Barack Obama Faces 8 Global National Security Challenges
- Exercise strategic restraint. The United States cannot afford quagmires that drain resources without providing lasting security. Playing world policeman from the Potomac is a seductive temptation. Its allure is encouraged by inertia and by free riders. But it is neither America's sole responsibility nor its remit. A strong military is the U.S. ace in the hole, but better still are indirect approaches, strategies of leverage, and "smart power."
America cannot afford to be the world's exclusive security guarantor, but the world is ill prepared for American retrenchment. A shrewd and realistic strategy that balances broadening strategic ends with narrowing national means will require visionary leadership and the best that America has to offer.
The Greek poet Archilochus said that the fox knows many things and the hedgehog has one big idea. Any Obama Doctrine will have to be as clever as the fox. Above all, the United States must keep its eye on multiple challenges, taking care not to exert its finite resources on any single problem.
Patrick M. Cronin is the director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington and the editor of the forthcoming Global Strategic Assessment 2009. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and not those of the U.S. government.
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- Read more about al Qaeda.
- Read more about terrorism.
Reader Comments
US Policy against terrorism
This is interesting articale on challenges that US faces in terms of terrorism. What US has failed to recognize over the period of time is that there cant be half measures in tackling terrorism. When it comes to Pakistan, it is absolutely baffling to see US being satisfied with what Pak has done in dismantling terror camps. Pakistan continues to be epicentre of world terrorism, India has been in line of fire for years and US will realize probably shortly that by not heeding to Indian advices what a great harm it has done to it's interests.
Barack Obama's 8 Global National Security Challenges
What a relief! We've gotten past violent Islamic extremism. I guess I
was on a day off when Dr. Cronin solved that little problem.
Nice ideas lacking a holistic model for the substance of governance
This is a clever article, all of it sensible. However, it is completely lacking--as was the recent publication of the GLOBAL TRENDS 2025 by the Director of National Intelligence, in a holistic analytic model. There are ten high level threats to humanity, and terrorism is 9th on that list. There are twelve policies directly relevant to preventing and containing terrorism, and not only of them, other than security, is mentioned. There are eight challengers--Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Wild Cards (e.g. Congo, Malaysia, Turkey), and nothing the US does will matter unless we create solutions that can be of compelling attractiveness to the eight challengers.
The primary problem with this incoming Administration, as with others since the demise of democracy in the USA, is twofold:
1) The Republican and Democratic parties have hijacked the US Government, which has betrayed the public trust and can no longer be trusted. Electoral Reform, restoring the fullness of one man-one vote and the diversity of debate, is a non-negotiable first step, or the USA will--as one prominent Russian political scientist has suggested--soon follow the Soviet Union into the disassembly line.
2) The US Intelligence Community stinks. I beat the hell out of them in front of the Aspin-Brown Commission, producing more actionable intelligence, all of it unclassified, with six telephone calls, than the entire $50 billion a year community. My findings were immediate, free, and relevant. The DNI and the rest of them are good people trapped in a bad system with no inclination to leave their prison--the Stockholm Syndrome. The incoming President needs a national intelligence community that is truly national. I have proposed to the transition team that Colin Powell be made Secretary-General for Education, Intelligence, and Research, with Derek Bok as Secretary of Education, a broadly experienced intelligence professional as Secretary of Intelligence, and E. O. Wilson as Secretary of Research. The secret intelligence budget of $60-75 billion a year needs to be cut in half, and on the way down, it should be used as the bill-payer for education and research.
The National Security Community in the USA needs to rediscover holistic strategic thinking. "It's all connected." And by the by, Lester Brown, Medard Gabel, and E. O. Wilson among others, have all documented that we can create a prosperous world at peace for one third the cost of what we all spend on war. Show me a DNI that can explain THAT to the President-elect, and I will show you a Smart Nation capable of leading all others toward heaven on earth.
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