Mission
The Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) conducts defense policy research, analysis, and development, combining “common security” and “defense reform” perspectives. The project seeks to advance policy options that reconcile the goals of:
- Reliable, sustainable defense against aggression;
- Enhanced international stability and cooperation;
- Robust national defense without contributing to interstate tensions, crisis instability, or arms racing;
- Lower levels of armed force and military spending worldwide; and
- The progressive diminishment of the use and role of force in international relations.
Method
PDA understands policy change as not only a political process, but also an intellectual and social one. We combine pragmatism and vision to alter policy in two interlocking ways: First, by altering the balance of expert, leadership, influential, and public opinion, and second, by developing and supporting “alternative policy networks” that cut across leadership sectors and bring together like-minded, influential individuals. We believe that the prerequisite of innovation to be a close and critical engagement in the mainstream security policy debate, engaging with informed opposing views seriously and with respect.
The constituencies for these efforts – our “focal audiences” – are:
- The policy development community;
- NGO and civic leaders;
- The media; and
- Government and congressional leaders and staff.
The tools we use to “alter opinion” and “build alternative policy networks” include reports and articles, resource compilations, fact sheets, graphic material, public education materials, media interviews, and public presentations. PDA also organizes and conducts meetings of various types, including round tables and study groups, media and congressional briefings, and conferences.
History
The Project on Defense Alternatives was founded in 1991 by Carl Conetta and Charles Knight. They had first worked together at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies in Brookline, MA where they had developed ideas for how the United States could contribute to ending the Cold War by leading NATO toward a less offensive posture in Europe. Such a military reform would reassure the Soviet Union that it was taking reasonable security risks in loosening its grip on its allies in Eastern Europe.
After the Cold War ended, PDA turned its attention to helping define a less militarized world, including intensive work in eastern Europe and in southern Africa. PDA developed a detailed proposal for a UN legion that would provide for rapid-response peace operations of varied sorts.
Toward the end of the 1990s, PDA turned more attention to the military policies of the United States, doing studies of the then institutionalized Quadrennial Defense Review, the wars in the Balkans, and the so-called ‘readiness crisis’ of US armed forces.
After 911, PDA warned of the dangers and the poorly conceived strategy behind the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, providing detailed critical studies of the operations as well as extensive resource compilations for scholars and journalists.
In 2009 PDA turned increasing attention to the undisciplined way in which the defense budget had grown since 1998 and its unsustainable character given new fiscal realities. PDA had a leading role in the Sustainable Defense Task Force in 2010 (also contributing to the follow on study of 2019.) After the report’s release to Congress, there was intense engagement with the ongoing national debate about the future composition of national security spending.
In 2017 PDA began intensive work on the potential for a counter-proliferation war in Korea led by the U.S. This included a ten-day trip in late 2017 by Charles Knight to the Manchuria region of China, Vladivostok, Russia, and Seoul, South Korea to engage and gather regional perspectives on how to avoid a new Korean war.
The chronology of PDA’s publications provides a good introduction to PDA’s 30-year contribution to international security thinking and policy.