Second, therefore, the United States must institutionalize the capacify to undertake anticipatory response-to make preventive or pre-emptive action an accepted norm, to make it possible and even desirable to act before crises erupt, and to do so in ways that prompt a fundamental rethinking of conceptional conceptions of sovereignty and intervention. At present, the US military is a singularly reactive crisis instrument, structured so that its early, preventive use can only be seen as premature, provocative, and thus inappropriate.

Third, the United States must be capable of tailoring its responses to the situations at hand, rather than futilely attempting to make situations conform to its capabilities. The established approach of fielding functionally oriented general-purpose forces with standardized organizational structures, personnel, and training may seem to suit the military relatively well for traditional conventional operations, like the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but it leaves us quite ill-suited for the myriad other conflicts that will arise with increasing frequency. The failed performance in Vietnam and the halting responses to innumerable situations since-most recently in the Balkans-attest to the results. Every time the United States fails to act-or fails while acting-it seriously diminishes US credibility and the perception of our effectiveness.

Finally, even as the United States must tailor its military response to situational peculiarities, so too must it seek greater organizational, operational, procedural, and even intellectual integration of the military and the national-security establishment as a whole. No longer can the country countenance expensive rivalry among the individual armed services, even if such competition arguably enhances civilian control of the military; no longer can the United States justify maintaining redundant capabilities in the belief that such diversity somehow multiplies uncertainty for a unitary adversary.

A Transformed Military

A fundamentally transformed military is needed, one whose primary purpose is peacekeeping, nation-building, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response, not war-making. Yes, these are all missions the military already performs to varying degrees, but the focus still remains on preparation for war.

National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, a strong influence in the Bush administration's foreign policy, declares that "the president must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society."

These, regrettably, are not voices of strategic vision. These are the voices of the Cold War, of a military-industrial complex that perversely keeps the United States wedded to big wars that demand and feed off compulsive technological advances. These are voices that, absent an extraordinary change of faith, virtually guarantee a perpetuation of a US military as it stands now, rather than the introduction of a military needed for the conditions of the 21 11 century.

The military we have is designed to fight wars. Any other mission is considered secondary. Its characteristics are those that arguably have served it well in the past and are expected to continue doing so when history repeats itself.

The military the United States needs is one based on the supposition that the future need not be a mere repetition of the past. A transformed military designed primarily for peacekeeping, nationbuilding, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response would be one with characteristics almost the opposite of the military at present: smaller, less expensive, much lighter, less lethal, human-centered, multilaterally oriented, and regionally tailored. Ground forces would take clear precedence over air and naval forces; support personnel would predominate over combat arms; and erstwhile combat functions would give way to policing, conflict mediation, and advisory-assistance functions.

Such a military would presumably require a different constellation of skills-and thus a different demographic profile, possibly even a different caliber of personnel-- than the current military possesses: more linguists and regional specialists, higher levels of education, greater levels of maturity and experience, perhaps a complete reconfiguration by gender, ethnicity, and age. This new military would also seem to call for different organizational arrangements, incentive systems, and command approaches: less hierarchy, wider spans of control, and compressed rank; less emphasis on authoritarian command; more emphasis on intellectual leadership, collegiality, and democratic decision-making; less emphasis on coercive discipline and obedience, more on self-discipline, competence, and socially responsible professionalism.

In transforming the military, there would be an accompanying need for major organizational reform-not only to reflect the changing orientation and priorities of the military, but also to engender the thinking necessary to legitimize and sustain such a transformation. For example, the United States should eliminate the mammoth civilian secretariats. We should also replace the existing Joint Chiefs of Staff, composed of the chiefs of the individual services, with a new Council of Military Commanders, composed of the commanders of the regional operational field commands around the world (e.g., the US-European Command, the US-- Pacific Command). To establish a new level of civilian and diplomatic supremacy, the United States should create regional super-ambassadors in each of the world's major regions. And to give a heightened degree of permanency to its multilateral relationships and to help ensure that the United States does not become the world's policeman, it should embark on a serious effort to establish permanent collective-security regimes in each region.

Hope for Things to Come

These proposals are truly revolutionary and, thus, truly infeasible in the near term. No ordinary practicing politician would entertain ideas that offer so little prospect of actual implementation. Even with acute political and intellectual skills, combined with an environment of relative peace and prosperity, former US President Bill Clinton failed to deliver a strategic vision worthy of the times.

The times call for a bona fide revolution in military and strategic terms. But, perhaps the new political climate will prove to be riper for change. Bush, who has quite the opposite intellectual reputation of his predecessor and who has an ideologically conferred measure of credibility with the military that Clinton clearly lacked, is in a prime position to enact significant change. What should energize him and his national-security advisor is the recognition that his chances for re-election will only be enhanced if he shows himself capable of visionary proposals-in this case, for the revolutionary transformation of a military whose true relevance and value will be judged in terms of its strategic effectiveness. The President's willingness to take the road less traveled, to initiate an as-yet-dormant national dialogue on the United States' strategic future, can only establish his place in history. In so doing, he can establish the United States' role in the world for the 215 century.