So, after twenty-five years of developing, training and using military force actively almost globally, the West has an enormous task to redefine defense-strategy goals and to refocus on those kinds of missions that national armed forces can actually deliver. The use of large-scale violence is hardly ever suitable for the attainment of positive political goals. Militaries exist to deter war—and in the case that deterrence fails—to fight and win wars. And fighting wars means applying high-quantity and high-quality violence upon the enemy. War is about the potential for large-scale destruction by the application of violence—even if it is precise, well-targeted and, in some cases, well-meaning.

As the discussion above shows, the task of the 2018 NDS is to provide new guidance for the world’s number one military actor after twenty-five years of neglect concerning peer-competitors and the possibility of “big war” in the future. The new U.S. National Defense Strategy opens a promising avenue for the future development of American approach to the use of military force in the world and for the development of the Armed Forces. At least the public summary of the NDS points—for the first time in twenty-five years—towards goals that may in the future be attainable. Although it can be debated how big threats North Korea or Iran actually are, the primary focus on developing warfighting capability for big-war contingencies facilitates, if necessary, taking care of smaller contingencies against any state adversaries.

It is noteworthy that the new defense strategy is only a good start. It will need to be implemented during the following years and even decades. But the implementation should start now. And the results will start to show in the 2020s—going well into the 2030s. The problem with this is in the fact that if the United States or Europe becomes involved in a military crisis with Russia (or China), the armed forces doing the fighting will be based on the tradition and lessons of counterinsurgency operations against dispersed small-scale adversaries. The needed military mindset, capabilities and certain amount of military mass will be absent from the battlefield for some years to come.

Lt. Col. Jyri Raitasalo is military professor of war studies at the Finnish National Defence University. The views expressed here are his own.