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Email this citationCIAO DATE: 05/02
Strategic Challenges for the Bush Administration
Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University
2001
Introduction by Stephen J. Flanagan
As the Bush Administration settles into office, the United States confronts an international environment marked by growing volatility and rapid change. What security challenges will the new administration face, and what strategies are available for managing these challenges? To answer these quesitons, leading policy specialists in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University recently prepared a series of assessments for the Department of Defense. These perspectives are presented in this occasional paper. Together with the Insitute's previously published Report of the National Defense University Quadrennial Defense Review 2001 Working Group, these assessments offer a broad menu of security policy choices. The key challenges ahead include:
In East Asia, the administration has a unique opportunity to strengthen the U.S.-Japan security alliance and manage change on the Korean Peninsula. At the same time, it will have to deal with several points of friction in the U.S.-China security relations, particularly the risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait, and address the complex political and social crises in Indonesia that threaten regional stability.
In Europe, the administration must come to terms with the determination of its allies to develop a distinct security and defense policy, while adjusting U.S. and allied goals in the search for a sustainable peace in the Balkans, developing as allied consensus on development of missile defenses, and crafting a credible strategy on the further enlargement of NATO.
In the Middle East, the collapse of the Arab-Israeli peace process and the dynamics of the oil market pose grave concerns, but the most vexing security issues in the region concern the Arab states of the Persian Guld, Iraq, Iran, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). With support for sanction evaporating, crafting a sustainable Iraq policy that eliminates its WMD and promotes a regime change is a clear priority. Internal political changes in Iran will not alter Iran's foreign and security policies considerably, including its determination to acquire nuclear weapons.
With Russia, the key challenges will be to develop a new strategy for delaing with a declining power whose ambitions generally exceed its capabilities. This calls for a more focused, but limited, engagement with Moscow on key issues of strategic stability, WMD proliferation, and select regional concerns on the RUssian periphery.
In South Asia, enduring tensions between India and Pakistan that could erupt into a nuclear war, the vulnerability of Pakistan to growing Islamic militancy, and mounting competition between India and China cloud the security environment. This situation calls for stabilizing the Indo-Pakistani nuclear competition, broadening the U.S. security cooperation with India, and rebuilding he relationship between Washington and Islamabad.
In the Western Hemisphere, the general outlook is hopeful and there is a great opportunity to implement a new rgional security strategy. The administration can best address instability and state weakness across the Andean region — and support Plan Colombia advanced by President Andres Pastrana — trough a new subregional partnership to address the causes and consequences of these problems.
On strategic nuclear forces and missile defenses, the administration should consider developin a comprehensive framework to determine the size, compositions, and posture of the U.S. strategix offensive and defensive forces that integrates new assessments of the nature of deterrence and stability. At the same time it should develop hedges and reconstitution options against greater than expected threats and approaches to strategic force reductions outside the formal treaties.
