CIAO DATE: 05/02

All Possible Wars? Toward a Consensus View of the Future Security Environment, 2001-2025

Sam J. Tangredi

Institute for National Strategic Studies
National Defense University

November 2000

Introduction

There was a legend in ancient Rome about a fabulous set of nine books which contained a predestined history of the Roman people and — in particular — details of all future wars and crises which would beset them.

These oracles, the property of Amalthaea ؏ the sibyl or prophetess of Cumae — were proffered to the Roman government. In a tale of greed, chauvinism, and intrigue worthy of a melodrama, the Romans decided not to pay the sibylıs price for the books and to bargain for a better deal. Upon learning of their decision, an angry and incredulous Amalthaea threw the first three books into a fire where they burnt to ashes. She thereupon asked for the exact same price for the remaining six books.

Again the Romans, wanting a view of the future on the cheap, refused her price and made a lower offer. An angrier Amalthaea burned three more books, and again asked the same price for the last three. Now desperate, the Roman government acceded, and purchased what came to be known as the Sibylline Books.

Because six books were destroyed, there could be no consensus among the Romans on interpreting the three surviving books. Despite sifting through the Sibylline ashes, they were unable to find the threads of meaning that could turn disconnected prophecies into a coherent view of the future. The books hinted that Rome would someday be a great power, dominating and bringing order to the known world. But the fragmented verses seemed to provide no basis for policy. Years later, a frustrated Caesar Augustus destroyed some 2,000 verses as spurious; they warned of things that seemed implausible or could not be understood.

Today, the United States is the dominant world power. We strain to bring what we understand to be order to an apparently chaotic world. Many dream of a future age of freedom, justice, and peace for all humanity. In the meanwhile, all of us wish to bequeath to our children a nation free from the threats and dangers that beset far-off lands and, potentially, our own: wars, poverty, oppressive ideologies, and ethnic hatreds. We want to know what particular dangers the future will bring.We want to be able to craft policies to protect and defend ourselves against those who would be our enemies, and, where possible, to bring peace to those whom we would aid.

There is no sibyl to offer us a complete set of reliable predictions and thorough explanations of the future threats we will face. There is no predestined chronology or policy which we can follow like a road map. What we do have is a series of learned studies of the meaning of the past and the present, expert assessments on the trends that appear to be developing through current events, thoughtful speculation as to how these trends may change or evolve in the future, and collective worries about what dangers could lie in wait, hidden from view.

This survey sifts through these dispersed piles of Sibylline ashes of our day, in order to develop the nearest to a consensus view of the future issues of war and peace — a view of the future security environment in which the United States will conduct its international relations. The proximate objective is to provide analytical support for the Quadrennial Defense Review of 2001 (QDR 2001), a comprehensive, Congressionallymandated review of U.S. military strategy, policy, and force structure.

QDR 2001, like its predecessor in 1997, is intended to be a strategy- driven assessment that balances the preparations of the present with the anticipated challenges and opportunities of the future. Obviously, the first step in developing any strategy is the identification of objectives and the environment in which those objectives are to be pursued. In fact, the QDR 1997 report opened with a section that specified the assumptions about the future security environment that were used in guiding the review.

Theoretically, there should be no shortage of futures studies that could be used to form the basis for deriving the future security environment assumptions of QDR 2001. A recent survey identified over 50 academic or professional studies conducted since 1989, the approximate end of the Cold War. As in ancient Rome, the future is a popular topic for serious speculation. However, there are severe problems in attempting to apply the results of these futures studies to effective policymaking. Among the difficulties are the lack of coordination between these studies; the significant differences in their methodologies and the time periods examined; the broad and divergent scope of topics; the presence of underlying and often unidentified biases; and the wide range of contradictory results. Many studies begin with a clean slate, taking scant interest in previous, related work. An unedited compilation of these studies would constitute a modern Sibylline oracle, capable of generating much debate, but not a basis for policy.

To construct a policy requires some sort of baseline consensus from which implications and issues can be examined in an analytical context. This survey attempts to derive such a baseline for the years 2001-2025. The methodology adopted is straightforward, but apparently unique among futures assessments. Thirty-six existing studies concerning the future security environment were selected based on the criteria discussed in chapter one. Conceptually, these studies are representative of views from the range of organizations involved with or interested in national defense issues. All of the studies, with two exceptions, were published between 1996 and 2000. Selecting a publication date of 1996 or later was based on the assumption that such earlier work had been considered by QDR 1997.

The thirty-six studies are then surveyed, analyzed in detail, and compared on a subject-by-subject basis to identify areas of agreement and disagreement. From this comparison, sixteen points of consensus and nine of divergence are identified. The points of consensus do not necessarily represent absolute agreement of sources, but do represent majority agreement. The points of divergence do not necessarily represent a fifty-fifty split, but indicate that there was no clear majority position.

After the consensus and divergence points were developed, they were tested for validity against the conclusions of over three hundred other sources, most of them specialized studies. Most, but not all of these consulted sources are also recent publications. The purpose was to identify dissenting positions on the points of consensus, as well as to validate the fact that the consensus represents a majority view.

Additionally, both the primary and consulted sources were surveyed for the identification of wild cards — unpredictable events that could present a considerable challenge during the 2001-2025 time period. Combined with the dissenting positions, the wild cards indicate changes in the security environment that may require the development of hedging strategies.

The final portion of this essay includes a consensus scenario that describes the anticipated 2001-2025 future security environment in narrative form and a list of possibilities that warrant hedging.

There are conceptual and practical limitations to providing a consensus view of the future which this study identifies, attempting a balanced effort of insight and caution. Chapter one identifies the sources surveyed and details the analytical methodology. The next chapter explores the differences between the three major intellectual approaches to assessing the future, in an effort to illustrate the conceptual difficulties in comparing results among future studies. This is followed in chapter three by a discussion the practical limitations to using any consensus view of the future as a basis for policymaking. These caveats point to the need for serious consideration of dissenting views and wild cards in the development of hedging strategies.

Chapter four is a detailed assessment of the future security environment identified in the QDR 1997 report, using the common subjects. This assessment is an illustrative model of the analysis performed on the other thirty-five primary sources. Additionally, the question of whether the QDR 1997 assumptions remain a valid analytical baseline is discussed.

Sixteen points of consensus are outlined in chapter five, as well as dissenting views on each of the points. Chapter six details the nine points of divergence and their relationship to the consensus views. Then, in chapter seven, the wild cards most frequently identified in the literature surveyed are described.

Chapter eight presents the 2001-2025 consensus scenario narrative, as well as the wild cards that appear most appropriate for consideration in constructing hedging strategies. This discussion is concluded in chapter nine.

The conclusions found in this survey are but a starting point for the public debate on American defense policy for the 2001-2025 period. Critics will undoubtedly contest the points of consensus. The points of divergence are, effectively, intellectual debates already in progress. Nearly everyone has a different future they would prefer to see. Professional futurists often suggest that scenarios should describe the optimism of goals, rather than the pessimism of threats. But for the purposes of strategic planning, and particularly for comprehensive defense reviews involving a multitude of organizations and people — many with conflicting agendas — a baseline view of the future is critical in ensuring that competing choices of action are addressing the same challenges, instead of being built on completely different sets of assumptions.

Unlike the Sibylline Books, this survey does not claim to predict or illustrate all possible wars that America might face between now and the year 2025. Rather, it attempts, through analysis of representative and reputable sources, to incorporate the most likely characteristics of the future security environment into a single scenario, while heightening our awareness of dissenting viewpoints and plausible wild cards. The objective is to avoid the mistakes made by great powers in the past by moderating both the natural urge for economy in defense and impatience with futures that do not conform with the desired outcomes of our strategic vision of the future security environment.

Full Text (PDF format, 1.7M)