APRIL 2009

Book Review

7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores War in the 21st Century

Unlocking the Future

Reviewed by LtCol F.G. Hoffman, USMCR(Ret)

>LtCol Hoffman is a retired Marine Reserve officer employed at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, Quantico.

One of the hardest tasks of any strategic leader is reshaping institutions in the face of a changing environment. Determining just what aspects of a dynamic environment pose new challenges lies at the crux of the leadership dilemma. All too often we project slow, evolutionary, and comfortable change. As 11 September 2001 showed, our record of identifying dangers and preparing counters is not very reassuring. Quite simply, we are not talented at strategic anticipation. As one prognosticator put it, we generally rely too heavily on linear projections of incremental change in technologies and social arrangements. We are almost hopeless when it comes to anticipating the sharp, sudden nonlinear changes that regularly punctuate human affairs.1

Even our ability to glimpse and assess ongoing patterns and trends in human events is marred by our cultural lens, personal biases, and the opacity that human beings bring to the process of analysis. Moreover, we confuse the improbable or the unfamiliar with the impossible and set ourselves up for profound shocks.

Yet strategies have to be formulated, policies hammered out, and defense institutions shaped for the next challenge, no matter how imprecise our conception of the future. We can hope for predictability or continuity, but with history as our compass, we recognize that states will fail, banks will crash, technologies will appear, and wars will be fought. While recognizing that it is impossible to accurately predict the future, preparing military forces for our security requires thinking about forecasts and trends.

This is where Dr. Andrew Krepinevich’s superlative new book provides invaluable advice. The author is a noted strategist who currently serves as the president of a highly influential think tank in Washington, DC. 7 Deadly Scenarios provides an introductory chapter on the importance of scenario-based thinking to expand the mental frames of senior leaders and planners beyond ritualistic plans and comfort zones. The author acknowledges both how hard and how important this strategic task is. “The Pentagon cannot afford to await event,” he observes. “It must make decisions today on what military capabilities will equip America’s fighting forces a decade or so from now.”

As indicated by the title, the book is devoted to seven futuristic chapter-length scenarios that describe the course of events that lead to seven potential crises. Not all of the scenarios represent traditional military problems or the sort of detailed conflict scenarios more typically gamed in military planning exercises. These scenarios include:

• A collapse of Pakistan’s Government and the compromise of its nuclear arsenal, which finds the United States not able to control the loss of dangerous materials.

• A radical Islamist group infiltrates tactical nuclear devices into America and conducts a “war of fire” inside our borders to force changes in U.S. policy.

• A virulent virus produces a massive and uncontainable pandemic, and America’s borders and medical system are overwhelmed.

• Nuclear proliferation destabilizes the Persian Gulf region, and Iran’s shaky regime unravels. Its proxies attack Israel and ratchet up attacks on shipping lanes.

• China suffers civil unrest, igniting a showdown pitting China against the United States and Japan, which are unprepared for the People’s Liberation Army’s hybrid warfare and “assassin’s Mace” weapons.

• The United States and the global trading system fall prey to a series of terrorist attacks against most transportation systems and the cyber infrastructure that our societies are dependent upon.

• Iraq unravels in 2025; American advisors are attacked and withdrawn. Russia and China offer substantial aid, including peacekeepers that the United Nations sanctions. The United States is left with diminished access and influence in the region.

These scenarios, which are not necessarily an exhaustive set of plausible problems, highlight a number of challenges that the author believes we ignore at our peril. He follows the scenarios with a chapter critical of current U.S. planning efforts. This exceptionally well-crafted chapter proposes a number of steps that would improve American planning, including a greater investment in simulation and experimentation, more competitive ideas at Joint Forces Command, a standing operating force, and a truly joint training and exercise center. Additionally, his evaluation of the joint requirements process is devastating. He finds it “generally incapable of effecting significant change” and “heavily weighted towards evolutionary incremental improvements in existing military capabilities” instead of aggressively exploring significant enhancements.
Many leaders are comfortable looking backward and exploiting history. It is a valuable reservoir of experiences. But there are limitations to that as well. As Walter McDougall has observed:

Our leaders cannot craft policy on the basis that the future will pretty much resemble the past, because then any new challenge will come as a shock for which we are ill-prepared.2

Scenario-based planning, which was used by the Commandant and the Corps’ senior leadership during the development of Marine Corps Vision and Strategy 2025, is one technique employed to avoid those shocks. The Pentagon recently embraced a “trends and shocks” scanning process that incorporates many elements Dr. Krepinevich seeks. Instead of an exercise in prediction, these scenarios expand an understanding of key drivers and trends and their potential interaction. These are not exercises in pinpoint predictions as much as they are intelligence preparation of the battlespace (IPB) of the future. This sort of effort pays dividends, like in any form of campaign planning, if foresight and research are matched by a willingness to temporarily suspend existing mental models and paradigms. A good IPB of potential futures must look for sources of dramatic change and new unknowns that can become the basis for commander’s critical information requirements.

Dr. Krepinevich’s timely and extremely relevant book offers both a useful framework for exploring the future and unlocking tomorrow’s inevitable surprises. Its recommendations will undoubtedly be applied to the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. It is highly recommended for all senior leaders and anyone interested in thinking about our future(s).

Notes

1. Homer-Dixon, Thomas, “Synchronous Failure: The Real Danger of the 21st Century,” speech delivered at George Washington University, 4 December 2002, available at www.homerdixon.com.

2. McDougall, Walter A., “America and the World at the Dawn of a New Century,” keynote speech, Foreign Policy Research Institute annual dinner, November 1999, available at http://
www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_14/mcdougall_dawn1.html.