01 November 2001
Byliner: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on War on Terrorism Nov. 1
(An Op-ed column from The Washington Post on 11/01/01) (1080)
(This column by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld first appeared
in the Washington Post November 1st and is in the public domain. No
republication restrictions.)
Beyond This War on Terrorism
By Donald H. Rumsfeld
On Sept. 11 the United States came under vicious attack, not by
traditional armies waging traditional military campaigns but by hidden
enemies, willing -- and able -- to strike our people where they live
and work.
These attacks were more than the first salvos of a new kind of war.
They were a wake-up call, a warning that we are entering a dangerous
new period in American history, one in which the United States'
historical invulnerability has been replaced by a new era of
vulnerability; one in which new enemies strike our cities and our
people in novel and surprising ways; one in which more and more
adversaries possess weapons of increasing range and power -- weapons
that will allow them to bring war to the American homeland.
In the wake of these attacks, we face two important challenges: First,
to win the war that is upon us by liquidating the terrorist networks
so they can no longer threaten our people. Second, to prepare now for
the next war -- a war that may be vastly different not only from those
of the past century but also from the new war on terrorism that we are
fighting today.
The methods of the Sept. 11 strikes came as a surprise. In the decades
ahead, we will almost certainly be surprised again. Too much of our
planning in recent years has been gripped by what one scholar of Pearl
Harbor called "a poverty of expectations -- a routine obsession with a
few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely."
But as we have painfully learned in recent weeks, the likely dangers
of this new century will be quite different from those of of the past
one. Until seven weeks ago, an attack like the one we suffered on
Sept. 11 seemed unimaginable to most Americans. In the decades ahead,
we will face other threats that seem just as unimaginable to us today.
For this reason, adapting to surprise -- adapting quickly and
decisively -- must be a condition of 21st century military planning.
To deal with surprise, we must shift our defense planning from the
"threat-based" model that has dominated thinking in the past to a
"capabilities-based" model for the future. Instead of focusing on who
our next adversary might be or where a war might occur, we must focus
on how an adversary might fight -- and develop new capabilities to
deter and defeat that adversary. Rather than planning primarily for
large conventional wars in precisely defined theaters, we must plan
for a world of new and different adversaries who will rely on
surprise, deception and asymmetric weapons (such as civilian airliners
turned into missiles) to achieve their objectives.
Preparing for this world was the objective of the Quadrennial Defense
Review, which was submitted to Congress Sept. 30. The review outlines
a new defense strategy for the 21st century centered around four key
goals: assuring U.S. friends and allies of America's steadiness of
purpose and capability to fulfill its security commitments; dissuading
potential adversaries from undertaking programs or operations that
could threaten U.S. interests or those of our allies and friends;
deterring aggression and coercion by deploying forward the capacity to
swiftly defeat attacks and impose severe penalties for aggression; and
decisively defeating any adversary if dissuasion and deterrence fail.
To meet these goals, we must maintain America's existing military
advantages in key areas and develop new ways to deny our enemies the
advantages they seek through asymmetric capabilities.
This requires the transformation of our armed forces -- a
transformation that will enable us to protect the U.S. homeland while
projecting U.S. forces in distant corners of the world, often in
hostile environments where our adversaries have deployed new weapons
designed to enable them to do what they wish against their neighbors.
The surprises we will encounter a decade from now will very likely be
different from the one that struck us on Sept. 11. To deal with those
future surprises, we must move rapidly now to improve our ability to
protect U.S. information systems and ensure persistent surveillance,
tracking and rapid engagement of an adversary's forces and
capabilities. We must enhance the capability and survivability of U.S.
space systems, develop new ways to harness information technology and
find new ways to provide for more effective joint operations. And,
over time, we will divest ourselves of legacy forces -- and invest
those resources in new concepts of war-fighting, new capabilities and
new ways of organizing our forces that maximize our effectiveness and
the combat potential of America's men and women in uniform.
The defense review was largely completed before the Sept. 11 attacks.
But in important ways, these attacks confirm the strategic direction
and planning principles that resulted from this review -- particularly
its emphasis on homeland defense, on preparing for surprise and
asymmetric threats, on the need to develop new concepts of deterrence,
on the need for a capabilities-based strategy and on the need to
balance the different dimensions of risk to include the risks to
people, modernization and transformation along with war-fighting
risks.
But the Sept. 11 attacks did change one thing: the sense of urgency.
Transformation cannot wait. New threats have arrived, quite literally,
at our doorstep -- and other, more dangerous, threats are rapidly
emerging. We must act now to prepare for the next war, even as we wage
the current war against terrorism.
The unspeakable loss of life, and damage to our economy, from the
attacks of Sept. 11 should give us a new perspective on what we can
afford for the forces that underpin our freedom and our prosperity for
the decades ahead -- costs that do not begin to compare with the cost
in human lives and resources if we fail to prepare well for the
future.
Yes, we must win the war on terrorism. But as we do so, we must also
prepare for the next war. We owe it to our children and grandchildren.
(The author is the U.S. Secretary of Defense)
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