Publications

This study assesses the US Army’s transformation initiative. Its goal is principally diagnostic, rather than prescriptive. That is, this assessment examines the Army’s approach to transformation in light of the challenges it will likely confront over the mid- to long-term future (i.e., 2013–2018). It is not intended to be prescriptive (i.e., to offer an alternative to the Army’s transformation initiative). This assessment concludes that the Army’s transformation vision, if realized, would yield  revolutionary results and displace the combined arms, mechanized operations that have dominated since the dawn of blitzkrieg. However, it also finds that there are substantial risks inherent in the Army’s approach to transformation, and that the Service is likely proceeding down a transformation path that is too narrow to account for the full range of missions it will likely confront in the post-transformation era.

This paper offers a first-blush assessment of the coalition campaign against Saddam Hussein’s regime that began on March 19, 2003, and was declared completed by President George W. Bush on May 1, 2003. Given the lack of comprehensive data on coalition operations and the tentative nature of much of the data thus far made public, many of the “lessons” or implications that follow must be regarded as preliminary. A thorough independent assessment of the conflict is needed, similar to the Gulf War Air Power Survey commissioned by the US Air  Force after Operation Desert Storm. Moreover, any assessment of Operation Iraqi Freedom should focus on how the experience of this war will influence future military competitions. The following are among the war’s potential implications for US military planners:

This report looks at the US military services struggling to adapt to an expeditionary era. This expeditionary era has emerged from two defining developments. First, due to the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 and of the Soviet Union, itself, in 1991,  more and more US combat forces have been brought home from the overseas garrisons, bases, and ports they once occupied on the periphery of America’s Cold War adversary. Second, there is ample reason to anticipate that future adversaries, having seen Iraq routed twice by US-led coalition forces after they were allowed to deploy unmolested into Southwest Asia, will seek asymmetric ways of opposing the movement of US military forces into their region.

This report addresses the issue of the United States pursuing a preventive war (or what the Bush Administration has labeled “preemptive” war) against Iraq. Preventive wars and attacks are relatively rare in history, and for good reason. Any war is a risky proposition. Choosing to assume that risk by initiating conflict is something that states have done typically with great reluctance. Nevertheless, a strong case can be made for launching a preventive war against Iraq.

This net assessment of the military-technical revolution, issued in July of 1992, is perhaps the best-known assessment prepared by the Office of Net Assessment. It has, I believe, held up well over time. The strategic management issues it raised should still be of special interest to top-level Department of Defense officials.

The Department of Defense (DoD) in its 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) concluded that the “anti-access” threat—the complex mix of political, geographic, and military factors that could prevent or delay US forces from deploying to a combat theater—is the dominant strategic challenge confronting future US power-projection operations in regions of potential conflict, particularly in Asia.