This report examines how US national security strategy and the USAF might change to better confront new challenges ...

Our analysis suggests that the United States could fail to achieve its core objectives -- could, in other words, lose -- under certain circumstances, in a conflict with any of the three most likely near- to mid-term state opponents -- North Korea, China, and Iran.

These findings are, of course, scenario specific; we do not mean to say that the United States. would, or must, fail in these or any other contingencies. The point that we wish to convey is that it is now fairly easy to devise scenarios in which the United States "loses" a war, something that seemed impossible during the post-Cold War era.