Project on Defense Alternatives
Mission Statement

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Project Description

Since its inception in 1991, the Project on Defense Alternatives has sought to adapt security policy to the challenges and opportunities of the post-Cold War era. Toward this end it promotes consideration of the broadest range of defense options. Central to its mission is the development of "transitional security policy," which would serve to create conditions favorable to the advent of regional and global cooperative security regimes. In the Project's perspective a transitional security policy would:

• Guarantee reliable, cost-effective defense against aggression;
  
  
• Rely on military structures that do not contribute to interstate tensions, crisis instability, or arms racing;
  
  
• Allow significant reductions in the level of armed forces and military spending;
  
  
• Foster progress in arms control and in the gradual demilitarization of international relations; and,
  
  
• Facilitate an increasing reliance on collective and global peacekeeping agencies and nonmilitary means of conflict prevention, containment, and resolution.

In its approach to security issues the Project seeks to uniquely combine pragmatism and vision. Although proceeding from a common security perspective, PDA pays careful attention to concerns about current military threats and requirements. The Project is premised on the belief that policy innovation can overcome the practical obstacles to progress toward more cooperative security postures -- however, it sees the prerequisite of innovation to be a close and critical engagement in the mainstream security policy debate.

Although PDA emphasizes the reformulation of US defense policy, it has contributed since its inception to the development of defense alternatives for NATO and has pioneered proposals for the "defensive restructuring" of armed forces in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the developing world. As part of this latter effort, the Project has designed arms control measures that would reduce the offensive character of existing conventional armed forces and reorient military assistance programs along defensive lines.

Description of Current Programs

Policy Analysis and Development Activities

The research and development activities of the Project, which form the basis of its program work, fall into several categories: Policy Analysis, Alternative Policy Development, and Basic Research.

Policy Analysis
PDA offers critical appraisals of existing policy frameworks, options, and initiatives -- including, for instance, the current administration's "Bottom Up Review," the increased emphasis in military policy on air power, conventional wisdom and doctrine regarding peacekeeping and multinational operations, and specific instances of military conflict. The Project assesses the assumptions and implications of existing policy, paying special attention to issues of cost, feasibility, and stability. The Project has developed a special expertise for evaluating the technical studies and reports underlying official policy, and it has developed reference databases on the Gulf War, Air Power, and multinational security operations including those of the United Nations.

Alternative Policy Development
Central to PDA's mission is the development of practicable alternatives to existing policy. The design of such options begins with the definition of a problem set -- including the shortcomings of current policy. The Project strives for completeness in defining these sets, so that no security issue is posed simply as one of meeting a perceived threat, but also as involving longer-term effects on, for instance, interstate stability, the economy, and the environment. Next, the Project defines an "ideal" solution from a comprehensive, common security perspective and specifies the current obstacles -- practical, strategic, political, and institutional -- to implementing such a solution. Finally, the Project designs a sequence of interim or "transitional" steps -- each with the character of (i) meeting the security challenge within existing constraints while (ii) approximating as much as possible a cooperative, nonoffensive approach and (iii) acting to reduce progressively the obstacles to a comprehensive, cooperative security solution. The Project is careful in its problem analysis to listen to concerns across the opinion spectrum, and to base its proposed policy options and steps on real-world precedents and to marshall broad analytical and historical support.

Basic Research
All policy rests on a body of basic technical, historical, and methodological research. In its policy analysis and development efforts, PDA draws widely on this body of research, often conducting "meta-analyses" that combine or relate available research in novel ways. PDA also undertakes or contracts basic research when gaps or flaws in existing studies dictate a need.

Description of Current Programs

Publications:
US Defense Policy | Regional Security | Terrorism
Iraq & Afghanistan | Military & Strategic Studies
Alternative Security & Defense | Chronological

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