A recent analysis of the 2010 QDR by the Center for American Progress claims, “…the 2010 QDR abandons the Bush administration’s “Long War” construct that oversimplified the nature of the struggle against violent extremists.”  This claim implies that the QDR clarified the nature of this conflict.  The QDR doesn’t even accurately identify the threat.  It does not acknowledge that there is an international campaign led by Islamic extremists to kill Americans.  I realize that it’s not politically correct to identify threats without obfuscation, but the failure to identify the source of this threat in the QDR is troubling.  The terms “violent extremism” and “extremism” are generalities.  Al Qaeda is more specific but it is simply a way to skirt the issue.  Sure, extremism in any case can be dangerous, but it’s not PETA activists who are trying to blow up airliners and killing Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It’s Islamic extremists.

Regarding the issuance of a new National Security Strategy–the National Security Strategy should be the primary driver of our defense policy and guidance.  The National Security Strategy is the document that seeks to articulate our grand strategy–our core interests, threats to those interests and how we intend to defend and advance those interests in broad terms.  Documents like the QDR should operationalize that vision. Of course, strategy making in Washington is largely broken.  The release of a QDR before a National Security Strategy is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse—that is unless President Obama’s grand strategy is not so different from that of his predecessor.  I suspect that it is closer than anyone at the White House would ever admit. But what is our grand strategy?  Primacy? Collective security?  Whatever the answer is to that question should be driving our defense and military policy, not the other way around.