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The role of scenarios in defense planning has evolved over time

• Scenarios used in defense planning have generally derived from each administration's prior conclusions about the relative importance of national security interests, and threats and challenges to these interests; national security policies and strategies; and the strategic concepts that have provided a framework for relating military forces to strategic ends.
• Once these matters were settled, scenario choice appears to be a fairly simple problem, both during the Cold War and in the decades after.

The factors in short-term, midterm, and long-term scenarios have expanded along with the range of military problems of concern for policymakers

• In combination with assessments of the strategic environment, statements of national policy and strategy have provided a basis for identifying which contingencies are important enough to justify defense preparations, including defense and military strategies, while strategic concepts have helped to guide and narrow the range of scenarios requiring consideration in conventional force planning efforts.
• In the present environment, it is argued that the nation faces a more uncertain and diverse set of threats and challenges than the conventional threats of the past.
• The author suggests that the most important factors driving conventional force planning are the strategic objectives and priority missions, the strategic concept and related force sizing construct, which scenarios and scenario combinations are used to assess the capabilities of the force, and the associated assumptions about the simultaneity or temporal overlap of operations that derive from the strategic concept and force sizing construct.

This report describes the forces that shaped conventional ground force planning during the 1945–2016 period, with an emphasis on the strategic concepts and contingency scenarios used. It identifies broader lessons that are likely to be of interest to contemporary force planners, especially those related to the strategic concepts to help connect basic national security policies with the planning and development of conventional ground forces, and provides the context for consideration of different combinations of force planning scenarios. Finally, the report identifies potential opportunities for the U.S. Army to influence the future selection of defense planning scenarios.

Historically, U.S. global interests and commitments have been sufficiently expansive that it was impossible to design a fiscally acceptable force that could defend all U.S. interests simultaneously: Efforts to estimate the forces required to simultaneously defend all U.S. interests have typically led to force structure estimates twice as large as more-realistic, budget-informed planning approaches.

The report demonstrates that Cold War–era strategic concepts and scenarios for planning conventional forces focused on the capabilities, intentions, posture, and plans of the USSR and China. In the post–Cold War era, Northeast and Southwest Asian and terrorist threat scenarios have predominated.

The analysis shows that the scenarios that have been used in defense planning have been derived from each administration's prior conclusions about the relative importance of national security interests, and threats and challenges to these interests; national security policies and strategies; and the strategic concepts that have provided a framework for relating military forces to strategic ends.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  The Truman Administration, 1945–1953

• Chapter Three

  The Eisenhower Administration, 1953–1961

• Chapter Four

  The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, 1961–1969

• Chapter Five

  The Nixon and Ford Administrations, 1969–1977

• Chapter Six

  The Carter Administration, 1977–1981

• Chapter Seven

  The Reagan Administration, 1981–1989

• Chapter Eight

  The George H. W. Bush Administration, 1989–1993

• Chapter Nine

  The Clinton Administration, 1993–2001

• Chapter Ten

  The George W. Bush Administration, 2001–2009

• Chapter Eleven

  The Obama Administration, 2009–2017

• Chapter Twelve

  Observations and Conclusions

• Appendix A

  Strategic Analysis Key Terms, Authorities, and Directives

• Appendix B

  The Development and Use of Scenarios in the Joint Strategic Planning System

• Appendix C

  Supplementary Tables and Figures