The U.S. Commission on National Security is a bipartisan effort to identify the threat environment that the U.S. will face in 25 years and propose steps to meet it.  The first phase of their work is available for public scrutiny and comment on their  homepage .  Their efforts and those of other military planners were the subject of a provocative critique by Washington Post writer Bill Arkin.  Arkin's site provides links to orginal copies of the reports as well as links to various online military resources as well as his own analysis of several recent operations.

 

1. What are the relative advantages and drawbacks to using either capabilities or intentions as the basis for threat assessment? Likewise, would you find intensity or frequency (or the put slightly differently: potential consequence or probability) a more useful concept in strategic planning? How (if at all) do your answers change when you are planning for the short or long term? What emphasis would you place on intelligence collection, and what are the promises and pitfalls of relying on intelligence assessments as a guide for policy? Finally, do you think an objective threat assessment is possible - why or why not?

2. Frequently there are striking similarities between the language in the Crowe memorandum concerning British relations with Germany and that used in analyzing U.S. and Chinese relations. To what extent do you think the current U.S. situation is analogous to that of the United Kingdom in 1907? What do you think is the likely future of U.S. and Chinese relations? Do you think a military clash between the U.S. and China is likely in the next 25 years either over Taiwan or as the natural outcome of rising Chinese power and assertiveness? Why or why not, and if so, what character will the conflict take? How might the logic of the security dilemma complicate U.S. or Chinese efforts to prepare for or avoid this circumstance?

3. How effective do you think U.S. planners were at identifying and addressing the threat environment faced by the U.S. during the Cold War or in the 1990's? Suppose you were given sweeping powers to affect U.S. strategic planning for the next 25 years. What sort of threats (and where) do you think the U.S. will encounter? How would you prioritize various nuclear, conventional, and "non-traditional" (e.g. Peace Keeping, Peace Enforcement, Drug Interdiction, Cyberwarfare) threats or missions? How should the U.S. invest or change its force structure to meet them? How would you answer the same set of questions if you were given the same powers and responsibility for strategic planning in France, Taiwan, India, South Africa, or Serbia?