Another thought on the QDR

When reading about the QDR for yesterday’s post, I came across something else I thought was really interesting. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finds Cold-War era force planning “too confining.”

Here’s a short excerpt from the QDR:

“[P]ast defense reviews have called for the nation’s armed forces to be able to fight and win two major regional conflicts in overlapping time frames. These have been characterized as conflicts against state adversaries, typically employing conventional military forces. This QDR likewise assumes the need for a robust force capable of protecting U.S. interests against a multiplicity of threats, including two capable nation-state aggressors. It breaks from the past, however, in its insistence that the U.S. Armed Forces must be capable of conducting a wide range of operations, from homeland defense and defense support to civil authorities, to deterrence and preparedness missions, to the conflicts we are in and the wars we may someday face.

“In short, U.S. forces today and in the years to come can be plausibly challenged by a range of threats that extend far beyond the familiar “major regional conflicts” that have dominated U.S. planning since the end of the Cold War. We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars that we would have planned. For instance, in Iraq and Afghanistan, two theaters in which we are engaged simultaneously, we have seen that achieving operational military victory can be only the first step toward achieving our strategic objectives.”

This QDR then represents a dramatic shift in U.S. planning and strategy. The Cold War defined our international relations and our military strategy for two decades after it was over.

This also reflects the idea that we no longer live in a “bipolar” world or even a “unipolar” one, at least in terms of security. The threats and challenges we face no longer come in the form of peer states, but are now rogue challenges to our supremacy.