The Next Defense Strategy
About this commentary series
By statute, the Department of Defense (DoD) must deliver a new National Defense Strategy (NDS) to Congress in 2022. And CNAS is here to help. From July to December 2020, CNAS will release new papers every week on the tough issues the next NDS should tackle. The goal of this project is to provide intellectual capital to the drafters of the 2022 NDS, focusing specifically on unfinished business from the past several defense strategies and areas where change is necessary but difficult.
Explore this series
Defense
A Joint Warfighting Concept for Systems Warfare
Future combat between peer and near-peer adversaries will be characterized, dominated, and decided by the collision of opposing systems of systems....
Defense
Air Force Structure in the Next National Defense Strategy
At present, the Air Force is both too small to meet current combatant command requirements and too large to remain ready and modernized under its current budget....
Defense
Moving Beyond A2/AD
The next National Defense Strategy should reconceptualize the military challenges China and Russia pose....
Defense
Next Generation Defense Strategy: Missile Defense
The next administration needs to more fully consider missile defense in the context of strategic deterrence....
Defense
Making Critical Choices for Better Posture Approaches
The U.S. Department of Defense must make critical choices in the next NDS to better link strategic objectives with posture in support of U.S. interests....
Defense
Conventional-Nuclear Integration in the Next National Defense Strategy
The next NDS must build on the limited progress that has been made to integrate conventional and nuclear strategy, planning, doctrine, and capabilities....
Defense
Reshaping the U.S. Military with a New Force Planning Construct
The nation is falling short, and the Department of Defense (DoD) can and must do more to help close the gap....
Defense
Enhancing Forward Defense: The Role of Allies and Partners in the Indo-Pacific
An effective next NDS requires a clear plan for marshaling and organizing the efforts of U.S. allies and partners in new ways....
Defense
Harnessing Military Talent to Compete in the 21st Century
Developments in technology mean that the DoD must update its processes to attract, recruit, and harness talent to apply skill sets where they are most needed....
Defense
Enlisting NATO to Address the China Challenge
Moving forward, the DoD should enlist NATO in efforts to address the China challenge....
Defense
Sustaining the Future of Indo-Pacific Defense Strategy
The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) should sustain the Indo-Pacific as the priority theater....
Defense
A Resource-Sustainable Strategy for Countering Violent Extremist Organizations
The United States has been trying to pivot from counterterrorism to strategic interstate competition for almost a decade....
Defense
Overcoming the Tyranny of Time: The Role of U.S. Forward Posture in Deterrence and Defense
The next defense strategy has the opportunity to codify the critical role of forward posture....
Defense
The All-Volunteer Force: Civil-Military Relations Hit Home—and Abroad
Tensions in the civil-military relationship threaten national security from conflicts abroad to cities across the United States....
Defense
The Decline of Deterrence
Deterrence is not as stable as believed, and is becoming less so....
Defense
The Next National Defense Strategy Will Be Shaped by Post-BCA Budget Instability
The post-BCA world will lead to greater uncertainty for the federal budget....
Defense
Addressing Deepening Russia-China Relations
Russia-China cooperation increases the challenge that each country poses to the United States....
Defense
Defining DoD’s Role in Gray Zone Competition
Note: This paper offers a counterpoint to another in this series, “A Strategy for Competition" (forthcoming), by Melanie Sisson....
Defense
Navy Force Structure in the Next National Defense Strategy
The discussion of Navy force structure is both timely and urgent....
Defense
Next Generation Defense Strategy: Space
Without significant changes in defense policy, programs, and staffing, U.S. strategic competitors will transform the nation’s asymmetric advantage into an asymmetric vulnerabi...
Defense
Institutional Roadblocks to the Defense Department’s Adoption of AI
Bureaucratic inertia, stemming in part from deep-rooted institutional and cultural resistance, has hampered DoD’s ability to rapidly develop, acquire, and deploy AI capabiliti...
Defense
Make China the Explicit Priority in the Next NDS
The Bottom Line The new NDS is an opportunity for the next Secretary of Defense in January 2021 to do three things: Further deepen and explicitly state the current NDS’s sound...
Defense
The Defense Industrial Base of the Future
The next iteration of defense technologies will require much more overlap with commercial industry....
Defense
Demilitarizing U.S. Policy in the Middle East
The next NDS must detail a new approach to the Middle East....
Defense
Sharpening the U.S. Military’s Edge: Critical Steps for the Next Administration
The Bottom Line The United States is losing its military technological advantage vis-à-vis great power competitors such as China. Reversing this trend must be DoD leadership’...
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