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To be relevant and lasting, "Joint Vision 2010" must get a fix on our military purpose and offer guidance on how to get there. The first step is to acknowledge that in the new strategic environment, fighting and winning wars will have to share center stage equally with tasks such as humanitarian assistance and peacekeeping.
Joint Vision 2010 provides an operationally based template for the evolution of the Armed Forces for a challenging and uncertain future. It must become a benchmark for Service and Unified Command visions.
-General John Shalikashvili
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Strategic vision statements can unify an organization around common purposes and advocate actions and plans to external audiences. Done well, they become the hallmarks of leading corporations and industries; done poorly, they are lampooned by cartoonists and the media as examples of management mumbo-jumbo. There is very little middle ground-either the vision appeals to its audience and mobilizes it toward practical ends, or it languishes on office walls and coffee tables.
Warfighting organizations are no strangers to strategic visions. "Joint Vision 2010," however, is a landmark attempt to set a path for the entire joint warfighting team-to produce a "template" for the evolution of the U.S. armed forces. If we take this literally, then "Joint Vision 2010" (JV 2010) is meant to be a pattern from which we can trace or build.
Unfortunately, more than a year after its publication, JV 2010 presents a quandary: Are we merely polishing up our old doctrine and organization with flashy words and mottoes? Is new technology the only change affecting the U.S. military? Do we have any guidance linking our vision and doctrine to planning and programming? A rough summary of the 23-page document includes three basic points:
#1 We have nearly the same interests and tasks as in the past.
"Our fundamental interests lie in enhancing U.S. security, promoting prosperity at home, and promoting democracy abroad. . . . On the whole, there is likely to be far more continuity than change in these interests and policies."
"The primary task of the armed forces will remain to deter conflict-but, should deterrence fail, to fight and win our nation's wars."
#2 Technology is changing warfare and enabling new operational concepts.
"This era...