A History of the Strategic Implications of the Great Recession and Its Aftermath on U.S. National Defense

Abstract

the country was officially in recession, and it would not emerge from this contraction for 18 months. This history considers the Great Recession's reverberations, and especially the related emergence of a national focus on deficit reduction, on the Department of Defense (DoD) as senior leaders in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the Joint Staff worked to shift from a decade of counterterrorism operations toward future threats amid a dynamic threat environment and budgetary uncertainty.The research reported here was completed in December 2021 and underwent security review with the sponsor and the Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review before public release.