Force is the issue

HEADNOTE

The United States needs to decide just what kind of military force it wants in the new millennium-and how to use it.

As the United States enters the 21st century, it will be confronted by a set of challenges

in the national security area that result not from the dawn of a new millennium, but from its failure to adapt sufficiently to the end of the Cold War. The most critical of these challenges will be what kind of military force this nation wishes to have and what role it wants the military to play in protecting US. interests in the world.

Answering that question during the Cold War was comparatively easy. The basic aini of U.S. foreign policy was to contain Soviet communist expansion through diplomacy backed by force or containment through deterrence. As former Secretary of Defense William Perry and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Ash Carter have noted, this policy was easy to understand but difficult to implement.