Topic: Strategy

Read the most recent CSIS research on U.S. national security strategy.

Bad Idea? Aggressively Countering Russian Action in the Arctic

As Arctic temperatures rise and the region undergoes extreme environmental change, new economic, scientific, maritime, and political opportunities have led to the gradual militarization of the region and its potential as a new theater for strategic competition between the United States and Russia. Amid such rapid change, the strategic outlook of the Arctic over the next two decades—whether cooperative or competitive—is an open question.

Opinion / Budget, Forces, Strategy

Bad Ideas in National Security Podcast

In this episode of The Truth of the Matter podcast, host Andrew Schwartz welcomes Kathleen Hicks, Andrew Hunter, and Todd Harrison from the CSIS International Security Program to discuss the Bad Ideas in National Security series. In addition to analyzing their own pieces, they nominate their frontrunners for what might be considered the “worst” bad idea.

President Harry Truman with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, 1950

Opinion / Strategy

Bad Idea: Strategy That Explicitly Says What We Will Not Do

The United States’ perennial search for rigidity in strategic choice—particularly regarding what it will not do and where it will not do it—risks leaving the country vulnerable in the face of emergent challenges and shifts in American political winds.

Opinion / Strategy

Bad Idea: Retrenchment from U.S. Alliances

Retrenchment from forward deployed forces supporting alliances is a bad idea. Alliances, including forward-stationing of U.S. forces abroad makes the United States safer, its allies more secure, and all participating more prosperous. Any weakening of the U.S. alliance architecture should demonstrate how it provides greater benefits than the existing system.

Opinion / Forces, Strategy

Bad Idea: Assuming the Small Wars Era is Over

The revived interest in great power politics comes with an important, if oft unstated, corollary: the problem of small wars is now of secondary importance. But the U.S. must be vigilant against focusing solely on a conventional, symmetric future conflict and would be wise to acknowledge the coexistence of multiple categories of dangerous actors.

Opinion / Strategy

Bad Idea: Debating Grand Strategy

The desire to author a new grand strategy is a longstanding and understandable tradition in U.S. foreign policy. In reality, however, a grand strategy debate is likely to degenerate into unproductive arguments where few objective criteria exist to evaluate competing proposals.

Opinion / Strategy

Bad Idea: Assuming All Arms Control Agreements are Inherently Good

That the United States should reflexively seek to remain in arms control agreements, even if they do not contribute to U.S. national security, is a bad idea in national security.

Opinion / Strategy

Bad Idea: The Wolf Amendment (Limiting Collaboration with China in Space)

The Wolf Amendment has neither discouraged Chinese space ambitions or altered China’s behavior on human rights—it has only muddled our relationship with China and created an opening for a challenger to NASA’s leadership role in space exploration.

Opinion / Strategy

Bad Idea: China-Driven U.S. Strategy

A strategic overcorrection has put China at the center of virtually every U.S. national security conversation and consideration. That positioning is at once distracting the United States from appropriately responding to growing trans-regional geopolitical volatility while also failing to achieve outcomes in U.S. China policy.

Opinion / Strategy

Bad Idea: Integrating Artificial Intelligence with Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications

Integrating artificial intelligence with nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) to create an automated strategic response system underestimates AI’s potential to inadvertently precipitate a catastrophic mistake.

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