Came upon an excellent summary of why public policy analysts need mathematics:

…if you are smart enough to be a Nobel-prize winning economist maybe you can do without the math, but the rest of us mere mortals cannot. We need the math to make sure that we think straight–to ensure that our conclusions follow from our premises and that we haven’t left loose ends hanging in our argument.

In other words, we use math not because we are smart, but because we are not smart enough.

On a related note, I recall reading a discussion in a computer science journal discussing why many CS grad programs require applicants to have taken advanced mathematics (beyond those subjects, like discrete math or mathematical logic, that directly related to CS). The conclusion: the CS programs wanted to see evidence that the applicants could handle rigorous, abstract thinking and advanced mathematics courses offered a good way of checking that.

Col. Killebrew’s latest.

Gates’ speeches, and his actions within the Pentagon, indicate that the Defense Department is now looking beyond Iraq and Afghanistan for a more appropriate use of military power in a more complex world. Assuming the next administration is generally of the same mind, the services don’t need to wait to be told what to do. After all, they’ve done it before.

Nasr and Takeyh on the costs of containing Iran

The Bush administration wants to contain Iran by rallying the support of Sunni Arab states and now sees Iran’s containment as the heart of its Middle East policy: a way to stabilize Iraq, declaw Hezbollah, and restart the Arab-Israeli peace process. But the strategy is unsound and impractical, and it will probably further destabilize an already volatile region.

Chet Richards is thinking big about matching resources to ends in the US defense budget.

We won’t be fighting major nuclear powers, including Russia, India, or China…

He is not the first to point this out; it is where he goes from here that distinguishes him. Where others revert to maintaining a large conventional force as an additional hedge against these powers, Richards asserts that America’s strategic nuclear force is itself a sufficient hedge.

Much like President Eisenhower looked to extended deterrence as a way to lower the cost of containing the Soviets, Richards looks to a 21st Century update of this policy to hedge against great power war.

Continuing this historical analogy, the natural question becomes “would such a policy leave the US vulnerable to challenges below the threshold of major power war?” The pendulum of policy swings between the extremes of affordability and vulnerability. During eras of fat defense budgets, concerns over affordability make concepts like extended deterrence appealing. As the pendulum swings back towards affordability, concerns about vulerabilities give rise to calls for more flexible or “full spectrum” capabilities.

Another interesting historical analogy to explore would be the Truman Administration’s defense budget decisions before the Korean War.

On a tangential note, Richards does not include the force structure necessary for large-scale stability or COIN operations. He made the argument in Neither Shall the Sword that such missions are neither possible nor necessary. An interesting point of comparison for his proposed budget would be one that uses some of the savings from extended deterrence to further grow the SysAdmin component.