Search

Begin New Search Topic Defense Policy Political Geography North America

341. The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Significance and Role

Author:
Seth Cropsey and Jun Isomura
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
The alliance between the United States and Japan, born at the end of the Second World War, continues to play a vital role in the defense of the Japanese Islands and in U.S. regional Indo-Pacific strategy. The People’s Republic of China is challenging the U.S.-Japan alliance in the Indo-Pacific Region. China has greatly increased its defense budget, expanded and modernized its navy, and increased operations that challenge the region’s status quo—including in the East China Sea, where the PRC regularly violates Japan’s territorial waters, in the vicinity of the contested Senkaku Islands. China’s belligerent behavior poses a strategic threat to Japan’s domestic security and will continue to encroach on Japanese and U.S. interests in the region. The PRC’s threatening behavior and an aggressive nuclear-armed North Korea are testing the U.S.-Japan bilateral alliance as it has not been tested since the Cold War. The United States continues to serve as a guarantor of Japan’s national security. The U.S. military has stationed naval, air force, army, and amphibious forces in Japan as a strategic deterrent against would be aggressors. With U.S. forces in Japan as a deterrent, Japan has developed a pacifist strategy based on non-aggression and security limited to self-defense. The Japanese constitution’s Article 9 enshrined this principle into law. Japan’s regional strategy has paid dividends through political, diplomatic, and economic engagement with Indo-Pacific countries. This includes Japan’s increasing defensive security cooperation in the region. The Japanese Self-Defense Forces have participated alongside the United States and such neighboring states as South Korea in bilateral and multilateral exercises that build both capabilities and security relationships. Beyond diplomatic and soft power engagement, Japan has in recent years increased its defensive capabilities. To counter Chinese and North Korean missile threats, Japan has worked with the United States to build an advanced ballistic missile defense. In addition, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have acquired medium-range cruise missiles for its air forces to deter potential adversaries from launching attacks. Tokyo has expanded its defense to counter challenges below the threshold of war against Japan’s outlying islands. Improved intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and the establishment of amphibious forces contribute to this defense.
Topic:
International Relations, Defense Policy, National Security, Bilateral Relations, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

342. Journal of Advanced Military Studies: Superpowers

Author:
Ed Erickson, Christian H. Heller, T. J. Linzy, Mallory Needleman, Michael Auten, Anthony N. Celso, Keith D. Dickson, Jamie Shea, Ivan Falasca, Steven A. Yeadon, Joshua Tallis, and Ian Klaus
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Advanced Military Studies
Institution:
Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
Abstract:
There are a variety of reasons to study geopolitical rivalries, and analysts, officers, and politicians are rediscovering such reasons amid the tensions of the last several years. The best reason to study geopolitical rivalries is the simplest: our need to better understand how power works globally. Power not only recurs in human and state affairs but it is also at their very core. Today’s new lexicon—superpower, hyperpower, and great power—is only another reminder of the reality of the various ways that power manifests itself. Power protects and preserves, but a polity without it may be lost within mere decades. Keith D. Dickson’s article in this issue of MCU Journal, “The Challenge of the Sole Superpower in the Postmodern World Order,” illuminates how fuzzy some readers may be in their understanding of this problem; his article on postmodernism calls us to the labor of understanding and reasoning through the hard realities. Ed Erickson’s survey of modern power is replete with cases in which a grand state simply fell, as from a pedestal in a crash upon a stone floor. Modern Japan, always richly talented, rose suddenly as a world actor in the late nineteenth century, but the Japanese Empire fell much more quickly in the mid-twentieth century. A state’s power—or lack thereof—is an unforgiving reality. This issue of MCU Journal, with its focus on rivalries and competition between states, is refreshingly broad in its selection of factors—from competing for or generating power. Dr. Erickson recalls that Alfred Thayer Mahan settled on six conditions for sea power, all still vital. Other authors writing for this issue emphasize, by turns, sea power (Steven Yeadon, Joshua Tallis, and Ian Klaus); cyberpower (Jamie Shea); alliances (T. J. Linzy and Ivan Falasca); information (Dickson); and proxies (Michael Auten, Anthony N. Celso, and others).
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, NATO, Islam, Terrorism, War, History, Power Politics, Military Affairs, European Union, Seapower, Cities, Ottoman Empire, Hybrid Warfare, Cyberspace, Soviet Union, and Safavid Empire
Political Geography:
Britain, Russia, Europe, Ukraine, Middle East, Lithuania, Georgia, North Africa, Syria, North America, and United States of America

343. From NORAD to NOR[A]D: The Future Evolution of North American Defence Co-operation

Author:
Andrea Charron and James Fergusson
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI)
Abstract:
The North American defence environment is in the process of a major transformation, occasioned by dramatic changes in the geostrategic/political landscape and the development of new generations of weapon systems. As a result, the requirements to deter, detect and defend North America from a variety of new threats are transforming. In this context, Canada and the United States, through the Permanent Joint Board of Defense (PJBD) established the Evolution of North American Defense (EvoNAD) study, and tasked its execution to the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) command. EvoNAD considers a long time horizon and has been broken into subcomponents reflecting six domain priorities: air, maritime, cyber, aerospace, space and land. The overarching factor which binds the six components together is the recognition that the single-domain threat environment is evolving into a multi-domain one. In the past, the threat to North America resided largely on a single axis (north-south), within a dominant domain (air, combined with ballistic missiles), met by a bi-national structure. While this threat seemed to collapse with the end of the Cold War, NORAD continued and evolved to adapt to new threats as well as to continue to monitor the Cold War-styled air and aerospace threats. Subsequently, 9/11 created a new threat environment and forced NORAD to consider threats emanating from within North America as well as outside of it. In addition to a number of changes, including direct feeds from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NAVCANADA, NORAD expanded into the maritime domain via a maritime warning mission. Roughly at the same time, NORAD’s attention also turned to the cyber-domain and its common threat to North America. The air threat has now returned with the resumption of long-range Russian flights across the Arctic, and down the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. This threat, however, is of a different character because of the development of a new generation of Russian long-range air-launched cruise missiles, as well as sea-launched cruise missiles, which have direct implications for NORAD’s capacity to deter, detect and defend, as well as for its current area of operations and mission suites (air/aerospace warning and control and maritime warning). Not only will these new long-range capabilities diffuse to other potential adversaries, generating a global threat environment, but also the first generation of hypersonic weapons has set the conditions for the merger of air and missile defence, and the air and outer space domains. Finally, the consequences of an attack against North America, alongside potential catastrophic natural disasters relative to the role of military forces in support of civil authorities, raises issues for both Canada and the U.S., and thus NORAD, regarding the most efficient and effective means to respond. The multi-domain/multi-dimensional North American threat environment should drive both Canada and the U.S. towards deeper defence co-operation, and the functional demands of this new threat environment could lead to NORAD’s ultimate transformation into an integrated, multi-domain and dimensional North American Defense Command solution. Of course, this outcome is not inevitable, and numerous barriers exist. Nonetheless, the same logic which led to NORAD’s creation in 1957 (with the agreement signed in 1958), remains valid. Driven by the common recognition that the defence of North America is indivisible, a North American Defense Command would be a natural evolution in Canada – American defence relations.
Topic:
Defense Policy, International Cooperation, Regional Cooperation, Maritime, Land, and Cyberspace
Political Geography:
Canada, North America, and United States of America

344. Trump’s Withdrawal from Syria: Not Unexpected and a Victory for the “Astana Three”

Author:
Joshua Krasna
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS)
Abstract:
The possibility that Iran and Turkey will be emboldened by the American decision, is worrisome. The main counter to that will be robust deterrence from Israel, whose maintenance may increase the likeliness of escalation in Syria and Lebanon, and even more resort to the restraining hand of Russia.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, Hegemony, and JCPOA
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Russia, Europe, Iran, Turkey, Middle East, Israel, Syria, North America, and United States of America

345. The Withdrawal of the US from Syria in Broad Perspective

Author:
Yaakov Amidror
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS)
Abstract:
Israel will need to increase the intensity of its operations against the Iranians. US withdrawal from the arena is a good opportunity for Israel to update its strategy in Syria.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Military Strategy, and Hegemony
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, Israel, Syria, North America, and United States of America

346. The Mobilization of the Defense Industrial Base in South America Through the Brazilian Admission in the NATO Catalog System

Author:
Sabrina Evangelista Medelros and William de Sousa Moreira
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
This article aims to describe and analyze the conditionalities and side effects of Brazil’s inclusion in NATO´s Catalog (NATO Codification System- NCS) for the national Defense Industrial Base and the country’s development (the agreement dates back to April 1997). The central hypothesis is that, through this process, there was a progressive conditioning of the national defense industry, and correlates, in favor of protocolization, which extended the internationality and scope of national agents, both as buyers and sellers, within this system and subsystems. The analysis of the process of inclusion of Brazil in the NSC and the characteristics and purposes involved and the analysis of the repercussions for Brazil.To do this, before the analysis of the repercussions, there is an explanation of the method used, once the objectives of the article consolidate through a medium-term prospective vision.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Military Spending, and Defense Industry
Political Geography:
Europe, North Atlantic, Brazil, South America, and North America

347. Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board Organizational Assessment

Author:
Michael Dominguez
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA)
Abstract:
Given the current strategic aim of the Department of Defense (DOD) to aggressively update the nation’s nuclear arsenal through DOE-operated defense nuclear facilities, and the aging infrastructure in the DOE’s nuclear complex, the Panel unequivocally concludes that the DNFSB’s safety oversight mission is as important today as it has ever been in its thirty-year history. The Panel, however, finds evidence confirming that the Board has recently underperformed in its essential mission.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Military Strategy, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
United States and North America

348. Russia’s hybrid warfare in the form of its energy manoeuvers against Europe: how the EU and NATO can respond together?

Author:
Vira Ratsiborynksa
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
NATO continues evolving and adapting to new security challenges and threats coming from the East and the South. At the NATO Summit in Warsaw in July 2016 the member states of the Alliance reaffi rmed their commitments on the core purposes of the Alliance: collective defense, crisis management and cooperative security. Th e Warsaw Summit marked a shift from reassurance to deterrence posture sending a signal that the Alliance is ready and is able to meet the challenge of hybrid threats. Th e changing security landscape in the Eastern fl ank reinforces NATO’s need to strengthen its core ‘hard power’ principles as well as update its ‘soft power’ infl uence on issues such as energy security.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, NATO, Energy Policy, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe, North Atlantic, and North America

349. The internal nature of the Alliance’s cohesion

Author:
Thierry Tardy
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
NATO Summits take stock of recent political and security developments, assess how they affect the Alliance’s posture and adaptation agenda, and decide on possible new directions. From the outside, a key feature of any Summit is also what it reveals about NATO’s political cohesion and relevance. The political cohesion of an international organization results from a general consensus among its key member states about its mandate, objectives and methods of operation. Relevance is about the extent to which an institution delivers on its mandate and therefore serves its purpose; relevance may be real or perceived, but is in any case essential to political cohesion. Cohesion and relevance can be undermined in at least three different ways. First, an institution’s cohesion and relevance are jeopardized whenever that institution proves unable to effectively deliver on the mandate it was established for. Second, cohesion and relevance are at stake when member states no longer agree on the objectives or methods of the institution, and as a consequence on the level of resources to allocate to it. Third, institutions’ cohesion and relevance may suffer from a lack of public buy-in for what they are and do. At all levels, the assessment results from a mix of rational analysis and a dose of manipulated subjectivity.
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Regional Cooperation, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
Europe, North Atlantic, North America, and Western Europe

350. European defence: what impact for NATO?

Author:
Thierry Tardy
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
NATO Defense College
Abstract:
The story of the EU’s efforts to acquire some kind of autonomy in the security domain has al- ways been told with reference to NATO. Back in Saint-Malo in 1998, French President Chirac and UK Prime Minister Blair framed the idea of a Eu- ropean Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), part- ly in response to NATO’s primacy in handling the Yugoslav conflicts. The objective at the time was for the Union to be given the “capacity for auton- omous action”,1 with “autonomous” referring to freedom from NATO and the United States. In this endeavour, the perception in NATO has always oscillated between indifference vis-à-vis a process that did not seem credible, and concern that an increased EU role in defence could under- mine NATO’s centrality and the transatlantic link. Over the last few years, the EU has embarked upon a process of beefing up its defence profile, raising anxieties in NATO circles. Most recently, references to the need for Europe to acquire stra- tegic autonomy or to move towards a European army, have added to the concerns. But are there reasons for NATO to worry about what the EU and its member states are doing? Is the EU aspira- tion in defence threatening the transatlantic link? Does the EU have the power to unsettle NATO?
Topic:
Defense Policy, NATO, Regional Cooperation, Military Strategy, and European Union
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, North Atlantic, France, and North America