National Security Dilemmas: Challenges and Opportunities

by Colin S. Gray, Paul K. Van Riper (Foreword)

A contemporary primer on the leading arguments about U.S. national security, National Security Dilemmas addresses the major challenges and opportunities that are live-issue areas for American policymakers and strategists today. Colin S. Gray provides an in-depth analysis of a policy and strategy for deterrence; the long-term U.S. bid to transform its armed forces’ capabilities, with particular reference to strategic surprise, in the face of many great uncertainties; the difficulty of understanding and exploiting the challenge of revolutionary change in warfare; the problems posed by enemies who fight using irregular methods; and the awesome dilemmas for U.S. policy over the options to wage preventive and preemptive warfare.With forty years’ experience as a strategist, within and outside of government, Gray uses a problem-solving motif throughout the book, suggesting solutions to the challenges he identifies. The book’s master narrative is that the United States must take a more considered strategic approach to its security dilemmas. Too often, the country’s leaders decide on a policy and then move to take action, all the while neglecting to devise a plan that would connect its political purposes to military means. While many of Gray’s judgments here are critical of current ideas and behavior, he crafted them as helpful guides should planners adopt them when revising policies and approaches. Strategy is a practical matter; truly it is the zone wherein theory meets practice.This text can be used as an expert guide to the major national security challenges of today. It both explains the structure of these challenges and provides useful answers. With a foreword by Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, USMC (Ret.), Bren Chair, Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia.

Genres: Military Fiction

334 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Colin S. Gray was a British-American strategic thinker and professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, where he was the director of the Centre for Strategic Studies. In addition, he was a Senior Associate to the National Institute for Public Policy.

Gray was educated at the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford. He worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Hudson Institute, before founding the National Institute for Public Policy in Washington, D.C. He also served as a defense adviser both to the British and U.S. governments. Gray served from 1982 until 1987 in the Reagan Administration's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. Furthermore, he taught at the University of Hull, the University of Lancaster, York University, Toronto and University of British Columbia. Gray published 23 books on military history and strategic studies, as well as numerous articles.

Reviews

[J Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally finished; excellent and lucid. This title should be required reading for anyone in strategy and policy position, and is recommended for anyone in uniform, officer or enlisted.

This is a collection of Gray's monographs adapted to a book, however it doesn't not read as such.

Highest recommendation.