The United States, in its ninth year of combat operations in Southwest Asia, employs at least one civilian contractor for every service member on the battlefield.1 Even though half of the Pentagon's budget pays for these private contractors,2 82 percent of them are not U.S. citizens.3 One might ask, so what? While the globalization of U.S. military logistics revolutionized battlefield support, it also fundamentally changed how developed nations procure military resources. Economic globalization has created a requirement for strategic resource management. Although the United States is leveraging the international economy to support its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is not yet strategically managing the resource consequences. Other nations will mimic U.S. global logistics techniques. When they do, if the United States has not learned to manage its resource dependencies, its military advantage will be blunted, if not brought to a screeching halt.
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