As the Biden administration implements “integrated deterrence,” Thomas Spoehr warns the application of non-military tools, such as economic sanctions and diplomatic condemnation, should not replace or diminish the need to build sufficient military power.
Russia has been dismissed as a declining by some policymakers and analysts who prefer to focus on competition with China. Yet Russia remains one of the most assertive and powerful states in the international system and ignoring the threat it poses is a strategic error.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy called out the “reemergence of long-term, strategic competition.” While this was a smart shift in focus, the widely used “great power competition” is the wrong term to describe this new priority.
China and Russia have prioritized strengthening their bilateral defense relationship in recent years. This report examines a key aspect of Sino-Russian defense ties, military-technical cooperation (MTC), and offers recommendations for U.S. policymakers.
In this brief, the authors explore a defense approach they have labeled the Progressive Values Strategy. The strategy is grounded in a view that the military instrument is not well suited to meeting many of the security challenges facing the United States. It focuses on achieving a level of military sufficiency that deters adventurism by others—as well as itself.
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.
It’s now time for the Trump administration to reinvigorate its posture of “maximum pressure,” which has come to look more like one of maximum patience.
Geopolitical competition is increasingly playing out in the gray zone—the space beyond diplomacy and short of conventional war. The nature of this competition is forcing the United States to confront the liabilities of its strengths. This report assesses current U.S. government actions to deter, campaign through, and respond to competitors’ gray zone tactics.
A significant number of Russia’s tactics fall in the space between routine statecraft and direct and open warfare, a space sometimes referred to as the gray zone.
On July 12, Turkey received the first elements of the S-400, a fourth-generation surface-to-air Russian missile system. Few recent weapon sales have been as geopolitically charged as this one. U.S. officials have threatened both military and economic sanctions should Turkey acquire the Russian system.