Addressing the Imbalance Between Strategy and Resources in a Turbulent World
Expectation, Meet Reality
The U.S. strategy and defense program outlined in the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review was predicated on certain assumptions:
- That Europe would be stable and at peace.
- That conditions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East were sufficiently quiet to continue drawing down large-scale U.S. ground, air, and naval forces to a series of small-scale counterterrorist efforts.
These conditions, it was thought, would allow the United States to focus more attention and resources on the Asia-Pacific region, "rebalancing" U.S. foreign and defense policy.
These assumptions, reflected in the presidential budget shown in Force II below, have been upended. However, the Budget Control Act limits defense spending to the levels described in Force I. Simply put, the current levels of military spending did not anticipate a revanchist Russia, the collapse of the Iraqi military and the rise of ISIS, or the continued need for U.S. combat forces in Afghanistan...
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