PREFACE

Strategic Appraisal 1996 deals with the major strategic issues con-fronting the United States in the post-Cold War era, with an empha-sis on the future role of aerospace power. It discusses both the ques-tion of U.S. grand strategy for the new era and the trends in various regions of the world and the challenges they could pose to the mili-tary forces of the United States—especially the Air Force. The context for understanding our strategic situation is provided by a discussion of alternative U.S. grand strategies for the post-Cold War era. Despite the amount of time that has passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the nation has not reached a consensus on a replacement for the containment strategy that played such a large role in informing our international behavior over decades. In the absence of such a grand strategy, we will continue to have difficulty in assessing the importance of inter-national events for our long-term interests and the wisdom of using U.S. military power to affect them. The discussion of the geopolitical trends in the various regions of the world is undertaken with an eye toward the potential challenges to the United States and its aerospace power that they might pose. With respect to each of the regions considered, the political situation is related to U.S. interests and to the possibility of U.S. military involvement. Drawing primarily on the expertise of RAND researchers in a wide variety of geopolitical issues, this book was produced in the Strateg