Resourcing The National Defense Strategy

Resourcing the national defense strategy: implications of long term defense budget trends: hearing before the full committee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, first session, hearing held November 18, 2009.

Resourcing the national defense strategy : implications of long term defense budget trends : hearing before the full committee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, first session, hearing held November 18, 2009.

This monograph offers key considerations for DoD as it works through the on-going defense review. The author outlines eight principles for a risk management defense strategy. He argues that these principles provide "measures of merit" for evaluating the new administration's defense choices. This monograph builds on two previous works-- Known unknowns: unconventional "strategic shocks" in defense strategy development and The new balance: limited armed stabilization and the future of U.S. landpower. Combined, these three works offer key insights on the most appropriate DoD responses to increasingly "unconventional" defense and national security conditions. This work in particular provides DoD leaders food for thought, as they balance mounting defense demands and declining defense resources.

This book explores the National Defense Strategy (NDS) which serves as the Defense Department's capstone document in a long-term effort. It flows from the NSS and informs the National Military Strategy. It also provides a framework for other DoD strategic guidance, specifically on campaign and contingency planning, force development, and intelligence. It reflects the results of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and lessons learned from on-going operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. It addresses how the U.S. Armed Forces will fight and win America's wars and how they seek to work with and through partner nations to shape opportunities in the international environment to enhance security and avert conflict. The challenges that the United States, our allies and our partners face are examined in this book, including violent transnational extremist networks, hostile states armed with weapons of mass destruction, rising regional powers, emerging space and cyber threats, natural and pandemic disasters, and a growing competition for resources. The Department of Defense must respond to these challenges while anticipating and preparing for those of tomorrow.

The post-cold war era presented security challenges that at one level are a continuation of the cold war era; at another level, these phenomena manifested in new forms. Whether the issues of economics and trade, transfer of technologies, challenges of intervention, or humanitarian crisis, the countries of the South (previously pejoratively labelled “Third World” or “developing” countries) have continued to address these challenges within the framework of their capabilities and concerns. The volume explores defence diplomacies, national security challenges and strategies, dynamics of diplomatic manoeuvers and strategic resource management of Latin American, southern African and Asian countries.

This monograph explores new ideas for analyzing national defense strategy, building on concepts that enjoy credence in the defense world while borrowing other concepts from the business world. It is the companion of a longer analytical report on the same subject. Both result from a study of how to assess the implications of national defense strategy, conducted by RAND at the behest of the Joint Staff's J-8 and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. For decades, RAND has partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in developing and using methods of analysis to solve complex defense problems. From the early days of systems analysis and cost-benefit analysis to the recent advent of capabilities-based planning and portfolio management, RAND has sought useful methods wherever they might be found, and it has invented others. In this study, methods that have proved successful in complex corporations are examined for their potential value in setting and assessing national defense strategy. These methods are driven by the imperative to focus capabilities and align resources toward goals in a dynamic environment, fundamentally the same imperative currently facing DoD as it strives for "jointness" in an unsettled security environment. This is an auspicious time to combine ideas from corporate success with methods developed over the last decade at RAND and elsewhere to improve the assessment of national defense strategy. The application of these ideas and methods is contained in the companion report. Although each document can stand alone, the authors recommend viewing them in tandem. Both should be of interest to practitioners and researchers concerned with connecting the ends with the means of national defense strategy. This essay may be of greater value to decision makers, but the main report will be of particular interest to persons with responsibility to perform the analysis.

National secuirty strategy is a vast subject involving a daunting array of interrelated subelements woven in intricate, sometimes vague, and ever-changing patterns. Its processes are often irregular and confusing and are always based on difficult decisions laden with serious risks. In short, it is a subject understood by few and confusing to most. It is, at the same time, a subject of overwhelming importance to the fate of the United States and civilization itself. Col. Dennis M. Drew and Dr. Donald M. Snow have done a considerable service by drawing together many of the diverse threads of national security strategy into a coherent whole. They consider political and military strategy elements as part of a larger decisionmaking process influenced by economic, technological, cultural, and historical factors. I know of no other recent volume that addresses the entire national security milieu in such a logical manner and yet also manages to address current concerns so thoroughly. It is equally remarkable that they have addressed so many contentious problems in such an evenhanded manner. Although the title suggests that this is an introductory volume - and it is - I am convinced that experienced practitioners in the field of national security strategy would benefit greatly from a close examination of this excellent book. Sidney J. Wise Colonel, United States Air Force Commander, Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education