Editor: Dr Douglas V Johnson II
Each year, the Army After Next Seminar students are asked to orient their Strategy Research Papers on topics appropriate to the programs 30-years in the future focus. Thirty years ago, the United States Army was deeply involved in Vietnam and in the Cold War. Officers could reasonably expect to serve repetitive tours in Southeast Asia interspersed with tours along either the Korean Demilitarized Zone or the Inter-German Border. The tension between sometimes guerrilla, sometimes major warfare in the Pacific and the prospects of nuclear war in Europe made any prognostications of a future like that which we currently enjoy an exercise in silliness. Yet we are now asking officers to make such prognostications with the end in view that they might be less surprised by whatever does come into being.