Setting Global Defense Strategy in the Face of Uncertainty

U.S. global defense strategy is at a critical juncture. After seven years of confl ict and with a change of president imminent, new options should and surely will be considered. Th is calls for reasoned analysis of alternatives before a new national defense strategy is set. Policymakers are well aware of this imperative because of recent history in which the United States grossly underestimated the risks and costs of the global war on terrorism and the decision to go to war in Iraq. Any such analysis should help decisionmakers to assess all major implications—expected and potential results, costs, and risks—of alternative strategies, side-by-side. Strategic analysis must be comprehensive, candid, and realistic; and it must confront head-on the multifaceted uncertainties of the emerging security environment. A pair of new monographs from the RAND Corporation off ers an analytic framework for responding to that challenge.1 Th is framework makes use of three methods that enable any large complex enterprise to set sound strategy in the midst of turmoil, be it a diversifi ed corporation in roiling markets or the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) in fl uid global security conditions: • using the perspective of operating units to determine needed capabilities and resources from the specifi c objectives derived from a given strategy • treating national defense as requiring a portfolio of capabilities that can be set and shifted to adapt strategy for better results and more acceptable costs and risks Research Brief