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Defense Strategy Review This site, edited by Charles Knight of the Project on Defense Alternatives, was founded in 2009. The site was archived in 2014. It remains a rich source for 574 documents and articles. Some posts here are full-text and some are short descriptions or comments on documents with links to servers hosted elsewhere.…
Crisis in Eastern Europe: Origins, Putin’s Input, and Tasks Ahead
by Lutz Unterseher, 10 April 2014 Origins During President Clinton’s first term he followed the advice of his Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to resist proposals for eastward expansion of NATO. They understood that NATO expansion would alienate Russia. However, in the summer of 1994 Clinton changed his mind. He faced discouraging predictions of…
Asia Pivot and Air-Sea Battle: Precipitating Military Competition with China?
by Carl Conetta, 03 March 2014 Will China come to pose a peer military threat to the United States? The Obama administration’s 2012 Strategic Defense Review and the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) turn on this eventuality. Both the so-called “Asia pivot” and the evolving Air-Sea Battle (ASB) operational concept are meant to preclude it.…
US doesn’t need more defense dollars to ease crisis in East China Sea
Charles Knight, letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, 24 Janurary 2014. Preventing war with a rising China requires diplomatic wisdom, not additional US military investment. Nicholas Burns (“The trouble with China,” Op-ed, Jan. 16) cites a recent mini-crisis in the East China Sea as a warning sign for “congressional leaders in both parties…
Reset Defense Bulletin: Small Changes for the Army and Navy
PDA Review from 20 Janaury 2014 Reset Defense Bulletin In the last issue of the Reset Defense Bulletin we reported that the Pentagon will likely pass up one of the best options for greater strategic efficiency — that is relying more on a strong and capable strategic reserve for large and medium scale wars. The…
“Omnibus” Information and Commentary: What Did the Appropriators Really Do to Defense Spending?
by Winslow T. Wheeler 16 January 2014 Summary of Findings: In the so-called “war-related,” Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account of the 2014 Omnibus, there is a DOD program spending increase of $10.8 billion above what President Obama requested. This has been misreported as a “$5 billion” increase. The OCO account should be re-titled the War…
Will the U.S. make needed changes to national strategy?
A new Quadrennial Defense Review and a new National Security Strategy are expected early this year. These iterations of routine official documents arrive in the context of a slow wind down of the post-9/11 wars, the problematic strategic legacies of these military interventions and a sluggish economic recovery from the Great Recession. Together these conditions…
Donald C. F. Daniel on Strategic Adjustment and the Benefits of Sequester
August 2013 The adverse consequences of hangings and budgetary cutbacks preoccupy those who face them. There may be no silver lining for those about to die, but there can be for those who must live with less. Cutbacks can force evaluation of priorities and the slimming of organizations whose bloat clouds institutional concentration and hampers…
Larry Wilkerson on Strategic Adjustment
July 2013 I was there (special asst to CJCS Powell) when we implemented the reductions to establish the Base Force and, further, when Les Aspin and Bill Clinton implemented even further cuts (resulting in the need, later, to use contractors massively in order to fight two wars simultaneously and thus avoid end strength limitations imposed…
Matthew Leatherman on Strategic Adjustment
July 2013 One of the Pentagon’s earliest and catchiest bumper-stickers for the automatic cuts of sequestration came from then-Secretary Leon Panetta during the first week of January 2012. If that cut arrived – as it did – the Pentagon would “probably have to throw that [strategy] out the window and start over.” Eighteen months have…
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