Read the most recent CSIS research on U.S. military force structure.
The last time a U.S. President invoked the Insurrection Act was in response to the 1992 L.A. Riots. This vignette highlights how federal forces were mobilized to address the unrest in L.A.
This past summer, federal forces were deployed to D.C. in response to protests addressing racial injustice. This vignette explains some of the unique features of the D.C. deployments, and highlights key considerations about the laws and norms that guide domestic federal force deployments.
CSIS Senior Adviser Mark Cancian annually produces a series of papers on US military forces. This first white paper in the series analyzes what DOD did with military forces in FY 2021 and four challenges and a wild card that military forces face in the future.
Today, traditional nuclear missions increasingly intersect with emerging technical domains such as space and cyber. How can policymakers mitigate the risks that bureaucratic competition can pose to the shared mission of defending the nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) system?
What would detailed conventional nuclear integration in doctrine, concepts, and large-scale exercises look like? Joint concepts inform high-level military doctrine, which in turn provides guidance on what the military should aim to achieve through planning and training in large-scale exercises.
Mark Cancian and Adam Saxton discuss the sharp rise in DoD cases and the implications of a second wave of Covid-19 for the military.
Mark Cancian moderated a panel discussion on early lessons from the military’s response to the pandemic with LTG David Barno, USA (Ret.), Nora Bensahel, and Melanie Marlowe.
CSIS and SAIS hosted the 2020 Future Strategy Forum: Cooperation and Conflict in the Time of Covid-19. The week-long conference featured a keynote discussion with Hon. Michele Flournoy and 3 panels discussing how Covid-19 will impact national security. View the recorded sessions here.
Mark Cancian and Adam Saxton discuss steps for how the Pentagon can protect the force while still enabling the military to accomplish its mission in a Covid-19 environment.
The federal response to the pandemic has been slow and uneven. And it is true that our civic institutions will sometimes let us down and fail to deliver on what Americans need. But, when they do, it is to other civilians — not the military — that we must turn. The military can’t save us from COVID-19, and we shouldn’t ask it to.