Discriminate Power: A Strategy for a Sustainable National Security Posture by Michael J. Mazarr and the NDU Strategy Study Group, Foreign Policy Research Institute.
This study began with the proposition that U.S. national security policy faces a looming means-ends gap with interlocking financial, political and strategic elements. Left on its current trajectory, our posture will be unaffordable, misaligned to emerging challenges, and increasingly dominated by patterns of spending that do not directly support the most relevant forms of national power. While fiscal and budgetary pressures are most immediate, more fundamental constraints lie in the rising multipolarity of the international system and the fact that leading challenges, from fragile states to cyber harassment, are less subject to influence by traditional instruments of statecraft.
The study concludes that the current debate over U.S. national security policy suffers from a false dichotomy: that the United States can be “either” strong “or” discriminate and selective. A basic conclusion of this analysis is that it can—and must—be both; that we can continue to play a vibrant global role while addressing the ways in which we pursue our objectives. Austerity need not undermine what the United States does, if we are prepared to think creatively about how we do it. We must deal with the widening gap between ends and means, not by abandoning American leadership, but by repeatedly asking how we can accomplish existing tasks in new ways.