In a February 1997 speech, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili expressed the following thought: ... with all of the talk about today's dangerous world and the difficulties Americans have faced, it is too easy to overlook the fact that today the United States and its Allies are much safer than they were in the dark days of the Cold War. This "strategic pause," where the United States has no adversaries who are global powers, is providing us with the time to regroup, reflect on the challenges ahead, and prepare America's forces for the next millennium. The paper which follows suggests that as we reflect on the challenges ahead, we may gain some insight by casting light on the challenges of the past. It is written in the spirit of the wisdom of Patrick Henry, who in 1775 said, "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past." For like the turn of the coming century, the turn of the last century was characterized by a strategic pause as well. As the British writer H. G. Wells observed in 1914, "Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the early 20th century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible," words which seem strange to us today as we look back on the most warlike of centuries to date. While civilization hopes that the human race has outgrown its warrior nature, there are no guarantees that the 21st century will be less violent than the 20th. What Wells said about people in general was perhaps more specifically true for his American contemporaries. Yet, within the United States War and Navy Departments, there were individuals who were concerned about the nation's security, even though Americans as a society had no urgent awareness that their security was in any way imperiled. This paper traces the development of U.S. strategic appreciations, and the planning that went along with them in the years prior to the American entry into the First World War. In its conclusions, the paper will endeavor to demonstrate the ways in which the challenges faced by that generation of Americans were similar to the ones we face today. Richard H. Witherspoon Colonel, U.S. Army Director, Strategic Studies Institute Back to Table of Contents Joint U.S. Army-Navy War Planning WWI Back to SSI List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by US Army War College. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com