Author Archives: Daniel Gouré, Ph.D.
A New Way To Lose A War According to reports over the past few days, the Obama Administration is thinking about rolling out a new strategy for Afghanistan, one that will require only a relatively modest increase in U.S. troops. The White House has discovered that our [Read More...]
QDR (V): The “Four Ps” of the Quadrennial Defense Review In their effort to define the metrics for sizing the U.S. military, Pentagon officials leading the 2009 QDR are trying to differentiate their work from previous quadrennial reviews. In the past the dominant metric was the number of major theater [Read More...]
Is the United States Trapped in Afghanistan? According to press reports, President Obama told Congressional leaders on Tuesday that he would not substantially reduce American forces in Afghanistan or shift the mission to just hunting terrorists there. At the same time he appears to be leaning against [Read More...]
Army: Push For Savings Must Also Consider Value Program managers and acquisition executives in the Department of Defense are experiencing increasing pressure to find cost savings in their programs. It is generally a good thing for those with the responsibility of spending the public’s money to be careful [Read More...]
It’s About Counterterrorism Not Counterinsurgency Today’s Wall Street Journal carries the story that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates may be losing his affinity for counterinsurgency, the dominant theme of the national defense strategy and the in-process Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The newspaper reports a senior [Read More...]
National Security Is Not A Good Argument For Cap & Trade Not every issue facing the nation is a matter of national security. This is the case with cap and trade. Proponents of cap and trade for national security argue that global warming will result in environmental degradation which, in turn, [Read More...]
Navy Must Continue Funding Countermine Capability It is self-evident that the United States military has entered a new world, one marked by strategic uncertainty and the proliferation of asymmetric threats. The devastating consequences of unanticipated dangers such as improvised explosive devices stand as a stark warning [Read More...]
Plan For Counter-Insurgency Plane Is A Bad Idea The U.S. Air Force is reported to be considering acquiring at least 100 propeller-driven “counter-insurgency fighters.” The argument for such an aircraft is that it can fly low and slow, giving it the ability to engage hard-to-find targets, operate from [Read More...]
Obama Courts Disaster By Resisting McChrystal Findings The President’s decision to conduct yet another review of our strategy in Afghanistan and to ask General Stanley McChrystal, commander of international forces in that country, to delay his request for more resources is inexplicable. Anyone who reads the unclassified [Read More...]
Gates Gets It Half Right On Missile Defense For Europe Yesterday, the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, defended his decision to radically alter the plan to deploy missile defense in Europe. The old plan was to deploy ten ground-based interceptors in silos in Poland supported by a fixed site radar [Read More...]