We recently sat down with the gang at the Center for a New American Security to discuss offset strategies. As you can see from the photo, we had all the important props one would need to plan how the United States will maintain its military technological superiority, including Star Wars action figures, a drone from Radio Shack, a model drone, a plastic shotgun, a fake robot, and – of course – a bottle of bourbon. We had a lot of fun recording this and we hope you have fun listening to it.
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Thomas D Baker 
I first heard the term Off-set Strategy four months ago: what is that? WOTR provided some context and I did some reading from other sources. It still remains an ambiguous subject albeit the WOTR crew’s podcast added some clarity in their recent discussions of the topic. Historically, the idea of Off-set Strategy seems to had existed since the Truman Administration years. Here’s a simple stab at it: Given a defined strategy (combined efforts of political, information, military, and economic capabilities) of an organized group of people; it is what is done next when the current strategy fails to produce desired ends, or when the current strategy requires a reset or refocus toward concurrent or different ends relative to environment factors. Essentially, an off-set strategy seems to provide some kind of reaction to ‘what ifs’ when the ‘what if’ occurs or reaction to: ‘boy, we didn’t see that coming.’
At the risk of sounding a cliche, a strategy should be simple because it is difficult to make happen. Also, a strategy requires large amounts of time to accomplish; therefore, it might not expect to produce what its original designers had intended or when. Example, post WWII Truman, after reading the ‘Long Letter’ likely recognized that the U.S. would not be able to continue to repair and restabilize Europe given the understood intentions of Russia. In retrospect, the strategy to ‘contain Russia’ was simple, although complicated to work, and required decades. Currently, if China is a real ‘buga-boo’ that must be countered, than the U.S. military and diplomatic efforts would require a simple approach and time — what does that entail? As for the other half of the world, i.e. North Africa, Middle East, SW Asia, Europe, those factors might be where the off-set strategy needs some critical thought. A person could consider also an inverse of that approach.
Some recommended future discussion about Off-set Strategy (if not already discussed)might include specifically defense force structure, Geographic Combatant Commands, and possible DoD/DoS combined organizations efforts. Good stuff. To the WOTR’s crew — cheers and Merry Christmas.