National Strategy

This morning on CNN, Fareed Zakaria disclosed and discussed a new strategic vision for the United States contained in an article by "Y," the pseudonym used by two military officers on the JCS staff.

The article is intended to be a twenty-first century replacement for George Frost Kennan's "X" article published in 1947 in Foreign Affairs. Kennan's article proposed the strategy of "containment," which dominated US strategic thinking for the next four decades. (Kennan himself objected to what he described as the "militarization" of containment).

The newly proposed Strategic Narrative suggests replacing "containment" with "sustainment." The authors describe it as follows: "The primary approach this Strategic Narrative advocates to achieve sustainable prosperity and security, is through the application of credible influence and strength, the pursuit of fair competition, acknowledgement of interdependencies and converging interests, and adaptation to complex, dynamic systems all bounded by our national values."

I'm skeptical that this new article will prove to provide adequate strategic direction for America's future, but I agree that we need to broaden our vision concerning national security beyond military power and punitive measures. I'll have more to say later.