Publications

This report seeks to provide the basis for an informed and constructive debate over the role of nuclear weapons in the overall US defense posture. To this end, the principal focus is on identifying the existing and emerging security environment as it pertains to nuclear weapons. The report also offers some recommendations on how the United States might best respond to the challenges posed by nuclear proliferation, and, hopefully, create a more secure global environment.

This monograph discusses the current state of the United States Air Force and how it can better align its institutional identity and force posture to the future security environment. It offers a fiscally-constrained menu of recommendations for how that realignment might be realized over the next twenty years, with a larger force posture in mind.

The central argument of this report is that, in light of the complex and intensifying security challenges the United States now faces, the nation can no longer afford poor strategic performance. The time to reverse the decline in US strategic competence is long overdue. The first task is for American political and military leaders to develop a clearer understanding of what strategy actually is, and what cognitive skills are necessary to craft and implement good strategies.

The Obama Administration has requested a total of $668 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD) in the FY 2010 budget. The “base” budget for the Department includes $534 billion in discretionary funding and an additional $4 billion in mandatory funding. The budget also includes, for the first time, full-year funding for the wars in Iraq and  Afghanistan—now termed Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO). The cost of the wars is estimated at $130 billion for FY 2010. In real terms, the base DoD budget is an $18 billion increase over last year’s budget, while the funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a $17 billion decrease from FY 2009.

This report assesses the effect that the operations in these two theaters have had on the plans, programs, and budgets of the US military, specifically those of the US Army. It makes projections for the future costs of the operations in these two theaters.

The United States currently faces a host of critical foreign and defense policy challenges, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, instability in Pakistan and the reconstitution of an operational sanctuary for key elements of al Qaeda and the Taliban in parts of that country, Iran’s development of an indigenous uranium enrichment capability and perhaps a nuclear weapons program as well, a resurgent Russia that is increasingly authoritarian at home and assertive abroad, and China’s ongoing development and deployment of advanced military capabilities. In addition to managing these current conflicts and potential crises, the President and his advisors will also be responsible for decisions that will shape US defense strategy and force structure for years and possibly even decades to come. Because the dangers the United States now faces are so numerous and so demanding, one of the most critical tasks for the Obama administration will be to reassess and reshape America’s military alliances.