Alternative Military Strategies for the Future: Thinking about Strategy: A Practitioner’s Perspective

In this volume, prominent civilian and military experts in defense, representing the maritime-continental coalition, military reform, and noninterventionist schools of thought, outline the changes in military strategy, policy, and force structure that they believe the United States must adopt if it is to cope successfully with threats to national security in the 1980s and 1990s. The authors analyze US interests and objectives, the changing strategic environment, and the major security threats facing the United States in the coming decades. They also discuss what they believe is the proper mix of political, economic, and military instruments for dealing with fixture threats. The alternative strategies they present are wide-ranging and comprehensive, running the gamut from a strategic withdrawal from global commitments to proposals for increasing US power projection and forcible entry capabilities in the Third World. In many ways the chapters are critical of current and past approaches to military strategy. The authors believe it is essential that strategists understand the existing critiques of current U.S. military strategy in order to make the correct policy decisions for the future.