Perhaps, but it will take work. Our security structures necessarily reflect the real-world constraints of history, resources, and culture, but this does not preclude us from change.
Globalization—the impact of events beyond national borders and often beyond regions—is a dominant trend in the 21st century. A fundamental question in this globalizing world is how security should respond to new conditions and contend with the ever-increasing impact of events beyond immediate locales.
The successful security paradigms of the past—deterrence, defense, and balance of power—today may be complemented by a new security paradigm that provides for the development of security structures that shape the environment such that the use of force becomes less probable. When force is used, the overwhelming majority of nations identify their security interests as commensurate with those of the United States.
To be successful in a globalizing world, whether under the new paradigm or in traditional deterrence and defense, security necessarily will focus heavily on transnational security activities, with the United States and regional states increasingly operating in multinational groupings, some formal and some informal. Such security activities will build on regional structures as key nodal elements.
In this scenario, the United States will be a critical linking factor, effectively creating a network among regionally based security partnerships. Coalition warfare, interoperable capabilities, and use of military activities and structures to shape the environment will be crucial. Effective results will require such a transnational security network not only to call on military power, but also to call for the full use of political, economic, and informational power in an applied, coordinated fashion.
First, however, the United States must set its own direction to maintain security consistent with supporting its critical interests. At least three key issues emerge:
- What kind of force structure do we need?
- How do we use the new globalizing factors as a necessary complement to military capabilities?
- Can we develop a functionally integrated security approach throughout the world?
U.S. Force Structure
U.S. force structure must be built on three types of military requirements:
- Wartime requirements, the traditional aspects of deterrence and defense
- Peacetime requirements of shaping the globalizing world
- The crucial U.S. role as a global link in establishing formal and informal partnerships to ensure worldwide security and stability
In spite of the debate over the proper sizing of U.S. forces to respond to wartime requirements, there can be little doubt about two propositions. First, the United States has vital interests in a variety of regional theaters: Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Near East-South Asia (which is why we have established military commands for each of these areas). The nation also has important interests in others U.S. force structure Africa, for example. Second, it simply is not possible to predict where, when, or how those interests may be challenged. We live in an all-azimuth world that is changing rapidly. In these circumstances, the ability to respond to more than one major contingency is critical to enable us to protect vital interests, to make as unlikely as possible that challenges to these interests arise, and to ensure that allies and friends continue to integrate their capabilities with ours.
Some contingencies will be less than all-out theater war. Significant threats to U.S. interests can come at lesser levels, including threats to allies and friends. Especially in an integrating world, the United States has an interest in helping meet those threats. Accordingly, smaller-scale contingencies and peacekeeping missions will remain as part of the mission for the U.S. military in a globalizing world. This is necessary especially if the United States wishes to maintain its leadership role. If we provide leadership, we must share risks.
Military contingencies alone will not provide sufficient sizing criteria; engagement by defense establishments is a crucial factor in the development of security in a globalizing world. Sizing and developing the force require more than just an analysis of possible theater war and smaller-scale use of forces in conflicts. The grind of peacetime engagement also must be factored into force structure and operational planning, not as an after-the-fact derivative but as an end in itself. This is because the shaping function of the force is an affirmative objective of the U.S. military. To accomplish that objective requires a concomitant force structure and operational presence, and that will differ from what would be necessary if the only issue were wartime requirements. This would call for an operational concept that efficiently factors in the expectation of engagement abroad, and may require an increased force structure in some specialized areas.
One additional element of force sizing needs to be considered. The United States often is the key linking factor among militaries regionally and is a global linking factor. This is a function we should continue because it promotes coordination of what otherwise could be somewhat isolated security approaches. At a minimum, linking involves communications and information technology architectures that can include allies and partners. Coordinated multinational logistics efforts also are important and can save considerable resources. Mobility likewise can be enhanced substantially by coordinated actions. All these efforts need to be continued for effective security in a globalized world.
Developing Nontraditional Means to Achieve Security
One of the key challenges in a globalizing world is whether we can develop security for ourselves using the new and nontraditional means a changing world offers. Modern communications and information technology can play a key role in building the habits of security cooperation. This is an effort the United States has begun on the engagement side. For example, since 1996, information networks have been an important element of coalition strategies. In Europe and Central Asia, we use the Partnership for Peace Information Management System, which links the 19 NATO and 26 Partnership for Peace nations. In Asia, the United States has established the Asia Pacific Area Network, which provides communication between and among the nations of Asia. Hopefully, we will be able to work with the Gulf Cooperation Council's new Hizam at-Ta'awun command, control, communications, and computer system for a similar Gulfwide area network and also to build on the shared early-warning capability that is a central component of the Cooperative Defense Initiative.
The power of these efforts for engagement is obvious because multinational efforts inherently are involved in modern communications and information technology. Moreover, the operational benefits are dramatic. Interoperability and effectiveness are enhanced by use of simulation networks for exercises. For example, during the 1999 NATO Summit, we used a simulation network for a week-long command post exercise with sites in Washington and Europe. Compatible information technology architectures are the backbone of coalition warfare, allowing for dominance through precision-guided engagement and focused logistics. These efforts need to be expanded.
A second challenge is whether we have the ability to shape the security environment in the area of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Future security will depend to an important degree on the ability of countries to confront the special challenges presented by such weapons and to resist WMD blackmail. The United States has begun worldwide programs of shared early warning, active and passive defense, consequence management, and medical countermeasures. While the specifics are a matter of some controversy, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have moved forward on missile defense programs whose benefits President Clinton said should be available to "all civilized countries." Through such programs, we and our partners no longer need feel helpless in the face of these threats. Effectiveness naturally depends on multinational efforts.
A third issue of nontraditional challenges involves enhancing our ability to use nonmilitary capabilities in support of military capabilities. The constraints are pragmatic: Resources are not easily available for tasks all know should be accomplished. It is a supreme irony that billions can be spent on military operations for the purpose of creating a framework for post-conflict civil improvements, both political and economic, but that the funds for such civil improvements themselves come slowly at best and often not at all. Money, it turns out, is not fungible among governmental bureaucracies. Moreover, even when resources are available, capabilities often are not. Many talk about conflict prevention; none practice it effectively. The establishment of new governmental structures in countries that have suffered conflict could be described politely as erratic. Economic restructuring generates conferences more often than it generates results. Building civil societies is difficult. Theoretically, the best response would be to establish institutions with not only the charter but also the resources to help accomplish the tasks; such organizations do not yet exist.
A Global Security Network?
The paradigm of the globalizing world is the integrated network. Financial resources flow through markets around the world. The Internet is an ever-increasing connective device. Is there likelihood that successful security similarly will involve some sort of network, likely built on regional and local nodes but in result establishing order on a broad basis? Certainly, it only can be built regionally step by step, and only if the United States continues to lead. Moreover, if it is to be achieved, it likely will be a network of networks. In other words, security for a globalizing world will be built on regional activities.
There are good reasons to seek such transnational security. By providing for cooperation, transnational security allows responses comprehensive to the types of problems an interconnected world will bring. The development of structured transnational approaches to security helps eliminate a key element of traditional security concern, namely, the need for countries to respond to one another. The development of NATO and, more recently, its enhancement through enlargement and inclusion of 26 countries in the Partnership for Peace program created zones of stability in Europe. A key question, however, is whether transnational security can operate in the real world where deterrence, defense, and balance of power are necessary.
The objective of transnational security will not eliminate necessarily the need to balance power, even in a globalizing world. Balancing power has a long and useful history as a security device and still is necessary in particular situations U.S. force structure but in a globalizing world it is not an optimum objective. Balancing power in the security arena is inconsistent with integrating power in the political, economic, technological, and informational arenas. Indeed, integrating security is a key factor underlying the development of effectively functioning political, economic, technological, and informational approaches, which are the objectives of the future. The development of the European Union was made more possible because the main countries of the Union had a common security structure in the NATO alliance. The economic growth of the Asia Pacific region has been fostered by a common security structure, at the heart of which are alliances and partnerships between the United States and most of the critical countries of the region. A balance-of-power approach to security will undercut an integrated approach to political, economic, technological, and informational development.
In the real world, balance of power may be necessary and may provide a satisfactory result. The countries of the Gulf, along with the United States, the United Kingdom, and others, have deterred Iraqi aggression. While dramatic changes are happening on the Korean Peninsula, historically South Korea and the United States had military power to offset and deter North Korean military aggression. As these examples suggest, balance of power has been a regional phenomenon of important consequence. Enemies have to be faced, not wished away; deterrence and very effective warfighting capabilities are necessary.
Military power, however, is useful for shaping transnational security as well as for balance of power. Allies and friends need to be buttressed. Countries of uncertain status need to be channeled into cooperative efforts. Using military power through engagement so that no country can see the use of force as desirable is absolutely appropriate. Getting a country to join in common objectives is to win the battle without fighting U.S. force structure the optimal solution, as Sun Tzu wrote 2,000 years ago. Thus, common transnational security will build on military power, though the application of such power optimally will come through engagement and shaping.
There is much that the United States already has done to help establish transnational security. The U.S. worldwide policy is one of engagement, which involves promoting security cooperation among the regional states and between regional states and others outside regional groupings. In Europe, Partnership for Peace, the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council, and the Southeast European Defense Ministerial are good examples. In the Gulf, the United States actively has encouraged further development of the military component of the Gulf Cooperation Council as well as other forms of regional cooperation, such as the Cooperative Defense Initiative against weapons of mass destruction. In Asia Pacific, we not only are building on bilateral alliances and partnerships but also are seeking transnational cooperation in the Asian Regional Forum and through informal military dialogues, as among the United States, Japan, and the Republic of Korea, and in the development of functional exchanges, as on the Asia Pacific Area Network. With Central Asia, we not only are encouraging security cooperation among the regional states through the Central Asian Peacekeeping Battalions, but also are supporting their participation in European security issues through their active participation in Partnership for Peace. In Africa, the United States has relied on efforts such as the African Crisis Response Initiative and the African Center for Security Studies. The multinational aspects of these efforts are obvious. Nonetheless, there is much to do.
Can we achieve security and stability in a globalizing world? Perhaps. To be effective in a dynamic, changing, globalizing world, security also must be dynamic and changing.
Franklin D. Kramer served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from March 1996 to February 2001.