New Strategy Offers More Opportunities than Liabilities

Dempsey: New Strategy Offers More Opportunities than Liabilities

By Cheryl Pellerin
American Forces Press Service

Also changed is the two-war construct, Dempsey said — the idea that arose in the era of the Soviet Union that the United States should be able to fight two large-scale land wars at the same time.

“Somebody said, ‘Aha, you’re taking that language out because now you’re only going to fight one war,” he said. “I would never say that. The nation doesn’t need a military that can only do one thing at a time. The nation needs a military that can do multiple things” to give the nation’s leaders as many options as possible.

Taking the two-war wording out of the defense strategy released the department from the “tyranny of language” associated with that construct, Dempsey said.

“That was fine when the world was like that and it was fine when resources were not an independent variable,” the chairman said, “and so by freeing ourselves from that tyranny of vocabulary I think what we can actually allow ourselves to do now is to think differently about how we achieve the outcome.”