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U.S. National Security In an address to the Heritage Foundation on July 20, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich offered his vision of U.S. national security policy--its challenges and possible solutions. We face a spectrum of threats from the obvious and widely discussed (terrorist directed nuclear and biological attack; ballistic missiles) to the exotic high tech (electromagnetic pulse; destruction of space satellites; cyber war) that are conceivable but frequently discounted. Our responses to date, warned Gingrich, are inadequate to counter the threats. Gingrich emphasized a more-is-better "safety oriented national security budget, not a budget director oriented national security budget." He urged threat planning projected 25 years into the future because knowledge and scientific breakthroughs will be seven-times that of the past 25 years. This circumstance underlies Gingrich's concern about major breakthroughs by hostile powers and the need to develop mechanisms ("a counter breakout system") that could deflect/defeat such threats to prevent catastrophic consequences for America. Gingrich is dismayed at the dysfunctional decision-making at senior Defense, State Department, and political levels as well as the extended timelines involved in moving military systems from concept to completion. He is also concerned that the U.S. simply has not addressed seriously the origins or parameters of the current war. Gingrich proposed a radically restructured national security system to address present and future threats. We should plan against enemy capabilities rather than our perception of their intentions. Implementing such recommendations would not be easy (and perhaps not politically or economically possible) but Gingrich insists they are imperative for the safety of our grandchildren, and his reputation as a seminal thinker, albeit a controversial one, makes his analysis worthy of serious consideration. |
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