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21. Preserving U.S. Military Advantages in the Middle East

Author:
Nathan P. Olsen
Publication Date:
05-2023
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
The 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS) calls on the U.S. military to sustain enduring advantages and build new ones for the future fight. According to the NDS, building and maintaining advantages to advance U.S. national interests will allow the military to deter attacks against the United States and its allies and partners, while fostering a resilient military force and defense ecosystem. In the Middle East, this challenge is especially relevant. The United States has several enduring advantages that could eventually disappear if the U.S. government does not make significant changes in how it operates in this part of the world.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Strategic Competition, and Military
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

22. Net spills among NATO allies: Theory and empirical evidence from dynamic quantile connectedness

Author:
Panagiotis Palaios, Anna Triantafillou, and George Andrew Zombanakis
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Security and Defence Quarterly
Institution:
War Studies University
Abstract:
The paper draws on the economic theory of alliances to stress the importance of considering both benefits and costs arising from the 0interaction between member states of a military alliance in terms of defence expenditure on equipment. We expand the theory of alliances to incorporate the spills that stem from the obligations of each ally by introducing the notion of spill-outs and net spills, the latter measured as the difference between spill-in and spill-out effects. To assess the net spills contribution of each of the members to the alliance, we test for empirical evidence of net spills among a group of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, applying time-varying Dynamic Quantile Connectedness analysis. The results that stem from our model considering the cost of spill-outs suggest that there are strong incentives among the allies for free-riding behaviour. In line with our theoretical model, our empirical analysis shows that it is only during crisis period that NATO member-states contribute actively to the alliance, something that has become increasingly clear since the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Topic:
NATO, International Security, Alliance, Economic Security, Defense Spending, Military, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Europe and North America

23. March of the Four–Stars: The Role of Retired Generals and Admirals in the Arms Industry

Author:
William D. Hartung
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Abstract:
The revolving door between the U.S. government and the arms industry, which involves hundreds of senior Pentagon officials and military officers every year, generates the appearance — and in some cases the reality — of conflicts of interest in the making of defense policy and in the shaping of the size and composition of the Pentagon budget. This report looks at the post–government employment records of a subset of the larger flow of “revolvers”: four–star generals and admirals who retired between June 2018 and July 2023. Among the findings are the following: 26 of 32 four–star officers who retired after June 2018 — over 80 percent — went to work for the arms industry as board members, advisors, executives, consultants, lobbyists, or members of financial institutions that invest in the defense sector. The biggest category of post–retirement employment for four–stars, by far, was as board members or advisors for small and medium–sized arms contractors, with 15 choosing that option. This compares to five who became board members, advisors or executives for one of the top 10 arms contractors. Five retired four–stars became arms industry consultants, five became lobbyists for weapons companies, and four joined financial firms that make significant investments in the defense sector. This brief recommends a number of measures designed to limit undue influence and potential conflicts of interest on the part of retired four–star generals and other retired Pentagon officials and military officers who pass through the revolving door. Bar four–star officers from working for firms that receive $1 billion or more in Pentagon contracts per year. Extend “cooling off” periods before retired Pentagon officials and military officers can go to work on behalf of the arms industry. Increase transparency over post–government employment and activities on the part of retired Pentagon and military officials working on behalf of arms contractors, including reporting on their interactions with Congress and the executive branch. The most comprehensive current proposal to address the revolving door issue is Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Department of Defense Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act. 1 The bill would encompass many of the recommendations put forward in this report.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Industry, Military, and Military-Industrial Complex
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

24. Who Is an Ally, and Why Does It Matter?

Author:
Natalie Armbruster and Benjamin H. Friedman
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Defense Priorities
Abstract:
In addition to the 51 allies the United States is obligated by treaty to defend, it has a number of quasi-allies: states the United States is not committed to defend but to which it provides a substantial degree of military and political support. By creating uncertainty about U.S. commitments both at home and abroad, quasi-allies’ ambiguous status creates dangers for both the United States and the quasi-allies. For the United States, the danger is entanglement; having quasi-allies can pull the United States into trouble outside its core interests, creating needless cost, risk, and even war. Quasi-allies may suffer a kind of moral hazard; they may falsely believe they have U.S. military protection and fail to secure themselves sufficiently or become emboldened and dangerously provoke adversaries. U.S. leaders should be more wary of these dangers and avoid loose talk and policy acts that imply a commitment to non-allies’ defense.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Alliance, and Military
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

25. Rocket’s Red Glare: Modernizing America’s Energetics Enterprise

Author:
Nadia Schadlow, Brayden Helwig, Bryan Clark, and Timothy A. Walton
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
Energetic materials are critical chemicals that release huge amounts of energy in a very short amount of time. Energetics come in three main forms: explosives, which create the lethal effects in warheads; propellants, which produce thrust for missiles and rockets; and pyrotechnics, such as fireworks, which illuminate or mark targets for military and civilian applications. Nearly every weapon on the modern battlefield, from small arms to missiles to munitions, relies on some form of energetic materials. Improvements in energetics can offer significant benefits on the battlefield. In some cases, better compounds can boost the range of missiles by 40 percent or more—allowing the targeting of an adversary from a safer distance—while also improving lethality and decreasing munition size. These advantages can help the US military realize many of its operational concepts, such as those developed to counter the People’s Republic of China (PRC). China’s armed forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), aims to prevent the US military from operating near its shores by fielding thousands of anti-ship missiles. This concept is often referred to as an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy. If China’s leaders act on their stated intention to invade the island of Taiwan, denying the PLA this objective would require large numbers of long-range, precision-guided munitions fired from outside the A2/AD “bubble,” coupled with other platforms that could penetrate the PLA’s defenses with powerful munitions. These types of US responses depend on energetics and the munitions that use these compounds. Since the end of the Cold War, however, the industrial base for munitions has grown increasingly brittle as innovation and investments in energetics have stagnated. Although the United States developed key compounds like CL-20—one of the world’s most powerful non-nuclear explosives—in the late 1980s, the US military still overwhelmingly uses the same energetic materials it deployed during World War II.1 Moreover, recent assessments of the industrial base have found that the DoD imports roughly a third of its energetic materials from foreign sources, with a significant portion of these sourced from China or other countries.2 For instance, one expert we spoke with stated that most trinitrotoluene (TNT) in the explosive fill of common US bombs comes from foreign sources. Other challenges include an aging network of twentieth-century production facilities, a broken business model that discourages innovation and investment, a shrinking workforce, and stifling regulations.
Topic:
National Security, Weapons, Supply Chains, and Military
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

26. Throwing Down the Gauntlet: What the IMF Can Do About Egypt’s Military Companies

Author:
Yezid Sayigh
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
Until recently, both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were wholly reticent to say anything about the involvement of the Egyptian Armed Forces (EAF) and other military agencies in Egypt’s civilian economy. This is a longstanding problem. By turning a blind eye to the diversion of resources to the military sector and to the increasingly significant impacts on the economy and public finances, these international financial institutions (IFIs) have undermined the effectiveness of their own programs and allowed their resources to be invested in support of suboptimal policies by the Egyptian government. There is a question of propriety when international assistance allows distorted policy incentives to continue or even intensify and disregards the fact that much of the hype about global growth in the Egyptian economy obscures the very real constraints imposed on private sector development. It is high time to throw down the gauntlet: IFIs and their governmental sponsors should tackle the reality of military involvement systematically in their programs and policy recommendations, and they should confront the issue head on in their dealings with Egypt’s authorities. Reticence persists but is starting to dissipate. A report released by the World Bank in December 2020 noted that military agencies account for an appreciable proportion of all state-owned enterprises producing capital goods; consumer durables and apparel; materials; food, beverages, and tobacco; automobiles and components; retailing; media and entertainment; semiconductors and intelligent transportation system equipment; and technology hardware and equipment.1 The IMF went further in a July 2021 review of its loan agreement with Egypt, in which it referred to the presence and role of Egyptian military companies for the first time ever.2 Significantly, it included them explicitly in its assessment of state-owned enterprises in general—many of which, the report noted, are “registering weak financial performance while some are benefiting from an uneven playing field”—and implied that military companies should come under the same broad reform policies that the IMF proposes for the public sector as a whole. Now that the IMF, in particular, has broken its former silence, it should refine its approach so as to tackle the Egyptian military’s economic role in a more targeted and consistent manner—hence making its approach more effective and sustainable. This requires a mix of measures. The first set involves bringing military agencies and companies within the scope of recommendations proposed by the IMF for Egypt’s civilian public sector and state-owned enterprises as a whole. These first measures therefore engage with IMF recommendations and Egyptian government policy initiatives relating to broad questions of ownership, regulation, and financing strategy. The second set of measures tackles the specific aspects of the legal, regulatory, and judicial frameworks that enable the military’s activities in the civilian domain. Unless they are revised, these enabling frameworks will impede wider reforms, but the Egyptian government and IMF have, for the most part, neither reviewed nor addressed them to date.
Topic:
Regulation, Economy, Business, IMF, Civil-Military Relations, and Military
Political Geography:
Middle East, North America, and Egypt

27. U.S.-China Technological “Decoupling”: A Strategy and Policy Framework

Author:
Jon Bateman
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
A partial “decoupling”2 of U.S. and Chinese technology ecosystems is well underway. Beijing plays an active role in this process, as do other governments and private actors around the world. But the U.S. government has been a primary driver in recent years with its increased use of technology restrictions: export controls, divestment orders, licensing denials, visa bans, sanctions, tariffs, and the like. There is bipartisan support for at least some bolstering of U.S. tech controls, particularly for so-called strategic technologies, where Chinese advancement or influence could most threaten America’s national security and economic interests. But what exactly are these strategic technologies, and how hard should the U.S. government push to control them? Where is the responsible stopping point—the line beyond which technology restrictions aimed at China do more harm than good to America? These are vexing questions with few, if any, clear answers. Yet the United States cannot afford simply to muddle through technological decoupling, one of the most consequential global trends of the early twenty-first century. The U.S. technology base—foundational to national well-being and power—is thoroughly enmeshed with China in a larger, globe-spanning technological web. Cutting many strands of this web to reweave them into new patterns will be daunting and dangerous. Without a clear strategy, the U.S. government risks doing too little or—more likely—too much to curb technological interdependence with China. In particular, Washington may accidentally set in motion a chaotic, runaway decoupling that it cannot predict or control. Sharper thinking and more informed debates are needed to develop a coherent, durable strategy. Today, disparate U.S. objectives are frequently lumped together into amorphous constructs like “technology competition.” Familiar terms like “supply chain security” often fail to clarify such basic matters as which U.S. interests must be secured and why. Important decisions are siloed within opaque forums (like the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States [CFIUS]), narrow specialties (like export control law), or individual industries (like semiconductors), concealing the bigger picture. The traditional concerns of “tech policy” and “China policy” receive outsized attention, while second-order implications in other areas (such as climate policy) get short shrift. And as China discourse in the United States becomes more politically charged, arguments for preserving technology ties are increasingly muted or not voiced at all. This report aims to address these gaps and show how American leaders can navigate the vast, perilous, largely unmapped terrain of technological decoupling. First, it gives an overview of U.S. thinking and policy—describing how U.S. views on Chinese technology have evolved in recent years and explaining the many tools that Washington uses to curb U.S.- China technological interdependence. Second, it frames the major strategic choices facing U.S. leaders—summarizing three proposed strategies for technological decoupling and advocating a middle path that preserves and expands America’s options. Third, it translates this strategy into implementable policies and processes—proposing specific objectives for U.S. federal agencies and identifying the technology areas where government controls are (or are not) warranted. The report also highlights many domestic investments and other self-improvement measures that must go hand in hand with restrictive action.
Topic:
National Security, Science and Technology, Intellectual Property/Copyright, Authoritarianism, Economy, Espionage, Military, and Interdependence
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

28. Mexico’s Military Knew Ayotzinapa 43 Were Kidnapped, Then Covered It Up

Author:
Ñaní Pinto
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
Abstract:
Following a new report, families of the 43 students criticized the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for failing to follow through on promises to finally solve the case.
Topic:
Corruption, Crime, Government, Kidnapping, and Military
Political Geography:
North America and Mexico

29. The Military Use of Small Satellites in Orbit

Author:
Mariel Borowitz
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI)
Abstract:
The number of small satellites in orbit has increased rapidly over the last decade, and the growth of this sector is expected to accelerate even more in coming years. Small satellites offer unique economic opportunities, due to their shorter development time, their lower cost as well as their manufacturing in assembly line style processes. Many small satellite applications envision systems comprised of constellations of hundreds or thousands of satellites, which offer a number of advantages, such as the increase in temporal resolution, or revisit rate, as well as formation flying. Military users can take advantage of commercial systems for military purposes - leveraging existing capability without the need to develop new systems internally. Militaries must look for ways to harness these trends to their advantage, both by making use of commercial offerings, and by examining military-specific opportunities. Military leaders envision a time when battlefield imagery could be requested and received by commanders on the ground and used for real-time decision-making. The U.S. Army's Project Convergence experimented with this capability in October 2020.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Satellite, and Military
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

30. Opening Up Military Innovation: Effects of Bottom‐​Up Reforms to U.S. Defense Research

Author:
Sabrina Howell, Jason Rathje, John Van Reenen, and Jun Wong
Publication Date:
02-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The U.S. economy’s productivity growth has slowed down in recent decades. This slowdown appears due in part to declining innovation, especially among high‐​growth new firms, making the design of innovation incentives particularly important. One overlooked but crucial decision a government or private‐​sector research funder must consider is whether to take a centralized top‐​down approach, tightly specifying the desired innovation, or a more open bottom‐​up approach, giving more latitude to firms to define their research proposals. The bottom‐​up approach may be useful if the research funder is uncertain about what opportunities exist. We compare these two strategies by studying a major reform to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program at the U.S. Air Force.
Topic:
Reform, Economy, Research, Innovation, Defense Industry, and Military
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America