The Army and the Future of the International System

Americans are inherently practical people, preferring the immediate and the tangible to the long-range and the intangible.This characteristic has brought us immense success in all realms of life, but it also complicates the process of crafting a coherent national security strategy.By focusing too much on the immediate and the tangible, we can easily lapse into strategic myopia, thus simply postponing tough decisions and allowing small threats to grow into large ones.This is particularly true during periods of strategic transition such as the current one.A huge array of factors must be considered as we attempt to design a coherent post-Cold War national security strategy.These include not only the traditional elements of strategy such as politics, economics, and the military balance, but also newer forces such as social trends, value changes, demographics, mass psychology, the expansion of communications and information technology, and environmental concerns.But of the factors that will shape future US national security strategy and the military force required to execute it, the most amorphous and difficult to analyze is the nature of the international system itself.This is the foundation for all strategy.Thinking at such a high level of abstraction can seem alien and esoteric to security professionals confronting the press of day-to-day problems where in-baskets rather than international systems take priority.System-level analysis is intensely, sometimes overwhelmingly complex.The tendency, then, is to avoid it in favor of more immediate and seemingly easier issues.But over the long term, the macro-level nature of the international system may be the most vital element of a coherent strategy.It is simultaneously ethereal and relevant, driving consideration of the appropriate force structure and procedures for applying national power.For this reason, astute strategists simply must speculate on this topic

Political science · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · Military and Defense Studies

• Multipolar Power Systems and International Stability

  Open Access•Karl W Deutsch, Judith D Singer•World Politics•1964

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