Portrait of an era -- Defining and achieving decisive victory -- Maintaining effective deterrence -- Transformation and strategic surprise -- Recognizing and understanding revolutionary change in warfare: the sovereignty of context -- Irregular enemies and the essence of strategy: can the American way of war adapt? -- The implications of preemptive and preventive war doctrines: a reconsideration -- The merit in ethical realism
Summary
"A contemporary primer on the leading arguments about U.S. national security, National Security Dilemmas addresses the major challenges and opportunities that are live-issue areas for American policymakers and strategists today. Colin Gray provides an in-depth analysis of a policy and strategy for deterrence; the long-term U.S. bid to transform its armed forces' capabilities, with particular reference to strategic surprise, in the face of many great uncertainties; the difficulty of understanding and exploiting the challenge of revolutionary change in warfare; the problems posed by enemies who fight using irregular methods; and the awesome dilemmas for U.S. policy over the options to wage preventive and preemptive warfare." "This text can be used as an expert guide to the major national security challenges of today, for it both explains the structure of these challenges and provides useful answers."--Jacket
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-322) and index
