For example, there is every reason to create what I have called a zone of international interest in the Persian Gulf whereby a collection of major oil importing nations guarantees continued distribution of petroleum resources from the region regardless of almost inevitable instability within and among producing states.

There are many reasons for having an international rapid deployment force to intervene in failing states both to prevent civil wars and, if necessary, to create a security environment in which diplomats can manage a peaceful restructuring of nations.

Likewise, if climate damage creates massive dislocations due to increased coastal water levels, decreased water supplies, and crop dislocations, as predicted by the Center for Naval Affairs (CNA) studies, the United States should now take leadership to create international institutions and capabilities to anticipate and limit the disruptions and instability these conditions will create.

A strategy of the global commons is anticipatory rather than reactive, appreciating that major disruptions will occur globally so rapidly that reliance on extended time to react is unrealistic. Diplomatic exchanges that took six months to transit between the United States and Europe at our founding, or six weeks a century ago, now take fewer than six seconds.

WITHIN THE context of organizing the global commons as a diplomatic platform and security establishment, the United States will find it necessary to make several unilateral adjustments to its security policy to account for the new realities of the 21^st century. The United States is an island nation, not a continental power. As such we will require greater maritime assets, both for increased open-ocean operations as well as for closer-to-shore conflict resolution and rapid-insertion operations.

These conditions require us to rely heavily on sea power and to maintain naval superiority both to protect our long east and west coasts and ports and to establish mobile and flexible presence in a variety of oceans and venues worldwide.

The advantages of a maritime strategy include the ability to shift fleets from ocean to ocean, the flexibility to establish presence in littoral waters and to withdraw over the horizon as circumstances require, the strength to use carrier-based aircraft in long-range attack mode and shorter-range close air support of on-shore operations, the competitive dominance the U.S. has in submarine capability, and the increasing capability of mounting swift insertion operations for rapid response.

As we must be the leading contributor to an international Persian Gulf stabilization force, among other common security interests, we will also find it effective to further consolidate the Joint Operations Command combining the Special Forces, possibly into a new fifth service, to accommodate the increasing burdens of containing localized unconventional conflicts.

To achieve these and other security objectives, however, we must acknowledge the political limits represented by organizing our security operations on an outdated statutory base. The Cold War national security state was established by the National Security Act of 1947 which unified the Army and Navy, and the Marine Corps, under a new Department of Defense and added a new service, the U.S. Air Force. It established the Central Intelligence Agency and created the National Security Council. For 64 years, with some notable exceptions, that legislation has served us well.

But, as Thomas Jefferson famously wrote, to expect each generation to govern itself with the laws and policies of previous generations is to expect a man to wear the coat he wore as a lad. Times change and laws and policies, as well as institutions, must keep pace.

The Cold War ended twenty years ago. NATO has yet to define a 21^st century mission. New allies and new rivals are emerging. There are new security threats that do not lend themselves to military response and that cannot be addressed either by old alliances or by the United States alone. The very nature of warfare and the character of conflict are changing.

A new national security statute must apply the 20^th century security structures and the experiences derived from them over six decades to the new realities of the 21^st century. The very process of updating the legal infrastructure of our national security will require us to reflect on what security means today and how our strategies should be adapted to achieve it.

No one argues that our military services are obsolete. We will continue to require land, sea, and air defensive capabilities as long as the Republic lives. Among the early lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, however, is that 21^st century conflict demands Special Forces and small unit capabilities even more than traditional big divisions, large carrier task groups, and long-range strategic bombers. Historic nation-state wars, though always plausible, are declining. Irregular, unconventional warfare involving dispersed terrorist cells, stateless nations, insurgencies, and tribes, clans, and gangs is increasingly prevalent.

Pakistan, whose instability imperils regional and possibly global security, is threatened by indigenous religious fundamentalists. Mexico is endangered by drug cartels that are de facto private armies. Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s ancient tribal and sectarian conflicts will continue for decades. Our massive military superiority cannot resolve these and a number of other conflicts by its sheer size and power.

Extended discussion on future security within the broader security community and public at large should encompass at least these questions: what is the nature of the threats we face; which of these require military response and which do not; are our present and planned force structures configured for new military threats; are weapons procurement programs continuations of traditional Cold War acquisitions or are they focused on future requirements; is the intelligence community properly coordinated and focused on emerging realities; for non-military concerns—such as failed states, radical fundamentalism, pandemics, climate degradation, energy dependence, and resource competition—are new international coalitions needed; are existing alliances adequate to anticipate and respond to these crises or are new ones required; most of all, does our government require new legislative authority to achieve national security under dramatically changing conditions?

The precedents for this kind of thorough-going review are found in the several commissions and studies carried out between the end of World War II (and even before) and the final passage of the National Security Act in 1947. These include the Eberstadt report, planning by George Marshall, hearings in the Senate Military Affairs committee, and a blizzard of behind the scenes maneuvering and power struggles. The creation of the national security state in 1947 was not smooth. Army and Navy traditionalists resisted unification. The structure of the new Defense Department and the powers of its Secretary were repeatedly contested. The makeup and authority of the National Security Council shifted and changed. Opponents of a Central Intelligence Agency foresaw a threat to Constitutional freedom.

Traditional institutional interests, almost always more comfortable with established arrangements and known devils than new arrangements and unknown devils, will predictably resist any review of the sixty-four year old law that underpins the national security state. Today, even to suggest a modernization of our core national security framework is to invite bitter opposition from those who never saw a boat they wanted to rock. Machiavelli was not the first to observe that the status quo has many friends and the ranks of reformers are thin.

The only issue that matters is whether Cold War strategies and structures adequately address present and future realities or whether the realities of a new century demand a fresh look at the institutions and policies, military and non-military, that will be needed to make the nation secure. Jefferson’s 21^st century man cannot forever wear the clothes of his younger, 20^th century self.