Quadrennial Defense Review 2010: Overview and Implications for National Security Planning

Stephen Daggett
Specialist in Defense Policy and Budgets

On February 1, 2010, the Defense Department released a report on the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a legislatively mandated assessment of defense strategy and priorities. The review is the sixth full scale assessment of U.S. defense policy since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the 1990 Base Force analysis and the 1993 Bottom-Up Review and continuing with QDRs completed in 1997, 2001, 2006, and 2010. These official reviews have been supplemented by assessments of independently chartered panels. 

The four QDRs reflect an ongoing evolution of strategic thinking away from planning for smaller versions of Cold War-era conventional conflicts, on the model of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and toward planning to cope with a much more diverse array of challenges. By the time of the 2006 and 2010 QDRs, the basic strategic assumptions guiding military planning had shifted dramatically. One premise is that no future adversary is likely to confront U.S. conventional, Cold War-era military capabilities directly. Instead, any foe, ranging from violent, radical non-state terrorist groups to a technologically advanced near-peer competitor, will try to exploit weaknesses in U.S. defenses through asymmetric means. A related premise is that the notion of a spectrum of conflict, ranging from unsophisticated insurgents or terrorists at the low end to sophisticated national armies at the high end, is becoming blurred, with "low-end" terrorist groups using advanced technologies and near-peer competitors likely to use indirect means of attack. 

The 2010 QDR concludes that changes in the global security environment require some adjustments in the balance of investments among elements of the U.S. military force posture. It argues for an emphasis, first of all, on prevailing in current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and against Al Qaeda elsewhere. It revises force planning to put diverse, overlapping scenarios, including long-duration stability operations and defense of the homeland, on a par with major regional conflicts in assessing the size and composition of the force. And, it calls for new investments in critical joint missions, including countering "anti-access strategies" aimed at defeating U.S. power projection forces; building the capacity of partner states; and ensuring access to cyberspace. The 2010 report also proposes measures to reform institutional procedures that it sometimes describes as "relics of the Cold War," including acquisition, security assistance, and export control processes. 

Critiques of the current and earlier QDRs raise a number of issues: Is the review overly constrained by budget limitations? Does it make sufficiently disciplined choices among the many priorities it cites? Does the focus on current conflicts come too much at the expense of preparations for future conflicts? Does the review realistically assess threats from Russia and China? A fundamental issue is whether the quite radical reassessment of global security challenges in recent QDRs has been matched by sufficiently far-reaching changes in the composition of the force. 

A question for future QDRs may be whether the reviews should be tasked to address broader security policy issues as a means of assessing defense plans in a more complete context. Potential policy issues to address include when to use military force, the effects of global financial trends on U.S. defense plans, the effects of domestic economic and budget trends on defense resources, the evolution of alliances to reflect post-Cold War era challenges, the prospects for more cooperative global security rules and institutions to enhance security, and the integration of U.S. defense planning with broader, interagency policies to address global trends.


Date of Report: May 17, 2010
Number of Pages: 81
Order Number: R41250
Price: $29.95

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