Geopolitics, Strategy and U.S. Interests. Revision

摘要

The basic purpose of this study is to enquire as to what U.S. national security policy may ask of the U.S. Navy in the first decade of the Twenty-First Century. Necessarily, the enquiry must identify and discuss trends in regional and integer-regional politics, for their possible relevance to U.S. security interests. Similarly, the enquiry must be alert to trends and even to possible discontinuities in technological capability that should be pertinent to the ability of the Navy to perform its assigned missions. The study provides some detailed discussion of trends in the international economy, with particular attention to the prospects for, and levels of, U.S. trade and investment. However, the drawing even of tentative conclusions for security policy from economic analyses is an exercise fraught with peril. In the Twentieth Century thus far, some great powers have pursued security policies that were manifestly absurd, even catastrophic, in economic terms. Germany and Britain both waged world wars that they could not afford; while Japan chose to fight in 1941 rather than face dishonor notwithstanding her lack of a modern industrial base. This Task One Report, seeks to establish clearly the probable structure of U.S. security problems and to relate possible, alternative, national military strategies to that structure.