January 6, 2015
Basic Books
In The Last Warrior, Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts—both former members of Marshall’s staff—trace Marshall’s intellectual development from his upbringing in Detroit during the Great Depression to his decades in Washington as an influential behind-the-scenes advisor on American defense strategy. The result is a unique insider’s perspective on the changes in U.S. strategy from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day.
2020
The Andrew W. Marshall Foundation
Andrew Marshall’s initial notion of a diagnostic net assessment came about while he worked at the RAND Corporation, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s.
It was during his time at RAND that Marshall, along with Joe Loftus, Jim Digby, Herb Goldhammer, Albert Wohlstetter, and others, began to understand that trying to describe the nature of the long-term competition between the United States and the Soviet Union required methods of analysis that were by definition broad and multi-disciplinary in nature.
For Marshall, to understand a competition between two nations meant studying the people, the organizations, and the decisionmaking structures of each country, including its comparative strengths and weaknesses. To the RAND analysts, understanding the nature of a competition was not a study of raw numbers; it was about conducting a structured systematic analysis that looked to the past for trends and then constructing alternative futures based in part on that trend analysis.
Because of the uncertainty about the future, the assessments would depend on the question; include factors such as ideology, demographics, political economics, financial institutions, cultures, religion, education, science, technology, research and development, manufacturing, budgetary constraints, organizational constructs, the possible emergence of disruptive technologies, and military organizations, tactics, doctrine, and force structure.
By nature, net assessment is subject to considerable uncertainty. The principal outcome of Marshall’s analysis was to identify two or three areas of emerging problems or opportunities about which a decisionmakers still had time to make strategic choices and decisions.
May 17, 2015
Nixon Presidential Library & Museum
Andrew Krepinevich and Barry Watts talk about their biography of Andrew Marshall, head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment – the Pentagon’s think tank – from 1973-2015. The co-authors are former members of Marshall’s staff.
February 1, 2001
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
“The principal aim of this report is to assess the evolving capabilities of nations and other actors to exploit near-earth space for military purposes over the next 20-25 years.”
