GRADING THE QDR

The Center for Strategic and International Studies grades the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review:

The 2010 QDR seeks to answer the question of whether the US should posture its forces and focus its acquisitions on dealing with conventional threats from rising peer competitors or more asymmetric threats emanating from weak and failing states.

The search for answers is being structured around the concept of "hybrid warfare," ... a concept ... so loosely defined that it does not provide clear criteria for decision-making. Service efforts to define it have so far been little more that shopping lists for every possible contingency mixed with buzzwords that appear to have meaning only as long as they are not examined in any detail.

In practice, any concept that effectively justifies anything ends in justifying absolutely nothing.

The QDR is, at its best, a difficult high-wire act with no safety net, long on good intentions and short on successful actions. Given the dramatic philosophical difference between the Bush and Obama administrations and the demonstrated incompetence of the Obama administration with respect to its domestic agenda, dead on arrival looks right.