Regional Security and Air
and Space Power

As this issue of ASPJ goes to press, the strategic and operational situation in much of the world has changed once again. The challenges to US security and interests are simultaneously real, intense, and ill defined. US forces find themselves engaging a wide spectrum of military tasks from training to humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, small-scale contingency operations, combat, and both conventional and nuclear deterrence missions. All of these tasks occur against the backdrop of the ongoing global war on terrorism, tensions on the Korean peninsula, and the search for a peace process in the Middle East. The challenges that characterize this environment compel air and space power professionals to be intimately familiar with security issues in nearly every region. Air and space power’s global reach and the imperative of establishing what Gen Gregory S. Martin calls “geopresence” provide the rationale for our focus on regional-security issues as seen from an air and space power perspective.

Each academic year, the Air War College class completes a Regional Studies course as part of the core resident curriculum. Faculty and students study the most important economic, social, strategic, military, and cultural issues within various regions. These seminars plan site visits to countries within their assigned regions to conduct firsthand research into relevant air and space power issues. The course culminates with a research paper that captures lessons from the classroom and the on-site visits. In this issue we include some of those students’ papers to share with the rest of the Air Force the insights they gleaned from such an intense experience.

Although we can publish only a small selection of the findings from this year’s Regional Studies program, what emerges is an impression of the complexity that challenges policy makers daily. The daunting problems of security, terrorism, internal strife, disease, and humanitarian relief that confront African nations provide airmen the impetus to consider how to plan for access and for the capabilities that forces may require to participate in rapidly changing conditions on that continent. The volatile security situation on the Asian subcontinent represents more than just a nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan. Air and space power planners must understand the long-term perceptions of Hindu, Muslim, Indian, Chinese, Pakistani, and European parties if they are to anticipate how to support US interests in that region.

It would be an understatement to declare that policy makers may not yet fully understand the strategic and operational implications for the Middle East that will occur as a consequence of the dramatic collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime and military in Iraq. The articles that explore questions related to this region reveal the interconnected global-security concerns that one must understand in order to employ force effectively in that troubled area of the world. Additionally, we may see a new factor emerging in Eastern Europe as Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary engage in global affairs in new ways.

Thus, air and space power advocates and practitioners face a paradox- the capabilities that we have advertised for nearly the entire history of our field appear to be within our grasp just as we must transform our understanding of those capabilities to meet the demands of a dramatic shift in the international-security environment. We have refined our technological capability to affect the full spectrum of combat and noncombat tasks to a point that few would have imagined 10–15 years ago. The demand for those capabilities, however, stretches our forces beyond limits that we may have thought possible. Now more than ever, airmen must spend time reflecting on what air and space power brings to the strategic, operational, and tactical fight. The stakes are so high with every deployment in nearly every region that we must approach the tasks set before us as a unified team- a team equipped intellectually and technically to do the right mission the right way at the right time.

Disclaimer  

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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