Defense Review Published

By Greg Scoblete
January 30, 2010

National Journal's Congress Daily has the 128 page Quadrennial Defense Review here (pdf). Plenty of time left in the weekend to kick back and enjoy it.

It seems to codify themes Secretary Gates has stressed earlier: rebalancing the U.S. military to perform better at counter-insurgency in addition to conventional threats. It is a QDR that envisions that Iraq and Afghanistan presage the future of American combat in what it dubs a "complex" threat environment. I'm dubious of this premise, given that we choose to invade Iraq and thus a lot of the deficits in counter-insurgency the QDR attempts to remedy by spending gobs of money on, could have just as easily been avoided had we not made poor strategic choices.

Indeed, given what we have learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'd be hard pressed to see why any political leader would wish to give armed state building another go, particularly when, in the case of Iraq at least, these are wars of choice.

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