Developing Resource-Informed Strategic Assessments and Recommendations
Abstract
The United States will soon be conducting another major review of national-security strategy. It will be the responsibility of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to provide resource-informed assessments and recommendations to the Secretary of Defense and the President. This monograph illustrates newly developed methods and tools to support the chairman's efforts. We sought a way to compare strategies that would integrate expectations about effectiveness, risks, and resource implications. Such an approach would tie into the Department of Defense's themes of capabilities-based planning, risk management, and portfolio analysis. To permit timely responses to senior-leader guidance, questions, and feedback, we put a premium on relatively simple methods. In developing a strategic planning approach, we drew on the past history of defense planning and strategic planning in large business organizations. A central concept is viewing issues through what the business world calls an operating-unit perspective. We offer a framework for strategic analysis with three dimensions: operating units (COCOMs) that constitute the portfolio of national defense; alternative strategies that distribute weight, and thus capabilities and resources, differently across this portfolio; and assessment and comparison of implications -- expected results, risks, and costs -- of each portfolio strategy. Using this framework, this report offers first-order assessments of the implications, by COCOM, of three illustrative strategies, each with a different primary emphasis: countering Islamic insurgency directly with U.S. forces; building up effective local partners to bear more of the burden of security; and responding to rising Chinese power and assertiveness.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2008
- Accession Number
- ADA487240
Entities
People
- David C. Gompert
- Duncan Long
- Paul K. Davis
- Stuart E. Johnson
Organizations
- RAND Corporation