General Resources

Cato Institute. Cato’s website provides extensive research on foreign policy and national security issues.

Center for Budgetary Assessments. A nonpartisan institute providing news and studies on military strategy, defense budgets, and weapon systems.

Congressional Budget Office. The CBO issues reports on various defense-related programs. CBO studies are available here.

Congressional Research Service. The CRS issues briefing papers on issues related to the department. CRS studies are available here.

Government Accountability Office. The GAO issues reports on the operations of the department’s programs. GAO studies are available here.

U.S. Department of Defense. The department’s website provides information on agencies and programs.

U.S. Department of Defense. The Office of Inspector General investigates waste, fraud, and abuse in the department’s programs.

Defense Strategy

Richard Betts, “A Disciplined Defense,” Foreign Affairs 86, no. 6. (November/December 2007): 67-80.

Ted Galen Carpenter, Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America (Washington: Cato Institute, 2008).

Benjamin H. Friedman and Christopher Preble, “Budgetary Savings from Military Restraint,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 667, September 21, 2010.

Eugene Gholz, Daryl G. Press, and Harvey M. Sapolsky, “Come Home, America: The Strategy of Restraint in the Face of Temptation,” International Security 21, no. 4 (Spring 1997): 5–48.

Michael Lind, The American Way of Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life (New York: Oxford University, 2006).

Barry Posen, “The Case for Restraint,” The American Interest 3, no. 1 (November/December 2007): 7–17.

Christopher Preble, The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2009).

Harvey M. Sapolsky, Benjamin H. Friedman, Eugene Gholz, and Daryl G. Press, “Restraining Order: For Strategic Modesty,” World Affairs Journal 172, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 84-94.

Defense Budgeting and Politics

Gordon Adams and Cindy Williams, Buying National Security: How America Plans and Pays for Its Global Role and Safety at Home (New York: Routledge, 2010).

Alain C. Enthoven, K. Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969 (Santa Monica: RAND, 1971).

Arnold Kanter, Defense Politics: A Budgetary Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963).

Sheldon Pollack, War, Revenue, and State (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2009).

Daniel Wirls, Irrational Security: The Politics of Defense from Reagan to Obama (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2010).

Harvey M. Sapolsky, Eugène Gholz, and Caitlin Talmadge, U.S. Defense Politics: The Origins of Security Policy (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2009).

Military Pay and Benefits

Cindy Williams, ed., Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004).

Cindy Williams, “Paying Tomorrow’s Military,” Regulation 29, no. 2 (Summer 2006): 26-31.