Toward a Consensus View of the Security Environment
Session 1
September 20, 2002
Meeting Notes (pdf 22 KB)—Summarized by Michael Kraig, Ph.D.
Sam Tangredi, Senior Military Fellow, National Defense University
What is the meaning of "national security," both during the first post-Cold War decade and now after September 11? How should one define "national security" and "stability" in the present global environment? Should it include "nontraditional" concerns such as environmental destabilization, disagreements over scarce resources, health epidemics, and political and economic instabilities in key regions—i.e., should the United States be concerned with those subnational trends that may eventually "spark" a larger security threat, such as a major regional war or humanitarian catastrophes?
Is major conventional war obsolete? Will future wars principally involve state actors (against which conventional or nuclear weaponry can be used and deterrent threats issued) or nonstate actors (intrastate conflicts or transstate actors) or some combination of both? If the latter, then what is the nature of this combination—are the two levels of conflict always connected (as in the case of "state-sponsored terrorism and rogue states") or are the two levels largely disconnected?
If major conventional war is not obsolete, then what is the character of the threat? If uncertainty and instability are indeed regular parts of the new international environment, does this inherent uncertainty extend to the traditional state-level strategic threats (such as the danger of interstate warfare), or only to substate or transnational threats (like terrorism or ethnic conflict)? What factors of the environment are truly "uncertain," and what parts are more easily predicted?
Are all transnational or subnational threats equal in their challenges to US security, or are some "more equal than others" in their implications? Which nonstate threats are the most worrisome, and why?
In the post-September 11 world, are threats and opportunities largely defined globally or rather by different regions? Are there some threats/instabilities that are inherently global while others are inherently regional?
How should one define terrorism? Which terrorist threats are state-sponsored? Are state-sponsored threats all aimed at the global level (i.e., at US hegemony and the globalized economy), or are state-sponsored terrorist threats aimed at specific "local" issues having to do with territory, ethnicity, religion, and so forth?