Tradeoffs in defense strategic planning: lessons from the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review

ABSTRACT

Defense ministries conduct strategic planning in various ways. In this article I outline tradeoffs in the design of strategic planning processes, and consider the implications of these tradeoffs for choices about the conduct of defense planning in different circumstances. Whereas an inclusive and transparent planning process is well-suited to building internal and external buy-in for a defense strategy, a more exclusive and opaque process is more likely to generate a defense strategy that departs from the status quo and speaks candidly about key challenges. The design of a defense planning process should therefore be informed by certain features of its context, such as whether the international security environment is stable or in flux and whether the defense ministry enjoys or lacks strong political support. I base the article’s findings on an in-depth analysis of the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review, which served for nearly two decades as the major strategy process of the U.S. Department of Defense. This analysis draws on interviews I conducted of 23 defense officials and experts, as well as primary and secondary sources. More generally, my findings highlight for scholars and practitioners the importance of understanding how planning processes can shape defense and national security policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Defense
• strategic planning
• strategy
• national security
• participation
• transparency

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the participants at a February 2017 workshop at the Centre for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen and to the anonymous reviewers for very helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. I thank IBM Center for the Business of Government, American University, and the School of International Service at American University for their support of this research. I am also grateful to Edward Lucas, Kate Tennis, and Balazs Martonffy for excellent research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Davis and Wilson (2011) and Davis (2018) for a related argument that it is important to prioritize experimentation and imagination over standardization and consensus when the security context is changing dramatically. See Cohen (2018), 60–63 for a different related argument: that the difficulty of predicting future strategic needs means that it may be best for defense reviews to make only incremental changes to defense strategy.

2. See Jensen (2018) for an application of other policy process theory that sheds light on links between defense planning and policy.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the IBM Center for the Business of Government, American University, and the School of International Service at American University.

Notes on contributors

Jordan Tama

Jordan Tama is Associate Professor at the School of International Service at American University, Research Fellow at the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, and Co-Director of the Bridging the Gap Project. His research examines the politics and processes of U.S. foreign and national security policy making. His work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, Woodrow Wilson Center, American Political Science Association, and IBM Center for the Business of Government.