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Today, the United States faces no existential threat; rather, it confronts an unusually wide and diverse array of challenges.

• Russia has reemerged as an aggressor state. China has become more repressive at home and more assertive abroad. Al Qaeda has spawned offshoots and imitators more powerful and more radical than itself. Climate change has advanced, and predictions of climate-related disasters have become more ominous, more imminent, and more credible. Cyberspace has emerged as a new battleground between the forces of order and disorder. Expansion of international travel makes the emergence of new communicable diseases like Ebola more dangerous. The past few years have been a reminder that stability is not the natural state of the international environment, that peace is not self-perpetuating, and that whole regions can descend suddenly into anarchy.

This book is the first of a series in which RAND will explore the elements of a national strategy for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy in a fast-changing world. Here, we lay out the major choices facing the next American administration both globally and in three critical regions. The initial chapters lay out alternatives for managing the world economy and the national defense, countering international terrorism, handling conflict in the cyber domain, and dealing with climate change. Subsequent chapters examine in more detail the choices to be faced in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. The final section proposes broad strategic guidelines that can inform and guide these choices.

Later volumes will develop further particular aspects of such a national strategy, including national defense, alliances and partnerships, institutional reform of the American system for managing national security, climate change, surprise and the role of intelligence in reducing it, and the global economy.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  The Global Economy

• Chapter Three

  National Defense

• Chapter Four

  Counterterrorism

• Chapter Five

  Cybersecurity

• Chapter Six

  Climate Change

• Chapter Seven

  Europe

• Chapter Eight

  East Asia

• Chapter Nine

  Middle East and South Asia

• Chapter Ten

  Rethinking American National Strategy