fought in the future. Getting a vision of the future more right than wrong depends on the military s ability to sift through experiences gathered from combat to discern those that will endure. This monograph seeks to do just that. A key premise of this paper is that the United States emerging national security strategy is right in postulating a future conflict environment dominated by irregular wars. For brevity, the paper concentrates on a few characteristics of future irregular wars that are likely to endure. For clarity, it parses the vision into the three classic levels of war; strategic, operational, and tactical. And for credibility, it concentrates on the ground dimension for two reasons: because Afghanistan and Iraq, like all irregular wars, are being fought principally on the ground and because the author s past intellectual endeavors and expertise have been in that dimension.

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