Fresh thinking needed in Quadrennial Defense Review.

• Author: Sledge, Nathaniel H., Jr.
• Position: VIEWPOINT

* If history is any guide, the current Quadrennial Defense Review process will prove to be perfunctory.

The end of two wars and dawn of an austere fiscal era demand that the next QDR depart from business as usual and deliver effective and affordable national security. The nation has gotten neither in the last 30 years. The 2014 QDR will only succeed if the participants possess the creativity and courage to challenge convention and shed cultural inertia, have enough discipline to adhere to a rational process, are dedicated to coalescing diverse perspectives and exhibit extraordinary persuasion.

According to Tide 10 of the United States Code, the QDR is supposed to be a "review of U.S. defense strategy, force structure, budget plans and associated policies." More practically, the process must also align and structure forces with approved strategy.

Unfortunately, approved strategy is the point of departure. Honest debate and objective analysis in national security strategy development are like casting a movie: They constitute 80 percent of a successful performance. But we are not benefitting from honest debate and objective analysis. In addition to misguided wars, politics and unsustainably high growth in recent defense budgets have poisoned strategy development. Neither can be ignored, but both should only be considered in proper sequence, after defense planners have determined what must be done at what risk level.

Politics and money are ubiquitous, but the 2014 QDR is not even supposed to consider budgetary constraints. As they say on the streets of America, "Good luck with that."

No longer can we maintain large standing armies for threats that are immune to mass force. No longer can we afford several air forces, when a couple will do. No longer can we sustain gilded and unchecked growth in defense agencies with little to show for it. No longer can we let the acquisition and sustainment of a few sexy but cost-ineffective weapons systems dominate service budgets at the expense of people, training and readiness.

The American people should be disappointed if the next QDR does not curtail defense profligacy and waste, and severely reduce and effectively redistribute defense resources.

There is no shortage of QDR-related advice. If only the government heeded it.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Center for a New American Security, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, the Peterson-Stimson Defense Advisory Council, the National Defense Research Institute and the Project on Defense Alternatives, among others, have conducted studies or assembled panels to consider the issues facing defense planners for the 2014 QDR. These are insightful, and in some cases, groundbreaking efforts. Not surprisingly, a consensus has developed that the current process needs improvement and that the nation's defense enterprises need to take drastically different directions.

Institutional perspectives are valuable because of their knowledge bases, but they are embodied in individuals who have stakes in the institutions they evaluate. Therefore, truly new ideas are permitted only to advance one retirement--or one funeral--at a time. It makes sense to include the ideas of concerned individuals who are unfettered by institutional niceties and allegiances.

In order to produce a credible QDR, defense planners must do several things.

First, the QDR team must be diverse in people, perspectives, professions, and...