Strategic Paradigms 2025: U.S. Security Planning for a New Era

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This publication presents the results of a twelve-month study, completed in late 1999, that examined the spectrum of security issues likely to confront the Unites States in the early decades of the next century. The framework for the study was four different paradigms, or scenarios, depicting potential security settings in 2025. These paradigms were the basis for extended analysis of the capabilities and strategies that the United States might need three decades hence; they were also used in an extensive assessment of the longer-term implications of defense and foreign policy choices being made today.

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By presenting these alternative visions of the future, IFPA identifies capabilities and strategies that will have utility under a wide range of circumstances in the twenty-first century.

The book addresses:

• The key questions and factors likely to shape the international system in the twenty-first century: globalization and other global trends such as technology proliferation, the rise of non-state actors, environmental stresses, and population growth. The study also examines trends in the strategic interactions among states in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Eurasia and how these relationships can be expected to influence the development of the security environment in the early twenty-first century.
  
• The four security paradigms:
  • A coalition of states opposing U.S. dominance
  • A multipolar balance of power
  • Weak unipolarity with the United States as the only dominant state
  • Chaos, with the United States as the only superpower in a world of increasing anarchy
    
    
• The specific security implications of each paradigm. Each paradigm is analyzed with regard to the following questions:
  • What will be the types of actors (state and non-state) and what security challenges will they pose for the United States in 2025?
  • What will be the nature of warfare in 2025?
  • What will be the nature of the United States' relationships with its allies in 2025?
  • What will be the nature of deterrence in 2025?

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