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Begin New Search Topic Defense Policy Content Type Working Paper Publishing Institution Center for Strategic and International Studies

41. Federated Defense in Asia

Author:
Michael J. Green, Kathleen H. Hicks, and Zack Cooper
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The United States has long emphasized the desirability of working with allies and partners to meet pressing security challenges. Indeed, many of our most vexing security concerns—from terrorism to cyber attacks—are best met with concerted multilateral responses. At a time when the United States and many of its allies and partners are reluctant to increase defense and security spending, working together is paramount. This is perhaps most evident in Asia, where present and potential future threats to security and prosperity are high and shared interests are substantial.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, Disaster Relief, Humanitarian Aid, and Intelligence
Political Geography:
United States and Asia

42. Talking Technology Best Practices in Communicating

Author:
Maren Leed, Kathryn Easop, Alvaro Genie, and Jaimie Hoskins
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
In recent months, Department of Defense leaders have raised increasing concerns about the potential for the United States to lose its comparative advantage in multiple technology areas. To help address this trend, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently directed a “Defense Innovation Initiative” aimed at fostering the development of breakthrough technologies. Success in this effort will require a series of actions, but all rest on one critical factor: a shared understanding across the research and policy communities of the scientific potential and its importance to our national security going forward. Without that common view, scientists in both the public and private sector will be unable to sustain sufficient support to deliver meaningful advances.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Science and Technology, and Infrastructure
Political Geography:
United States

43. NATO's Posture after the Wales Summit

Author:
Guillaume Lasconjarias
Publication Date:
11-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The recent NATO Summit in Wales has been viewed as a watershed event not just because of the particular moment at which it took place, but because of the pledges taken by heads of states and governments. For sure, the still ongoing Ukraine crisis and the rising insurgency in Syria-Iraq might have acted as true “wake-up calls”, calling the Alliance to step up its posture and show its determination, especially in terms of commitments towards bolstering the main pillars of the Alliance. The initiatives announced in terms of readiness and defence posture, the Readiness Action Plan in particular, belong to a series of reassurance measures towards Eastern allies, but also revitalize the NATO Response Force through an expeditionary spearhead, the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force. Although some might consider these measures as “too little too late”, they prove the Alliance's cohesion and the commitment to the transatlantic link.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, NATO, and International Security
Political Geography:
Iraq, Ukraine, and Syria

44. Leveraging Global Value Chains for a Federated Approach to Defense

Author:
David J. Berteau, Scott Miller, Ryan Crotty, and Paul Nadeau
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
CSIS launched the Federated Defense Project to assess and recommend concrete ways for the United States and its partners to integrate their defense capabilities in support of shared interests. Rather than creating interdependencies that would hinder autonomous action or bind partners to commitments to which they only share a tangential interest, the federated defense strategy builds on the natural interests of allies and partners to develop closer working ties to the United States and one another in order to manage the challenges posed by constrained resources and a daunting geostrategic environment. Buttressing any form of federated defense must be a set of bottom-up, organic interactions within the private sector to develop the capabilities that will underpin these security architectures. The expansion of business-to-business relationships among providers of platforms, supplies, and services to the network of trusted partners and allies is a key building block in ensuring adequate capabilities development, integration, and interoperability. To date, this interaction has occurred despite the many barriers that exist to their success. A federated approach will seek to enable this cooperation and lower these barriers, leading to greater cooperation, collaboration, and integration through global value chains (GVCs). Addressing the findings below is essential to the successful execution of a federated approach to defense.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Privatization, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
United States

45. Iran, Evolving Threats, and Strategic Partnerships in the Gulf

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Internal ethnic and sectarian tensions, civil conflict, continued instability, failed governance and economy. Syrian civil war. Iraq, Lebanon, “Shi'ite crescent.” Sectarian warfare and struggle for future of Islam through and outside region. Sunni on Sunni and vs. Shi'ite struggles Terrorism, insurgency, civil conflict linked to outside state and non-state actors. Wars of influence and intimidation Asymmetric conflicts escalating to conventional conflicts. Major “conventional” conflict threats: Iran-Arab Gulf, Arab-Israeli, etc. Economic warfare: sanctions, “close the Gulf,” etc. Missile and long-range rocket warfare Proliferation, preventive strikes, containment, nuclear arms race, extended deterrence, “weapons of mass effectiveness”.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, International Security, and Nuclear Power
Political Geography:
Iraq, Iran, Middle East, Lebanon, and Syria

46. The Civil-Military Challenge to National Security Spending

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Perhaps the worst part of the debate that has led to the shut down of the federal government is its almost total irrelevance. It threaten both the US economy and US national security, but it does even begin to touch upon the forces that shape the rise in entitlements spending or their underlying causes.The Congressional debate does not address the forces that have led to a form of sequestration that focuses on defense as if it were the key cause of the deficit and pressures on the debt ceiling. It does not address the irony that much of defense spending has direct benefits to the US economy and that the spending on foreign wars–the so-called OCO account–dropped from $158.8 billion in FY2011 to some $88.5 billion in FY2013, and is projected to drop to around $37 billion in FY2015. Much of the debate focuses on the Affordable Care Act or "Obama Care"–a program whose balance between federal expenditures and revenues is sufficiently uncertain so the Congressional Budget office can only make limited forecasts, but whose net impact cannot come close to the cost pressures that an aging America and rising national medical costs have put on Federal entitlements in the worst case NDS May actually have a positive impact in the best case.The following briefing provides a range of estimates that addresses the real issues that are shaping the overall pressures that poverty, an aging America, and rising medical costs are putting on the US economy and federal spending. It draws on a range of sources to show how different estimates affect key trends, but focuses on data provide by a neutral arm of the same Congress that has paralyzed the US government and whose action threaten the funding on a viable national security strategy.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Economics, and Governance
Political Geography:
United States and America

47. Chinese Military Modernization and Force Development

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman, Nicholas S. Yarosh, and Ashley Hess
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) face a critical need to improve their understanding of how each is developing its military power and how to avoid forms of military competition that could lead to rising tension or conflict between the two states. This report utilizes the unclassified data available in the West on the trends in Chinese military forces. It relies heavily on the data in the US Department of Defense (DoD) Report to Congress on Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China, particularly the 2013 edition.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
United States and China

48. Iran's Present Day Military Capabilities and Military Aspirations in the Middle East

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Far too much of the analysis of Iran's search for nuclear weapons treats it in terms of arms control or focuses on the potential threat to Israel. In reality, Iran's mix of asymmetric warfare, conventional warfare, and conventionally armed missile forces have critical weaknesses that make Iran anything but the hegemon of the Gulf. Iran's public focus on Israel also disguises the reality that its primary strategic focus is to deter and intimidate its Gulf neighbors and the United States – not Israel. It has made major progress in creating naval forces for asymmetric warfare and developing naval missiles, but it has very limited air-sea and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (IS) capabilities. It lacks modern conventional land, air, air defense and sea power, has fallen far behind the Arab Gulf states in modern aircraft and ships, and its land forces are filled with obsolete and mediocre weapons that lack maneuver capability and sustainability outside Iran. Iran needs nuclear weapons to offset these facts.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Treaties and Agreements, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, Middle East, Israel, and Arabia

49. Changing US Security Strategy: The Search for Stability and the "Non-War" against "Non-Terrorism"

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
More than a decade into the “war on terrorism,” much of the political debate in the US is still fixated on the legacy of 9/11. US politics has a partisan fixation on Benghazi, the Boston Marathon bombing, intelligence intercepts, and Guantanamo. Far too much US attention still focuses on “terrorism” at a time the US faces a much broader range of threats from the instability in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) and Islamic world. Moreover, much of the US debate ignores the fact that the US has not actually fought a “war on terrorism” over the last decade, and the US failures in using military force and civil aid in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US has not fought wars as such, but rather became involved in exercises in armed nation building where stability operations escalated into national building as a result of US occupation and where the failures in stability operations and nation building led to insurgencies that forced the US into major counterinsurgency campaigns that had little to do with counterterrorism. An analysis of the trends in the Iraq and Afghan conflicts shows that the US has not been fighting a war on terrorism since Bin Laden and Al Qaida Central were driven into Pakistan in December 2001. The US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and then made stability operations and armed nation building its key goals. It was US mishandling of these exercises in armed nation building that led to major counterinsurgency campaigns although – at least in the case of Afghanistan --the US continued to label its military operations as a struggle against “terrorism.” By 2013, the US had committed well over $1.4 trillion to these exercises in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the same time, the US made massive increases in its domestic spending on homeland defense that it rationalized as part of the fight against terrorism but often had little or nothing to do with any aspect of counterterrorism. At the same time, the US failed to develop consistent or useful unclassified statistics on the patterns in terrorism and its counterterrorism activities. The US government has never provided a meaningful break out of federal activities and spending at home or abroad which actually focus on terrorism, or any unclassified measures of effectiveness. The OMB has lumped a wide range of activities that have no relation to terrorism it its reporting on the President's budget request – activities whose total cost now approach $60 billion a year. The Department of Defense has never provided a meaningful estimate of the total cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or a break out of the small portion of total overseas contingency operations (OCO) spending actually spent on counterterrorism versus counter insurgency. The State Department and US intelligence community provide no meaningful unclassified data on the cost of their counterterrorism effort and it is unclear that they have developed any metrics at any level that show the cost-benefits of their activities. The annual US State Department country reports on terrorism come as close to an unclassified report on the status of terrorism as the US government provides. While many portions are useful, the designation of terrorist movements is often political and shows the US designation of terrorist movements conflates terrorism and insurgency. The closest the US has come to developing any metrics on terrorism has been to develop an unclassified database in the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) that never distinguished terrorism from insurgency. This database formed the core of the statistical annex to State Department reporting, but has since been withdrawn without explanation. As this analysis shows in detail, it now has been replaced by a contractor effort that makes all of the previous mistakes made by the NCTC. The end result is a set of official reporting and statistics in the annex to the State Department report where “terrorism” remains remained poorly defined, badly structured, ignored in parts of the world, and conflates terrorism with counterinsurgency, instability, and civil war. A review of the Afghan, Iraq conflicts, and other recent conflicts in the MENA region shows just how serious these problems are in distorting the true nature of the wars the US is fighting and the threats it faces. The same is true of the unclassified reporting the US government provides on terrorism. A detailed review of the most recent State Department report on terrorism provides important insights into key terrorist movements, but the narratives generally ignore their ties to insurgent movements, their statistical data include some major insurgent movements and exclude others, and many of the data seem to include violence that is not truly terroristic in character.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Islam, Terrorism, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Middle East, and North Africa

50. Offensive Cyber Capabilities at the Operational Level

Author:
Maren Leed
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
At present, the defense policy landscape is replete with arguments, many of which are ultimately based in the lack of a common vision among both elites and within the broader population about the role of the U.S. military in the future. Cyber operations are one element of these debates, although much of the discussion has centered around how best to defend against a growing cyber threat, the role of the Defense Department in that defense, and tensions between civil liberties and security interests. Occasionally, greater attention is paid to questions about the U.S. use of cyber offensively, which brings with it questions of precedent, deterrence, international norms, and a host of other challenges. But it is also apparent that U.S. leaders have already approved the use of offensive cyber capabilities, though under tight restrictions. While not ignoring this larger context, the specific question this report examines is whether the Defense Department should make a more deliberate effort to explore the potential of offensive cyber tools at levels below that of a combatant command.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, Intelligence, Science and Technology, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States