Salvaging American Defense: The Challenge of Strategic Overstretch (Book) - Softcover

Cordesman, Anthony H.

9780892064953: Salvaging American Defense: The Challenge of Strategic Overstretch (Book)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892064951 ISBN 13: 9780892064953

Publisher: Centre for Strategic & International Studies,U.S., 2007

From grassroots terrorism to the nuclear ambitions of hostile nations, the United States faces increasingly complex threats to its national security. Combating these threats continues to demand a reshaping of the nation's security structure, military forces and defense expenditures. In this study, Anthony Cordesman offers a detailed analysis of critical challenges affecting U.S. national security and how failures in adapting to these challenges have exacerbated the strains on available resources. He systematically identifies the most glaring obstacles to successful national security planning and proposes constructive and practical ways to proceed in the future. Cordesman focuses on ten specific challenges, and each is addressed within the context of the Iraq War, Afghan War, War on Terrorism, and the risk of conflict over the Taiwan Straits. Out of the lessons drawn from these experiences, he examines the future of international coalitions, asymmetric warfare, nation building, and stability operations, and concludes that perhaps the most pressing area for change is the need for accountability among civilian and military policymakers.

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Review:

?Asserting that the United States needs to adapt to the "long war" against international terrorism, the authors argue that it must do this at same time that it must cope with a host of other issues. They identify ten major types of challenge that require attention over the coming decade and offer their judgments on the available options. Those challenges include the strain of the Iraq occupation on US armed forces, determining the level of financial burden of national defense, meeting the needs of the active and reserve military, measuring the extent that the US has too few forces or forces in the wrong areas, determining what kind of force transformation is affordable and needed, abandoning unaffordable force transformation efforts, creating effective national security interagency capability, creating effective local (Iraqi) forces, reshaping alliance relationships, and finding ways to achieve policy maker accountability.?-Reference & Research Book News

"Asserting that the United States needs to adapt to the "long war" against international terrorism, the authors argue that it must do this at same time that it must cope with a host of other issues. They identify ten major types of challenge that require attention over the coming decade and offer their judgments on the available options. Those challenges include the strain of the Iraq occupation on US armed forces, determining the level of financial burden of national defense, meeting the needs of the active and reserve military, measuring the extent that the US has too few forces or forces in the wrong areas, determining what kind of force transformation is affordable and needed, abandoning unaffordable force transformation efforts, creating effective national security interagency capability, creating effective local (Iraqi) forces, reshaping alliance relationships, and finding ways to achieve policy maker accountability."-Reference & Research Book News

About the Author:

Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at CSIS.

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