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Organizing for Success: Theater Missile Defense in Korea
To meet rising threats from ballistic missiles, Combined Forces Command and US Forces Korea created a theater-level missile defense command that serves as an excellent model for other theaters. The Combined and Joint Theater Missile Operations Cell fuses several theater missile defense elements into one joint organization, providing significant war-fighting abilities without additional force structure. Major topics addressed in article include Cause for Concern, Creating the New Organization, Understanding the Differences: Before and After, The Reorganization Process, Army Heavy, Yet Joint?, Dual Requirements of CJTMOC, Unproven Concept Concerns, and Insights for Positive Improvement on Joint Doctrine. Article concludes that the concept of merging small, in-theater assets with more robust, US-based assets via electronic means during armistice and war is certainly worth exploring.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Eikmeier, Dale C.
2001
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Shades of Sentinel? National Missile Defense, Then and Now
Due to emerging long-range missile threats, US officials are seeking changes in the ABM Treaty. However, this proposal is similar to that of the 1967 Sentinel Plan, and dangers that Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara warned against years ago could apply to current plans. Might we be making the same mistake we made 33 years ago in deploying a costly and unnecessary limited national missile-defense system? Major topics addressed in article include The Decision to Deploy Sentinel, The Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, and Sentinel Redux? Author concludes that there should be a clearer understanding about the ICBM threat.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Costanzo, Charles Edward
2001
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Military Commissions, Past and Future
The detention of suspected terrorists has raised questions about how they will be held accountable for their alleged crimes. President George W. Bush authorized the use of military commissions to try non-U.S. citizens involved in terrorist activities. Authors examine the role of military commisions in the U.S. Army's history. Major topics of article include "The Mexican-American War to Reconstruction," "The Indian wars to World War II," "World War II," "Contemporary Litigation," and "The Uniform Code of Military Justice."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Prescott, Jody; Eldridge, Joanne
2003-03-04
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Partnering for Hemispheric Security: A Combined Regional Operations Center in Brazil
Brazil is crucial to maintaining the security and stability of South America, a continent vital to the defense of the Western Hemisphere. Colonel Krause presents a provocative proposal for building a stronger alliance with Brazil through a combined regional operations center. Such a center could yield productive partnerships with both Brazil and other nations in the region, as well as facilitate multinational security cooperation in the heart of South America.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Krause, Merrick E.
2002
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Maintaining Friendly Skies: Rediscovering Theater Aerospace Defense
As Pearl Harbor did in 1941, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks brought home the catastrophic consequences of an insufficient homeland aerospace defense. This is not a new issue. The history of the Cold War is replete with attempts to build effective aerospace defenses for the United States and Soviet Homelands as well as for the theater armed forces of both superpowers. Grau and Kipp chronicle this history and recommend steps for improving US theater and homeland aerospace defenses. The article contains ten key conclusions from the United States and Soviet Union theater-air-defense-systems experience applicable to future missile defense.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Kipp, Jacob W.; Grau, Lester W.
2002
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Attack Operations: First Layer of an Integrated Missile Defense
United States forces have a long history of conducting attack operations. The proliferation of theater and long-range ballistic missiles suggests that the concept should be adapted to support missile-defense operations. To do so, we must include missile-defense capabilities in air and space expeditionary force packages, mature technology and doctrine to accommodate such capabilities, and connect Air Force capabilities to joint doctrine and employment concepts. Author argues that, although current structures contain pieces of the puzzle, we must fully integrate those pieces within an overall theater missile-defense architecture that includes offensive capabilities.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Krause, Merrick E.
2003
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Reflections on the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty and National Missile Defense
The United States announced its withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) in 2002. Major Ruse's examination of how the treaty restricted the development of our national missile defense system helps us understand what the withdrawal means for the future. The Treaty had been adopted during the Cold War, to avert a possible nuclear war and curb the nuclear arms race. Logic held that if each nation remained defenseless to a nuclear attack and if nuclear retaliation to a first strike were guaranteed, then neither nation would have any motivation to consider launching a nuclear strike. The treaty codified MAD, which prevailed until the fall of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Against this brief background of the ABM Treaty, one needs to explore why it became such a hot issue after three decades. The answer lies within a framework of political and technological developments as well as a revised security environment. The Cold War is over, and the US must develop new legal, strategic, political, and technological means appropriate for today's global security environment. An NMD system does not yet exist, butt hopefully its inevitable deployment will spark fresh thinking about the strategic shape of our future world and contribute to a secure environment for future generations.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Ruse, Mark A.
2002
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Air and Space Nation is in Peril
The United States air forces protect economic security. This is especially true because military strategy has evolved so dramatically over the past decade. The basic factors that shaped our geopolitical environment during the Cold War have changed. It is essential that the US maintain strong public support for its actions. This in turn means we must be extremely careful about both inflicting and sustaining casualties. If such sterilized warfare is our goal, then certain types of strategies, tactics, and weapons are more desirable than others. Precision or nonlethal weapons delivered by air platforms - ideally either unmanned, unseen, or flying beyond the range of enemy fire - are the instruments of choice. It would be foolish for our leaders to think that air and space power could be effective in any crisis, but it has now become their weapon of first resort. Over the past few years, we have heard references to a crisis in the American air and space industry. Despite America's dominant position, concerns need to be addressed. First and foremost, we need to conduct a broad-based examination of all aspects of the air and space nation. The US must have a comprehensive plan to develop, improve, and coordinate the commercial and military aspects of our policy.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Meilinger, Phillip S., 1948-
2003
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Terrorism Threat and U.S. Government Response: Operational and Organizational Factors
This book is a collection of current research from academia, the U.S. government, and the private sector. The authors' experiences and approaches to the issue vary, but they share a deep understanding of the concepts underpinning terrorism. They provide an analytical approach that promotes an awareness of the terrorist's perspective, and then develop a strategic structure for combating it. Their recommendations regarding operational and organizational measures provide policymakers with several options for addressing modern threats.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Smith, James M.; Thomas, William C.
2001-03
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Homeland Security and Homeland Defense: Definitions, Roles, Seams, and Gaps [powerpoint]
This presentation describes homeland security and homeland defense definitions, roles, seams, and gaps. It begins with conceptual and structural foundations: National Defense and National Security, Civil Defense and Emergency Management, and legacies to HLS and HLD. In regards to homeland security post Cold War, there is a changing international landscape, new threats for the U.S. This presentation reviews homeland security and homeland defense after 9/11: post Cold War issues, homeland defense on military agenda, National Guard-expanded mission focus, and the Hart/Rudman Commission. The gaps in homeland security and homeland defense became visible during Hurricane Katrina.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Alarid, Megan
2007-02
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International Security Negotiations: Lessons Learned from Negotiating with the Russians on Nuclear Arms
"This paper examines arms control and non-proliferation negotiations during and after the Cold War. To make the analysis of this vast topic manageable, the discussion concentrates on negotiating with the Russians (recognizing that the USSR was more than Russia) and, primarily, on negotiations to eliminate or control nuclear arms. American Cold War policy was focused largely through the lens of how to contain and deter Russian expansion and aggression. The intense military competition was at the heart of this struggle, and the nuclear balance was at the heart of the military strategies on both sides. [...] The point of the discussion is not analysis for analysis' sake but to search for lessons that might be of value to American policy today and in the future."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Wheeler, Michael O.
2006-02
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Biowarfare Lessons, Emerging Biosecurity Issues, and Ways to Monitor Dual-Use Biotechnology Trends in the Future
"The study summarizes policy lessons for future efforts to monitor possible covert biological warfare programs based on recent investigations of past Iraqi and South African covert biowarfare programs. This comparative case study approach identified several commonalities in past biowarfare programs in developing countries. One was a tendency of governments to recruit some of the brightest graduate students studying in several different fields of science and send them abroad for advanced studies at western universities. This trend changed dramatically after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, and it is now much more likely that future scientists working for government-sponsored bioweapons programs or for terrorist groups in the developing world will receive their advanced training at nonwestern institutions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Purkitt, Helen E., 1950-
2005-09
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Information Warfare Arms Control: Risks and Costs
"Since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, information warfare has taken a prominent role in transforming the military as envisioned in Joint Vision 2010. However, due to the rapid changes in information technologies and the low cost, wide availability and high payoff of information warfare weapons, some have seen it as a destabilizing influence and have called for international arms control agreements to govern its use. Although the international legal system and the modern concept of arms control were able to provide for national and international collective security during the Cold War, information warfare presents many challenges that question their viability. The most significant challenges are to the international legal system, which include undermining the ordering principle of the post-Westphalian international system. Despite these challenges, an information warfare arms control regime is still achievable; however, at potentially significant costs and risks. Although some of these costs would be similar to previous nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons arms control agreements, the lack of available data makes it difficult to determine the expected costs with any degree of accuracy. In addition, some of these costs cannot be expressed in budgetary terms; therefore, they are presented as risks and include increased proliferation, intelligence loss, cheating, and a false sense of security. Since there are also political risks by not becoming a signatory to international agreements on this issue, the U.S. would be best served by staying engaged in the discourse to shape the norm for information warfare in the international arena."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Thom, Maxie C.
2006-03
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Extended Deterrence: Taking Stock of Current Policy and Updating the Research and PME Agendas
"Dr. James Smith, Director of the Air Force Institute for National Security Studies [INSS] made introductory remarks highlighting the importance of this study to the group of assembled experts. The workshop capped a series of studies undertaken across an international group of think tanks, universities, and government research organizations over the past five years. It asked participants to examine questions such as: (1) What are the current challenges to extended deterrence and assurance? (2) Are any of these challenges being inadequately or improperly addressed? (3) Do the current US policies, strategies, and postures meet the assurance expectations of our allies? (4) How will the anticipated regional security environments of 2015-2020 generate new requirements and expectations? (5) Which extended deterrence and assurance issues require expanded investigation and analysis? (6) Are current US deterrence and assurance strategies and postures adequately 'tailored' for each region? (7) What kinds of knowledge and skill sets will mid- to senior-level Department of Defense military and civilian personnel need in order to meet the challenges of the emerging strategic environment? INSS anticipated that the discussion would be influenced by current developments such as: (1) The Russian incursion into Crimea and the threat to Ukrainian independence and sovereignty; (2) Overall Russian intransigence and stridency; (3) Chinese military development and maritime stridency; (4) North Korean nuclear weapons and delivery system development as well as general DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] adventurism; (5) Iranian nuclear program developments."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
2014-08-06
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'All Our Tomorrows': A Long-Range Forecast of Global Trends Affecting Arms Control Technology
"This report summarizes a three-phase research project undertaken by the USAF Institute for National Security Studies on behalf of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to forecast longrange global trends affecting arms control technologies. The report projects the international political, economic, and scientific environments to the year 2015. It posits economic and technological drivers as shaping the system, including its military and political dimensions. The result will be a two-tiered system, with great danger arising from significant proliferation in the second tier and the transition zone between tiers. The report next draws conclusions from this likely future for the scope, value, and practice of arms control. Arms control will be focused less on limitation and reduction of existing weapons, although the endgame there between the United States and Russia will remain a significant effort. The focus will shift to the less well-defined realm of counterproliferation, and to marginal, failing, and failed states as well as non-traditional and non-state actors. New dimensions will be added, including control efforts toward small arms, advanced conventional weapons, military space, and information operations. The report then extrapolates from this future to assess the likely arms control technology requirements in cooperative, noncooperative, intrusive, and non-intrusive regimes. The projection here is continuing requirements for each of these specialized sets of technologies, with particular emphasis on multiple use technologies for remote arms control compliance and verification monitoring as well as for intelligence detection and collection. Similarly, area arms control monitoring systems must be capable of application for force protection applications. Data management/knowledge management will become a top priority for arms control, as will the continuing development of human expertise in this advanced area of specialization." Note: This document has been added to the Homeland Security Digital Library in agreement with the Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering WMD (PASCC) as part of the PASCC collection. Permission to download and/or retrieve this resource has been obtained through PASCC.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Smith, James M.; Larsen, Jeffrey Arthur, 1954-
2002-06
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Rollback of South Africa's Biological Warfare Program
"This monograph analyzes the origins and development of the South African CBW program, as well as its rollback. It concludes with a profile of South Africa as a state that produced weapons of mass destruction and with a list of outstanding questions. More than twenty policy lessons, based on the South African case, are presented, which should be considered in future CBW non-proliferation studies."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Burgess, Stephen Franklin; Purkitt, Helen E., 1950-
2001-02
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Constructing 'The Other': Ethno-Religious Identity In Separatist Movements In Southeast Asia
From the thesis abstract: "In Southeast Asia, three main separatist minorities are often studied: the Moros of the southern Philippines, the Acehenese on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, and the Thai-Malay Muslims in southern Thailand. Their persisting grievances and pursuits of self-determination include disputes over ancestral land, socio-economic opportunity, and exclusion from participation in and lack of recognition by the state apparatus. Consequently, members within these minority groups often take up arms against the state. Understanding separatist movements in Southeast Asia is more than recognizing political and socio-economic grievances. US policymakers must take into account how and why a separate ethnoreligious identity is constructed and implemented to achieve a particular aim. The powerful notion of 'other' mobilizes general support and gives legitimacy to goals and grievances in the pursuit of a specific political goal: a separate, Islamic state. Studying constructed and implemented identities will help policymakers contextualize regional instability, political violence, terrorism linkages, and at the same time, improve relations, bolster institutional capabilities, and promote human rights. However, the focus here will not be merely on the 'who' and 'why' questions. Exploring political and socio-economic grievances are indeed necessary and important in understanding political agendas and violent actions, as well as in the formulation of foreign policy. It is equally necessary and important, however, to explain how and why a separate ethno-religious identity is created and mobilized to reinforce political goals. The 'whys' of separatist movements and violence-the historical, territorial, political, and socio-economic grievances-are not the focus of this paper. It will be assumed that these groups have such grievances against the state and that there are other ethnicities and religions that co-exist within the countries."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Bowman, Robin L.
2005
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Limitations of Standoff Firepower-Based Operations: On Standoff Warfare, Maneuver, and Decision
This document takes a critical look at dramatic changes in the Israel Defense Forces and other Western militaries regarding force structure and force utilization concepts, based on a preference for standoff precision firepower over classic maneuver. Using the Second Lebanon War as a primary case study, the monograph examines some of the limitations inherent in standoff fire capability and argues that by itself it is generally incapable of bringing the enemy to strategic collapse. Ron Tira contends that given Israel's security reality, it seems there is no replacing the tactical battlefield that includes maneuvering and conquering territory.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Tira, Ron
2007-03
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Israel and a Nuclear Iran: Implications for Arms Control, Deterrence, and Defense
The essays that comprise this report examine the principal challenges for Israel should Iran acquire nuclear weapons. The essays explore Iran's potential deployment of a nuclear capability; the implications of a nuclear empowered Iran with regard to arms control and non-proliferation efforts in the nuclear realm; the difficulty of fostering a stable Israel-Iran nuclear relationship; the critical role of missile defense; and a realistic defense of Israel's home front against the threat
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Kam, Ephraim
2008-07
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Viability of U.S. Antisatellite (ASAT) Policy: Moving Toward Space Control
"This paper suggests that the varied strategic arguments that pervaded in past ASAT debates are now, for the most part, gone. Another broader argument has, however, replaced them, and in some ways presents a more nuanced organizational issue. That issue concerns determination of the relative importance of space weaponry designed toward negating space-based threats, the traditional role of ASATs, within the parameters of U.S. space control capabilities specifically and military planning generally. In that context, it is argued that although past political impediments to the development of ASATs have dissipated, ASAT development will likely continue conservatively much as it has in the past, now as a part of a broader spectrum of efforts. In a change from the past, however, organizational politics and fiscal prioritization rather than macro strategic political and public debate now determine such a course."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Johnson-Freese, Joan
2000-01
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Future (im)perfect?: Mapping conflict, violence and extremism in Africa
"The central challenge for sub-Saharan Africa is to build accountable, capable governments that can deliver security and inclusive growth. Research into the drivers, trends and characteristics of violence in Africa may help achieve these goals. This paper firstly presents global and African trends in armed conflict since 1960, while looking at armed conflict within the broader context of political violence using recent event data. The fatality burden between key affected countries is also discussed. The paper then turns to an examination of the high levels of non-state conflict in the Middle East and Africa compared to the rest of the world and the systemic imbalances that drive instability. Finally, challenges in measuring the relative contribution of violent Islamist extremism to political violence are presented."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Cilliers, Jakkie
2015-10
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Homeland Air Force
This article discusses how 9/11 altered the role of the USAF in homeland defense. It also discusses what future changes are likely to occur.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
2004-01
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New Germany and Nuclear Weapons: Options for the Future
"This article first explores the issue of whether German motivations for obtaining nuclear weapons in the future exist or may develop by discussing the historical background regarding German attitudes about nuclear policy - the past German motivations and resulting debates over obtaining nuclear weapons. Second, it examines possible motivations in terms of the changed security concerns brought by the end of the cold war. What are the various security scenarios and plausible options and, in turn, their related effects on German nuclear decisions? Third, this article analyzes the influence of nonsecurity motivations. These motivations may stem from German efforts at producing an integrated political and cultural identity (i.e., political community) as part of the ongoing unification process. Can these nonsecurity aspects also act as an impetus for German desires to become a nuclear power? Last, this article includes overall conclusions and possible policy implications for the United States and the US Air Force."
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Gose, Mark N.
1996
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Milestones in Strategic Arms Control 1945-2000: United States Air Force Roles and Outcomes
As a strategy instrument, arms control is an integral element of national efforts to enhance security, in this case as both a complement to and a substitute for more confrontational strategy elements. Second, and related, it establishes that security strategy involves both conflict and cooperation, side by side and often simultaneous, as overlapping stages of a single continuum. In such a deliberately ambivalent world, primary national security organizations can find themselves caught in the middle of these seemingly incompatible policy threads, and this was often the fate of the United States Air Force (USAF) across the Cold War and through to today. An examination of arms control and its implications for the USAF entails establishing the policy context of national security strategy and national military strategy, particularly nuclear strategy and USAF development to support that strategy. The story of United States national security policy across the Cold War and into its immediate aftermath is very much the story of the continuous framework of containment. And the central dimension of containment was the US-Soviet strategic relationship. Thus, implementation of United States national security policy focused on evolving nuclear strategy and, as the Cold War matured, on the accompanying process of arms control. This strategic dimension of policy and practice was also the central force shaping much of the development of the organization charged with employing most of the United States nuclear capability and with creating the infrastructure of nuclear force management, the USAF.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
2002
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US Policy Towards Secession in the Balkans and Effectiveness of DE FACTO Partition
During the decade of the 1990s, as ethnic conflicts obtained greater salience
and demonstrated renewed ability to destabilize the international order,
successive US administrations fostered cautious multilateral policies.
Washington advocated interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo that were designed
to end conflict and restore order in the short-run while firmly denying the right to partition the original state. Partition--the creation of one or more new
independent states from an existing one--was normatively and practically
rejected. Instead, the US and its NATO allies opted for de facto partition as
the "best of the worst" policy choices. The de facto partitions in Bosnia and Kosovo are short-term military and political expedients involving the use of non-sovereign boundaries to divide states ethnically, geographically and politically. Simultaneously, the regimes imposed by the Dayton Accords in Bosnia and the UN protectorate in Kosovo emphasize the use of political and economic incentives to bridge military and territorial boundaries. The following study examines the two major ongoing civil-military attempts to manage ethnic conflict in the Balkans via de facto partition. The analysis focuses on the extent to which policy implementation bolsters the underlying objective--to maintain a multiethnic sovereign state and prevent secession or partition. The study assesses the de facto partition regimes in Bosnia and Kosovo in terms of their short-term effectiveness containing conflict and the long-term prospects for state preservation. In each case, the analysis begins with a brief review of the objectives of the intervenor's. Subsequent sections focus on the military and political aspects of the intervention, and the extent to which they are reinforcing partition or integration. The conclusion offers a blunt final assessment of international efforts in the Balkans and policy recommendations addressing current shortcomings.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Makros, Beth L.; Saunders, Jeremy C.
2001-01
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Threat Perceptions in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore
This research addresses threat perceptions in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore and how or if these perceptions are influenced by the U.S. military presence in East Asia. It encompasses a comparative approach in that each individual interviewed was asked the same basic questions. The first section of this paper outlines the nature of the U.S. military presence in East Asia from
the Cold War to post-Cold War periods. The second identifies some real and potential security threats in the region from the American perspective. The final section reports the results of a series of more than 50 interviews conducted in Washington and in each of the three countries based on the four basic questions outlined above. Some conclusions are then drawn concerning
similarities and differences in national threat perceptions and the importance of the American military presence.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Berry, William E.
1997-09
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Overcoming Uncertainty: U.S.-China Strategic Relations in the 21st Century
Mutual uncertainty colors every aspect of U.S.-China relations. American's worry that China will use its growing military power in pursuit of expanding political and economic interests. Beijing fears that the U.S. will try to prevent it from achieving its comprehensive modernization goals. Thus, there lingers an omnipresent perception on both sides that the United States and China are on a road to inevitable confrontation that could include military hostilities. Policymakers and defense planners on each side are, therefore, required to "hedge" against some future, undefined, military threat from the other which, in turn, feeds mutual distrust. This paper offers a range of policy steps that should be taken to overcome mutual uncertainty and advance responsibly U.S.-China relations. It does so in view of changes in the global strategic environment and an assessment of China's future. The full range of vital and important bilateral security issues are explored, including the goals of both sides, interests, and strategic perspectives regarding these issues. Finally, bilateral military relations are addressed, including why and how they should be stabilized and developed to support the overall security relationship. Ultimately, this paper is intended to provide a framework for a balanced debate on China policy that would contribute to improved stability and predictability in U.S.-China relations. Now more than ever, in the face of myriad complex foreign policy challenges and opportunities, strong bipartisan consensus is needed to formulate and implement policies that best serve America's long-term interests. Yet, now more than ever, such a consensus appears elusive.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Anderson, Walter N.
1999-10
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Post-Cold War Nuclear Strategy Model
The authors of this paper hold the view that the conceptualization of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War environment will require some elements of the old Cold War debate, as well as new concerns resulting from events in the 1990s. The first relevant debate will pertain to the classic Cold War arguments about deterrence, and it's utility. It is clear that the second part of this conceptualization, and clearly related to the need for deterrence, will be the need to monitor and evaluate the current military, economic, and political situation in Russia. Third, after discussions in these two areas there needs to be a careful consideration of the recent proposals for changing the alert status of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal. And finally, since U.S. nuclear strategy and posture will reflect certain domestic and political realities, it would be helpful to consider which ones have merit in this question.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Hall, Gwendolyn M.; Capello, John T.; Lambert, Stephen R.
1998-07
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Water: The Hydraulic Parameter of Conflict in the Middle East and North Africa
Water is a primary concern of most governments in the Middle East and North Africa. A myriad of synergistic variables are exponentially increasing demands for water, while simultaneously decreasing the region's ability to supply it. These variables include a rapidly increasing population, a large per capita increase in water demand, increasing water pollution, rapid economic growth, persistent regional drought, and irrecoverable water over-exploitation. Compounding the issue are regional tensions (such as those between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and Egypt and Sudan), vague international water laws, and a history of regional conflict. A gloomy prediction emerges if one extrapolates the trends in each of these variables. Especially in the Middle East, water supplies are so tight that even the most optimistic forecast suggests the water issue will be "super-critical" within a decade. Indeed, water issues surround the current peace process, and may actually be worsened should a successful treaty be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This paper examines these variables in depth, and then forecasts a series of possible events that could be the catalyst for a water-based conflict in the Middle East. These events include mass Palestinian migration to a newly declared Palestinian state, transferring control of the West Bank aquifer to the Palestinian Authority, loss of Israeli control of the Jordan River headwaters (which would necessarily result from returning the Golan Heights to Syria), continued or exacerbated drought, and an Israeli return to a more hawkish government. While currently water should only be considered a proximately source of conflict in the region, in the future, water could very well become the primary reason governments decide to go to war.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Kiser, Stephen D.
2000-09
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Chinese People's Liberation Army: 'Short Arms and Slow Legs'
China's rise in power has focused considerable scrutiny on the capabilities and intentions of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). For some observers, Beijing's combination of consistently rising budgets, military modernization, and a more offensive operational doctrine has signaled its intention to assume the status of a world power. While every major power's defense budget and military personnel levels have declined substantially since the Berlin Wall came down, the Chinese budget has increased on average approximately 11% per year. In addition, China's new military doctrine "Limited war under high technological conditions" is more assertive, stressing offensive, even preemptive, uses of military power. This paper examines the PLA's intentions and its ability to threaten its neighbors by considering two variables: China's defense budget and its military doctrine. Defense budgets are only marginal indicators of intentions, but they offer insights into what kinds of capabilities a military is purchasing and developing. Military doctrine is an excellent source of intent because it provides a state's war preparations guidance, which defines the nature and origin of how it perceives future wars and how the military should prepare to fight those wars. Conceptually, the PLA's new doctrine is suited to achieving Beijing's objectives. However, the PLA does not how have, nor has it ever had, the wherewithal to carry out the doctrine's intent. China's deficiencies in systems integration, manufacturing propulsion systems, and advanced computer technologies will be the most limiting factors in the PLA's ability to field the weapons and equipment necessary to satisfy strategic requirements.
USAF Institute for National Security Studies
Howard, Russell D. (Russell D'Vere), 1946-
1999-09
