As Members of Congress and their Congressional staff read and are briefed on the newly released 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) one thing becomes abundantly clear -- the 2010 QDR does not comply with the law.  Title 10 of U.S. Code, Section 118 sets the parameters for the QDR’s construction.  A good website to read the QDR’s “Charter” is here: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/118.notes.html

The law states that the QDR will: “Delineate a national defense strategy consistent with the most recent National Security Strategy.”  The President has not released a National Security Strategy. Are we to assume that the 2010 QDR is consistent with President Bush’s 2006 National Security Strategy?  “No. Certainly not” — Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Strategy) Amanda Dory said when asked.  The Administration and QDR document itself makes it clear that the strategic departure point was the 2008 National Defense Strategy — which, of course, was a Bush document based on the 2006 National Security Strategy.  So either the QDR uses as its base the 2006 Bush Administration's National Security Strategy, or the QDR violates law — that’s the choice.

The law states that the QDR shall: “Make recommendations that are not constrained to comply with the budget submitted to Congress by the President.”  Yet repeated statements from all levels of the Administration underscore that this QDR was “budget informed,” which sounds a lot like bureaucrat-speak for “budget constrained.”  In fact, the QDR does not challenge any of the funding cuts that Secretary Gates made unilaterally in April 2009.  Instead, the QDR validates (a cynic might say rubberstamps) the 2010 and 2011 defense budget submissions, the latter of which only experienced a flat-line 1.8% inflation-adjusted increase insufficient to address long-term equipment modernization, recapitalization, let alone transformation.  Therefore the 2010 QDR was budget-constrained and thus violates law.  The Administration tacitly admits to the budget constraint by bringing Vice Admiral Stanley (J8) who heads the Joint Staff’s budget office to brief the report, and not Vice Admiral James Winnefeld (J5) who heads Strategic Plans and Policy. 

The law states that the QDR will be conducted: “with a view toward determining and expressing the defense strategy of the United States and establishing a defense program for the next 20 years.”  The 2010 QDR provides no meaningful 20 year outlook. 

Generals are often accused of fighting the last war.  The 2010 QDR fights Iraq and Afghanistan all over again.  Its key planning scenario calls for “Conducting a major stabilization operation, deterring a regional aggressor, and extending support to civil authorities in response to a domestic catastrophe.”  That sounds a lot like Iraq, Iran, and Katrina in 2005.  So the future... looks like today.

Is 2029 going to look a lot like 2009, since 2009 looks nothing like 1989?  More to the point, are future U.S. wars going to look like the two current overseas contingency operations?  The Administration might answer this accusation by pointing out that the QDR reflects the lessons learned from the current conflicts — that counterinsurgencies like those in which the U.S. finds itself were not aberrations but are recurring; the QDR seeks to institutionalize that capability.  So future force structure looks much like that of today.  To that one must ask if the authors means to imply that America will preemptively invade regional pariahs in the future and wage decade-long counterinsurgency operations?  Such are wars of today from which their lessons learned are derived.  Is that the Obama national security strategy — because it sounds a lot like that of President Bush.

The 2010 QDR demonstrates little creativity in its (non)look to the future—maybe too much to ask from government.  Unlike the more candid Joint Operating Environment published by U.S. Joint Forces Command under the leadership of General James Mattis, USMC, the 2010 QDR does not even “nod” to the “black swan” scenario—what former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld might have called, “the unknown unknowns.”  Mattis’ document bravely opined that Mexico might destabilize because of narco-terrorism.  Where is the informed but wild guess in the QDR?  Where is there geopolitical bravery in this QDR? 

The 2010 QDR fails to comply with the very law which established the study.  As a budget drill, the document does itself, the Department of Defense, and U.S. Code a disservice.  Perhaps Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies was right when he said,

“If God really hates you, you may end up working on a Quadrennial Defense Review: The most pointless and destructive planning effort imaginable...If God merely dislikes you, you may end up helping your service chief or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs draft one of those vague, anodyne strategy documents that is all concepts and no plans or execution. If God is totally indifferent, you will end up working on our national strategy and simply be irrelevant.”