National Security: Perspectives on Worldwide Threats and Implications for U.S. Forces.

Abstract

This report summarizes the views presented in October 1991, at a GAO sponsored conference on worldwide threats to U.S. national security. The conference was designed to provide insight into potential military threats to U.S. security interests and necessary modifications to current and planned U.S. forces to meet those threats. Conference participants discussed and analyzed the possibility of U.S. and Allied involvement in various regional contingencies in Europe, the Soviet Union, East Asia the Pacific, the Near East and South Asia. Topics ranged from the possibility of nuclear war to a general discussion of low intensity conflict. To serve as a starting point for discussion, the participants agreed that for many years the Soviet-Warsaw Pact threat to Europe shaped U.S. force planning but that the USSR no longer posed a conventional threat. Nuclear weapons held by the former Soviet Union and now Independent States continued to be a threat to global stability, however. The participants suggested several options for responding to the changing security environment, including assisting the former Soviet Republics with denuclearization, reducing forward deployed U.S. forces in Europe and the Pacific, increasing U.S. efforts at missile nonproliferation in the Near East, and reforming the organization and control of low intensity conflict operations.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 16, 1992
Accession Number
ADA291101

Entities

Organizations

  • United States Government Accountability Office

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Anti-Ballistic Missiles
  • Arms Control
  • Arms Control Treaties
  • Congress
  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Interagency Coordination
  • International Law
  • International Organizations
  • International Relations
  • Military Science
  • National Politics
  • Public Policy
  • Sociopolitics
  • Strategic Weapons
  • Treaties
  • Warfare

Readers

  • Academic Conference Management
  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP).