber-space assets give us unparalleled advantages on the traditional battlefield, they also entail vulnerabilities.
China is developing technologies to disrupt our traditional advantages. Examples include development of anti-satellite capabilities and cyber warfare. Other actors, particularly non-state actors, are developing asymmetric tactics, techniques, and procedures that seek to avoid situations where our advantages come into play.
The Department will invest in hedging against the loss or disruption of our traditional advantages, not only through developing mitigation strategies, but also by developing alternative or parallel means to the same end. This diversification parallelism is distinct from acquiring overmatch capabilities (whereby we have much more than an adversary of a similar capability). It will involve pursuing multiple routes to similar effects while ensuring that such capabilities are applicable across multiple mission areas.
Force Management Risk
The people of our Total Force are the greatest asset of the Department. Ensuring that each person has the opportunity to contribute to the maximum of their potential is critical to achieving DoD’s objectives and supporting U.S. national security. An all-volunteer force is the foundation of the most professional and proficient fighting force in the world. It also underlines the necessity to innovate in providing opportunities for advancement and growth. Our civilian and military workforce similarly possesses skills that are highly prized in the private sector, thus requiring a concerted strategy to retain these professionals.
Retaining well-trained, motivated military and civilian personnel is key. Financial incentives only go so far. Our military and civilian personnel elect to serve their country unselfishly. It is the responsibility of our senior leaders to recognize that fact and provide the means for personnel to grow, develop new knowledge, and develop new skills.
Institutional Risk
Since 2001, the Department has created new commands (integrating Space and Strategic Commands, establishing Northern and Africa Commands) and new governance structures. DoD is already a complex organization. We must guard against increasing organizational complexity leading to redundancy, gaps, or overly bureaucratic decision-making processes.
Conclusion
The strategy contained in this document is the result of an assessment of the current and future strategic environment. The United States, and particularly the Department of Defense, will not win the Long War or successfully address other security challenges alone. Forging a new consensus for a livable world requires constant effort and unity of purpose with our Allies and partners. The Department stands ready to fulfill its mission.
2012
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