Recommendations for a Future National Defense Strategy
By Mackenzie Eaglen
December 01, 2017
Thank you, Chairman McCain, Ranking Member Reed, and distinguished members of the Committee on Armed Services for the opportunity to evaluate how the Department of Defense should effectively develop and implement a new National Defense Strategy.
Stop Repeating Past Mistakes
It’s long past time for a new National Defense Strategy that seeks to break the mold in honesty, clarity, conciseness, and fresh thinking. Since the end of the Cold War, these documents have repeatedly served as opportunities to redefine American force structure and interests globally. Unfortunately, the most recent generation of strategies has become increasingly unmoored from the strategic reality the country faces. Since the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon’s force-sizing construct has gradually became muddled and watered down at each iteration—from the aspirational objective of fighting two wars at once to the declinist “defeat-and-deny†approach—without enough substantive debate over the wisdom of the progressive abandonment of the two-war standard.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/12/01/recommendations_for_a_future_national_defense_strategy_112712.html
