Long Term Strategy

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There is growing agreement among national security professionals about the need for enhanced strategic foresight to help address increasingly complex and rapidly changing security challenges. Notably, a report issued in 2009 by the Project on National Security Reform specifically stated that "the current (security) environment virtually puts a premium on foresight - the ability to anticipate unwelcome contingencies". Numerous efforts have also been or are currently undertaken within the U.S. government to look at evolving trends, plausible futures, and anticipatory capacity building, including the National Intelligence Councils Global Trends series, the State Department's Project Horizon, the Joint Staff (J3) Multi-layer Assessment Program, Joint Force 2020, and quadrennial reviews in defense, diplomacy and development, homeland security, and intelligence.

Against this background, the Long-Term Strategy electives concentration focuses on providing methods for evaluating and understanding trends in global affairs to support national defense, security planning and national level decision-making. The Long-Term Strategy program provides opportunities and systems to examine the interaction of political and military trends against the backdrop of other social, historical and economic trends to provide strategic foresight -- structured efforts to think about potential defense and security challenges from several-to-many years in the future as well as the implications of such developments for defense and national security resource allocation paradigms.

Special emphasis will be placed on long-range defense planning as a form of strategic planning -- one that, at its best, prepares well for an uncertain world while operating within an economic framework. It takes the view that the watchwords for the coming years should be assuring flexibility, adaptiveness, and robustness of the nations defense and national security capabilities. Accomplishing this while living within a budget that necessitates choice could be enabled by a portfolio framework using interagency and joint instruments for dealing with multiple objectives, risks, emerging opportunities and costs. Taking this perspective over the next few years will be helpful as the United States rethinks national security strategy generally and long-term defense plans and investment priorities more particularly.

The courses from the electives program required for the programs successful completion are introduced below.

Fall Semester	6453 Seminar in Diagnostic Net Assessment [ More ]	6459 Seminar in Defense Strategic Planning [ More ]
Spring Semester	6466 Research Seminar in "Long-Term Strategy" Topics [ More ]

 

6453 -- Seminar in Diagnostic Net Assessment

Course description: The course examines net assessment; a multidisciplinary strategic assessment process developed to address security issues, including military balance assessments. Net assessment involves a cross disciplinary comparative evaluation of the balance of strengths and weaknesses of countries, and regional and institutional entities of interest to national security decision-makers. Themes covered:

• The history and practice of net assessment at RAND, the NSC, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense since the 1960s;
• Scenario-based planning and analysis; and,
• The future security environment - that is, differing interpretations and analyses of the changing setting for U.S. and allied national security policy. This will encompass various general trends in world politics -- demographic, economic, cultural, etc. -- as well as potential geopolitical developments in specific regions. In both regional and global terms, the goal will be to examine long-term implications for U.S. and allied security policy and strategic planning.

The theoretical considerations presented in the readings will be complemented with several case studies.

 

6459 -- Seminar in Defense Strategic Planning

Course description: Advanced study in the concept and methods of long-range defense planning and analysis, particularly with respect to iterative aggregation and synthesis in the Military Departments, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (and with immediate applicability to the Department of State, the National Security Council/White House, and the Congress). Topics covered:

• Strategy and Strategic Planning
• Basics of Long-Range Political-Military Planning
• Prescriptive Strategic Planning
• Descriptive (Department of Defense) Strategic Planning
• War Planning
• Business & Public Sector Strategic Planning What Lessons for the National Security Establishments?
• Defense Planning Under Deep Uncertainty
• Problems with Present Strategic Planning
• Strategic Management & Implementation

 

6466 -- Research Seminar in "Long-Term Strategy" Topics

Course description: The students will each undertake an individual (25+ pages paper) for group research project focused on a current/historical key strategic/regional/functional/investment military balance or on the analysis of a (current or historical) long-term strategic planning and implementation construct.

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For additional information, please contact Dr. Sorin Lungu at LunguS@ndu.edu.

The reading list for the Long-Term Strategy program for AY 12-13 includes:

1. William Ascher and William Overholt, Strategic Planning and Forecasting: Political Risk and Economic Opportunity (Wiley, 1983).
2. Andrew Marshall, J.J. Martin and Henry Rowen, eds., On Not Confusing Ourselves: Essays on National Security Strategy in Honor of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (Westview Press, 1991).
3. Edward Miller, The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan: The U.S Strategy to Defeat Japan: 1987-1945 (U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1991).
4. Geoffrey Vickers, The Art of Judgment: A Study of Policy Making (Sage Publications, 1995).
5. David Walsh, The Military Balance in the Cold War: US Perceptions and Policy, 1976-85 (Routledge, 2007).
6. Tai Ming Cheung, Fortifying China: The Struggle to Build a Modern Defense Economy (Cornell University Press, 2008).
7. Richard Bitzinger, The Modern Defense Industry: Political, Economic, and Technological Issues (Praeger, 2009).
8. Michael Horowitz, The Diffusion of Military Power: Causes and Consequences for International Politics (Princeton, University Press, 2010).
9. Andrew Krepinevich, 7 Deadly Scenarios: A Military Futurist Explores the Changing Face of War in the 21st Century (Bantam, 2010).
10. Richard Fisher, Chinas Military Modernization: Building for Regional and Global Reach (Stanford University Press, 2010).
11. Aaron Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (Princeton University Press, 2010 reissued edition).
12. Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Arming Without Aiming: Indias Military Modernization (Brookings Press, 2010).
13. Joseph Maiolo, Cry Havoc: How the Arms Race Drove the World to War 1931-1941 (Basic Books, 2010).
14. Ashley J. Tellis, Andrew Marble and Travis Tanner, eds., Strategic Asia 2010-11: Asias Rising Power and Americas Continued Purpose (National Bureau of Asian Research, 2010).
15. Dima Adamski, The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the US, and Israel (Stanford University Press, 2010).
16. Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (Crown Business, 2011).
17. Aaron Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (W. W. Norton & Co, 2011).
18. Nial Fergusson et al., The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Harvard University Press, 2011).
19. James Clay Moltz, Asias Space Race: National Motivations, Regional Rivalries, and International Risks (Stanford University Press, 2011).
20. Nicholas Lambert, Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War (Harvard University Press, 2012).
21. George Gilboy and Eric Heginbotham: Chinese and Indian Strategic Behavior: Growing Power and Alarm (Cambirdge University Press, 2012).
22. Thomas Mahnken, ed., Competitive Strategies for the 21st Century: Theory, History, and Practice (Stanford University Press, 2012).