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71. Armed Robotic Systems Emergence: Weapons Systems Life Cycles Analysis and New Strategic Realities

Author:
Dr. Robert J. Bunker
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
Armed robotic systems—drones and droids—now emerging on the battlefield portend new strategic realities not only for U.S. forces but also for our allies and future potential belligerents. Numerous questions of immediate warfighting importance come to mind with the fielding of these drones and droids that are viewed as still being in their experimental and entrepreneurial stage of development. By drawing upon historical weapons systems life cycles case studies, focusing on the early 9th through the mid-16th-century knight, the mid-19th through the later 20th-century battleship, and the early 20th through the early 21st-century tank, the monograph provides military historical context related to their emergence, and better allows both for questions related to warfighting to be addressed, and policy recommendations related to them to be initially provided.
Topic:
International Security
Political Geography:
Global Focus

72. Evaluation of the 2015 DoD Cyber Strategy: Mild Progress in a Complex and Dynamic Military Domain

Author:
Mr. Jeffrey L. Caton
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
In 2011, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, which officially recognized cyberspace as an operational domain akin to the traditional military domains of land, sea, air, and space. This monograph examines the 2015 DoD Cyber Strategy to evaluate how well its five strategic goals and associated implementation objectives define an actionable strategy to achieve three primary missions in cyberspace: defend the DoD network, defend the United States and its interests, and develop cyber capabilities to support military operations. This monograph focuses on events and documents from the period of about 1 year before and 1 year after the 2015 strategy was released. This allows sufficient time to examine the key policies and guidance that influenced the development of the strategy as well as follow-on activities for the impacts from the strategy. This inquiry has five major sections that utilize different frameworks of analysis to assess the strategy:
Topic:
International Security
Political Geography:
Global Focus

73. Terrorist Sanctuary in the Sahara: A Case Study

Author:
Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Guido
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
The idea to deny sanctuary to terrorist groups lies at the heart of contemporary U.S. counterterrorism strategy. Violent extremist organizations in North Africa, most notably the group al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), have used remote and sparsely populated areas in the Sahara for protection from security forces to perform a range of activities such as training, planning, and logistics in order to conduct terrorist operations like kidnapping, murder, and bombing. Even after 16 years since the September 11 attacks and the resources dedicated to efforts to deny sanctuary, the concept of sanctuary remains largely unexplored. To deny sanctuary requires an understanding of what sanctuary is as an object and how sanctuary is used by terrorist organizations. This monograph proposes a functional understanding of sanctuary and offers fresh ideas to control sanctuary using a detailed case study of the most notorious of the North African terrorists, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, from his arrival to Mali in the late 1990s until the French intervention in early 2012. This multi-disciplinary inquiry utilizes a wide range of open-source documents as well as anthropological, sociological, and political science research, including interviews with one-time Belmokhtar hostage, Ambassador Robert Fowler, in order to construct a picture of what a day in the life of sanctuary-seeking terrorists is like. Belmokhtar and other violent groups remain active and at large in the Sahara in spite of a large French military presence, a small U.S. military presence, and local security forces conducting counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. Additionally, the Islamic State movement could be viewed as the emergence of mega sanctuaries for terrorists and other violent extremist organizations. These threats require a new strategy to isolate, contain, or defeat terrorists and violent extremists in their sanctuary areas.
Topic:
International Security
Political Geography:
Global Focus

74. 2017 Natural Resource Governance Index

Author:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
This report presents the key findings and core messages of the 2017 Resource Governance Index. The index measures the quality of resource governance in 81 countries that together produce 82 percent of the world’s oil, 78 percent of its gas and a significant proportion of minerals, including 72 percent of all copper. It is the product of 89 country assessments (eight countries were assessed in two sectors), compiled by 150 researchers, using almost 10,000 supporting documents to answer 149 questions
Topic:
International Security and Natural Resources
Political Geography:
Global Focus

75. Beyond the Caliphate

Author:
Richard Barrett
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Soufan Group
Abstract:
As the so-called Islamic State (IS) loses territorial control of its caliphate, there is little doubt that the group or something similar will survive the worldwide campaign against it. As long as the conditions that allowed the group to exist in the first place remain, IS or something like it will survive. The threat will mutate…
Topic:
International Security
Political Geography:
Global Focus

76. Regional Organizations and the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms

Author:
Eric G. Berman and Kerry Maze
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Small Arms Survey
Abstract:
The UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects (PoA) provides an increasingly critical framework for governments and civil society. Armed groups continue to illegally access and use illegal weapons to mount mass attacks on civilians and terrorize cities and communities, commit human rights violations and banditry, and incite and prolong armed conflicts. Some 60 million people are displaced due to war and insecurity (UNHCR, 2016). Armed attacks and kidnappings directed at humanitarian workers are at record highs. Armed groups are increasingly disregarding international humanitarian law and, as a result, are blocking much needed assistance to populations at risk.1 The vast majority of deaths from armed violence do not occur in conflict settings, however. Of the more than 500,000 lives that are lost annually to armed violence, in some countries small arms––many of them illicit––are used in more than three out of four homicides (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2015).
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Security, Governance, Weapons, and UNDP
Political Geography:
Global Focus

77. A New Development Agenda: Bridging the Development–Security Divide

Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Weapons play a pivotal role in violence and insecurity worldwide: around 44 per cent of all violent deaths involve the use of firearms (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2015, p. 2). Given their typically long life spans, small arms can circu- late in a region or between regions over dec- ades, while in the wrong hands even small quantities of arms and ammunition can have destabilizing effects. In particular, the illicit proliferation of arms and ammunition is a driver of modern armed conflicts, often pro- longing their effects (Anders, 2015; Diehl and Jenzen-Jones, 2014; Florquin and Leff, 2014). Flows of illicit arms also affect countries sup- posedly ‘at peace’, contributing to high levels of violence (Schroeder, 2013; 2014; 2016).
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Security, Military Strategy, Armed Struggle, Military Affairs, and Weapons
Political Geography:
Global Focus

78. A New Development Agenda: Bridging the Development–Security Divide

Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Weapons play a pivotal role in violence and insecurity worldwide: around 44 per cent of all violent deaths involve the use of firearms (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2015, p. 2). Given their typically long life spans, small arms can circu- late in a region or between regions over dec- ades, while in the wrong hands even small quantities of arms and ammunition can have destabilizing effects. In particular, the illicit proliferation of arms and ammunition is a driver of modern armed conflicts, often pro- longing their effects (Anders, 2015; Diehl and Jenzen-Jones, 2014; Florquin and Leff, 2014). Flows of illicit arms also affect countries sup- posedly ‘at peace’, contributing to high levels of violence (Schroeder, 2013; 2014; 2016).
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Security, Military Strategy, Armed Struggle, Military Affairs, and Weapons
Political Geography:
Global Focus

79. A New Development Agenda: Bridging the Development–Security Divide

Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Weapons play a pivotal role in violence and insecurity worldwide: around 44 per cent of all violent deaths involve the use of firearms (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2015, p. 2). Given their typically long life spans, small arms can circu- late in a region or between regions over dec- ades, while in the wrong hands even small quantities of arms and ammunition can have destabilizing effects. In particular, the illicit proliferation of arms and ammunition is a driver of modern armed conflicts, often pro- longing their effects (Anders, 2015; Diehl and Jenzen-Jones, 2014; Florquin and Leff, 2014). Flows of illicit arms also affect countries sup- posedly ‘at peace’, contributing to high levels of violence (Schroeder, 2013; 2014; 2016).
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Security, Military Strategy, Armed Struggle, Military Affairs, and Weapons
Political Geography:
Global Focus

80. A New Development Agenda: Bridging the Development–Security Divide

Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
Weapons play a pivotal role in violence and insecurity worldwide: around 44 per cent of all violent deaths involve the use of firearms (Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2015, p. 2). Given their typically long life spans, small arms can circu- late in a region or between regions over dec- ades, while in the wrong hands even small quantities of arms and ammunition can have destabilizing effects. In particular, the illicit proliferation of arms and ammunition is a driver of modern armed conflicts, often pro- longing their effects (Anders, 2015; Diehl and Jenzen-Jones, 2014; Florquin and Leff, 2014). Flows of illicit arms also affect countries sup- posedly ‘at peace’, contributing to high levels of violence (Schroeder, 2013; 2014; 2016).
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, International Security, Military Strategy, Armed Struggle, Military Affairs, and Weapons
Political Geography:
Global Focus