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32. THE GULF MILITARY BALANCE Volume III: The Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman and Robert M. Shelala II
- Publication Date:
- 05-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- The US faces major challenges in dealing with Iran, the threat of terrorism, and the tide of political instability in the Arabian Peninsula. The presence of some of the world's largest reserves of oil and natural gas, vital shipping lanes, and Shia populations throughout the region have made the peninsula the focal point of US and Iranian strategic competition. Moreover, large youth populations, high unemployment rates, and political systems with highly centralized power bases have posed other economic, political, and security challenges that the GCC states must address, and which the US must take into consideration when forming strategy and policy. An updated study by the CSIS Burke Chair explores US and Iranian interests in the region, Gulf state and GCC policies toward both the US and Iran, and potential flash-points and vulnerabilities in the Gulf to enhanced competition with Iran. This study examines the growing US security partnership with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE – established as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It analyzes the steady growth in this partnership that has led to over $64 billion in new US arms transfer agreements during 2008-2011. It also examines the strengths and weaknesses of the security cooperation between the southern Gulf states, and their relative level of political, social, and economic stability. The study focuses on the need for enhanced unity and security cooperation between the individual Gulf states. It finds that such progress is critical if they are to provide effective deterrence and defense against Iran, improve their counterterrorism capabilities, and enhance other aspects of their internal security.
- Topic:
- Security, Islam, Oil, Terrorism, Natural Resources, and Counterinsurgency
- Political Geography:
- United States, Middle East, and Arabia
33. THE GULF MILITARY BALANCE Volume II: The Missile and Nuclear Dimensions
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman and Bryan Gold
- Publication Date:
- 05-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- The report shows that Iran's current missile and rocket forces help compensate for its lack of effective air power and allow it to pose a threat to its neighbors and US forces that could affect their willingness to strike on Iran if Iran uses its capabilities for asymmetric warfare in the Gulf or against any of its neighbors. At another level, Iran's steady increase in the number, range, and capability of its rocket and missile forces has increased the level of tension in the Gulf, and in other regional states like Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. Iran has also shown that it will transfer long-range rockets to “friendly” or “proxy” forces like the Hezbollah and Hamas. At a far more threatening level, Iran has acquired virtually every element of a nuclear breakout capability except the fissile material needed to make a weapon. This threat has already led to a growing “war of sanctions,” and Israeli and US threats of preventive strikes. At the same time, the threat posed by Iran's nuclear programs cannot be separated from the threat posed by Iran's growing capabilities for asymmetric warfare in the Gulf and along all of its borders. It is far from clear that negotiations and sanctions can succeed in limiting Iran's ability to acquire nuclear weapons and deploy nuclear-armed missiles. At the same time, the report shows that military options offer uncertain alternatives. Both Israel and the US have repeatedly stated that they are planning and ready for military options that could include preventive strikes on at least Iran's nuclear facilities and, and that US strikes might cover a much wider range of missile facilities and other targets. A preventive war might trigger a direct military confrontation or conflict in the Gulf with little warning. It might also lead to at least symbolic Iranian missile strikes on US basing facilities, GCC targets or Israel. At the same time, it could lead to much more serious covert and proxy operations in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, the rest of the Gulf, and other areas.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and War
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iran, and Middle East
34. THE GULF MILITARY BALANCE Volume I: The Conventional and Asymmetric Dimensions
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman and Byran Gold
- Publication Date:
- 05-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- Iran almost certainly recognizes that US conventional superiority would give the US and its Gulf allies the upper hand in a serious conventional conflict where they could use the full spectrum of their abilities to attack a range of Iranian military targets. As a result, Iran is linking the steady expansion of its asymmetric forces to new uses of its conventional forces, and is building up its missile and nuclear capabilities, in part to deter retaliation against its use of asymmetric warfare, and in part to pose a major challenge to US and allied conventional superiority If the US is to successfully neutralize this complex mix of threats that can be used in so many different ways and at some many different levels of escalation, it must continuously adapt its forward deployed and power projection forces to deal Iranian efforts to improve its capability conduct a battle of attrition in the Gulf or near it, and deal with contingencies like Iran's use of free floating mines, unattributable attacks, and any other form of asymmetric warfare than threatens friendly Gulf states and the flow of world energy exports from the region. The US, must also work with its Gulf partners and other allies to deter and defend against very different types of conflict and be prepared to face sharp limits on the amount of force it can use. US success depends on building up the capabilities of its strategic partners in the Arab Gulf, as well as improving its cooperation with more traditional partners like Britain and France.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Arms Control and Proliferation, and Nuclear Weapons
- Political Geography:
- United States and Middle East
35. Defense Cuts, Sequestration, and the US Defense Budget
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman and Robert M. Shelala II
- Publication Date:
- 04-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- Concepts are not a strategy. Broad outlines do not set real priorities. A strategy requires a plan with concrete goals numbers schedules and costs for procurement, allocation, manpower, force structure, and detailed operational capabilities. For all the talk of 10 years of planned spending levels and cuts, the President and Congress can only shape the actual budget and defense program one year at a time. Unpredicted events and realities will intervene. There is a near zero real world probability that the coming plan and budget will shape the future in spite of changes in the economy, politics, entitlements, and threats to the US.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, International Cooperation, War, and Counterinsurgency
- Political Geography:
- United States
36. US and Iranian Strategic Competition: Sanctions, Energy, Arms Control, and Regime Change
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman, Bryan Gold, and Chloe Coughlin-Schulte
- Publication Date:
- 07-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis (CESRAN)
- Abstract:
- This report analyzes four key aspects of US and Iranian strategic competition - sanctions, energy, arms control, and regime change. Its primary focus is on the ways in which the sanctions applied to Iran have changed US and Iranian competition since the fall of 2011. This escalation has been spurred by the creation of a series of far stronger US unilateral sanctions and the EU's imposition of equally strong sanctions – both of which affect Iran's ability to export, its financial system, and its overall economy.
- Topic:
- Arms Control and Proliferation, Islam, Nuclear Weapons, Oil, Regime Change, and Sanctions
- Political Geography:
- Iran and Middle East
37. US AND IRANIAN STRATEGIC COMPETITION: The Impact of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Central Asia
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman, Sam Khazai, Robert M. Shelala II, Nori Kasting, and Sean Mann
- Publication Date:
- 06-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Abstract:
- Security and stability in Central and South Asia are driven by regional tensions and quarrels, and the internal instability of regional states. Weak governance and corruption are major problems in every state in the region, along with state barriers to economic growth and development and – in most cases – under investment in education, health, and infrastructure. Very young populations face major unemployment and underemployment problems and income distribution is badly unbalanced, and on sharply favors the ruling power elite. Ethic, tribal, and sectarian tensions compound these problems, and in many cases, so do internal and external threats from Islamic extremists and the growing tensions between Sunni and Shi‟ite.
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and India
38. 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
39. 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
40. 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