National Security in the New Era: Conference Summary

America & the World: National Security in the New Era

A Tobin Project Conference at Airlie, November 14-16, 2008

Two generations ago, American policymakers and scholars developed a U.S. national security strategy that offered a lasting and coherent response to the threats that emerged after World War II. In the late 1940s George F. Kennan, then a diplomat serving in Moscow, developed the strategy of containment. This strategy became the cornerstone of America’s successful effort to address the threat of Soviet expansion.

At the same time Bernard Brodie, along with colleagues at Yale University, framed the underpinnings of a strategy of deterrence that helped prevent the Cold War from ending in nuclear war. Together, these contributions by policymakers and scholars laid the foundations for the national security strategy that kept America safe for half a century.

Today there is no consensus on what national security strategy will best address the threats that now confront the United States.

The strategic landscape has changed completely over the last twenty years. The Soviet Union has vanished. China is rising. Terror groups that aspire to commit mass killing have appeared for the first time. The security of nuclear weapons and barriers against nuclear proliferation have eroded, raising the danger that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorists. Failed states where terror groups may incubate have multiplied in number.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 caused scholars and policymakers to reassess our understanding of the threats and challenges to United States national security, exposing large gaps in our knowledge on a range of issues critical to strategy-making. To take one example, a survey of America’s four leading international relations journals showed only a half dozen articles from 1980-1999 featuring religion as an influence in global politics. America now must craft a successful strategy to counter religious extremism and its terrorist offspring. But America’s stock of relevant ideas is thin.

A sustained effort is needed to define the questions and offer the answers that can help provide the basis for a new U.S. national security strategy. To that end, the Tobin Project is launching a multi-year effort with two primary goals:

Foster new academic research on key issues and trends that are relevant to making national security strategy for the new era.

Build a society of scholars and policymakers who know each others’ skills and concerns and so can better cooperate in the years ahead to address questions of national security.