Our failure to provide for the common defense does not stem from lack of money.

We spend roughly half a trillion dollars per year to maintain and operate the Defense Department, an amount that matches the rest of the world's defense spending combined.

Clearly something is not right, and spending even more money on a failed defense strategy is not going to make it right.

This monograph does not recommend a specific alternative -- aside from the obvious one: it is time to re-create the Department of Defense or even abolish it completely and make way for a new structure for, and approach to, national defense.

We need to examine what has changed over the last dozen or so years to render the U.S. war machine ineffective against the types of opponents we now face, and, given their success, the type we are likely to face in the future.

There are several possible approaches to a radical restructuring of the U.S. military that will eliminate not only our large, heavy formations but the mindsets that accompany them.

In their place, we should consider forces that blur the boundary between "civilian" and "military" as well as between government and private industry. We can be sure that our opponents have not ruled out any form of organization, and if we are to win, we must be at least as creative.

Traditional maneuver warfare is designed to enable one country's military establishment to defeat another's in battle. While it works very well for that purpose, what we face today are non-state actors, such as al-Qaida and the Iraqi insurgents. These adversaries aren't coming out to meet us on battlefields; rather they are attacking us with improvised explosive devises or hit-and-run ambushes or commercial airliners -- anywhere in the world, any day of the week.

What we are seeing, in short, is an evolution in armed conflict -- one isn't sure whether to even call it "war" -- in which guerrilla warfare is morphing into something much more dangerous.

This analysis is based on a comparison of recommendations from five distinguished strategists:

-- William S. Lind, author of "Strategic Defense Initiative;"

-- Martin van Creveld, "The Transformation of War;"

-- Thomas X. Hammes, "The Sling and the Stone;"

-- Micheal Scheuer, "Imperial Hubris;" and

-- Thomas P. M. Barnett, "The Pentagon's New Map" and "Blueprint for Action."

As all these authors note, in their varying ways, guerrilla warriors traditionally operated largely within a state (although they may have base areas just outside it) and their goal was either to replace the government of that state or to drive out an occupying power from it.

This pattern held from the early 1800s, when the word "guerrilla" was coined, through the U.S. war in Vietnam and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. With the fall of the Soviet Union, however, and the withdrawal of support by both Cold War powers, many U.S. and Soviet client states around the world began to fail.

These states are now providing safe havens for a new breed of violent ideological organization that has ambitions for changing governments not just in single states but in entire regions. They use modern technologies such as the Internet and cell phones to recruit and train members, and to plan operations. And they recognize that in order to achieve their goals, they must often persuade an outside power -- generally the United States -- to back off.

This new type of conflict is often called "fourth generation war" or 4GW. Although strategies for fighting a 4GW run the gamut from isolationism to an active program of military intervention and regime change in failed or otherwise threatening states, all of them propose a variant on one of two basic approaches: "containment" and "rollback." Each offers costs, risks, and potential benefits for the United States and its allies.

Containment is the least costly, in the short term at any rate.

Our military forces could be downsized to a retaliatory element to punish and eliminate any regime harboring 4GW organizations that attack us. These forces could be conventional military units such as we used in Iraq, or massive non-nuclear carpet bombing strikes, or even nuclear weapons. Some versions of containment allow for intervention via intelligence and international police operations, while reserving full-fledged military action for retaliation.

The idea -- crudely put -- is that over time, the regimes that spawn 4GW groups will collapse under the weight of their own failure, whereupon their populations will get their act in order, elect new leaders, and join the world system. Until that happens, we will protect ourselves.

The problem with containment is that we may not be able to live with whatever arises by way of failed or hostile states in the meantime. It is possible that such a strategy, especially if carried to the extent of isolationism, would hasten the day when groups like al-Qaida acquire nuclear devices and smuggle them into the cities of the developed world.

The idea of rollback, on the other hand, is to help the process of collapse along by various levels of intervention, and then to stay and rebuild the failed state so that it can no longer harbor our 4GW opponents.

Proponents of rollback generally see the military as an ordinary tool of policy and would use it to break open countries that harbor 4GW groups or that we, for any other reason, feel potentially threaten the security of the developed world.

The promise of rollback is great. It would eliminate "terrorist" groups, world poverty, ignorance, hunger and disease.

The problem with rollback is equally great: nobody knows how to do it.

Our Iraqi adventure has discredited the idea of military intervention as the primary mechanism, and other tools of regime change such as political pressure or economic sanctions can take decades to work, when they work at all, and they always bring great hardship to ordinary people living in the affected countries.

Military forces for rollback, should we swallow the risks and proceed anyway, fall into two categories.

The first, like the military the nation requires for containment, specializes in maneuver warfare to rapidly eliminate a hostile regime. Unlike containment, however, the idea is not to punish the regime, but destroy it -- whilst doing the least possible damage to the country's infrastructure so that rebuilding can proceed sans insurgency.

In order to ensure the maximum level of creativity and initiative for this mission, should we decide to undertake it, I recommend privatizing the forces for it.

Such a course of action would require expanding the current capabilities of private military companies, and putting in place a legal structure to promote competition among them and enforce compliance with laws and rules to govern their activities.

Although difficult, it is much easier than trying to transform the current hierarchy and bureaucracy of the Defense Department, which has settled into an extremely stable pattern of spending more and more, while, as an institution, it produces less and less.

The other category required in any rollback force is the rebuilding element. Its larger component would be an expanded Army Corps of Engineers focused on reconstruction not only of infrastructure but of everything else needed to help the invaded state function as a member of the world economy.

The smaller piece of the rebuilding element would be a counter-insurgency force modeled after the U.S. Marine Corps' Combined Action Program, which proved successful in the early days of Vietnam. This force would live down in the neighborhoods and villages -- not in bases or Green Zones -- to head off potential insurgencies, particularly those instigated by members of the ousted regime, and would work hand-in-hand with the expanded Corps of Engineers.

After looking at what would be required in each case, and balancing the promise of rollback against its dismal track record, I recommend containment, but not isolationism, as our best near term strategy.

The United States would continue to use intelligence and law enforcement in the international field, while experimenting with diplomatic and financial means of encouraging states and other entities in the developing world to eliminate 4GW organizations and the conditions that spawn them. Since this is unknown territory, a significant military force needs to be kept in being, and a high priority must be put on accounting for every nuclear device and kilo of fissile material anywhere in the world.

(Retired Air Force Col. Chester W. "Chet" Richards is a strategic theorist and defense consultant based in Atlanta, Ga. This essay -- a version of which was first published by the Strauss Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information -- is a summary of his book, "Neither Shall the Sword: Conflict in the Years Ahead.")

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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