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71. 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 (CSIS)
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

72. Islamist Extremism - Potential for Greater U.S.-Australian Cooperation

Author:
Douglas J. Feith
Publication Date:
02-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Though not the beginning of the war between Islamist extremists and the United States, 9/11 was the moment when most Americans realized that such a war was underway. Understandably, the challenge often is thought of as a problem of terrorism, but it is broader.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Terrorism, and War
Political Geography:
United States and Australia

73. 21st Century Cultures of War: Advantage Them

Author:
Anna Simons
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
In the inaugural launch of the FPRI’s new e-publication, The Philadelphia Papers, the anthropologist Anna Simons of the Defense Analysis department at the Naval Postgraduate School, and member of the Orbis Board of Editors, provocatively assesses cultures of war in the 21st century. She cautions that while the United States military increasingly dazzles in the technological realm, we remain at a marked disadvantage when it comes to social relations, chronically underestimating the sophistication of adversaries and allies in the (non-East Asian) non-West. This asymmetry, to include who is willing to do what to whom, puts our soldiers, diplomats, and intelligence communities at a distinct disadvantage. She argues that the U.S. needs to take this into account as it rethinks how to wage war, never mind whether to become involved in the kinds of ambiguous political-military conflicts we have engaged in over the past decade. Indeed, without a greater appreciation for the social and anti-social skills of likely future adversaries, current problems plaguing our military -– from PTSD through questionable generalship -- will only worsen over time.
Topic:
Politics, Science and Technology, War, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
United States

74. Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late

Author:
Joseph Cirincione
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Columbia University Press
Abstract:
There is a high risk that someone will use, by accident or design, one or more of the 17,000 nuclear weapons in the world today. Many thought such threats ended with the Cold War or that current policies can prevent or contain nuclear disaster. They are dead wrong--these weapons, possessed by states large and small, stable and unstable, remain an ongoing nightmare. Joseph Cirincione surveys the best thinking and worst fears of experts specializing in nuclear warfare and assesses the efforts to reduce or eliminate these nuclear dangers. His book offers hope: in the 1960s, twenty-three states had nuclear weapons and research programs; today, only nine states have weapons. More countries have abandoned nuclear weapon programs than have developed them, and global arsenals are just one-quarter of what they were during the Cold War. Yet can these trends continue, or are we on the brink of a new arms race--or worse, nuclear war? A former member of Senator Obama's nuclear policy team, Cirincione helped shape the policies unveiled in Prague in 2009, and, as president of an organization intent on reducing nuclear threats, he operates at the center of debates on nuclear terrorism, new nuclear nations, and the risks of existing arsenals.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, War, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Middle East, and East Asia
Publication Identifier:
9780231164054
Publication Identifier Type:
ISBN

75. Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change.

Author:
Rachael Bryson
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
In Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change Williamson Murray differentiates between innovation and adaptation. Innovation, the focus of a previous book (with Allan R. Millett, 1998), includes peacetime advancements and learning. In contrast, adaptation is comprised of wartime changes and battlefield lessons. Murray argues that militaries able to adapt to battle conditions have a higher probability of ending the conflict as the victor. He expands on this point, writing that the United States has demonstrated a lack of adaptability in recent conflicts, and therefore the purpose of this study is to glean lessons about adaptability that may be applied to the US military.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States

76. From Cold War to Hot Peace: The Habit of American Force

Author:
Richard K. Betts
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
WHEN THE UNITED STATES BECAME MORE SECURE, it became more forceful. Since the Cold War ended, it has spent far more than any other country or coalition to build armed forces; it has sent forces into combat more frequently than it did in the era of much bigger threats to national security; and it has done so much more often than any other country. The United States has been, quite simply, “the most militarily active state in the world.” To many in the mainstream of American politics, this is as it should be, because the United States has the right and responsibility to lead the world—or push it—in the right direction. To others, more alarmed by the pattern, U.S. behavior has evolved into “permanent war.”
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States

77. Partisan Balance: Why Political Parties Don't Kill the U.S. Constitutional System

Author:
Paul Frymer
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
The Constitution of the United States provides the federal government with 536 elected officials who come from 536 different electoral districts. David Mayhew asks whether this constitutional system is democratically fair. Given the 536 differently constituted and independent electoral bases, there is a real potential for what Mayhew labels both "dissonance" and "skew" in terms of which voters are represented by government activity.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States

78. Giving the Surge Partial Credit for Iraq's 2007 Reduction in Violence

Author:
Stephen Biddle, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Jeffrey A. Friedman
Publication Date:
09-2012
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Why did violence decline in Iraq in 2007? Many credit the "surge," or the program of U.S. reinforcements and doctrinal changes that began in January 2007. Others cite the voluntary insurgent stand-downs of the Sunni Awakening or say that the violence had simply run its course after a wave of sectarian cleansing. Evidence drawn from recently declassified data on violence at local levels and a series of seventy structured interviews with coalition participants finds little support for the cleansing or Awakening theses. This analysis constitutes the first attempt to gather systematic evidence across space and time to help resolve this debate, and it shows that a synergistic interaction between the surge and the Awakening was required for violence to drop as quickly and widely as it did.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, War, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, and Arabia

79. Iraq: Transition to Embassy Lead – 2010-2012

Author:
James Franklin Jeffrey
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
The 2011 transition from a US military-centric American presence in Iraq to a diplomatic lead, requiring the build out of already the largest US embassy since Vietnam, was an extraordinary political and logistic al effort, all but unparalleled in State Department history. The transition's success and its many challenges provide lessons for both the upcoming Afghanistan transition and 'expeditionary diplomacy' generally. It provides a model for diploma tic primacy in a conflict environment, but also cautionary lessons on the limits of diplomatic engagement in a war zone.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, United States, Iraq, and Vietnam

80. Introduction

Author:
Julie Smith
Publication Date:
11-2012
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
Many people believed that Great Britain was not and did not wish to become European, and that Britain wanted to enter the Community only so as to destroy it or divert it from its objectives. Many people also thought that France was ready to use every pretext to place in the end a fresh veto on Britain's entry. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you see before you tonight two men who are convinced of the contrary.
Topic:
War
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Germany