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31. The Civil Transition in Afghanistan: 2014-2016

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Creating an effective transition for the ANSF is only one of the major challenges that Afghanistan, the US, and Afghanistan's other allies face during 2014 2015 and beyond. The five other key challenges include: Going from an uncertain election to effective leadership and political cohesion and unity. Creating an effective and popular structure governance, with suitable reforms, from the local to central government, reducing corruption to acceptable levels, and making suitable progress in planning, budgeting, and budget execution. Coping with the coming major cuts in outside aid and military spending in Afghanistan, adapting to a largely self-financed economy, developing renewal world economic development plans, carrying out the reforms pledged at the Tokyo Conference, and reducing the many barriers to doing business. Establishing relations with Pakistan and other neighbors that will limit outside pressures and threats, and insurgent sanctuaries on Afghanistan's border. Persuading the US, other donors, NGCO, and nations will to provide advisors to furnish the needed aid effort through at least 2018, and probably well beyond.
Topic:
Government, Politics, and Governance
Political Geography:
Afghanistan and Middle East

32. International Shifts and Their Security Impact on the Gulf: Key Trends and Key Numbers

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman
Publication Date:
12-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
I have been asked to help set the stage for this conference by looking at the broader issues that can address the issue of A World with No Axis? International Shifts and their Impact on the Gulf. I have spent enough time in the Gulf over the years to know how often people have strong opinions, interesting conspiracy theories, and a tendency to ignore hard numbers and facts. We all suffer from the same problems, but today I'm going to focus as much on f act s and numbers as possible. I'm only going to select only a portion of the key trends and numbers involved in my oral remarks , but I will leave the conference with a much longer paper that lists a fuller range of such data. This paper that will also be on the CSIS web site, along with a series of very detailed papers on the military balance in the Gulf. If you want to provide me with your card, I'll also make sure the papers involved are sent to your directly.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Regional Cooperation, International Security, and Governance
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Middle East, Arabia, and Qatar

33. The US and Iran: Sanctions, Energy, Arms Control, and Regime Change

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman, Bryan Gold, and Chloe Coughlin-Schulte
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
US and Iranian strategic competition is heavily drive by four key factors–the success or failure of sanctions, the im0pact of that competition on the flow of Gulf energy exports, the success or failure of efforts to limit Iran's nuclear options and the broader prospect for arms control, and the prospects for accommodation of regime change. In recent years, the key variable has been ways in which sanctions on Iran have changed US and Iranian competition since the fall of 2011, and helped lead to a tentative set of Iranian agreements with the UN's P5+1--the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, namely United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, and France, plus Germany--in November 2013.
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Economics, Oil, Regime Change, and Sanctions
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, China, United Kingdom, Iran, Middle East, France, and Germany

34. Federated Defense Project

Publication Date:
12-2013
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 challenges-such as terrorism, threats to freedom of the seas and air, and cyber threats-are best met with multilateral action. At a time when the United States and many of its allies and partners are reluctant to increase defense and security investments, working together is of increasing importance. This is perhaps most evident in the Middle East and Asia, where real and potential threats to U.S. and partner security are high and our interests great.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Arms Control and Proliferation, International Cooperation, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, and Asia

35. Shaping Iraq's Security Forces US-Iranian Competition Series

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman, Sam Khazai, and Daniel Dewit
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
The last active US combat forces left Iraq in August 2010, marking the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the beginning of Operation New Dawn. Some 49,000 advisory troops, four advisor assistance brigades, and a limited number of special operations forces (SOF) remained to train, advise, and assist Iraq's security forces after that date, including the military, intelligence, and police. Until the end, these US troops continued to serve a number of other important security functions: carrying out kinetic operations against Iranian-backed and other militant groups; providing training to the ISF; taking part in joint patrols along the borders of the Kurdish provinces and helping integrate ISF and Kurdish forces; and acting as a deterrent to Iraq's neighbors–in particular Iran.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Counterinsurgency, and Fragile/Failed State
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Iran, Middle East, and Arabia

36. The Gulf Military Balance Volume II: The Missile and Nuclear Dimensions

Author:
Anthony H. Cordesman and Bryan Gold
Publication Date:
12-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
No single aspect of US and Iranian military competition is potentially more dangerous than the missile and nuclear dimensions, and the possibility Iran will deploy long-range, nuclear-armed missiles.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, and Middle East

37. 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

38. 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

39. 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

40. The Sum of all Fears: Israel's Perception of a Nuclear-Armed Iran

Author:
Ehud Eiran and Martin B. Malin
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Washington Quarterly
Institution:
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Abstract:
Thucydides' ancient logic still governs: uncertainty (over Iran's nuclear intentions) and the fear this inspires (in Israel) increases the risk of another war (in the Middle East). Even if Israel's response to the Iranian nuclear program does not lead the region into a war, Israel's fears will be crucial in shaping Middle Eastern politics and will help to determine the stability of the region in the years ahead.
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, and Israel