The first in a series exploring the elements of a national strategy for U.S. foreign policy, this book examines the most critical decisions likely to face the next president. The book covers global and regional issues and spotlights the long-term policy issues and organizational, financial, and diplomatic challenges that will confront senior U.S. officials in 2017 and beyond.

Defense planning faces significant uncertainties. This report applies robust decision making (RDM) to the air-delivered munitions mix challenge. RDM is quantitative, decision support methodology designed to inform decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty and complexity. This proof-of-concept demonstration suggests that RDM could help defense planners make plans more robust to a wide range of hard-to-predict futures.

This report is the last of a six-volume series in which RAND explores the elements of a national strategy for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. It analyzes U.S. strengths and weaknesses, and suggests adaptations for this new era of turbulence and uncertainty. The report offers three alternative strategic concepts and evaluates their underlying assumptions, costs, risks, and constraints.