This monograph examines the challenge in future threat definition. In order to do, it is necessary to understand where identification of threat originates, and how and why such identification is made in the context of international political relations. To define future threat is, in a sense, an impossible task, yet it is one that must be done. The only sources of empirical evidence accessible are the past and the present; one cannot obtain understanding about the future from the future. The author draws upon the understanding of strategic history obtainable from Thucydides' great History of the Peloponnesian War. He advises prudence as the operating light for American definition of future threat, and believes that there are historical parallels between the time of Thucydides and our own that can help us avoid much peril. The future must always be unpredictable to us in any detail, but the many and potent continuities in history's great stream of time can serve to alert us to what may well happen in kind.

Based on the author's analysis of Thucydides interpretation of strategic history influence, threats are often carried out when there is envy of an economic stable, technological advanced, and a solid local political process exists. The author views that these strategic history elements in the face of America's viewed as a global super power and our U.S. military will need to be fine-tuning our foreign strategic interests, and military strategy on a regular basis.Political scientists, historians, and military strategists, and international relations specialists may be interested in this work because these identified historical strategic forces could determine the future security of our nation.

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About the Author: ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

COLIN S. GRAY is Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, England. He worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, UK, and at the Hudson Institute in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, before founding the National Institute for Public Policy, a defense-oriented think tank in the Washington, DC, area. Dr. Gray served for 5 years in the Ronald Reagan administration on the President's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. A dual citizen of the United States and UK, he has served as an adviser to both the U.S. and British governments. His government work has included studies of nuclear strategy, arms control, maritime strategy, space strategy, and special forces. Dr. Gray has written 27 books, including: The Sheriff: America's Defense of the New World Order (University Press of Kentucky, 2004); Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (Weidenfeld and Nicol­son, 2005); Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2006); Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace and Strategy (Potomac Books, 2009); Na­tional Security Dilemmas: Challenges and Opportunities (Potomac Books, 2009); The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010); War, Peace and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History, 2nd Ed. (Routledge, 2011); Airpower for Strategic Effect (Air University Press, 2012); Perspectives on Strategy (Oxford University Press [OUP] 2013), which is the follow-on to Strategy Bridge. The final volume in the Strategy Bridge trilogy, entitled Strategy and Defence Planning: Meeting the Challenge of Uncertainty, was published by OUP in 2014. Dr. Gray is a graduate of the Universities of Manchester and Oxford.