ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the four key axes on which policy debates are fought: markets versus planning, public versus private, experts versus politics, and centralization versus decentralization. It assumes that the United States will invest some effort in preparation for war, even if wars are very hard to predict. Responsible officials cannot explain away their tasks with academic theories, even proven ones. The public and the private blend in providing America’s defense. Private firms develop America’s most advanced weapons and deploy personnel along with the troops to help them fight more effectively, while the defense agencies act as entrepreneurs- identifying, organizing, and promoting waves of innovation that change the way the nation lives as well as how it fights wars. America is too powerful to be conquered and too rich and too large to notice much when it is at war. Only a small portion of its population needs to be in uniform or to run the risks of combat.
