This 1999 report, from a Department of Defense-appointed panel led by former Senators Warren Rudman and Gary Hart, predicts increasing American strategic vulnerability, especially to terrorist attack. The United States Commission on National Security/21st Century has been charged with examining and assessing post-Cold War defense requirements in the most comprehensive reassessment of US defense policy since 1947. This will be conducted in three phases: "the first to describe the world emerging in the first quarter of the next century, the second to design a national security strategy appropriate to that world, and the third to propose necessary changes to the national security structure in order to implement that strategy effectively." This report fulfills the first phase.