Homeland Stupidity has obtained a copy of the long awaited Quadrennial Defense Review Report (QDR), due to be officially released Monday. In the report, signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “the Department’s senior leadership sets out where the Department of Defense currently is and the direction we believe it needs to go in fulfilling our responsibilities to the American people,” Rumsfeld wrote in a brief letter accompanying the report.

“The United States is engaged in what will be a long war,” the report begins.

“Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has fought a global war against violent extremists who use terrorism as their weapon of choice, and who seek to destroy our free way of life. Our enemies seek weapons of mass destruction and, if they are successful, will likely attempt to use them in their conflict with free people everywhere. Currently, the struggle is centered in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we will need to be prepared and arranged to successfully defend our Nation and its interests around the globe for years to come. This 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review is submitted in the fifth year of this long war.”

The report (PDF) begins by laying out what the DoD has done since the last Quadrennial Defense Review in 2001. And from there, it gets really interesting. Here are a few choice cuts:

The long war against terrorist networks extends far beyond the borders of Iraq and Afghanistan and includes many operations characterized by irregular warfare — operations in which the enemy is not a regular military force of a nation-state. In recent years, U.S. forces have been engaged in many countries, fighting terrorists and helping partners to police and govern their nations. To succeed in such operations, the United States must often take an indirect approach, building up and working with others. This indirect approach seeks to unbalance adversaries physically and psychologically, rather than attacking them where they are strongest or in the manner they expect to be attacked. Taking the “line of least resistance” unbalances the enemy physically, exploiting subtle vulnerabilities and perceived weaknesses. Exploiting the “line of least expectation” unbalances the enemy psychologically, setting the conditions for the enemy’s subsequent defeat.

Highly distributed global operations over the past several years — in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Central Asia, the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Africa, and Latin America — make manifest the importance of small teams conducting missions uniquely tailored to local conditions. These operations also demonstrate the agility of U.S. forces forward-deployed in and near these regions to transition quickly from deterrence to humanitarian or other operations as required. In some places, U.S. forces have concentrated on attacking and disrupting enemy forces. In others, U.S. forces have worked to improve the lives of people in impoverished regions, or to build up the capacity of local security forces to police their own countries. In almost all cases, updated authorities, processes and practices were required to ensure unity of effort in these distributed operations. Still, additional cooperation authorities will be required if the U.S. Government is to be able to achieve its goals in the most cost-effective manner.

Victory will come when the enemy’s extremist ideologies are discredited in the eyes of their host populations and tacit supporters, becoming unfashionable, and following other discredited creeds, such as Communism and Nazism, into oblivion. This requires the creation of a global environment inhospitable to terrorism. It requires legitimate governments with the capacity to police themselves and to deny terrorists the sanctuary and the resources they need to survive. It also will require support for the establishment of effective representative civil societies around the world, since the appeal of freedom is the best long-term counter to the ideology of the extremists. The ultimate aim is that terrorist networks will no longer have the ability or support to strike globally and catastrophically, and their ability to strike regionally will be outweighed by the capacity and resolve of local governments to defeat them.

Just as these enemies cannot defeat the United States militarily, they cannot be defeated solely through military force. The United States, its allies and partners, will not win this long war in a great battle of annihilation. Victory can only be achieved through the patient accumulation of quiet successes and the orchestration of all elements of national and international power. U.S. military forces are contributing and will continue to contribute to wider government and international efforts to defend the homeland, attack and disrupt terrorist networks, and counter ideological support for terrorism over time. But broad cooperation, across the entire U.S. Government, society, and with NATO, other allies, and partners is essential.

I should interrupt. Defense Tech notes that this approach sounds exactly like what Sen. John Kerry was proposing: “Back in the ’04 campaign, the insufferable Massachusetts senator got hammered by Republicans for his calls for more international coalitions, for his observation that there were non-military ways to win the war on terror, and for his view that there might not be a formal end to the anti-terror fight.”

Long-duration, complex operations involving the U.S. military, other government agencies and international partners will be waged simultaneously in multiple countries around the world, relying on a combination of direct (visible) and indirect (clandestine) approaches. Above all, they will require persistent surveillance and vastly better intelligence to locate enemy capabilities and personnel. They will also require global mobility, rapid strike, sustained unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency capabilities. Maintaining a long-term, low-visibility presence in many areas of the world where U.S. forces do not traditionally operate will be required. Building and leveraging partner capacity will also be an absolutely essential part of this approach, and the employment of surrogates will be a necessary method for achieving many goals. Working indirectly with and through others, and thereby denying popular support to the enemy, will help to transform the character of the conflict. In many cases, U.S. partners will have greater local knowledge and legitimacy with their own people and can thereby more eff ectively fight terrorist networks. Setting security conditions for the expansion of civil society and the rule of law is a related element of this approach.

Throughout much of its history, the United States enjoyed a geographic position of strategic insularity. The oceans and uncontested borders permitted rapid economic growth and allowed the United States to spend little at home to defend against foreign threats. The advent of long-range bombers and missiles, nuclear weapons, and more recently of terrorist groups with global reach, fundamentally changed the relationship between U.S. geography and security. Geographic insularity no longer confers security for the country.

The United States seeks to build and expand global partnerships aimed at preventing proliferation; stopping WMD-related trafficking; helping friendly governments improve controls over existing weapons, materials and expertise; and discrediting weapons of mass destruction as instruments of national power. Improving the ability to detect, identify, locate, tag and track key WMD assets and development infrastructure in hostile or denied areas and to interdict WMD, their delivery systems, and related materials in transit are essential to this approach. In addition, the United States must improve its ability to identify and penetrate criminal networks bent on profiting from the proliferation of such dangerous weapons and expertise. Multinational efforts such as PSI provide a model to expand global cooperation to prevent proliferation.

If prevention efforts fail, the United States must be prepared to respond. An effective response requires that the United States use all elements of national power, working with like-minded nations, to locate, secure, and destroy WMD. The United States will use peaceful and cooperative means whenever possible, but will employ force when necessary. This will require growing emphasis on WMD elimination operations that locate, characterize, secure, disable and/or destroy a state or nonstate actor’s WMD capabilities and programs in a hostile or uncertain environment. The Military Departments will organize, train and equip joint forces for this increasingly important mission.

You wanted to know how the U.S. intends to win the war on terror? It’s all right here (PDF). Go read the whole thing.

I have been through it once already, and I haven’t yet found anything particularly objectionable or stupid. If I do, there will be an update. So far it looks like an excellent strategy for countering terrorism and meeting the threats the U.S. faces now and is likely to face in the next few years.