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Defense Strategy for the 1990s:The Regional Defense Strategy
 
Secretary of Defense Dick CheneyJanuary, 1993
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................2 I. DEFENSE POLICY GOALS......................................................................................................4 II. THE REGIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY...............................................................................6 Underlying Strategic Concepts....................................................................................................6 Planning for Uncertainty.........................................................................................................6 Shaping the Future Security Environment..............................................................................7 Strategic Depth........................................................................................................................8 Continued U. S. Leadership....................................................................................................8 Enduring Requirements...............................................................................................................9 Alliances..................................................................................................................................9 High Quality Personnel.........................................................................................................10 Technological Superiority.....................................................................................................10 Elements of the Regional Defense Strategy..............................................................................11 Strategic Deterrence and Defense.........................................................................................11 Forward Presence..................................................................................................................13 Crisis Response.....................................................................................................................14 Reconstitution........................................................................................................................16 Translating the Elements into Forces and Programs.............................................................16 III. REGIONAL GOALS AND CHALLENGES.........................................................................18 Europe.......................................................................................................................................18 East Asia/Pacific .......................................................................................................................20 The Middle East/Persian Gulf and South Asia..........................................................................21 Latin America and the Caribbean..............................................................................................22 Sub-Saharan Africa...................................................................................................................23 CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................24 
 
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INTRODUCTION
The past four years have seen extraordinary changes abroad as the Cold War drew to a close.We have entered a new strategic era. The collapse of the Soviet Union -- the disintegration of the internalas well as the external empire, and the discrediting of Communism as an ideology with global pretensionsand influence -- fundamentally altered, but did not eliminate, the challenges ahead. The integration of theleading democracies into a U.S.-led system of collective security, and the prospects of expanding thatsystem, significantly enhance our international position and provide a crucial legacy for future peace. Our national strategy has shifted from a focus on a global threat to one on regional challenges andopportunities. We have moved from Containment to the new Regional Defense Strategy.The changes made over the past four years have set the nation on a solid path to secure andextend the opportunities and hopes of this new era. America and its allies now have an unprecedentedopportunity to preserve with greater ease a security environment within which our democratic ideals canprosper. Where once a European-wide war, potentially leading to
 
nuclear exchange, was perhaps only afew weeks and miles away, today such a threat has fallen back and would take years to rekindle. With theend of the Cold War, there are no global threats and no significant hostile alliances. We have a markedlead in critical areas of warfare. Our alliances, built during our struggle of Containment, are one of thegreat sources of our strength in this new era. They represent a democratic “zone of peace,” a communityof democratic nations bound together by a web of political, economic, and security ties. This zone of peace offers a framework for security not through competitive rivalries in arms, but through cooperativeapproaches and collective security institutions. The combination of these trends has given our nation andour alliances great depth for our strategic position.Simply put, it is the intent of the new Regional Defense Strategy to enable the U.S. to lead inshaping an uncertain future so as to preserve and enhance this strategic depth won at such great pains.This will require us to strengthen our alliances and to extend the zone of peace to
 
include the newlyindependent nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, as these now-fragile states succeedin their struggle to
 
build free societies and free markets out of the ruin of Communism. Together with our allies, we must preclude hostile nondemocratic powers from dominating regions critical to
 
our interestsand otherwise work to build an international environment conducive to our values. Yet, even as we hopeto
 
increasingly rely on collective approaches to solve international problems, we recognize that acollective effort will not always be timely and, in the absence of U.S. leadership, may not gel. Where thestakes so merit, we must have forces ready to protect our critical interests.Our fundamental strategic position and choices as a nation are thus very different from those wehave faced in the past. The choices ahead of us will reset the nation’s direction for the next century. Wehave today a compelling opportunity to meet our defense needs at lower cost. But as we do so, we mustbe guided by a strategy that recognizes that our domestic life cannot flourish if we are beset by foreigncrises. We must not squander the position of security we achieved at great sacrifice through the ColdWar, nor eliminate our ability to shape an uncertain future security environment in ways favorable to usand those who share our values.Guided by the new strategy, we are restructuring our forces to meet the essential demands of strategic deterence and defense, forward presence, crisis response, and reconstitution. As we do so, weare reducing our forces significantly -- by more than a million military and civilian personnel. Thesereductions will reduce force structure to its lowest level in terms of manpower since before the KoreanWar and spending to the lowest percentage of GNP since before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet even aswe reduce our forces in size overall, we must not carelessly destroy their quality or their technologicalsuperiority. Along with alliances, high-quality personnel and technological superiority representcapabilities that would take decades to restore if foolishly lost in this time of reductions.Even in this time of downsizing, we must retain capable military forces. For the world remainsunpredictable and well-armed causes for conflict persist, and we have not eliminated age-old temptationsfor nondemocratic powers to turn to force or intimidation to achieve their ends. We have sought throughthe Regional Defense Strategy to anticipate challenges and opportunities yet to
 
come, to
 
shape a futureof continued progress, and to preclude reversals or the emergence of new threats. This document
 
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discusses the new strategy in some depth and is intended as a contribution to
 
a national dialogue thatvery much needs to
 
continue as we look to protecting the nation’s interests in the 1990s, and beyond.
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