Developing Resource-Informed Strategic Assessments and Recommendations

A debate will likely occur in 2009 about U.S. global national-security strategy. The authors describe and illustrate a methodology to help frame and evaluate resource-informed strategies. The core is an integrated portfolio-analysis approach that compares options by their anticipated effectiveness, risks, and resource implications, Three illustrative grand strategies are compared, which deal in different ways with the problems of our time.

A portfolio-analysis approach that deals explicitly with both uncertainty and differences of strategic perspective allows an integrated comparison of alternative strategies' effectiveness, risks, and resource implications.