For more than 40 years, U.S. defense policy and the design of military capabilities were driven by the threat to national security posed by the Soviet Union and its allies. As the Soviet Union collapsed, analysts wondered what effect this dramatic change would have upon defense policy and the military capabilities designed to support it. Strangely enough, this development would ultimately have little effect on our defense policy. Over a decade later, American forces are a smaller, but similar version of their Cold War predecessors. The author argues that, despite many suggestions for significant change, the bureaucratic inertia of comfortable military elites has dominated the defense policy debate and preserved the status quo with only minor exceptions. This inertia raises the danger that American military capabilities will be inadequate for future warfare in the information age. In addition, such legacy forces are inefficient and inappropriately designed for the demands of frequent and important antiterrorist and peace operations. Lacquement offers extensive analysis concerning the defense policymaking process from 1989 to 2001, including in particular the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. This important study also provides a set of targeted policy recommendations that can help solve the identified problems in preparing for future wars and in better training for peace operations.

This book provides an authoritative account of how the US, British, and French armies have transformed since the end of the Cold War. All three armies have sought to respond to changes in their strategic and socio-technological environments by developing more expeditionary capable and networked forces. Drawing on extensive archival research, hundreds of interviews, and unprecedented access to official documents, the authors examine both the process and the outcomes of army transformation, and ask how organizational interests, emerging ideas, and key entrepreneurial leaders interact in shaping the direction of military change. They also explore how programs of army transformation change over time, as new technologies moved from research to development, and as lessons from operations were absorbed. In framing these issues, they draw on military innovation scholarship and, in addressing them, produce findings with general relevance for the study of how militaries innovate.

explains how the US military transformation failed in the post-Cold war era Harvey Sapolsky is a leading defence scholar in the US will be of interest to students of strategic studies, defence studies, military studies, US politics and security studies in general

While traditionally, Americans view expensive military structure as a poor investment and a threat to liberty, they also require the employment of armed forces as a guarantee of that very freedom. Beginning with the wars of the English colonies, Americans typically increased their military capabilities at the beginning of conflicts only to decrease them at the apparent conclusion of hostilities. In [this book], a stellar team of military historians argue that the United States sometimes managed effective drawdowns, sowing the seeds of future victory. Yet at other times, the drawing down of military capabilities undermined our readiness and flexibility, leading to more costly wars and perhaps defeat. The political choice to reduce military capabilities is influenced by Anglo-American pecuniary deicions and traditional fears of government oppression, and it has been haphazard throughout American history. These two factors form the basic American "liberty dilemma," the vexed relationship between the nation and its military apparatuses from the founding of the first colonies through to present times. With the termination of large-scale operations in Iraq and the winnowing of forces in Afghanistan, the United states military once again faces a significant drawdown in standing force structure and capabilities. The political and military debate around how best to affect this force reduction lacks a proper historical perspective. This volume aspires to inform this dialogue. Not a traditional military history, Drawdown analyzes cultural attitudes, political decisions, and institutions surrounding the maintenance of armed forces. -- Back cover.

Volume II continues the analyses and discussion of national security policy and strategy.

Since World War II, military intervention in developing world internal conflicts (DWIC) has become the primary form of U.S. military activity, and these interventions have proven unsuccessful in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This book argues such failure was entirely predictable, even inevitable, due both to the nature and dynamics of foreign military intrusion in the affairs of other countries and especially the DWICs that provide the major contemporary form of potential U.S. military in the foreseeable future. Basing its analysis in both human nature (the adverse reaction to prolonged outsider intrusion) and historical analogy, the book argues strongly why military intervention should be avoided as a national security option and the implications of such a policy decision for national security strategy and policy.

American Civil-Military Relations offers the first comprehensive assessment of the subject since the publication of Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State. Using this seminal work as a point of departure, experts in the fields of political science, history, and sociology ask what has been learned and what more needs to be investigated in the relationship between civilian and military sectors in the 21st century. Leading scholars—such as Richard Betts, Risa Brooks, James Burk, Michael Desch, Peter Feaver, Richard Kohn, Williamson Murray, and David Segal—discuss key issues, including: • changes in officer education since the end of the Cold War • shifting conceptions of military expertise in response to evolving operational and strategic requirements • increased military involvement in high-level politics • the domestic and international contexts of U.S. civil-military relations. The first section of the book provides contrasting perspectives of American civil-military relations within the last five decades. The next section addresses Huntington’s conception of societal and functional imperatives and their influence on the civil-military relationship. Following sections examine relationships between military and civilian leaders and describe the norms and practices that should guide those interactions. What is clear from the essays in this volume is that the line between civil and military expertise and responsibility is not that sharply drawn, and perhaps given the increasing complexity of international security issues, it should not be. When forming national security policy, the editors conclude, civilian and military leaders need to maintain a respectful and engaged dialogue. Essential reading for those interested in civil-military relations, U.S. politics, and national security policy.

Transformation should lie at the heart of our new approach to defense. The development of transformational capabilities, processes, and force structures should be given strategic focus to meet the principal challenges under our defense strategy. India is already ceased with the necessity of transformation albeit without any documented national security guidelines or operating instructions, which are legislated or have the validation of at least the 'Cabinet Committee on Security'(CCS). In other words the first step would be to create a draft security strategy based on many assumptions, like the foreign policy or the cumulative emerging threat scenario as appreciated by the Defence Intelligence Agency(DIA). This well researched book is a result of the project allotted by the USI under the Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa chair. The book is therefore more as an idea or a theoretical construct, basically to bring in more clarity to the various options available for this great transformation of the Indian military. The author has deliberated upon various landmarks of transformation milestones achieved so far by the three services and given recommendations to further build upon ongoing modernization plan and shift to a higher plane of transformational activities.

Smartly and appealingly positioned at the intersection of theory and practice, Joseph Cerami's book is an essential resource for students and researchers in search for a coherent picture of policy innovation and leadership of U.S. and U.N. efforts to design and implement Weapons of Mass Destruction policy initiatives.