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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 09/04
Honing the Sword: Strategy and Forces After 9/11
Marcus Corbin
Center for Defense Information
February 2003
Abstract
In 2001, prior to the attacks of Sept. 11, the Center for Defense Information published a national security review and force structure entitled Reforging the Sword: Forces for a 21st Century Security Strategy. Happily for the authors of Reforging, the Sept. 11 attacks did not make it obsolete. To the contrary, its emphases on working more closely with allies, on lighter, more agile forces, on intelligence, and on the importance of nonmilitary components of a conflict were important elements of the conduct of the counterattack by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. The events of Sept. 11 and Operation Enduring Freedom have reinforced the need raised in Reforging to prepare for new threats, and have enhanced the prospects for some of its proposed new directions, particularly in the area of allied collaboration if a multilateralist administration took office. This report updates Reforging the Sword in light of events on and since Sept. 11, 2001. The suggestions here use as a foundation the predilections spelled out in Reforging for working with allies, for taking the nonmilitary elements of modern war into consideration, and for trying to keep humans in the war–fighting loop.
Although the Afghanistan operation provides a useful illustration of new types of wars the military might face in the 21st century, there is the everpresent danger of basing too much future planning on “refighting the last war,” or even the current one. To the extent that similar factors may not recur in other situations, the lessons of Afghanistan will be less relevant in those cases. Nevertheless, central characteristics of the Sept. 11 attacks and the operations in Afghanistan are likely to be harbingers of the future — the first war of the 21st century — rather than vestiges of a past era of conflict.
