Project on Defense Alternatives
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.
Additional Materials from Project on Defense Alternatives: Policy Briefs
Working Papers
Title: Something in the Air: "Isolationism," Defense Spending, and the US Public Mood
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: October 2014Title: Reasonable Defense: A Sustainable Approach to Securing the Nation
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: November 2012Title: Debt, Deficits and Defense: A Way Forward
Date: June 2010Title: An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the $2 Trillion Surge in US Defense Spending
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: January 2010Title: Re-Envisioning Defense: An Agenda for US Policy Debate and Transition
Authors: Project on Defense Alternatives
Date: December 2008Title: Forceful Engagement: Rethinking the Role of Military Power in US Global Policy
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: December 2008Title: America Speaks Out: Is the United States spending too much on defense?
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: March 2007Title: Resolving Iraq: Progress depends on a short timeline for US troop withdrawal
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: January 2007Title: No good reason to boost Army, Marine Corps end strength
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: January 2007Title: More Troops for Iraq? Time to just say “No”
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: January 2007Title: War and Consequences: Global terrorism has increased since 9/11 attacks
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: September 2006Title: Pyrrhus on the Potomac: How America’s post-9/11 wars have undermined US national security
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: September 2006Title: Losing Hearts and Minds: World public opinion and post-9/11 US security policy
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: September 2006Title: Fighting on Borrowed Time: The effect on US military readiness of America’s post-9/11 wars
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: September 2006Title: Mechanized Tube Artillery as an Integral Element of Expeditionary Forces
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: May 2006Title: Die Europäische Union: Stolpersteine auf dem Weg zur Integration (The European Union: Stumbling Blocks on the Road to Integration)
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: May 2006Title: A Few Thoughts on the Evolution of Infantry: Past, Present, Future
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: May 2006Title: We Can See Clearly Now: The limits of foresight in the pre-World War II Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: March 2006Title: QDR 2006: Do the forces match the mission? DOD gives little reason to believe
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: February 2006Title: Masque of Democracy: Iraqi Election System Still Disfavors Sunni Arabs, Favors Kurds
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: December 2005Title: Arms Control in an Age of Strategic and Military Revolution
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: November 2005Title: The Iraqi election "bait and switch": Faulty poll will not bring peace or US withdrawal
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: January 2005Title: Is the Iraq war sapping America's military power? Cautionary data and perspectives
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight, Melissa Murphy
Date: October 2004Title: Radical Departure: Toward A Practical Peace in Iraq
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: July 2004Title: Radical Departure: Toward A Practical Peace in Iraq
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: July 2004Title: Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a "New Warfare
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: February 2004Title: The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: October 2003Title: European Armed Forces of Tomorrow: A New Perspective
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: October 2003Title: Catastrophic Interdiction: Air Power and the Collapse of the Iraqi Field Army in the 2003 War
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: September 2003Title: Trends in the Incidence of International Terror Attacks on Americans After the Cold War
Authors: Charles Knight, Melissa Murphy
Date: June 2003Title: What Colin Powell Showed Us: The End of Arms Control and the Normalization of War
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: May 2003Title: Burning Down the House: How the Iraq War Will Affect the International System
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: May 2003Title: Reconstructing Iraq: Costs and Possible Income Sources
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: April 2003Title: Disarming Iraq: What Did the UN Missions Accomplish?
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: April 2003Title: Prevention or Preemption? - towards a clarification of terminology
Authors: Volker Kröning
Date: March 2003Title: The "New Warfare" and the New American Calculus of War
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: September 2002Title: Terrorism, World Order, and Cooperative Security
Authors: Carl Connetta
Date: September 2002Title: First Strike Guidelines: the Case of Iraq
Authors: Charles Knight
Date: September 2002Title: The Pentagon's New Budget, New Strategy, and New War
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: June 2002Title: Dislocating Alcyoneus: How to Combat al-Qaeda and the New Terrorism
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: June 2002Title: Strange Victory: A critical appraisal of Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan war
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: January 2002Title: Operation Enduring Freedom: Why a Higher Rate of Civilian Bombing Casualties
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: January 2002Title: Bush Administration Policy Toward Europe: Continuity and Change
Authors: Charles Knight
Date: January 2002Title: German Defense Planning: In a Crucial Phase
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: September 2001Title: Beyond bin Laden — The Temptations of a Wider War
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: September 2001Title: Disengaged Warfare: Should we make a virtue of the Kosovo way of war?
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: May 2001Title: A New US Military Strategy? Issues and Options
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: May 2001Title: The Paradoxes of post-Cold War US Defense Policy: An Agenda for the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review
Authors:
Date: February 2001Title: Can the United States Spend Less on Defense? Toward a Smaller, More Efficient, and More Relevant US Military
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: October 2000Title: Bigger Budgets Will Not Cure the Pentagon's Ills
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: October 2000Title: The Armed Forces - "used too much and supported too little" - G.W.Bush
Authors:
Date: September 2000Title: Wheels or Tracks? On the "Lightness" of Military Expeditions
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: July 2000Title: U.S. Military-Strategic Ambitions: Expanding to Fill the post-Soviet Vacuum
Authors: Charles Knight
Date: June 2000Title: Europe's Armed Forces at the Millennium: A Case Study of Change in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: December 1999Title: Slovenian Security in the European Perspective
Authors: Anton Grizold, Ljubica Jelusic
Date: September 1999Title: Interventionism Reconsidered
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: September 1999Title: Rotocraft for War: Descending on a Military Dilemma
Authors: Lutz Unterseher
Date: July 1999Title: NATO Expansion: Costs and Implications
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: July 1999Title: The Readiness Crisis of the U.S. Air Force
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: April 1999Title: Alleged "Carrier Gap"; is Out to Sea
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: April 1999Title: Military Strategy Under Review, Volume 4, Number 3
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: January 1999Title: Defense Sufficiency and Cooperation
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: March 1998Title: Dueling with Uncertainty
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: February 1998Title: Future Tense -- An Assessment of the Report of the NDP
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: December 1997Title: America's New Deal with Europe
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: October 1997Title: Backwards Into the Future
Authors: Carl Conetta
Date: June 1997Title: Asia Pacific Tilts to West
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: April 1997Title: Framework for Constructing a New Era Alternative to the Bottom-Up Review
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: February 1997Title: Post-Cold War US Military Expenditure in the Context of World Spending Trends
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: January 1997Title: Post-Cold War US Military Expenditure
Authors: Carl Conetta, Charles Knight
Date: January 1997