CONFRONTING AN IRREGULAR AND CATASTROPHIC FUTURE Lieutenant Colonel

Next year's Quadrennial Defense Review (or QDR) will be the most important since the end of the Cold War. A frank appraisal of the nation's strategic future in light of September 11, 2001 (9/11), experience in the war on terrorism, and ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan indicates a need for substantial adjustment to the strategy reflected in QDR '01. Such adjustments in defense strategy and policy, however, require that the future trajectory of the nation's primary challenges be thoroughly reassessed. The most likely, virulent, and persistent challenges for the foreseeable future will be irregular and increasingly catastrophic in character. Further, although nonstate sources pose the most pressing irregular and catastrophic threats today, we cannot discount the prospect that all hostile competition—to include that with states—will trend in this direction over time. Taken to their logical ends, strategic adjustments founded on such an outlook would mark a very distinct philosophical shift in the strategic calculus of some American strategy and policy elites. Further, it would balance strategic priorities and address what has been an over-emphasis on the prospect of future peer competition. The past 3 years have been instructive. We have learned through very real and often difficult strategic experience that our most significant hostile competition for the foreseeable future will arrive via decidedly unconventional routes—terrorism, insurgency, and emerging concepts such as " unrestricted warfare. " The inherent grand strategic danger of these challenges often lies not in their immediate impact but rather in their very persistence. Their corrosive effects accumulate over time, undermining our position of primary influence. Thus, purposeful irregular resistance—whether global or local in origin—seeks to offset recognized U.S. advantages in traditional forms of warfare, erode political will, and drive real and perceived costs to prohibitive levels. The most capable irregular adversaries recognize America's advantages, reduce their own vulnerability to them, and target our minds instead of our might. Tactical military victories are less important than the persistent imposition and accumulation of physical, psychological, and material costs. This steady compounding of adverse effects is intended to tip the cost benefit calculations against pursuit of particular strategic courses of action and force strategic retreat. We see this approach at work today in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the wider war with Islamic extremism. There is near certainty that the most active and capable irregular adversaries will seek more immediate and far reaching impact through weapons of mass destruction (WMD). While …