Comparing Alternative U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies

Can Assumption-Based Planning Help Elevate the Debate?

Robert J. Lempert, Horacio R. Trujillo, David Aaron, James A. Dewar, Sandra H. Berry, Steven W. Popper

ResearchPublished Apr 6, 2008

Cover: Comparing Alternative U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies
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The United States faces the challenge of countering the terrorism threat. Frequently, both expert decisionmakers and lay citizens have trouble assessing alternative strategies to address such issues because of the emotions they engender and of the deep uncertainty involved. RAND has a long history of developing and employing methods for addressing such questions and distilling complex policy problems into their essential trade-offs. One such approach, assumption-based planning (ABP), focuses on identifying and addressing the key assumptions and thus the key vulnerabilities underlying an organization's plans. ABP not only offers a qualitative approach widely useful in its own right but has also provided the foundation for a family of new quantitative methods that aim to improve strategic decisionmaking under the conditions of deep uncertainty that are characteristic of the terrorism threat. Can ABP help contentious groups more systematically debate alternative U.S. counterterrorism strategies? This briefing reports on two sets of workshops that attempted to do just that.

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Document Details

  • Copyright: RAND Corporation
  • Availability: Web-Only
  • Year: 2008
  • Pages: 78
  • ISBN/EAN: 978-0-8330-4451-8
  • Document Number: DB-548-RC

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Lempert, Robert J., Horacio R. Trujillo, David Aaron, James A. Dewar, Sandra H. Berry, and Steven W. Popper, Comparing Alternative U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies: Can Assumption-Based Planning Help Elevate the Debate? RAND Corporation, DB-548-RC, 2008. As of September 11, 2024: https://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB548.html
Chicago Manual of Style
Lempert, Robert J., Horacio R. Trujillo, David Aaron, James A. Dewar, Sandra H. Berry, and Steven W. Popper, Comparing Alternative U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies: Can Assumption-Based Planning Help Elevate the Debate? Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2008. https://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB548.html.
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