Publisher's Synopsis
"Defense reviews are political documents, as much as they are analytical ones. This report examines three main questions. First, why has the defense strategy process evolved in the way it has? Second, why, despite so much time and effort, do strategies so often come up short? Finally, and most importantly, how can the process change to make for better strategy? Using a mixture of primary and secondary sources and firsthand interviews, this report first traces the history of major defense reviews in the post-Cold War period from the Base Force through the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review. The report then explores the politics behind these reviews to explain the structural, personnel, and political reasons why these defense reviews often embrace the status quo, and predicts what factors -- from budgets to timing to senior-level involvement -- may allow a review to develop more-innovative findings. The report concludes with a series of reco
