This monograph Toward a Risk Management Defense Strategy builds on two previous works by the author—Known Unknowns: Unconventional “Strategic Shocks” in Defense Strategy Development and The New Balance: Limited Armed Stabilization and the Future of U.S. Landpower. It frames the contemporary defense decision making environment. It describes the concept of risk management as a founding principle for contemporary defense strategy development.
This monograph The New Balance: Limited Armed Stabilization and the Future of U.S. Landpower describes one among many potential points of departure for upcoming QDR deliberations on landpower force planning. In opening up decision space for the new defense team, it concludes that DoD should initiate an unconventional revolution when fashioning U.S. land forces so as to optimize them for employment against less traditional but still violent—and often nonmilitary—threats to core U.S. interests.
This monograph Known Unknowns: Unconventional “Strategic Shocks” in Defense Strategy Development argues that thoughtful evaluation of the most plausible defense-relevant shocks and their deliberate integration into DoD strategy and planning provides senior defense officials with key checks on excessive convention. Further, the institutionalization of deliberate net and risk assessment of defense-relevant shocks, reasoned judgments about their origins, and preliminary analysis of the most appropriate responses to them promises to routinize prudent hedging in DoD strategy and planning.