How Much is Enough: Setting a Topline for Defense Spending

By Jacob Cohn

Jacob Cohn manages the Strategic Choices Tool and conducts research and analysis for both the Strategic Studies and the Budgetary Studies programs at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. His primary areas of interest concern trends in the overall defense budget and in particular the linkages between resources and strategy. His research also focuses on the utilization of scenarios and wargames to facilitate long-range strategic planning and operational concept development. He is also an adjunct lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Twenty-six years after the end of the Cold War, the United States once again must prepare for great power competition and confrontation. Russian aggression along NATO’s eastern front presents military challenges to European security not seen in decades. China’s military modernization and coercive behavior toward U.S. allies and partners threatens stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Both nations are disrupting the post-World War II international order that has long provided relative peace and prosperity for the United States, its allies and partners, and much of the rest of the world.

The shifting strategic environment is further complicated by an evolving set of operational-level military challenges. Recent military innovation, driven by the increasing “informationization” of potential rivals and their adoption of advanced conventional and asymmetric capabilities, threatens the traditional means with which the United States projects power. Confronting these strategic and operational challenges will require U.S. defense leaders to rethink how they prioritize resources and how they view the use of force. Given the strategic and operational challenges confronting the United States, the Department of Defense (DoD) must reevaluate how it operates—its operational concepts—in addition to rebalancing its portfolio of capabilities and its force structure to defend American interests from ever-changing threats.

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