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The Owl of Minerva Flies at Twilight: Doctrinal Change and Continuity and the Revolution in Military Affairs
David Jablonsky Dr.
Revolutions in military affairs have never been strictly military phenomena. Social and political transformations in the past have also been major and often catalytic ingredients of such revolutions. The current revolution is no exception, whether it involves the relationship of communication-information breakthroughs to the interaction of the elements of Clausewitz's remarkable trinity, or the civil- military aspects concerning the use of military force in the post-cold war era. In all this, the United States military, and particularly the United States Army, is doctrinally ready to move into the revolution underway in military affairs. On the one hand, there is the emphasis on versatility in terms of dealing with the changes that accompany any such revolution. On the other, there is the continuity of the doctrinal framework, itself a product of an earlier RMA, which will serve, this study convincingly concludes, to ease many of the sociopolitical problems that may emerge as the revolution in military affairs continues.
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Environmental Security: A DoD Partnership for Peace
Kent Hughes Butts Dr.
International environmental issues can lead to instability and conflict that threaten U.S. security interests and may result in the commitment of U.S. forces. Chronic, unresolved environmental issues threaten stability in such critical regions as the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Recognizing this, the Department of Defense (DOD) has committed itself to using DOD assets to mitigate environmental issues that could lead to instability. However, a strategy to implement this proactive policy has not been developed. As part of the effort to create this strategy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Environment, Safety and Occupation Health), Mr. Lewis D. Walker, convened a panel on Environmental Security as part of the Fifth Senior Environmental Leadership Conference. The panel was sponsored by the Strategic Studies Institute and the Army Environmental Policy Institute. Its members were environmental security experts from within and outside DOD and represented Major Commands and the Joint Community. This report was drafted by members of the panel and edited by the panel chairman. While recognizing that their report was a contribution to the ongoing effort to define DOD's environmental security role and not a comprehensive study, the panel reached consensus, and made recommendations on key policy
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Shari'a Law, Cult Violence and System Change in Egypt: The Dilemma Facing President Mubarak
Stephen C. Pelletiere Dr.
Egypt is one of the more economically deprived countries in the world. Societal stress is a major challenge. Few believe that Egypt will escape the poverty that has for so long oppressed it. For all its challenges, Egypt is of strategic importance to the United States, because of its leadership position in the Arab world. It would be extremely difficult for Washington to safeguard its interests in the Middle East without support from Cairo. Recently, Egypt has been hit with an outbreak of religious strife that poses a threat to the rule of President Husni Mubarak. This study looks at the unrest, identifies the forces behind it, and prescribes steps that can be taken to alleviate the situation.
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World View: The 1994 Strategic Assessment from the Strategic Studies Institute
Steven Metz Dr. and Earl H. Tilford Dr.
Every year the analysts at the Strategic Studies Institute prepare current strategic assessments for their particular areas of interest. These assessments are the bedrock of the annual SSI Study Program. This year's assessments seem especially crucial as the strategic situation throughout the world is far more complex and fraught with danger than many may realize. The dramatically altered world of the post-cold war period is not the peaceful and tranquil scene many had longed for and thought had, indeed, arrived. From the Danube eastward along the southern boundaries of what used to be the Soviet Union, ethnic conflict is rampant. Russia remains very much an enigma wrapped in a riddle, but, as always, Russian national interests are paramount in Kremlin thinking. While there are those in the Middle East who earnestly seek peace, there are others who are determined to support old hatreds and the policies that issued from them. In the Far East, North Korea has resisted U.N. demands to inspect its nuclear production facilities, China is modernizing its military forces, and Japan continues to seek new markets. In this dynamic international setting, a technological revolution is propelling many nations, the United States being foremost among them, from the industrial age into the information age. The implications for military force structures and strategies are as enormous as they are uncertain.
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Ethnic Conflict: Implications for the Army of the Future
William A. Stofft Major General and Gary L. Guertner Dr.
Ethnic conflict is an ascendant phenomenon replacing ideology as a social force most likely to promote violence and regional instability. The ferocity of ethnic violence and its potential for escalation increase the political pressures for U.S. leadership and collective engagement. The U.S. Army has a direct interest in ethnic-based conflicts because land power is the dominant means for intervention through coalition peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations. For these reasons, the Army War College was tasked to identify potential Army requirements for responding to ethnic-based, regional conflicts. This study pinpoints specific patterns of ethnic conflict, and cautions that each may confront military planners with unique circumstances and requirements. Political and military strategies must be tailored to fit a broad spectrum of ethnic conflict. Specific Army requirements are discussed, the most important being a thorough understanding of the complex political environments of ethnic conflict before committing our forces.
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Reconciling the irreconcilable: The Troubled Outlook for U.S. Policy toward Haiti
Gabriel Marcella Dr. and Donald E. Schulz Dr.
Few foreign policy issues have been more frustrating to the U.S. Government during the past year than the Haitian crisis. Thus, this report could not be more timely. The title is suggestive. The authors describe different courses of action and the steps that the United States might take to implement them. None of the choices are attractive and none of them can guarantee success. However, because the situation facing the Haitian people continues to worsen, the sooner we come to terms with that situation the better. Drs. Schulz and Marcella have made a major contribution to that process through their careful delineation of the "irreconcilable" elements in the Haitian "equation," their careful analysis of the various options available to U.S. policymakers, and the course of action which they have recommended.
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Can Europe Survive Maastricht?
Douglas Stuart Dr.
Professor Douglas Stuart, with the generous support of the Ford Foundation, presents a much needed analysis of the Maastricht Treaty and its effects on Europe. He maintains that the Western European leaders have lost sight of the true meaning and potential value of European integration in recent years. This, he explains, accounts for the European Union's seeming inability to respond effectively to international crises, such as the one in former Yugoslavia. Professor Stuart concludes that unless the European Union reassesses its priorities and policies, the fundamental aspiration of maintaining European unity may be lost.
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Meeting the Challenges of Regional Security
Leonard Sullivan Honorable
The Honorable Leonard Sullivan, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, maintains that the disorder in the post-cold war world must be addressed in radically new and innovative ways. Old alliances, structured for containment, will not be adequate in a world where the challenges may be more appropriately addressed by police forces than by traditionally structured military forces. This sweeping analysis suggests that, in the future, regional security apparatuses (RSAs) will be needed to deal with problems which issue from specific socio-cultural and economic conditions rather than from ideology or the pursuit of traditional national interests by the superpowers. Mr. Sullivan maintains that the United States can use its advantage in technology as a part of its approach to meeting the many challenges posed by "the new world disorder."
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The Mexican Military Approaches the 21st Century: Coping with a New World Order
Stephen J. Wager LTC
In 1993, the Strategic Studies Institute and the University of Arizona cosponsored a conference on "Mexico Looks to the 21st Century: Change and Challenge." It brought together a distinguished group of academic and government specialists to discuss Mexico's future, particularly the changes likely to be brought about by the North American Free Trade Agreement and their implications for the United States. Participants made presentations on Mexico's political future, the borderlands, the environmental problem, migration, Mexico's civil society, the labor and women's movement, and the military. The conference was funded by the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Outreach Program, under the direction of Colonel John D. Auger, and the University of Arizona. It was organized by Dr. Edward J. Williams of the University of Arizona and Dr. Donald E. Schulz of the Strategic Studies Institute. Of the papers presented at the meeting, the one that struck closest to the concerns of the U.S. Army was "The Mexican Military Approaches the 21st Century: Coping with a New World Order" by Lieutenant Colonel Stephen J. Wager of the U.S. Military Academy. His discussion of the roles and missions of the Mexican armed forces has special salience in this era of "alternative missions." Here is a classic case of a military institution whose principal missions of civic action and counternarcotics are those with which our own Army has had to deal in recent years. Colonel Wager's study provides a timely and instructive lesson on how our Mexican colleagues have wrestled with these challenges.
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Where Does Cuba Stand?
Enrique A. Baloyra Prof.
Given the potential explosiveness of the Cuban crisis and the possibility that it might lead to U.S. military involvement, it would seem appropriate to take a closer look at the Cuban situation. In particular, we need a better understanding of those forces promoting both political stability and instability. In this report, the distinguished Latin American scholar Enrique Baloyra argues that Castro's current policy of "re-equilibration" is unlikely to succeed and that his options will increasingly boil down to two choices: One, he can deepen the process of government-led reform, or, two, he can continue the current policy, with growing chances of violence and turmoil. Baloyra suggests that since the former might jeopardize his hegemonic position, the latter is the more probable option. The future, in short, is likely to be grim.
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The Future of Insurgency
Steven Metz Dr.
Security professionals and strategists are discovering the post-cold war world is as rife with persistent, low-level violence as its predecessors. In fact, many regions are experiencing a rise in the amount of conflict in the absence of restraints previously imposed by the superpowers. Since frustration in many parts of the Third World is actually increasing, insurgency--the use of low-level, protracted violence to overthrow a political system or force some sort of fundamental change in the political and economic status quo--will be an enduring security problem. Unfortunately, most existing doctrine and strategy for dealing with insurgency are based on old forms of the phenomenon, especially rural, protracted, "people's war." But as this type of insurgency becomes obsolete, new forms will emerge. It is important to speculate on these future forms in order to assist in the evolution of counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine. Dr. Steven Metz uses a psychological method of analysis to argue that two forms of insurgency, which he calls the "spiritual" and the "commercial," will pose the greatest intellectual challenges to security professionals, military leaders, and strategists. The specific nature of such challenges will vary from region to region.
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The Military-News Media Relationship: Thinking Forward
Charles W. Ricks COL, Rod Lyon Dr., and William T. Tow Prof.
Over the course of the next six months, the Strategic Studies Institute will examine the impact of the media's technological advances on strategic and operational level planning and policymaking, first in an overseas theater, and subsequently on decisions made at the national level. The first of these two studies recognizes the complexity of executing military operations under the scrutiny of a very responsive, high technology world news media. Given the volatile, unstable, and ambiguous environment in which armed forces can find themselves, the actions of field forces have a greater chance than ever before of affecting subsequent strategic decisions made at higher levels. The pressure on field commanders to "get it right the first time" is demonstrably greater than ever. The author intends that these thoughts provide commanders with an understanding of the high technology and competitive news media environment they can expect to experience and offers specific suggestions for successfully communicating with reporters.
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Turkey's Strategic Position at the Crossroads of World Affairs
Stephen J. Blank Dr., William T. Johnsen Dr., and Stephen C. Pelletiere Dr.
This report analyzes the implications of Turkey's policies and the reactions of Turkey's neighbors in three discrete chapters. The authors focus their conclusions and options for U.S. policymakers on the effect of Turkish policies in Europe, the Middle East, and the former Soviet republics. The final chapter summarizes their conclusions with respect to the three regions and provides policy options for continuing U.S.-Turkish relations that are so important in the search for peace and stability in these regions.
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Strategic Minerals in the New World Order
Kent H. Butts
The author discusses U.S. dependence on overseas sources of strategic minerals essential to sustain its economy and defense sector. U.S. vulnerability to a loss of access to important mineral supplies is more pronounced now than at any time since World War II. The uneven distribution of strategic mineral reserves and their concentration in a handful of politically unstable countries make it essential that U.S. policymakers ensure mineral availability in the new world order. The author considers the geographical imbalance of mineral trade patterns, evaluates the stability of the major strategic mineral producing countries, and assesses the potential for mineral supply disruption. He also examines several policy options for reducing U.S. vulnerability to a loss of strategic mineral supplies including retention and modernization of the National Defense Stockpile.
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The Army and Multinational Peace Operations: Problems and Solutions
William J. Doll COL
Effectiveness in multinational peace operations has become an important issue for the Army. In addition to traditional peacekeeping to monitor cease-fires and truces, the Army is now involved in activities such as peace enforcement and the reconstruction of failed states. While the Army has well-established procedures for traditional peacekeeping, it clearly has much to analyze and learn about these new types of multinational peace operations. As part of this process, the Strategic Studies Institute and the U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute sponsored two roundtables at the Army War College in 1993. Both brought together diverse experts from within and outside the government, and sought to clarify key questions and problems rather than provide definitive answers. To encourage frank and open discussion, the roundtables operated on a nonattribution basis.
The first roundtable examined grand strategy and foreign policy. It dealt with issues such as the future of the United Nations and U.S. objectives in Third World conflict. The second was at the level of military strategy and operations, focusing on the concerns of regional combatant commands and U.S. components in multinational forces. This is the report of the second roundtable. It is not a verbatim transcript of discussion at the roundtable, but an attempt to capture the essence of the debate and identify core issues which emerged. -
The Future of the United Nations: Implications for Peace Operations
Steven Metz Dr.
President Clinton has expressed clear support for greater U.N. effectiveness in the peaceful resolution of conflict and the organization of collective security. This entails finding ways to improve U.N. peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace-enforcement. The U.S. Army will have a vital role in this process and thus must better understand both the U.N. itself and the key issues and questions associated with peace support operations. The foundation of such understanding is debate on a series of broad issues such as the macro-level configuration of the international system, alterations in global values (especially the notion of sovereignty), and the function of the United Nations in possible future international systems. While questions concerning such problems cannot be answered with certainty, they will serve as the basis for future decisions on doctrine, force structure, and strategy. It is thus vital for American security professionals to grapple with them.
To encourage this process, the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, sponsored a roundtable on October 5, 1993 that brought together distinguished experts from both inside and outside the government. They included widely-published writers, analysts, and practitioners of peace operations. Their goal was less to reach consensus on the future of the U.N. than to agree on what the vital questions, problems, and issues will be. This report is not a verbatim transcript of discussion at the roundtable, but an attempt to capture the debate and identify the core issues which emerged. -
Paradigm Lost?: Transitions and the Search for a New World Order
David Jablonsky Dr.
After every momentous event, there is usually a transition period, in which participants in the events, whether individuals or nation-states, attempt to chart their way into an unfamiliar future. In the United States in this century, there are three such transitions, each focused on America's role in the international arena. After World War I, the American people specifically rejected the global role for the United States implicit in Woodrow Wilson's strategic vision of collective security. In contrast to this "return to normalcy," after World War II the United States moved inexorably toward international leadership in response to the Soviet threat. The result was an acceptance of George Kennan's strategic vision of containing the Soviet Union on the Eurasian landmass and the subsequent bipolar confrontation of the two superpowers in a twilight war that lasted for over 40 years.
Sometime in the penultimate decade of the 20th century, the United States and its allies won the cold war. Once again in the current transition period, the primary questions revolve around the management of power and America's role in global politics. Once again there are the issues of change and continuity. In terms of change, the cold war set in train a blend of integrative and disintegrative forces and trends that are adding to the complex tensions of the current transition. The integrative force that increasingly linked global economies in the cold war, for instance, also holds out the spectral potential of global depression or, at the very least, nations more susceptible to disintegrative actions, as the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait demonstrated. In a similar manner, the advances in communications and transportation that have spread the results of medical and scientific discoveries around the world are countered by the malign transnational results of nuclear technology, the drug trade, terrorism, AIDS and global warming. -
Afghanistan and Beyond: Reflections on the Future of Warfare
Stephen J. Blank Dr.
This report provides an historical analysis of lessons from one of the most important wars of the 1980s, the war in Afghanistan. After reading this study, you will better understand the nature of operations "other than war" in multiethnic states. Many fear that these wars will set the paradigm for wars in the 1990s and will exert pressure on U.S. forces to conduct peacekeeping, peace-enforcement and humanitarian assistance operations in especially dangerous areas. Yugoslavia and Somalia, each in their own way, bear out the ubiquity of these wars and the pressures on the United States to act. This report will, of course, contribute to the body of material dealing with the war in Afghanistan.
More importantly, it increases understanding of future wars, particularly these types of wars, so that policymakers and analysts alike will better appreciate their military and political aspects. In turn, we may devise mechanisms either to forestall and avert them, or to bring them to the speediest possible conclusion. Alternatively, should those mechanisms fail and troops have to be committed, this and future analyses will enable commanders to have a better grasp of the nature of the war they will fight. In either case, understanding the war and the theater should facilitate a solution more in keeping with U.S. interests and values. -
The Nature of the Post-Cold War World
Charles William Maynes Mr. and William G. Hyland Mr.
The editors of the nation's two leading journals on foreign policy were asked to examine the nature of the post-cold war world and America's transitional role. These essays represent the views of Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy, and William G. Hyland, former editor of Foreign Affairs.
Charles Maynes reviews the major transitions that marked 45 years of Soviet-American strategic confrontation. Predictably, the U.S. global role and defense resources are declining as old threats decrease and domestic problems move higher up on the policy agenda. Less predictably, the relative defense spending of small powers is likely to increase, adding to the potential for regional instability. These trends and the proliferation of weapons technology, including weapons of mass destruction, will drive the major powers toward their third attempt in this century to deal with global instability through collective security. Power will become more evenly distributed as America's military dominance recedes and others' economic power increases. Such trends, Mr. Maynes believes, should not be disturbing so long as prudent retrenchment does not become a foolish retreat from an American global role.
William Hyland believes that no president since Calvin Coolidge has inherited an easier foreign policy agenda. Presidents from Truman through Bush did the cold war "heavy lifting," and the Clinton transitional era should mark the ascendancy of domestic over foreign policy issues. Economic power is essential to America's future and the country faces the difficult task of economic recovery while avoiding the political expedience of protectionism or other forms of belligerence toward our trading partners. This would accelerate international fragmentation, undermining the political trends toward a collective security regime that is vital to the new world order and is the best alternative to the extremes of U.S. isolationism or global policeman. -
Domestic Missions for the Armed Forces
Sam Nunn Senator
During the summer of 1992, Senator Sam Nunn, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, initiated legislation to enhance civilian and military cooperative efforts in meeting critical domestic needs. In a speech before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he called for a major reexamination of the roles and missions of the nation's Armed Forces to help solve these problems. The political context of Senator Nunn's speech is as important as its content. The cold war was over, domestic crises were manifesting themselves, and the Armed Forces, especially after the Gulf War, enjoyed unprecedented prestige and unique capabilities and efficiencies. These efficiencies, Senator Nunn believes, can be turned on domestic difficulties. As budgets were cut, the broad area of roles and missions also became the vehicle for scrubbing the budget and revalidating missions and force structures. The revalidation process continues and, in simple terms, the defense budget will see dollars being taken out or new missions added. This paper details Senator Nunn's ideas for new missions. It sets forth his speech, the relevant materials from reports of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House-Senate Conference Committee (Appendix A), and the final text of the legislation as enacted in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1993 (Appendix B).
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Eisenhower as Strategist: The Coherent Use of Military Power in War and Peace
Steven Metz Dr.
Few if any American officers performed a wider array of strategic functions as Dwight D. Eisenhower--he was a staff planner in the War Department, wartime commander of a massive coalition force, peacetime Chief of Staff, and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Eisenhower was directly involved in a number of major transitions including the building of the wartime American Army, its demobilization following the war, and the resuscitation of American military strength during the initial years of the cold war. This means that Eisenhower's career can provide important lessons on how a coherent strategy should and should not be built during times of strategic transition. That is what this monograph begins to do. It is not intended to be a biography in the usual sense and thus offers no new facts or insights into Eisenhower's life. Instead it uses that life as a backdrop for exploring the broader essence of strategic coherence and draws lessons from Eisenhower's career that can help guide the strategic transition which the U.S. military now faces.
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General George C. Marshall: Strategic Leadership and the Challenges of Reconstituting the Army, 1939-41
John T. Nelson COL
The study of strategic leadership as a formal, analytical concept is relatively new. Therefore, concrete, historical examples of leaders who have wrestled with the width and breadth of strategic-level challenges are of inestimable value. Marshall's contributions were no accident of history. They resulted from the exercise of effective strategic leadership, consciously and consistently applied across a broad spectrum of activities and interests. This study analyzes the nature and effects of that leadership and captures the magnitude of Marshall's achievements as a strategic leader during what were frequently regarded as the unglamorous prewar years.
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Land Warfare in the 21st Century
James M. Dubik Colonel and Gordon R. Sullivan General
Land warfare in the 21st century will be shaped by the cumulative effects of many revolutionary changes that have yet to merge in a clear or predictable pattern. This paper identifies three elements of change that are likely to have the greatest impact on the Army and the joint conduct of land warfare. First, the international system is undergoing its third major transition of the 20th century in response to the end of the cold war. Second, changes in military technology are culminating in what many believe will be a "military-technical revolution" that brings unprecedented depth and transparency to the battlefield.
Finally, this paper cautions that change will inevitably coexist with at least three constants--the root causes of war, the nature of war, and the essence of fighting power. Preparation includes traditional non-quantifiable factors as much as technology. Leadership, courage, self-sacrifice, initiative, and comradeship under extreme conditions of ambiguity, fog, friction, danger, stark fear, anxiety, death, and destruction--all remain the coins of war's realm and no amount of technological advance will degrade their value. A central message of this paper is for strategists to carry the best of the present forward as we adapt to the revolutionary changes on the horizon. Land warfare will remain a vital component in the national military strategy, but only if we understand and respond to the forces that are shaping the battlefields of the 21st century. -
Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and Peace-Enforcement: The U.S. Role in the New International Order
Donald M. Snow Dr.
The author examines the bases of American military participation in the array of Third World activities falling under the general rubric of peacekeeping and peace-enforcement. The relevance of this inquiry was underscored by President Clinton in his Inaugural Address, when he added situations where "the will and conscience of the international community are defied" to traditional vital interests and as times when American military force might be employed. He considers the major instances in the post-cold war world where so-called humanitarian interventions have occurred or may occur: the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author then examines the effects of these actions on the principle of sovereignty. He next turns to the emerging roles of peacekeeping and peace-enforcement and the conceptual and practical differences between them, and concludes with some cautionary lessons for the Army.
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Strategy, Forces and Budgets: Dominant Influences in Executive Decision Making, Post-Cold War, 1989-91
Don M. Snider Dr.
The successful application of national military strategy depends upon the existence of a balanced, flexible military establishment; a national force structured, manned, equipped, and trained to execute the broad range of potential missions that exist in the post-cold war world. With this in mind, the national leaders of the previous administration developed a concept for a military that was considerably smaller; but well-equipped, highly trained, and capable of rapid response to a number of probable scenarios in the final decade of the 20th century. The author's masterful assessment of the processes by which these plans for the future state of America's armed forces were developed is a valuable addition to the literature on strategy formulation. Working with a great deal of original source material, he is able to illuminate the critical series of events that resulted in the development of the National Military Strategy of the United States and the "base force." He comments upon the roles played throughout this process by the Secretary of Defense, by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by the Service Chiefs. He assesses the extent to which the "build-down" has been achieved since the concept was approved, and how the process was affected by the Gulf War, domestic needs, and, to a lesser degree, by a change in administrations.
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