Gulliver's Travails is a world of rampant nationalism, state- and nonstate-sponsored terrorism, and fluid coalitions.1 Most US citizens consider their nation to be the world's policeman . . . fireman, physician, social worker, financier, mailman, and bartender. It is much like being a traffic cop on an incendiary New York City Friday afternoon when the traffic lights stop working. Just when everyone foresees the illusory weekend escape from the rat race, they instead must compete to relax. A zero-sum calculus pervades much of the globe, and random firefights occur in a world where everyone is armed and many are envious.
This is an age in which agrarian and industrial civilizations often dominate the stage with unruly behavior, threatening to topple more "advanced" states when "primitive" conflicts create problems that spill across borders. Though the reasons for the conflicts may appear primitive, the weapons used are often modern.2 Furthermore, newly anointed leaders are clever enough to realize refugees pose a threat to the stability of their regime, be it an autocracy, a people's republic, or an economic enclave. Those in power assume, usually correctly, that the displaced will seek to return to their homes, or at the least to gain revenge.3 Consequently, to ensure their new state's security, governments seek some means for controlling the passions of those who might oppose them. In some cases, internal repression and external terrorism are the mechanisms chosen.4
Traditionally the United States could ignore some of these activities, but as the world has gotten smaller, the problems of terrorism are no longer confined overseas. Small states or groups may seek to either spur or deter US action in pursuit of their own agendas. The problem is there are too many actors, all clamoring for attention, frequently in direct opposition to one another. Addressing these claimants' issues is vital to the US because groups that are neither controlled nor appeased may export terrorism to America.
Nationalism lurks everywhere, usually asserting itself along ethnic, economic, religious, cultural, or racial schisms.5 In many areas, a man who is not one's brother is one's enemy. States which secede from within existing borders are themselves subject to civil wars, and states propagate as ever more groups seek self-determination. Territory is important in this world, because the emergent groups need land to form states. Because land matters, border disputes continue long after these tenuous states initially form.6 The violent, nationalistic conflicts concomitantly displace millions of people. Refugees stream across borders seeking food, shelter, and security, but their presence often sparks reactionary nationalistic movements in the "invaded" country.7
America, though without peer, finds its forces dispersed around the world, trying to answer all the alarms. As shown in figure 3-1, the American World View is Global; the United States is heavily involved worldwide in order to hold threats at arms length. The World Power Grid is characterized as Dispersed. New actors are constantly appearing, alliances rapidly shift, and small actors can produce disproportionate effects. DTeK is Constrained because technological changes are occurring at an evolutionary rate, and not everyone benefits equally. The US government has not emphasized the funding of basic research and development (R&D), relying instead on commercial developments. This R&D strategy is repeated around the world, so the United States has maintained a military edge in many dual-use critical technologies, particularly those related to operations in space.
the rest is here
http://www.au.af.mil/au/2025/monographs/A-F/a-f-3.htm
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