The possibility of achieving decisive results from short warning attacks
appears to have improved greatly with technological advances. Indeed,
strategic surprise offers both golden opportunities and lethal dangers,
so it attracts much attention in today's world. In this monograph, Dr.
Colin Gray takes a broad view of strategic surprise, and relates it to
the current military transformation. He argues that the kind of
strategic surprise to which the United States is most at risk and which
is most damaging to our national security is the deep and pervasive
connection between war and politics. Although America is usually
superior at making war, it is far less superior in making peace out of
war. Dr. Gray concludes that the current military transformation shows
no plausible promise of helping to correct the long-standing U.S.
weakness in the proper use of forces as an instrument of policy. This
monograph was written under the Strategic Studies Institute's External
Research Associates Program (ERAP).