Consider this post a sequel to this one. This is going to be wonky as shit, so be warned. If you don’t care about the Quadrennial Defense Review, you’re not going to like this post. If you’re on the fence but need some background for the importance of this massive Pentagon planning document, I suggest reading this. But for all my defense wonks, let’s get in.

So Defense News has the leak. This, from the preface, is the key summary graf to me:

QDR analyses centered on the following challenge areas: defending the United States and providing defense support to civil authorities, conducting irregular operations (including counterinsurgency, stability operations, and counter-terrorist operations), defeating adversaries armed with anti-access capabilities, countering weapons of mass destruction, and operating effectively in cyberspace.

Laura Rozen notices the key fact here: a dubious and kind of empty concept called “2 Major Theater Wars” is gone. What was that? It was a QDR-borne doctrine since the 1990s that said the military has to be prepared to fight and win two Gulf War One-sized conflicts at the same time. (It’s been adjusted over the past 15 years to modify that meaning, but as a quick definition, I think that’s both fair and serviceable.) Now, you might ask yourself: what are two Gulf War One-sized conflicts? Good question! The fact is, over the past 15-odd years, successive Pentagons haven’t had a good answer. But they knew they needed something that said, basically, We Will Fuck You Up So Don’t Try Anything. They had Kim Jong-il and Saddam Hussein in mind. Oops! When the worst-case scenario came to pass and the U.S. was involved in two simultaneous wars, it did absolutely terribly in both while the services said, “Well, these things are just bumps on the road to the tech-enhanced future” and the officers who started to dig us out of years of compounded mistakes did so, at a minimum, without paying any mind to the QDR.

So this is much better. Why’s this better? Because it’s focused on existing capabilities to guard against. Not on people. Not on states. Not on specific enemies. But on capabilities that hostile actors have demonstrated to use against the United States and its allies. You’re prepared for the capabilities? Then you’re prepared for the ne’er-do-wells who wield them. (You’ll see in my Windy post that I talk about budgeting issues there, so forgive me if I don’t repeat myself.) And those capabilities themselves targeted for focus are pretty much manifested threats — or, in the case of the WMD issue, so sufficiently dangerous that we can excuse some hypothetical-ness.

Exum says the draft has a “strong whiff of Brimley” about it, by which he means Shawn Brimley, the former CNAS defense analyst whom Michele Flournoy tapped to move to the Pentagon and take charge of the QDR process. (I will take Ex at his word that he knows how to identify Brimley’s particular Canadian aroma.) Probably couldn’t have not had that. I will withhold all real judgment about the QDR until I see the actual finished product. But these indications so far are very positive. Go Brimley. Never send an American to do a Canadian’s job.

Update: Also, check out how the QDR leak inadvertently also leaked the White House’s forthcoming National Security Strategy.