"Today's U.S. military is full of perplexing questions and issues. Individually, each can be explained, but collectively the explanations seem too complicated. This complexity makes the military difficult to comprehend even to those in uniform. This report is an attempt to understand this complexity and to start a conversation about how to better understand America's 21st-century military. To do that, a return to first principles is necessary, starting with how the nation understands 'the common defense' and the role that organized violence plays in providing for it. The nation's understanding of both the common defense and organized violence has changed dramatically in the years since 2001. The diversification in the employment of violence produced a profound paradigm shift that Thomas Kuhn's seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, helps to identify and explain. America's senior civilian and military leaders must understand this shift in order to create the military the nation needs in the coming decades and to ensure that it is an institution the American people continue to trust"--Publisher's web site.

"RAND Project Air Force".

Prologue : the colonel's crisis -- Introduction -- Organized violence : the military's unique responsibility -- Thomas Kuhn on problems, paradigms, anomalies, and paradigm shifts -- The common defense and the continental paradigm -- The common defense and the overseas paradigm -- The Second World War validates the overseas paradigm -- The overseas paradigm : accounting for the Second World War's anomalies -- The overseas paradigm : accounting for additional anomalies, 1950-1975 -- The overseas paradigm : conflicting signals, 1975-2001 -- Inconsistencies in the overseas paradigm : the post-9/11 era -- Crisis and the overseas paradigm -- Rise of the guardian paradigm? -- Possible implications of a paradigm change -- Epilogue : the colonel's retirement speech.