In the Wake of the QDR

摘要

In early September 2001, the Quadrennial Defense Review for that year was in the final stages of completion. There was no mystery about what it was going to say. The details had been dribbling out all through the summer in Pentagon statements and preliminary documents. The QDR would call for the armed forces to be sized, structured, and equipped to deter aggression in four critical theaters (Europe, northern Asia, the East Asian littoral, and the Middle East/Southwest Asia), defeat aggression in two theater wars simultaneously, and win decisively in one of them. The standard was dubbed "4-2-1."