The author contends the Department of Defense (DoD) cannot ignore inadequacies of much of the current force as the strategic landscape becomes increasingly unpredictable. For the next large-scale unconventional challenge, the Secretary of Defense must have the right force available to respond effectively. Senior landpower leaders should anticipate there will be changes in the U.S. approach to defense-relevant and defense-specific challenges around the world and should be proactive in assisting the SecDef to identify and build capabilities for the new balance point during the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review. Doing so will enable the DoD to better account for contemporary strategic conditions with minimum future institutional disruption.

"April 2009"--T.p. "April 2009."

Prologue: a new era, reality and strategic temperance -- Introduction: a period of critical defense choices -- The strategic environment versus the policymaking environment -- The strategic environment: an unconventional status quo and its implications -- Unconventional threats of purpose and context -- Internal and external threats to foreign interests will commingle -- Hybrid combinations of purposeful and contextual threats -- Decreasing utility of traditional military power -- The impact of the strategic environment on landpower missions -- DoD 3000.05: the lost opportunity -- The policymaking environment: full-spectrum dominance, uncertainty, and increasing certainty -- The theology of full-spectrum dominance -- The tyranny of uncertainty in defense strategy and planning -- An era of increasing strategic-level certainty? -- Identifying and institutionalizing a new balance for the coming strategy and resource war within DoD -- An alternative spectrum of conflict and the new balance -- Operationalizing the new balance in future force planning -- Guiding principles for future land force employment -- Core interests first -- Limited objectives -- Risk management -- Comprehensive interagency and international approaches -- A new mission set and its impact on force planning -- Active management of purposeful unconventional threats -- Armed stabilization -- Preemptive and punitive campaigns of limited scope and duration -- Security sector reform and assistance -- Conventional deterrence and limited traditional war -- Facilitation of limited, whole-of-government stabilization and reconstruction -- Generation and sustainment of adequate land forces -- Homeland Defense and Security (HLD/S) -- A new landpower force planning construct: a two-contingency force remains the COIN of the realm -- Conclusion: pursuing a new balance.