The U. S. Army Future Concept for the Human Dimension

2-5. Conclusion

Our understanding of the future OE is never static or complete. The myriad interactions occurring daily guarantee that next week’s interpretation of the future will differ from today’s interpretation. Any examination of the future OE is of necessity an ongoing effort that continuously generates changes to the product.

The global and domestic trends discussed above shape the future domestic environment. As these trends interact, they tend to amplify both the positive and the negative effects. Over time, this tends to create and increase a disparity of wealth, education, health, and general well-being. In many ways, this disparity is self-perpetuating and it breeds resentment between the extremes. Trends indicate that the demand for services (population growth) will outpace the nation’s ability to supply those services (economic growth.). There will be a large segment of our population that is undereducated, unemployed, and in poor health.
Implications of the OE
Some suggest that to study human history is to study the nature of conflict. A never-ending struggle for wealth, knowledge, and power, motivated by ideology, religion, ethnicity, and virtually any other differences among peoples that can motivate a struggle characterizes the story of civilization. The OE sets the conditions that may lead to conflict. An ever-shrinking pool of vital resources, (food, water, energy), combines with the growing global population to stress the capacity of the world to provide an acceptable quality of life for all. At the same time, the information age has dramatically expanded people’s access to knowledge and information. These phenomena—shrinking resources, growing populations, ubiquitous access to real time information—interact and merge to create a collective sense of global relative depravation.
Global relative depravation (resentment stemming from the realization that others in the world enjoy a higher quality of life) is an all-too-human reaction to the growing gap between haves and have-nots. In the not too distant past, people living in near poverty under miserable conditions assumed their experience was the norm. The elites, fearing class envy, did nothing to dispel this perception. In some cases, the former Soviet Union for one, the ruling authorities made a point of convincing its people that they were better off than the rest of the world by delivering their messages while controlling access to external information sources. Today, and increasingly so in the future, individuals, cultures, and societies recognize their plight and seek to improve their situation.
Time is in itself a constant, but its relation to the evolving OE and the impact it has on the human dimension in that environment is in constant flux. Globalization and information technologies have enabled near-instantaneous flow of information and compressed the time allowed for planning, decisionmaking, and the execution of operations. The Army must develop processes and capabilities that enable military decisionmaking to meet the challenges of the real time battlefield. If not managed properly, adversaries can manipulate this frenetic pace of operations forced upon the Army to support their operations and strategy. The compression of time feeds stress and contributes to strategic exhaustion. This exposes the Soldier, the Army, and the American people to a constant stream of near real time information detailing events in the OE. Over time, this begins to erode public support for the Army’s efforts. The adversary, who thinks in terms of decades or more, is less vulnerable to the pressure of time. His strategy may well rely on protraction—that is, the deliberate avoidance of decisive events while prolonging the conflict. The U.S. must consider and adopt a strategy and implement human dimension programs and processes that support an Army committed to persistent conflict over an extended time.
The physical environment encompasses a fixed amount of resources. The introduction of the human elements into that environment also introduces a competition for those resources. In an inverse relationship, available resources are shrinking as the demand for them is growing. When those resources remain relatively plentiful, that competition can be resolved with cooperation. As those resources become more constrained cooperation will evolve into competition. Actual or perceived shortages increase the potential for open conflict.

Globalization and the proliferation of information technologies increase the opportunity for competing cultures to interact. In most cases, this interaction results in a mutually acceptable relationship. In other instances, the interaction exposes irreconcilable differences and an increased potential for conflict. As competition in the global marketplace drives U.S. and MNCs to reduce costs, they will seek to take advantage of the explosion of information and information technologies. High tech jobs can be easily exported to low-cost nations with an excess educated population—India and China among others. As sensitive hardware and software development moves offshore, U.S. basic functions—finance, transportation, and even defense—become targets for developing an “enemy within.” The volume of imported technology and the expertise needed to detect a threat challenge the Army’s ability to detect and guard against malicious code or pre-programmed failure.

More than ever, the U.S. National Security Strategy must be an interagency effort, integrating all elements of national power. Those elements will include not only our diplomatic, economic, and military capabilities, but also the power of the human dimension that motivates and executes the details of that strategy.
This chapter presents a particularly negative outlook across many aspects of the future OE. Based upon factual research the trends are indeed daunting. There may be reason for hope that U.S. and global efforts will somehow check or even reverse these trends, but prudence dictates considering the future with a wary eye. Obviously, global trends require solutions beyond the means of nations let alone the U.S. Army, but the Army cannot ignore their impact. The next three chapters discuss the moral, physical, and cognitive components of the human dimension. It is only with an understanding of the future OE, an appreciation for the components of the human dimension, and the complexity resulting from their interaction that the Army can generate the changes necessary to prepare to man, train, equip, and employ the future Modular Force to conduct full spectrum operations.