Publications

The Bush Administration has requested $611 billion for national defense in fiscal year 2009. This includes $541 billion for the “base” defense budget — $518 billion for the Department of Defense, and $23 billion for Department of Energy and other  defense related activities. The base defense budget is intended to cover the military’s longterm — essentially peace-time — force structure, readiness and modernization costs.

The United States is currently in a situation comparable to the one it confronted in the early days of the Cold War, when US civilian and military leaders were faced with a new and daunting challenge in the form of the Soviet Union. To address this  challenge, a long-term national strategy to preserve American security was developed. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States entered a period of relative calm — a “unipolar moment” in which its power was unrivaled and emerging threats to its security had not yet fully formed. Unfortunately, that period has been succeeded by a more dangerous era, as the United States now confronts several formidable challenges that may grow even more threatening in the years to come. The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the three existing and emerging strategic challenges that are most likely to preoccupy senior decision-makers in the coming years:

This report addresses the critical issue of allocating resources to deal with current and future discontinuities in the security environment. For the Defense Department, strategy is fundamentally about making choices as to how limited resources can best be used to provide for the nation’s security. One of the most difficult choices is  between apportioning resources to deal with current challenges confronting the military, or devoting them instead to creating novel or even revolutionary military capabilities that address emerging challenges. To help strike the appropriate balance between these two options, this report provides a framework for thinking about investment strategies at a time when the United States is at war, and facing the need to transform its military owing to the likelihood of significant shifts in the character of the military competition. The first section of the report addresses how the competitive environment has dramatically changed since the Cold War’s end, and notes how the Defense Department’s existing investment strategy is ill equipped to address these changes.

Starting with the establishment of the US Navy’s Fighter Weapons School (Topgun) in late 1968, the American military Services began committing themselves to longterm, sustained investments in realistic combat training despite the considerable costs and risks. The idea was to train fighter crews and, later, members of armored or mechanized units and other combatants in environments that closely replicated the challenges and stresses of actual combat. The insight behind this American “revolution in training affairs” was that, in the past, most individual losses had occurred during early missions or engagements when combatants were inexperienced novices prone to costly mistakes. The hope was that realistic training could enable most individuals to acquire the proficiency that only the survivors of early combat encounters had previously gained, whether by luck or innate talent. The US Air Force’s Red Flag exercises, the US Army’s National Training Center, and the US Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center are concrete manifestations of this commitment to tactical proficiency.

Ever since Thucydides recorded the dramatic fall of Athens’ vaunted navy at Syracuse in 413 BC, naval warfare has been marked by abrupt competitive shifts. Intense geopolitical and maritime rivalries between well-financed seafaring nations, the emergence of new operational challenges for established naval powers, and the novel incorporation of advanced technologies in naval weapons and ship designs have all repeatedly spurred transformations that have redefined naval warfare.

In the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld introduced the concept of dissuasion, citing it as one of the “four key goals that will guide the development of US forces and capabilities, their deployment and use.” This view was subsequently confirmed in both The National Defense Strategy of the United States, published in 2005, and the 2006 QDR. Yet despite its apparent prominence in US defense planning, there is significant uncertainty and even confusion regarding a number of key issues: What exactly is dissuasion, and how does it differ from deterrence? How can the United States operationalize dissuasion; that is, what types of instruments can be used to dissuade both opponents and allies alike? Finally, what are the main impediments to a successful dissuasion strategy, and how can they be overcome? This report addresses each of these issues.