America's Strategic Choices: Defense Spending in a Post-Covid-19 World

The Ronald Reagan Institute and the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) released this report summarizing the findings of two Strategic Choices Exercises, which convened a bipartisan group of senior defense and budget experts, current and former policy makers, and industry leaders. Using CSBA’s Strategic Choices Tool, an interactive decision-making model that enables users to make changes to the defense budget, participants assessed the impact of fiscally-constrained adjustments to U.S. defense strategy and military forces over a 10-year window. They assessed two budgetary scenarios: an annual real 3% increase in defense spending and an immediate 10% cut. The exercises found that the 10% cut scenario would have devastating consequences for defense strategy and capabilities. Teams had to make large-scale cuts to personnel, force structure, and modernization that have heretofore proven to be politically unpalatable. 16 Pages.