Published: 1998
Total Pages: 19
Get eBook
The above quote, taken from Secretary of Defense William Cohen's cover letter that accompanied the May 1997 Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review, might leave one with the impression that those responsible for that undertaking were driven by purely noble motives. Rather than accepting such a lofty notion at face value, we must probe more deeply to reveal the process at work during the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). This is especially appropriate since more than a year has passed since the completion of the QDR and the follow-on report by the National Defense Panel (NDP). We can now view the results with some perspective. In addition, lessons learned from the 1997 reviews can help guide the next review cycle, scheduled for 2001. While many in Congress may have held out high hopes that the QDR and NDP would produce meaningful recommendations for change to meet the nation's future security requirements, the results have been disappointing. This paper will seek to explain that the shortcomings in the products from the QDR and NDP were, perhaps predictably, largely a result of the bureaucratic structure of the process used to conduct these two much-publicized defense reviews. Furthermore, this paper will offer recommendations for an alternative structure for the next QDR to increase the freedom and independence of its operations. This will improve the chances that the next review will take a truly "fresh look" at defense and yield a more relevant report.
