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President's Welcome

Welcome to www.csbaonline.org, the website of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. We created this site as a resource for anyone who is looking for innovative and effective ways to think about our Nation's defense budget and strategy.

Today we face the challenge —and the opportunity—of undertaking a comprehensive defense posture review in a time of war and a growing global financial crisis. Key decisions will have to be made with respect to strategy and defense priorities in a dynamic security environment characterized by increasingly tight budget constraints. For the nation, the imperative to “think smarter” about defense has rarely been greater.

CSBA’s Strategy for the Long Haul, developed in 2007-2008, provides a ready stockpile of information and analysis to inform and support the administration’s defense strategy review, and to assist the Congress, the strategic studies community, defense professionals, and the media in evaluating the results of this review, and of the other defense initiatives likely to be undertaken in 2009-2010.
In the coming year, CSBA will leverage the intellectual insights on defense strategy, policy, programs and budgets in the Strategy for the Long Haul series and companion monographs to encourage the Obama Administration to craft a defense posture that substantially enhances the US military’s competitive position in an increasingly hostile and demanding security environment, and to support the efforts of other key constituencies that will influence the outcome of the administration’s efforts.

The need for a thoughtful, coherent US defense strategy in the face of unprecedented challenges to the international security environment has never been greater. CSBA is prepared to bring its intellectual capital to bear on the problems and to work with the new administration, Congress, and the military as they forge the next Quadrennial Defense Review, a new National Security Strategy, and to establish longer-term resource priorities in the next Future Years Defense Program (FYDP).

Indeed that work began early in 2009: CSBA’s VP for strategic studies served on the Defense Department’s transition team, and other CSBA experts shared their thinking with key policy makers in the Defense Department, senior military leaders, National Intelligence Council, and the Office of Management and Budget, among other Executive Branch offices. These meetings brought additional opportunities: a request by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to advise on preparing for the upcoming defense review, and a request by General James Mattis, Commander, Joint Forces Command, to consider how his command might best reorganize to prepare for the future.

CSBA’s ongoing research has also resulted in requests by senior Air Force and Marine Corps leaders to provide analytic support for their QDR efforts, as well as invitations to participate in high level meetings with the Army and Navy leadership, including the Army chief of staff, General Casey, and the Navy’s chief of naval operations, Admiral Roughhead.

Congress continues to tap CSBA’s team for their expertise. Representative Mac Thornberry called CSBA’s effort “outstanding and incredibly helpful.” CSBA staff briefed the Defense Policy Board, the Defense Science Board, Defense Sciences Research Council, Navy Strategy Group, and the Senior QDR Review Group, among others. In addition, CSBA has participated in forums organized by other defense groups, including Aspen Strategy Group, Heritage Foundation, MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, Center for New American Security, Center for Naval Analyses, and the US Military Academy, among many others.

Having laid this foundation, CSBA continues to advance its findings through an aggressive outreach program to government officials and influential leaders in support of what should be the most important defense posture review since the Cold War’s end.

We thank you for your involvement and support.

Andrew Krepinevich