http://lobelog.com/pentagon-we-come-to-facilitate/#more-31766

Pentagon: We Come to Facilitate

by David Isenberg
The latest version of U.S. national security orthodoxy was on display this week at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, D.C., where Defense One, a division of Atlantic Media’s Government Executive Media Group, held its third annual summit on Monday. Over 500 people gathered to listen to various senior military, governmental, and political leaders give their views on the state of the world and how the United States is and should be responding.
The title of the conference summed up the essence of the gathering: The Age of Everything. As Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, speaking about Asia, wrote in a message to the summit:

The Asia-Pacific is a region of both extraordinary opportunity and extraordinary challenges, including continuing provocation from North Korea, ongoing threats of terrorism, the growing impact of climate change, and challenges to the long-held universal principle of freedom of navigation.
It is a region which exemplifies the challenges of “the age of everything,” as threats become more transnational, more transregional, and cannot be addressed in isolation. It is an age that brings complex challenges in every part of the world, from the destabilizing and malign influence of Russian aggression in Ukraine and Syria, to the steady metastasis of the Islamic State in the Middle East, to the growing threat of cyber warfare.

The mood, in short, was that threats are everywhere. As retired Air Force Lt. Gen., James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, said, “I don’t remember a time when we have been beset by a greater number and greater diversity of threats around the world.”http://lobelog.com/pentagon-we-come-to-facilitate/#more-31766