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“Defense Planning in a Time of Conflict: A Comparative Analysis of the 2001-2014 Quadrennial Defense Reviews, and Implications for the Army,” a Jan. 31, 2018, report from the RAND Corporation, analyzes the aforementioned years’  QDRs through the lenses of “organization and process, strategy development, force planning, modernization and transformation, resources, defense reform and infrastructure, risk assessment, and reception” and “identifies trends, implications, and recommendations for the Army and U.S. Department of Defense, in order to shape the conduct of and improve future reviews,” according to RAND’s website. “Most QDRs did not adequately address either the growing portfolio of demands on the force or risks associated with different end strengths and mixes of active- and reserve-component forces,” the site reads. “To avoid a similar outcome, future defense reviews should focus on assessing the adequacy of U.S. forces to support the chosen strategy at an acceptable level of risk and on characterizing the budgets needed to support those forces in the near, mid-, and long terms.” Learn more about the report here.”Most QDRs did not adequately address either the growing portfolio of demands on the force or risks associated with different end strengths and mixes of active- and reserve-component forces,” the site reads. “To avoid a similar outcome, future defense reviews should focus on assessing the adequacy of U.S. forces to support the chosen strategy at an acceptable level of risk and on characterizing the budgets needed to support those forces in the near, mid-, and long terms.”

“Navigating Dangerous Pathways: A Pragmatic Approach to U.S.-Russian Relations and Strategic Stability,” a January 2018 report published by the Center for a New American Security and co-authored by James Miller Jr., PhD, president of Adaptive Strategies and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, and Richard Fontaine, CNAS president, offers “concrete recommendations for managing each of the three pathways” that their September 2017 report “A New Era in U.S.-Russian Strategic Stability: How Changing Geopolitics and Emerging Technologies are Reshaping Pathways to Crisis and Conflict” identified as having the potential to lead “to crisis or conflict” between the United States and Russia. “The aim is to help shape the ongoing debate regarding U.S.-Russian relations and guide actions affecting U.S. nuclear posture, ballistic missile defenses, cyber deterrence, and space resilience,” they write. “The recommendations also address the American role in NATO and NATO-Russian relations, both of which are of critical importance to all three pathways.”

In a Feb. 2, 2018, report entitled “The Return of Political Warfare,” Seth Jones, PhD, Harold Brown chair, Transnational Threats Project director and International Security Program senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says that US defense strategy must be take unconventional warfare, and especially political warfare, into consideration “since the costs and risks of conventional and nuclear war may be prohibitively high” for it and the countries it sees itself as competing with. “Recognizing that other powers routinely conduct political warfare, George Kennan encouraged U.S. leaders to disabuse themselves of the ‘handicap’ of the ‘concept of a basic difference between peace and war’ and to wake up to ‘the realities of international relations—the perpetual rhythm of struggle, in and out of war,'”  Jones writes. “Kennan’s advice may be even more relevant today in such a competitive world.”

READ THE REPORT — In “Keeping A2/AD at Bay: The Imperative for Base Defense in the Western Pacific,” a new report from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, Lt. Col. Thomas R. McCabe, USAF Ret., argues that the United States must view the Western Pacific as a frontline and prepare its aircraft, assets and bases in the region for conventional attack due to China’s development and deployment of “modern military systems, especially conventional ballistic and cruise missiles.”  Further, he writes, “leaders should consider several countermeasures, including dispersal, passive defense, and active defense” in anticipation of such an attack. Learn more about the report here.