This accessible and stimulating new book from renowned security scholar Donald Snow examines the United States' national security situation today and what policies the U.S. should adopt to confront it.
National Security for a New Era is the first comprehensive examination of American national security policy since the events of 9/11 galvanized change. It starts from the premise that there have been two fundamental “fault lines” in national security policy over the past 15 years, the end of the Cold War and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Each transformed security policy: the end of the Cold War ushered in the era of globalization for the 1990s, and 9/11 initiated a shift to a more traditional geopolitical view of the world for the early 2000s. The text attempts to place these traumatic events into the context of the prior American experience of the Cold War, traditional concerns over American interests, politics, and military problems, and to extend that experience into the future. Asymmetrical warfare, the Iraq war precedent, the neo-conservative challenge, state building, and the future reconciliation of globalization and geopolitics are all examined.