This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by LEHMAN, J. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

U.S. Defense Policy Options: The 1990s and Beyond

The sudden collapse of the Warsaw Pact and of communism has thrust the United States into an entirely new era without the comforts of a neat bipolar balance of power. Just as the debate got under way on the shape of the new world structure, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the resulting war demonstrated that the post-Cold War world will be not very different from the pre-Cold War world. American national security strategy needs major overhaul, with substantial reduction in numbers of strategic and theater nuclear weapons. The force structure needs reconfiguration away from heavy positional forces for the garrisoning of NATO and toward more flexible and deployable forces. Manning of the new force structure should be shifted substantially to a higher percentage of reserve manning, with both active and reserve depending entirely on voluntary enlistment. Emphasis should remain on using high-technology and high-quality people to substitute for high numbers. The bloated Pentagon bureaucracy, last holdout of Stanlinist organization, will continue to be a major obstacle to rational national security policy in the 1990s.

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 517, No. 1, 193-202 (1991)
DOI: 10.1177/0002716291517001014


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?