The Freedom to Say No: Using America's Military in the New Era

A new era in international relations presents the United States with a fresh opportunity to redefine and restrict the terms under which it will use military force. Unlike the Cold War period, military considerations should no longer dominate American foreign policy. An early lesson from the end of the Cold War seems to be simple logic: United States military forces were built up for the Cold War; that era is now over; therefore, the military can be scaled down. However, the conclusion is only supportable if the United States adopts a fundamental change in its national security policy and raises the threshold for using the military. The consequences of choosing to be less active with the military are dramatically different than before. A reduced reliance on the military is consistent with both domestic political realities and security concerns in the post-Cold War era. Certainly, the United States has a new freedom not to use its military unless vital interests are directly at stake; and significantly, those interests can be more narrowly defined.