Small Wars Journal

U.S. Still in Denial About 21st Century Threats

  1. Blog
Tue, 04/19/2011 - 9:58am
U.S. Still in Denial About 21st Century Threats, Says Former Obama National Security Adviser by Sandra Erwin, National Defense. BLUF: "... defense leaders should avoid becoming consumed by 'tactical' issues such as inter-service rivalries and, instead, focus on the bigger picture, said former Obama national security adviser, retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones. The U.S. military still has not come to grips with the 'security environment of the 21st century,'... ... Jones envisions the U.S. military playing a greater diplomatic role as preventer of wars and protector of democratic ideals."

Comments

I liked GEN Jones when he commanded EUCOM, in my opinion he was the right man, at the right place at the right time. He actually managed to get EUCOM to expand its focus into long neglected Africa and focus on the command on post Cold War threats. While I agree with many of his comments in this article, I fail to see where he actually addresses how we're failing to address 21st Century threats. I see a lot of legacy threats and interests (the two shouldn't be confused) from the late 20th Century that will continue to be of interest into the foreseeable future such as energy security and selective engagement in peace keeping efforts, but these are not unique to the 21st Century.

Definitely agree that our economic power is our greatest asset. Even if we invested more money in the military it won't change the limits of what the military can accomplish in our pursuit to build a new world order, which is why his comments about the military playing a greater role in diplomacy and nation building are concerning, it appears he is looking backward not forward.

I'm not sure what predictable world the U.S. is used to living in (a reference he made in his article), and why the world would be more unpredictable today than it was yesterday, unless it is due to having our intelligence community focused mostly on narrowly very small portion of the world and only watching terrorists and counting Chinese submarines? If you want to understand the environment you have to make the effort to do so. The world socially and politically has always been covered with gasoline that is at least ankle deep, so potential conflagrations are in many places simultaneously simply waiting for someone to throw a match and it get it started. If we're going to have any hope in limiting the number of conflagrations, then we need to look at the whole world and through different lenses than we're doing now. A small sampling of the unpredictable world yesterday and today.

- the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was the catalyst that kicked off WWI, but the conditions were put in place years before (did we understand that then?)
- the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (catalyst, but again conditions were set for years in advance)
- the fall of Shah in 1979
- Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 82 after Abu Nidal attempted to assassinate an Israeli Ambassador
- The USSR shooting down a Korean Airlines in 1983 (almost led to WWIII).
- AQ on 9/11
- The Tunisian Martyr who set himself on fire and literally fanned the flames of Arab revolt throughout the Arab world (again no one knew he was going to set himself on fire that day or what the reaction would be, but the conditions that led to frustration among the populace existed for years).

Hopefully he'll address what is different in the 21st Century such as the proliferation of technology, cyber threats, integrated financial systems, etc. Terrorism, insurgency, instability, state on state war is not a new threat.