Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategy Essay Competition: Essays 2003

摘要

Transformation which means making sure the Armed Forces stay effective and relevant is not simply fielding new technology although technology is certainly important. Transformation only occurs when there are changes in the ways in which we think, look at the future, and interact as a joint community. As American physicist Richard Feynman observed: The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent in every detail with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of....That is indeed difficult The following essays were written by people who are not afraid of this difficult work The first essay examines the legitimacy of preemptive war; the second examines the relationship among terrorism, Islam, and the political environment in the Middle East; and the final one examines the conditions for building a lasting peace, postconflict.