Why Kennan’s containment strategy ensures defeat within the second space race
Few today keep in mind that America’s successful Cold War strategy against the Soviet Union was based on a strategic framework that went far beyond military power and yet formed the premise of all statecraft and grand strategy – this was called George Kennan’s containment strategyKennan’s approach was published in 1947 and shaped almost every military and diplomatic motion of the United States until the top of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Kennan’s strategy was straightforward: avoid direct confrontation with the Soviets and try and contain their territorial and economic expansionist ambitions until their state economy eventually collapsed. This strategy was good, and it worked. Containment was an appropriate strategy for a time when national power was largely measured by lines on a map and the variety of products produced and sold. Today, it is just not only inadequate, but harmful since it creates the illusion of security without providing it. Neither army tanks nor fifth-generation fighter jets can preserve our military, economic, and diplomatic sovereignty, which is way more threatened within the digital realm than in some other.
Today’s competition between the nice powers requires a 21st twentieth century strategy that recognizes the profound shift in how a nation’s military and economic power is measured. It now not exists only within the physical realm, but the vast majority of it exists within the digital world, in e-commerce, networks, apps, and contracts stored within the cloud. Even conventional currencies, considered in paper and coins, are quickly disappearing into “checkbook” money, crypto money, or corporate shares. The physical realm still ultimately determines life or death, but much of its power every thing quickly becomes mere sequences of “1s” and “0s” – digital dataAnd just as quickly, space is becoming the popular area through which and with which this necessary data is communicated, processed and stored.
To a level that now dwarfs the physical world, national power and dominance is asserted and defined by data stored in or transmitted across information networks. In terms of national security and significant infrastructure, it’s the records themselves that should be protected in those networks. And only a few of them are protected. When they’re, records are only protected with a Kennane-style physical “containment” mentality – at a purely physical site or network level, a mentality that repeatedly proves to be easily compromised and wholly inadequate for national security in the knowledge age.
To ensure a vibrant, free market economy, we’d like a brand new national strategy – a move from the purely physical to the digital. A method that recognizes the critical role of space in defining the long run of the digital economy and takes into consideration the just about infinite variety of vulnerable attack surfaces that a digital future offers.
To ensure personal and national sovereignty, the United States must secure all records sent to, from, or stored in critical infrastructure (e.g., power plants, transportation systems, and financial institutions) and all unclassified military communications (including GPS) with some level of encryption. The vulnerability of those sectors today represents a national vulnerability that affects all facets of our power. Consumer demands and military needs for more autonomous and versatile operations are causing these systems to turn into increasingly hyperconnected. This connectivity is as essential to national health as clean air and water. If we don’t secure it, our country can be ceaselessly vulnerable to extortion, mental property theft, and catastrophic economic attacks.
The current strategy for safeguarding data and the networks that connect it’s an inadequate extension of Kennan’s containment strategy, which is actually designed to contain, protect, and alert attacks. In today’s digital world, political boundaries are unclear at best and provide chains are opaque. A national strategy focused on hiring increasingly cyber defense teams is a futile exercise and can’t sustain with the exponential growth of information and networks. Just because the expensive and well-planned Maginot Line offered no protection against Germany’s blitzkrieg of mechanized warfare, we could deploy every technician within the country to defend against cyberattacks and it might still not be enough to guard our national power and modern lifestyle.
Just as George Kennan’s strategy for securing the physical world was critical to his time, today’s strategy must be sure that Americans can operate safely anywhere and anytime within the hyper-connected digital realm. Instead of specializing in containment and protection from external forces, we must assume that every one networks, even probably the most secure, are already compromised because we now know that they already are.
We have to triple and speed up implementation. Zero-Trust policies across all federal agencies; as with previous anti-counterfeit and anti-counterfeit measures, we must protect national security and significant infrastructure networks by legally mandating Zero Trust on the record level. This approach protects data from the uncertainties of supply chains and compromised networks.
History has shown us that tools of war quickly turn into tools of crooks and criminals, and we’re already seeing this evolution in cyberspace. At some point, everyone’s personal data would require similar protection to that of our government. Until then, a zero-trust protection strategy ought to be implemented in all facets of national security and significant infrastructure, no matter classification.
We must abandon the present strategy of protecting data and networks, which relies on George Kennan’s now inadequate strategy of containment. While this was appropriate for a balance of power quantified essentially by the tangibility of land, soldiers and industrial assets, it is totally inadequate for cyberspace and the digital world.
A real zero-trust policy, where all records and their management controls are protected by encryption and controlled by their owner, is the one strategy to preserve and “contain” what’s going to constitute power on this century. Anything less puts our space-faring future, our national power, and our lifestyle in danger.
