America 2021: The Military and the World

The plague of short-term thinking endemic to Washington politics–the focus on yesterday’s press release, today’s televised teapot tempest–is only exacerbated when the conversation turns to national security. The wars we’re fighting now and the threats directly in front of us come to monopolize our attention at the expense of the big picture. Yet if the past decade has taught us anything, it’s that America and the world are best-served when policymakers and experts take a step back to consider not just the challenges of today and tomorrow–but the challenges of several tomorrows from now.

Where will our armed forces be in ten years, and what will we ask of them? Will we still be in Afghanistan and Iraq? How might our changing demographics change our alliances?

In April, we brought together four distinguished military experts–Lawrence Korb, P.W. Singer, Heather Hurlburt, and Robert Hunter–to grapple with and debate the big picture. We didn’t ask them technical questions about force structure or weapons acquisitions. We instead looked for insight into American strategy and the kinds of challenges we’re likely to confront in the years ahead.

This article was originally published in Democracy.