Hal Brands
Amid the institutional carnage of the first two months of the Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, few Americans will notice the demise of the Office of Net Assessment. That small outfit occupied a nearly windowless space in the Pentagon. Its work was known only to the nerdiest parts of the national security community.
Yet ONA played a large role in helping the US win the Cold War, by sharpening its strategic instincts and making its behavior more lethally competitive. Shuttering the office is an act of self-harm at a moment when hot wars rage in the Europe and the Middle East and a new cold war, against China, is well underway.
Net assessment is the study of military balances, or, more broadly, of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of rival nations. In the US, the institutionalized practice of net assessment was a child of the Cold War. During the 1950s, the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council had the unenviable task of estimating how much damage the US and the Soviet Union might suffer in a nuclear exchange.
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