The School of
Advanced International Studies will host a forum at 8
a.m. on Thursday, June 26,
to celebrate the launch of Ideas for America's Future:
Core Elements of a New National Security
Policy, a book by Jeffrey P. Bialos, a senior fellow at
the SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations.
Wesley K. Clark, former supreme allied commander of
NATO and author of the book's preface,
will be the featured speaker.
Ideas for America's Future, a 500-page study
published by CTR, explores the need for a
strategy "reset" and offers a new national security
paradigm with three overarching conceptual
approaches, six core policy ideas and six approaches to
revitalizing the United States' national
security tool box. The study is the outgrowth of a
symposium that CTR co-hosted last year with the
American Security Project, a nonprofit, bipartisan public
policy organization.
Bialos brings a unique perspective to the study from
having served in senior positions at three
U.S. government departments with national security
responsibility: Commerce, Defense and State.
Most recently he was deputy undersecretary of defense for
industrial affairs during the Clinton
administration.
The book is focused on the challenges for the next
U.S. president in shaping a post-Iraq
national security strategy that does three things: reflects
the country's core values and restores
moral leadership, can earn the trust of the American people
and coalition partners, and will protect
against a dynamic range of 21st-century threats posed by
agile enemies. How, it asks, does the United
States "re-balance" its national security investment
portfolio, adjust to the emerging multipolar world
and realign security capabilities to address the low
intensity and asymmetric threats expected to be
prevalent, from insurgency to stabilization and
reconstruction to tsunamis?
In this study, Bialos and co-contributors Stuart L.
Koehl, David M. Catarious and Suzanne E.
Spaulding address the following:
The need to develop a holistic
strategy of "constructive engagement" that includes a major
focus on advancing the human condition and promoting good
governance.
How to preserve the fabled U.S.
openness to foreign ideas, people and investment capital to
avoid a descent to second best in economic and security
terms.
The need for a military and
civilian "surge" to prevent Afghanistan from falling into
chaos.
A renewed strategy of extended
nuclear deterrence and an enhanced nonproliferation regime
that better regulates the nuclear fuel cycle.
A plan to refocus and reshape the
U.S. Army and the reserve components for low-intensity
conflict and institutionalize the lessons of
counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq.
A proposal to reshape the U.S.
government's civilian agencies to achieve more effective
national
security outputs without creating new departments or
bureaucracies.
A way to de-conflict the roles of
NATO and the European Union in a manner consistent with
European values and capabilities.
Ideas for ensuring better force
interoperability among coalition partners likely to remain
at
different levels of capability, and for encouraging U.S.
allies to develop constabulary forces for low-
intensity, expeditionary conflict.
The event will be held in the Nitze Building's Kenney
Auditorium. Non-SAIS affiliates must
RSVP to CTR at
transatlanticrsvp@jhu.edu or 202-663-5880.