Planning America's Security; Lessons from the National Defense Panel
Abstract
This report reviews recent longer-term U.S. defense planning attempts, focusing especially on the NDP. The NDP was established as an independent effort to provide guidance to the Secretary of Defense and the Congress on matters pertaining to the long-term national security of the United States. This report reviews the motivations for creating the NDP, the NDP's relationship to the QDR, the NDP's administrative and logistical experience, and the substantive results the NDP published in its final report. We conclude by discussing in depth some of the lessons learned from the first NDP experience and distilling recommendations for the Congress, the administration, the Department of Defense (DoD), and future NDP management teams. The substantive recommendations of the NDP report were initially overshadowed by other events that dominated the news headlines in late 1997 and early 1998, most notably the crisis with Iraq. Nevertheless, the report was sufficiently pointed to generate considerable interest-and not a little controversy-within the defense and national security communities. Of particular interest was the report's focus on the need for the DoD to accelerate its reform efforts (the NDP called this a "transformation strategy") to better position itself to meet the numerous new and unpredictable challenges of the next 20 years.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1999
- Accession Number
- ADA363977
Entities
People
- John E. Tedstrom
- John G. Mcginn
Organizations
- RAND Corporation