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31. The Eastern Mediterranean in the New Era of Major-Power Competition: Prospects for U.S.-Israeli Cooperation

Author:
Douglas J. Feith and Seth Cropsey
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
This is a study of Eastern Mediterranean security and how the United States and Israel can improve cooperation to protect their common interests. The study’s particular focus is the maritime domain. Few things in world affairs survive for millennia. It’s also true that few are ever really new. In the Eastern Mediterranean, what has endured for thousands of years is the strategic attention of great powers. The region retains it today, commanding interest not only from local and regional actors, but also from global players. As Iran works to extend its reach to the Mediterranean, Russia, as it has for centuries, strives to exert its influence across the Middle East. The United States, on the other hand, has been signaling a desire to reduce its involvement in the region. Remarkably, China too has become a player. Its increasing presence in the Middle East reflects commercial and strategic motives and signifies its rise as a force competing for global economic and military predominance. China is at once a security challenge and a close economic partner. It is the world’s major rising and disruptive power and plays a huge role in global trade and investment.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, International Trade and Finance, National Security, Science and Technology, Military Spending, Maritime, and Alliance
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, Israel, United States of America, and Mediterranean

32. If You Can’t See ’em, You Can’t Shoot ’em: Improving US Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Targeting

Author:
Seth Cropsey
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
This report tracks the development of naval and maritime intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (ISR/T) from the Cold War to the present day. It reveals the fluctuating relationship between ISR/T and weapons ranges that have adversely impacted the US Navy’s combat capabilities. While the United States developed longer-range weapons throughout the Cold War and revised tactics and fleet composition to better employ those weapons offensively, the gap that remained between weapons range and targeting information had a negative effect on US Navy combat power. Following the Cold War, while weapons and delivery-system range decreased, ISR/T capacity and capability rose, allowing for precision strikes against ground targets at short and medium range. Finally, the contemporary fleet, facing renewed great power competition, is increasingly receiving long-range strike weapons. However, it lacks the ISR/T complex to identify and hit targets at those ranges in most over-the-horizon combat situations. Second, this report reviews the current ISR/T capabilities to which the US Navy has access, primarily in the Pacific theater, and performs first-order sufficiency analysis to gain an understanding of the impact the current program of record has on operational requirements. Finally, the report concludes with several key recommendations to naval policymakers, civilian and military.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, National Security, Science and Technology, Military Affairs, and Surveillance
Political Geography:
Asia, North America, and United States of America

33. China’s Economic Slowdown: Root Causes, Beijing’s Response and Strategic Implications for the US and Allies

Author:
John Lee
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
This monograph attempts to argue and/or demonstrate three main points. First, it looks at why there were credible fears about the stability and viability of the Chinese economy — especially the financial and banking system — leading up to the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2011–15), and what these were. To understand why Beijing was so concerned, the monograph draws out the serious structural problems that were leading inevitably to a permanent slowdown from the double-digit growth rates of the first three decades of reform. Second, the monograph looks at what occurred from 2015 to the present, and how China apparently overcame its economic difficulties. In fact, it has not overcome its problems, but deferred them to a future time in ways that only its unique authoritarian political economy is able to do.Third, it is clear the Communist Party is not passively awaiting an unhappy economic fate in connection with its mounting imbalances and domestic economic dysfunction. In many respects, its leaders have been highly creative in seeking solutions that do not entail a weakening of the party’s hold on economic power. On the contrary, the party has been busily shaping and pursuing grand strategic policies such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Made in China 2025 (MIC 2025) to solve or alleviate many of its domestic political-economic problems. This monograph argues that these and other outward-focused initiatives stem most fundamentally from Chinese weaknesses and vulnerabilities but are being remade and recast into initiatives that will strengthen the position of the CCP domestically, ensure greater resilience for its political economy, and advance its ambitious strategic and international objectives at the same time. In summary, it is about the Communist Party cleverly transforming domestic vulnerability into grand strategy and using economic approaches to gain pre-eminence and “win without fighting.”
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, National Security, Geopolitics, Economy, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

34. Strengthening the Economic Arsenal: Bolstering the Deterrent and Signaling Effects of Sanctions

Author:
Elizabeth Rosenberg and Jordan Tama
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
Economic sanctions have become the tool of choice for U.S. policymakers to influence international affairs. On issues ranging from nuclear nonproliferation to human rights, the United States typically imposes sanctions with the goal of inducing a government to change its behavior. Yet sanctions often have more potential to deter unwanted actions than to compel policy reversals, and the greatest impact of sanctions sometimes involves the signals they convey about likely future U.S. steps. Maximizing the overall effectiveness of U.S. economic pressure therefore requires concerted efforts by policymakers in the executive branch and Congress to make sanctions more effective instruments of deterrence and signaling. Doing this will also have positive knock-on effects, helping to limit the unintentional escalation of international competition and preserve the utility of sanctions as a vehicle for addressing security challenges and protecting universal norms. This report highlights several areas for action by U.S. policymakers: Make U.S. sanctions-removal assurances more credible: U.S. offers to lift sanctions on a country if it makes certain concessions send an effective signal only if the United States has a track record of backing up its commitments. In recent years, this signal has been severely weakened by U.S. failures to follow through on some significant sanctions-removal agreements, notably with Iran and Cuba.
Topic:
Economics, National Security, and Sanctions
Political Geography:
Iran, Global Focus, and United States of America

35. Beating the Americans at Their Own Game: An Offset Strategy with Chinese Characteristics

Author:
Robert O. Work and Greg Grant
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
During the Cold War, the U.S. military relied on technological superiority to “offset” the Soviet Union’s advantages in time, space, and force size. Our military-technical edge allowed the U.S. Joint Force to adopt force postures and operational concepts that largely compensated for the Soviet military’s numerical conventional advantage without needing to match it man-for-man or tank-for-tank. After the Cold War ended, this same military-technical advantage provided the U.S. military a decisive conventional overmatch against regional adversaries for over two decades. Now, however, the “rogue” regional powers that have preoccupied U.S. attention for so long have been replaced by two great powers with substantially greater capabilities. A resurgent and revanchist Russia and a rising, increasingly more powerful China are taking aggressive actions that threaten regional security and stability and challenge the existing international order. Without question, of these two great-power competitors, China poses the greater challenge over the long term. Since about 1885, the United States never has faced a competitor or even group of competitors with a combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) larger than its own. China surpassed the United States in purchasing power parity in 2014 and is on track to have the world’s largest GDP in absolute terms by 2030. In comparison, our Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, was hobbled by unsustainable economic contradictions that ultimately crumbled under pressure. At the height of its power, its GDP was roughly 40 percent the size of the United States’. If that is not concerning enough for U.S. strategic planners, Chinese technological capabilities are growing as rapidly as its economic power. The Soviets were never able to match, much less overcome, America’s technological superiority. The same may not be true for China—certainly not for lack of trying. Indeed, China is keenly focused on blunting the U.S. military’s technological superiority, even as it strives to achieve technological parity, and eventually technological dominance. Chinese strategists do not explicitly describe their aims in this manner. Nevertheless, after considering what the Chinese military has accomplished technologically in little more than two decades and what they plan to do in the decades to come, any objective assessment must at least consider the possibility that the U.S. Joint Force is close to becoming the victim of a deliberate, patient, and robustly resourced military-technical offset strategy. The purpose of this paper is to describe this strategy and outline its key lines of effort.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Cold War, National Security, Military Affairs, and Soviet Union
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Asia, North America, and United States of America

36. Maintaining America’s Coercive Economic Strength: Five Trends to Watch in U.S. Sanctions

Author:
Howard Berman, Paula J. Dobriansky, Sue E. Eckert, Kimberly Ann Elliott, David L. Goldwyn, Peter Harrell, Theodore Kassinger, George A. Lopez, Richard Nephew, Michel Rademaker, Frederick Reynolds, Elizabeth Rosenberg, Daleep Singh, Julianne Smith, Adam Szubin, and Rachel Ziemba
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
U.S. foreign policy officials have embraced economic sanctions as a tool of choice for American foreign policy. Decisionmakers have deployed sanctions against strategic adversaries and national security threats ranging from Russia to non-state actors such as terrorist groups, drug cartels, and businesspeople who engage in corrupt activities. The appeal to both policy leaders and key constituent groups of the potent economic impacts of sanctions in several recent high-profile cases, particularly those of Iran, Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela, combined with broad bipartisan support for aggressive use of U.S. sanctions, suggests that the United States will favor this policy tool and be an active practitioner in the years ahead. This brief describes five of the most prominent and influential trends that could affect U.S. sanctions and other coercive economic measures in the future. The five trends are: (1) a shift toward more aggressive use of U.S. unilateral sanctions; (2) the growing role of Congress in enacting sanctions and managing their implementation; (3) an increased potential for unintended consequences as a result of growing complexity in sanctions; (4) accelerating efforts of foreign governments to insulate trade and payment channels from U.S. sanctions; and (5) new technological developments that may have the potential to both enhance and weaken the impact of U.S. sanctions in the years ahead.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, National Security, Sanctions, Elections, and Economy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

37. Climate Change and National Security: How Can Public Policy Change the World?

Author:
Aspen Institute
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Aspen Institute
Abstract:
The Aspen Institute partnered with the University of Chicago’s Inter-Policy School Summit on March 1-3, 2019, to host 40 graduate students from around the world to explore and consider the intersection between Climate Change and National Security, a topic that will come to play an increasingly important role in the policy realm for decades to come. The participants were asked to research various topics within the larger theme and write white papers proposing rigorous and tangible solutions for the quaternary effects of climate change, especially when they pertain to national security.
Topic:
Security, Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy Policy, Environment, Migration, National Security, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States of America and North America

38. Safeguarding Australia's Security Interests Through Closer Pacific Ties

Author:
Greg Colton
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
Greater Australian engagement in the Pacific Islands region is needed if Canberra wants to ensure regional stability and underpin Australia’s national security. Inconsistent engagement by Australia, the United States, France and New Zealand in the Pacific Islands region has created space that non-traditional powers have exploited to engage with sovereign Pacific Island states. There is an increasing risk of geostrategic competition in the region, particularly with the growing influence of China and the economic leverage it holds over some indebted Pacific Island nations. The Australian Government should pursue a deliberate strategy of forging stronger links with its traditional partners in the region, and more equitable partnerships with its Pacific Island neighbours, if it is to underpin regional stability and strengthen Australia’s national security.
Topic:
International Relations, National Security, Regional Cooperation, Geopolitics, and Economy
Political Geography:
China, France, Australia, Asia-Pacific, and United States of America

39. Providing for the Common Defense: The Assessments and Recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission

Author:
National Defense Strategy Commission
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
The final report of the National Defense Strategy Commission is a compilation of the assessments of the National Defense Strategy and recommendations based on its analysis related not just to defense strategy, but also to the larger geopolitical environment in which that strategy must be executed. They consulted with civilian and military leaders in the Department of Defense, representatives of other U.S. government departments and agencies, allied diplomats and military officials, and independent experts. This publication is the consensus report of the Commission. The Commission argues that America confronts a grave crisis of national security and national defense, as U.S. military advantages erode and the strategic landscape becomes steadily more threatening. If the United States does not show greater urgency and seriousness in responding to this crisis and does not take decisive steps to rebuild its military advantages now, the damage to American security and influence could be devastating.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Government, and National Security
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

40. The Costs of War: Obstacles to Public Understanding

Author:
Steven Aftergood
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
Abstract:
Public access to information about government spending is presumed – and required – by the US Constitution, which directs that “a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time” (Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7). It is remarkable that, among all of the many categories of government information, budget information is singled out for publication in this way. The ability of the public to “follow the money” expended by its government is understood to be an essential prerequisite to self-rule. Budget data that are secret, unreliable, or otherwise unavailable are incompatible with constitutional democracy. In practice, however, public access to budget information is imperfect and incomplete. In the crucial area of national defense, the scale of spending alone makes it hard to grasp. Public understanding of the costs of war is further limited by secrecy, faulty accounting, and the deferral of current costs.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Government, National Security, Military Spending, and Transparency
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America