Clinton's defense reviews, in the context of earlier reviews:

During the Cold War, military planning was geared around the threat posed by the Soviet Union. With its "New Look" defense program, the Eisenhower administration focused on nuclear deterrence and de-emphasized conventional forces. The Kennedy administration adopted the concept of "flexible response" and built up conventional forces to reduce the likelihood of nuclear escalation; Kennedy's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara argued that the United States needed a "two-and-one-half-war" capability to simultaneously defend Western Europe from the Soviet Union and Southeast Asia or Korea from China and still be able to meet a contingency elsewhere.

Under the Nixon administration, the United States moved towards a one-and-one-half war strategy, in which the United States would maintain forces to meet one major Communist attack in either Europe or Asia, and still meet a contingency elsewhere. The Reagan administration more clearly focused on war specifically with the Soviet Union and prepared to fight that country on several fronts.

Planning in the post-Cold War Environment

With the end of the Cold War, the strategic environment facing U.S. military planners changed dramatically. There was no more U.S.-Soviet axis around which the rest of the world revolved, and the resulting loss of stability accelerated regional conflict, which was also fed by the proliferation of conventional weapons as well as that of weapons of mass destruction. Also, the American public expected a peace dividend after years of high defense spending.

The first effort to adapt the military for the post-Cold War world was the Base Force, a plan begun in 1989 and implemented only in the last year of the Bush administration and the first of Bill Clinton's. As devised by Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Base Force was to be the minimum force needed to execute a new strategy based on regional threats. This new strategy was based on four foundations: strategic deterrence and defense, forward presence, crisis response, and reconstitution. The plan called for a 25 percent reduction in force structure, a 10 percent reduction in budget authority, and a 20 percent reduction in manpower relative to FY 1990. The Joint Military Net Assessment (JMNA) concluded that the Base Force was capable of resolving only one major regional conflict at a time both quickly and with low risk.

The new Clinton administration conducted a second major review of the military in 1993, the Bottom-Up Review (BUR). The strategy here gave more attention to the military's involvement in relatively small peacetime operations, but quickly became geared around a two-MRC model. Policymakers initially leaned towards a model under which the military could win one MRC while holding steady in a second MRC before forces could be shifted, but Defense Secretary Les Aspin publicly committed to a two-MRC model in June 1993. Being able to fight two major regional conflicts simultaneously would deter the possibility that a second conflict would emerge, proponents argued.

At the same time, the BUR accelerated force reductions and budget cuts beyond those planned under the Base Force. This tension between a more ambitious military plan, relatively high levels of deployment in contingency operations such as Bosnia and Iraq, and a shrinking force led to concerns over whether the military could actually implement the two-MRC strategy effectively and over the force's level of readiness. The JMNA in 1993 concluded that the United States could win two conflicts but with higher levels of risk, especially on the second front.

The Clinton administration conducted its second major review with its Quadrennial Defense Review in 1997 (the QDR was ordered by the Military Force Structure Act of 1996 and made a permanent requirement by the Fiscal 2000 National Defense Authorization Act). Here, the DoD declared its strategy to be one where the United States would shape the international environment to its favor, respond to all types of crises when directed, and prepared for the future by transforming current capabilities. The QDR maintained the goal of being able to fight two MRCs simultaneously with moderate risk, but the level of risk in doing so rose to "moderate" and "high" levels.

Under George W. Bush, the Department of Defense conducted another planning review in 2001, completing and releasing its Quadrennial Defense Review shortly after the attacks of September 11. The 2001 QDR focused on the need for forward deterrence, so that the United States could maintain its security through active engagement, and responding to asymmetric threats [1]such as terrorist attacks. Overall, the QDR marked a shift in focus from responding to specific threats to building up the capabilities for meeting all possible force requirements, both functional and geographic. [2] [This is related to the concept of 'asymmetric threat' and the reduction of emphasis on the primacy of 'national borders'. See: Reagan Administration/asymmetric]

From "Gov report: Proposals for Intelligence Reorganization 1949-1996" [3]

With the end of the Cold War, emerging security concerns, including transnational terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, face the United States. Most recent proposals for intelligence reorganization address post-Cold War requirements for covert action, the structure and size of the CIA, and the extent of the DCI's authority over all elements of the Intelligence Community. These post-Cold War issues can be usefully addressed with an awareness of arguments pro and con that were raised by earlier investigators.

Clinton and Wolfowitz

When the Republicans left office in 1993, Wolfowitz became a leading opponent of the Clinton administration's foreign policy. Armitage emerged as a critic of President Clinton's Asia policy. A third, younger veteran of the Reagan and first Bush administrations, Condoleezza Rice -- who had been a Soviet specialist first at the Pentagon and then on the National Security Council – regularly denounced Clinton's close identification with Russia's Boris Yeltsin. And Rumsfeld headed the Team-B-style commission that warned of the danger of missile attack. Eventually, Rice became George W. Bush's top foreign-policy adviser in the 2000 campaign, working closely with Armitage and Wolfowitz. [4]

On how Clinton's CIA Director, James Woolsey, supported Reagan's defense policy initiatives [5]

On how the Gang of Four nixed Carter's Test Ban Treaty:

Congress and the White House tangled repeatedly in 1999 over a variety of national security issues, including Chinese military espionage, lax export controls that allowed Beijing to purchase some of America's most advanced technology, the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban Treaty, the Pentagon budget, and, very late in the session, a potentially disastrous decision by President Clinton drastically limiting the use of Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, for live-fire combined-arms training.

...On another major issue, the Republican-controlled Senate and the president engaged in a titanic struggle over ratification of the Test Ban Treaty.

In the end, the Senate declined to ratify by a resounding 51 to 48 vote, handing the president what even administration officials conceded was a humiliating foreign policy defeat for Clinton.

...The fact that six former secretaries of Defense urged the Senate leadership to reject ratification was undoubtedly a factor in the final outcome. James R. Schlesinger, Richard B. Cheney, Frank C. Carlucci, Caspar W. Weinberger, Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Melvin R. Laird argued, in a letter to Lott and Sen. Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.), the minority leader, that if all nuclear tests, even of the lowest yields, were permanently prohibited, the reliability of America's own nuclear arsenal would inevitably decline--as would, of course, the overall U.S. deterrent credibility. [6]

From DEMOCRACY NOW, 10/02/2003:

Own a Piece of Iraq - How U.S. Gvt. Officials Are Leaving Public Office To Cash In On Iraq:

President Bush’s campaign manager in 2000, Joe Allbaugh, has set up a new private business firm in Washington and Iraq to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq including companies who are seeking government contracts. ... Other Washington insiders who are working in Iraq are former [Clinton] Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. [7]

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The Rest of the Iceberg