Aligning Ends, Ways, and Means

Book excerpt: After four decades of relative stability in national security strategy, American behavior has been erratic in search of a new and sustainable role on the world stage. Rather than facing an ideologically driven great power alliance, the new threat appears to be emanating from failed or failing states. And rather than preparing to deter, and if necessary, defeat, a military super power the United States has entered into long, costly, and uncertain nation building efforts that are falling out of favor with the American public facing a deep recession. Nation building efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed an imbalance in the capabilities of the departments and agencies and an inability to achieve a unity of effort, a whole of government effort. High level commissions recommend a reallocation of resources to achieve a new balance in the instruments of power and major reorganizations to affect a better orchestration of the instruments. Others are completely redefining national security. Traditionally, threats to national security were military problems with military solutions. What were considered issues of foreign policy -- including pandemics and environmental degradation -- are increasingly cast as national security matters. They are not military problems with military solutions. A national security strategy aligns ends, ways, and means. Finding a new alignment must take place in an environment of a deep and wide recession, partisan gridlock, and uncertainty about the very meaning of national security. This book presents the reader with the information necessary to engage in an informed debate on national security strategy and the system that supports it.