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We will achieve our objectives by shaping the choices of key states, preventing adversaries from acquiring or using WMD, strengthening and expanding alliances and partnerships, securing U.S. strategic access and retaining freedom of action, and integrating and unifying our efforts.

Shape the Choices of Key States

Although the role of non-state actors in world affairs has increased, states will continue to be the basis of the international order. In cooperation with our allies and friends, the United States can help shape the international environment, the behavior of actors, and the choices that strategic states face in ways that foster accountability, cooperation, and mutual trust.

Shaping choices contributes to achieving many of our objectives. It is critical to defending the homeland by convincing key states that attacking the United States would be futile and ultimately self-defeating. Our deterrence posture is designed to persuade potential aggressors that they cannot meet their objectives through an attack on the United States and that such actions would result in an overwhelming response. Our posture and capabilities also contribute to deterring conflict of other types, particularly with potential adversary states. We can also promote security by helping shape the choices that strategic states make, encouraging them to avoid destabilizing paths and adhering to international norms on the use of force, the promotion of peace and amity, and acting as good stewards of the public good within their own borders.

We shall seek to anchor China and Russia as stakeholders in the system. Similarly, we look to India to assume greater responsibility as a stakeholder in the international system, commensurate with its growing economic, military, and soft power.

Prevent Adversaries from Acquiring or Using Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD)

There are few greater challenges than those posed by chemical, biological, and particularly nuclear weapons. Preventing the spread of these weapons, and their use, requires vigilance and obligates us to anticipate and counter threats. Whenever possible, we prefer non-military options to achieve this purpose. We combine non-proliferation efforts to deny these weapons and their components to
our adversaries, active efforts to defend against and defeat WMD and missile threats before they are unleashed, and improved protection to mitigate the consequences of WMD use. We also seek to convince our adversaries that they cannot attain their goals with WMD, and thus should not acquire such weapons in the first place. However, as the NSS states, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising its right of self-defense to forestall or prevent hostile acts by our adversaries.

Reducing the proliferation of WMD and bolstering norms against their use contribute to defending the homeland by limiting the number of states that can directly threaten us and dissuading the potential transfer of these weapons to nonstate actors. As we and our partners limit WMD proliferation, we will deny terrorists a potent weapon and contribute to bringing the fight against violent extremists to a successful conclusion on U.S. terms.

A number of hostile or potentially hostile states are actively seeking or have acquired WMD. Some may seek them for prestige or deterrence; others may plan to use them. Preventing such regimes from acquiring or proliferating WMD, and the means to deliver them, contributes to promoting security.

Fortunately, the ranks of the nuclear powers are still small, but they could grow in the next decade in the absence of concerted action. Many more countries possess chemical and biological weapons programs – programs that are more difficult to detect, impede, or eliminate. These countries will continue to pursue WMD programs as a means to deter, coerce, and potentially use against adversaries. Shaping the behavior of additional states seeking or acquiring weapons of mass destruction will require an integrated, international effort.

Technological and information advances of the last fifty years have led to the wide dissemination of WMD knowledge and lowered barriers to entry. Relatively sophisticated chemical agents, and even crude biological agents, are within the reach of many non-state actors with a modicum of scientific knowledge. Non-state actors may acquire WMD, either through clandestine production, statesponsorship, or theft. Also of concern is the potential for severe instability in WMD states and resulting loss of control of these weapons. In these cases, the United States, through a concerted interagency and partner nation effort, must be prepared to detect, tag and track, intercept, and destroy WMD and related materials. We must also be prepared to act quickly to secure those weapons and materials in cases where a state loses control of its weapons, especially nuclear devices. Should the worst happen, and we are attacked, we must be able to sustain operations during that attack and help mitigate the consequences of WMD attacks at home or overseas.

Strengthen and Expand Alliances and Partnerships

The United States also must strengthen and expand alliances and partnerships. The U.S. alliance system has been a cornerstone of peace and security for more than a generation and remains the key to our success, contributing significantly to achieving all U.S. objectives. Allies often possess capabilities, skills, and knowledge we cannot duplicate. We should not limit ourselves to the relationships of the past. We must broaden our ideas to include partnerships for new situations or circumstances, calling on moderate voices in troubled regions and unexpected partners. In some cases, we may develop arrangements limited to specific objectives or goals, or even of limited duration. Although these arrangements will vary according to mutual interests, they should be built on respect, reciprocity, and transparency.

The capacities of our partners vary across mission areas. We will be able to rely on many partners for certain low-risk missions such as peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance, whereas complex counterinsurgency and high-end conventional operations are likely to draw on fewer partners with the capacity, will, and capability to act in support of mutual goals. We will support, train, advise and equip partner security forces to counter insurgencies, terrorism, proliferation, and other threats. We will assist other countries in improving their capabilities through security cooperation, just as we will learn valuable skills and information from others better situated to understand some of the complex challenges we face together.

We must also work with longstanding friends and allies to transform their capabilities. Key to transformation is training, education and, where appropriate, the transfer of defense articles to build partner capacity. We must work to develop new ways of operating across the full spectrum of warfare. Our partnerships must be capable of applying military and non-military power when and where needed – a prerequisite against an adaptable transnational enemy.

Secure U.S. strategic access and retain freedom of action

For more than sixty years, the United States has secured the global commons for the benefit of all. Global prosperity is contingent on the free flow of ideas, goods, and services. The enormous growth in trade has lifted millions of people out of poverty by making locally produced goods available on the global market. Low barriers to trade also benefit consumers by reducing the cost of goods and allowing countries to specialize. None of this is possible without a basic belief that goods shipped through air or by sea, or information transmitted under the ocean or through space, will arrive at their destination safely. The development and proliferation of anti-access technologies and tactics threatens to undermine this belief.

The United States requires freedom of action in the global commons and strategic access to important regions of the world to meet our national security needs. The well-being of the global economy is contingent on ready access to energy resources. Notwithstanding national efforts to reduce dependence on oil, current trends indicate an increasing reliance on petroleum products from areas of instability in the coming years, not reduced reliance. The United States will continue to foster access to and flow of energy resources vital to the world economy. Further, the Department is examining its own energy demands and is taking action to reduce fuel demand where it will not negatively affect operational capability. Such efforts will reduce DoD fuel costs and assist wider U.S. Government energy security and environmental objectives.

We will continue to transform overseas U.S. military presence through global defense posture realignment, leveraging a more agile continental U.S. (CONUS)-based expeditionary total force and further developing a more relevant and flexible forward network of capabilities and arrangements with allies and partners to ensure strategic access.

Integrate and unify our efforts: A new “Jointness”

Our efforts require a unified approach to both planning and implementing policy. Iraq and Afghanistan remind us that military success alone is insufficient to achieve victory. We must not forget our hard-learned lessons or allow the important soft power capabilities developed because of them to atrophy or even disappear. Beyond security, essential ingredients of long-term success include economic development, institution building, and the rule of law, as well as promoting internal reconciliation, good governance, providing basic services to the people, training and equipping indigenous military and police forces, strategic communications. We as a nation must strengthen not only our military capabilities, but also reinvigorate other important elements of national power and develop the capability to integrate, tailor, and apply these tools as needed. We must tap the full strength of America and its people.

The Department of Defense has taken on many of these burdens. Our forces have stepped up to the task of long-term reconstruction, development and governance. The U.S. Armed Forces will need to institutionalize and retain these capabilities, but this is no replacement for civilian involvement and expertise. The United States must improve its ability to deploy civilian expertise rapidly, and continue to increase effectiveness by joining with organizations and people outside of government – untapped resources with enormous potential. We can make better use of the expertise of our universities and of industry to assist in reconstruction and long-term improvements to economic vitality and good governance. Greater civilian participation is necessary both to make military operations successful and to relieve stress on the men and women of the armed forces. Having permanent civilian capabilities available and using them early could also make it less likely that military forces will need to be deployed in the first place.

We also need capabilities to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Strategic communications within the Department and across government is a good example. Although the United States invented modern public relations, we are unable to communicate to the world effectively who we are and what we stand for as a society and culture, about freedom and democracy, and about our goals and aspirations. This capability is and will be crucial not only for the Long War, but also for the consistency of our message on crucial security issues to our allies, adversaries, and the world.

We will continue to work with other U.S. Departments and Agencies, state and local governments, partners and allies, and international and multilateral organizations to achieve our objectives. A whole-of-government approach is only possible when every government department and agency understands the core competencies, roles, missions, and capabilities of its partners and works together to achieve common goals. Examples such as expanding U.S. Southern
Command’s interagency composition and the establishment of U.S. Africa
Command will point the way. In addition, we will support efforts to coordinate national security planning more effectively, both within DoD and across other U.S. Departments and Agencies.

We will continue to work to improve understanding and harmonize best practices amongst interagency partners. This must happen at every level from Washington, DC-based headquarters to the field. DoD, in partnership with DHS, also will continue to develop habitual relationships with state and local authorities to ensure we are positioned to respond when necessary and support civil authorities in times of emergency, where allowable by law. Through these efforts we will significantly increase our collective abilities to defend the homeland.

We will further develop and refine our own capabilities. We should continue to develop innovative capabilities, concept, and organizations. We will continue to rely on adaptive planning, on integration and use of all government assets, and on flexibility and speed. Yet we must not only have a full spectrum of capabilities at our disposal, but also employ and tailor any or all of them to a complex environment. These developments will require an expanded understanding of “jointness,” one that seamlessly combines civil and military capabilities and options.

Finally, we must consider further realigning Department structures, and
interagency planning and response efforts, to better address these risks and to meet new needs. We will examine how integrated planning is conducted within the Department, and how to make better use of our own existing capacities.

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