The U.S. Department of Defense accounts for over half of federal government discretionary spending and over 3% of GDP. Half of all federal employees work for the Department. The annual budget for the military not only provides for those salaries, it covers the baseline and wartime operating expenses of the force, and hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in new capabilities and technologies. Given the materiality of the defense function and amount of resources it consumes, the processes for budgeting for defense and managing the funds is important to understand. This text provides a fully integrated view of defense budgeting. It takes the position that defense budgeting is a specific instance of public budgeting, and public budgeting is a specific instance of public policy. In order to fully understand how the nation budgets for defense, it first lays a theoretical and conceptual foundation for public policy and public budgeting. That is followed by an assessment of the political and policy context for defense, including the overarching federal budget process and role of Congress in setting defense policy. Only then does the text explore the specifics of defense budgeting: how, by whom, and why the budget is crafted. Beyond the topic of budgeting – formulating, requesting, and legitimating the request for funds – the book tackles financial management topics. Included are discussions of federal appropriations law, funds management, accounting requirements, intragovernmental business transactions, and contemporary topics of defense policy such as funding overseas contingency operations in an era of deficit control legislation. This book is an appropriate reference for both students and practitioners of defense budgeting and financial management. It would also be appropriate in a general public budgeting course. Most public budgeting texts focus on state and municipal governments and there are few that address the federal system. This book fills that gap and provides a specific example of federal budgeting.

In this book we have introduced the basics of the federal budget process, provided an historical background on the foundation and development of the budget process, indicated how defense spending may be measured and how it impacts the economy, described and analyzed how Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution System (PPBES) operates and should function to produce the annual defense budget proposal to Congress, analyzed the role of Congress in debating and deciding on defense appropriations and the politics of the budgetary process including the use of supplemental appropriations to fund national defense, analyzed budget execution dynamics, identified the principal participants in the defense budget process in the Pentagon and military commands, assessed federal and Department of Defense (DoD) financial management and business process challenges and issues, and described the processes used to resource acquisition of defense war fighting assets, including reforms in acquisition and linkages between PPBES and the defense acquisition process.

A myth from the colonial period was that Americans could defend themselves by keeping a rifle in the closet and when needed, grab it, and march off to battle in times of crisis. Unfortunately, providing national defense is more complicated that that; indeed it was more complicated even during the Revolutionary war. General George Washington’s struggles to form a standing army supported by workable logistics and supply processes and to get funding for both from the Revolutionary Congress are well documented. Financing national defense requires planning and resourcing in advance. Reacting at the instant of crisis is too late. Building an educated, highly trained and capable Armed Forces and the acquisition of defense weapons and weapons systems has long lead times and involves making decisions the consequences of which are likely to last for decades. These decisions include how to recruit and retain military and civilian personnel as well as designing, buying and fielding a vast array of ground weapons, ships, aircraft and other weaponry. A decision to buy a major defense weapons system for example sets in motion a chain of other decisions that will affect the U.S., its allies and enemies around the world. Implementation of such decisions is financed through the U.S. federal government and Department of Defense budget processes in a planned yet highly and pluralistic and disaggregated system for determining how to advocate, acquire and allocate scarce resources in a manner that culminates in congressional and presidential approval. In this book we examine the concepts and practices of defense financing, provide a detailed description and analysis of resource policy decision making, financial management and budget execution processes, and analyze the most significant features of the national defense and U.S. federal government resource decision and management system. The book assesses the numerous factors, including those that characterize the complex budget review and appropriation decision making dynamics of Congress, that make U.S. defense finance and budgeting different from any other system in the world. In addition, in a concluding chapter the book compares U.S. defense policy and budgeting to other nations in different regions of the globe, drawing conclusions about the effects of U.S. defense policy and defense financing abroad in regions including Europe, Russia, the Middle-East and Asia.

Budgeting for national defense is a complex endeavor, particularly for a nation like the U.S. that assumes global responsibility and strives to have the most advanced and lethal force on earth. It is necessary – and challenging – to balance the myriad requirements between current and future readiness, across warfare areas and military services, between having state of the art capability with sufficient capacity, and among people, hardware, and the activities people do with that hardware. As analytically difficult as that problem is, it is embedded in the political budgeting processes and national security must be balanced with every other function of government and there must also be cooperation across branches of government. This text explores that complex endeavor. It takes the position that budgeting for defense is a particular instance of public budgeting which is a particular instance of public policy. Thus, this text starts with a conceptual, empirical, and process foundation before discussing the participants and processes that build the annual defense budget. It then covers the execution of that budget and the ultimate accounting. Compared to the first edition, this text is updated with current figures and examples. There is a new chapter on determinants of military spending in society and burden sharing within alliances. The chapter on budget execution has been disaggregated and a new chapter is devoted to fiscal law. The final chapter seeks to integrate all that came before it by discussing matters that integrate the stages of budgeting and which cross branches of government. Following in the tradition of the first edition, this is intended to be both a textbook for a course in budgeting, but also a desktop reference for defense budgeting practitioners.

Examines the planning and budgeting processes of the United States. This title describes the planning and resource integration activities of the White House, reviews the adequacy of the structures and process and makes proposals for ways both might be reformed to fit the demands of the 21st century security environment.

In this comprehensive study, 15 African experts describe and analyse the military budgetary processes and degree of parliamentary oversight and control in nine countries of Africa, spanning across all the continent's sub-regions. Each case study addresses a wide range of questions, such as the roles of the ministries of finance, budget offices, audit departments and external actors in the military budgetary processes, the extent of compliance with standard public expenditure management procedures, and how well official military expenditure figures reflect the true economic resources devoted to military activities in these countries.

Never before in the history of mankind have so few people had so much power over so many. The people at the top of the American national security establishment, the President and his principal advisors, the core team at the helm of the National Security Council, are without question the most powerful committee in the history of the world. Yet, in many respects, they are among the least understood. A former senior official in the Clinton Administration himself, David Rothkopf served with and knows personally many of the NSC's key players of the past twenty-five years. In Running the World he pulls back the curtain on this shadowy world to explore its inner workings, its people, their relationships, their contributions and the occasions when they have gone wrong. He traces the group's evolution from the final days of the Second World War to the post-Cold War realities of global terror -- exploring its triumphs, its human dramas and most recently, what many consider to be its breakdown at a time when we needed it most. Drawing on an extraordinary series of insider interviews with policy makers including Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, senior officials of the Bush Administration, and over 130 others, the book offers unprecedented insights into what must change if America is to maintain its unprecedented worldwide leadership in the decades ahead.

This new textbook seeks to explain how US defense and national security policy is formulated and conducted. The focus is on the role of the President, Congress, political partisans, defense industries, lobbies, science, the media, and interest groups, including the military itself, in shaping policies. It examines the following key themes: US grand strategy; who joins America's military; how and why weapons are bought; the management of defense; public attitudes toward the military and casualties; the roles of the President and the Congress in controlling the military; the effects of 9/11 on security policy, homeland security, government reorganizations, and intra- and inter-service relations. The book shows how political and organizational interests determine US defense policy, and warns against the introduction of centralising reforms. In emphasizing the process of defense policy-making, rather than just the outcomes of that process, this book signals a departure from the style of many existing textbooks.