Sunday, March 27, 2011

Policy & Planning in a changing environment, on Midrats


The global strategic environment is at a pivot as the Arab world is in flux, the Western welfare states is staggering, and the world's economic center of gravity is shifting East. What ideas and concepts do we need behind, which new ones do we need to embrace - and what are the implications of what we are seeing now?

Join EagleOne and me as we examine the Big Pixels for the full hour with our guest, Thomas G. Mahnken, currently Jerome E. Levy Chair of Economic Geography and National Security at the U.S. Naval War College, and a Visiting Scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at The Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

In addition to his present position, he is the author of
Technology and the American Way of War Since 1945 and other books.

In previous assignments, Dr. Mahnken served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning from 2006-2009. In that capacity, he was responsible for the Department’s major strategic planning functions, including the preparation of guidance for war plans and the development of the defense planning scenarios. He was the primary author of the 2008 National Defense Strategy and contributing author of the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review. He led an interagency effort to establish, for the first time in five decades, a National Security Council-run interagency policy planning body.

Prior to joining the Defense Department, he served as a Professor of Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. From 2004 to 2006 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Merrill Center at SAIS. During the 2003-04 academic year he served as the Acting Director of the SAIS Strategic Studies Program. His areas of primary expertise are strategy, intelligence, and special operations forces.

Dr. Mahnken has held positions in both the government and the private sector. He served as Staff Director of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel’s Force Structure and Personnel Sub-Panel. He served on the staff of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. He served in the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, where he conducted research into the emerging revolution in military affairs. He also served as a member of the Gulf War Air Power Survey, commissioned by the Secretary of the Air Force to examine the performance of U.S. forces during the war with Iraq. Prior to that, he served as an analyst in the Non-Proliferation Directorate of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), where he was responsible for enforcing U.S. missile proliferation policy.

Join us live if you can and join in with the usual suspects in the chat room, but remember, if you miss the show or want to catch up on the ones you've missed - you can always reach the archives at blogtalkradio - or set yourself to get the podcast on iTunes.

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