Policy Briefs

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  Supporting Democracy in Erdoǧan’s Turkey: The Role of Think Tanks

  Richard H.M. Outzen and Ryan Schwing

  This paper examines the Turkish think tank sector as part of a strategy to invest in Turkish democratization in a manner that does not prejudice security cooperation or the broader bilateral relationship. The United States for over 60 years has promoted a Turkey that is politically stable, economically prosperous, militarily capable, and democratically mature. As we head into 2016, the good news is that Turkey has had a party capable of ruling and winning elections for 14 years, is a G20 economy, retains one of the strongest military and security establishments in the world, and has established civilian authority over the military in a durable manner. The bad news is that this substantial progress has not resulted in a more transparent government fully committed to Western democratic norms. Instead the result has been a frequently unpredictable ally led by an increasingly authoritarian, albeit popular President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who flouts Western norms with relish and deviates from Western strategic consensus with ease. The sustained dialogue, mutual understanding, consultation, and compromise that mark good partnerships are noticeably absent—and the formerly substantial American influence over Turkish policymaking is greatly diminished. At the same time, the United States has an image problem to accompany its influence deficit, having experienced a sustained loss of trust among the Turkish public.

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  China’s Goldwater-Nichols? Assessing PLA Organizational Reforms

  Phillip C. Saunders and Joel Wuthnow

  In the past few months, China has announced a series of major reforms to the organizational structure of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA): the Central Military Commission (CMC) has been revamped, the four general departments dissolved, new service headquarters created, and five new theater commands established in place of the seven military regions (MRs). These changes are part of a sweeping transformation of PLA institutions, force structure, and policy that will be ongoing through 2020. In pursuing these reforms, China’s leaders hope both to tighten central political control over a force that was seen as increasingly corrupt and to build the PLA into a credible joint warfighting entity. Yet important obstacles remain, and it may be years before the implications of these reforms come into full view.

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  Posing Problems Without an Alliance: China-Iran Relations after the Nuclear Deal

  Joel Wuthnow

  The signing of a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in July 2015 to address international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program has led to bullish predictions about the future of Sino-Iranian relations. Under the deal, Iran is expected to limit its uranium enrichment and make other changes to its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of international sanctions. China is expected to be a prime beneficiary of the deal as Chinese firms take advantage of greater access to the Iranian market, especially in the energy sector. Some U.S. analysts also contend that the two countries could forge deeper strategic relations as well, involving coordination designed to weaken U.S. influence—or what both states see as U.S. “hegemonism”—in the region.

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  Defense Partnerships: Documenting Trends and Emerging Topics for Action

  Samuel Bendett

  Public-public and public-private and partnerships (P4s) are time-proven effective solutions for delivering public services at reasonable costs when deployed and managed properly. Various U.S. agencies¹ and international organizations all have longstanding successful P4 initiatives and projects. Recently, Department of Defense (DOD) leaders have expressed increased interest in implementing P4s throughout their organizations.² As DOD is faced with evolving roles and missions in an “unpredictable and complex world amid fiscal constraints, the expertise and involvement of the private sector and other public organizations will be essential.”³ P4s could be ideal tools intended to “further policy objectives, enhance U.S. operational capabilities, reduce costs, gain access to nonmilitary expertise or assets, or build greater capacity in partners.”⁴

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  Global Knowledge Networking: Smart Strategies for Promoting Innovative Learning and Leader Development

  Walter L. Christman, Frank C. DiGiovanni, and Linton Wells II

  Smart security builds on actionable knowledge. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Wales Summit in September 2014 highlighted the need to build on partnerships to prepare and operate together better. Building on the successes of past partnership initiatives and capabilities, this paper proposes new ways to embrace and extend techniques and relationships originally developed under successful Secretary of Defense (SECDEF)-level memoranda of understanding (MOUs) within NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. The Global Knowledge Networking (GKN) initiative supports smart decisionmaking by educating and training tomorrow’s agile, resilient, and effective leaders. GKN is a network of people, ideas, and processes to make knowledge actionable and is focused on improving on U.S. and coalition interoperability through improvements in existing training and education capabilities. It has begun to convene strategic dialogues around key challenges and collectively owned opportunities. Its initial framing is globally relevant and focused on the Arabian Gulf region through a proposed test bed for collaboration with the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This will allow new tools for interoperability to be explored and created together as enablers of joint capability. Drawing on the experiences of NATO’s Partnership for Peace, it will promote an innovative systems approach that could help cultivate and sustain more effective security partnerships around the globe.

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  Responding to Russia after the NATO Summit: Unmanned Aerial Systems Overmatch in the Black Sea

  Connor Sullivan, Schuyler Standley, and James M. Keagle

  The Ukraine conflict poses unique and asymmetric challenges to the international community. Since the earliest days of the Crimean crisis, Russian support of “separatists” within Ukraine has ranged from plainclothes thugs to more traditional uniformed troops, munitions, and other forms of aid. Some of the individuals involved may have had links to the Russian military or its intelligence community. While much of the aid comes through the porous border between Russia and Ukraine, Russia also leverages the opportunity to use Black Sea smugglers as a way to supply ongoing rebellions or to initiate new revolts. Two Black Sea–bordering regions, Odessa and Transnistria, are home to active pro-Russian movements that could potentially evolve into a pro-Russian state. Worries of Russia supplying separatists via illicit movements on the Black Sea and generally advancing its Novorossyia claims should be matched to a general concern over Black Sea smuggling rings, which traffic humans, weapons, and nuclear materials into Europe via Odessa’s port.

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  An Empirical Analysis of Claimant Tactics in the South China Sea

  Christopher D. Yung and Patrick McNulty

  China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei all claim some or all of the land features and maritime territory in the South China Sea. One notable aspect of the South China Sea dispute is that its advocates argue past one another with little reference to a common set of facts. Another is the absence of comprehensive data on the actions claimants have taken to advance or protect their claims. The Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University (NDU) set out to create a comprehensive database documenting the various tactics pursued by South China Sea claimants over an 18-year timeframe (1995–2013). This paper draws upon that data to analyze what tactics South China Sea claimants are employing and to present some potential considerations for U.S. and allied policymakers.

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  The Defense Acquisition Trilemma: The Case of Brazil

  Patrice Franko

  Brazil is a puzzling new player in the global system. Emerging as a complex international actor, it has come to be seen as a significant economic competitor and dynamic force in world politics.1 But transformational changes in the economic and political realms have not been accompanied by advances in military power. While Brazil has entered the world stage as an agile soft power exercising influence in setting global agendas and earning a seat at the economic table of policymakers, its military capacity lags. The national security strategy announced under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2008 intended to redress this power gap. President Dilma Rousseff ’s 2011 White Paper—so detailed that it is called a “White Book”—provides the conceptual roadmap to achieve a new military balance. But military modernization is still a work in progress.

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  The Rising Terrorist Threat in Tanzania: Domestic Islamist Militancy and Regional Threats

  Andre LeSage

  Despite its reputation for peace and stability in a troubled region, the East African country of Tanzania is experiencing a rising number of militant Islamist attacks that have targeted local Christian leaders and foreign tourists, as well as popular bars and restaurants. These attacks, which began in 2012, rarely make the headlines of international media. However, they should serve as a wake-up call for U.S. policymakers to increase short-term engagement with Tanzanian officials and support for Tanzanian security agencies to preempt the emergence of a more significant threat to U.S. and international interests in East Africa.

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  Strategy and Force Planning in a Time of Austerity

  Michael J. Meese

  On February 13, 1989, General Colin Powell, who was in a transition between National Security Advisor and Commander of U.S. Army Forces Command, addressed the reality of strategy: “All of the sophisticated talk about grand strategy is helpful, but show me your budgets and I will tell you what your strategy is.”1 What General Powell meant is that the definition of the U.S. role in the world and its strategic goals flow from budgets, not the other way around. This paper fleshes out General Powell’s observation by focusing on the means part of the ends, ways, and means of strategy in order to explain how austerity affects force planning and strategy. By first examining budget reductions as a general matter, the paper describes today’s austere U.S. budgetary environment. It concludes with the current strategic options that will likely characterize the contemporary discussion of strategy and force planning.

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  The Flawed Strategic Debate on Syria

  Richard H.M. Outzen

  Dating from Bashar al-Asad’s first suppression of mass demonstrations in April 2011, the war in Syria is now 3 years old, has killed more than 130,000 Syrians, and displaced nine million Syrians, two million as refugees into neighboring countries.1 Foreign intervention has increasingly shaped the course of the fighting and will continue to have substantial regional consequences. The complexity of this bitter, nominally internal struggle has dampened American enthusiasm for joining the fray or even paying much attention to Syria, notwithstanding the chemical weapon attacks on Gouta, east of Damascus, last August, which captured the attention of the American people, media, and policy community. With an international taboo broken and a Presidential redline crossed, public debate spiked in August–September 2013 over U.S. interests in Syria and the limits on what we will do to secure them. Debate did not result in a consensus for action.

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  Targeted Killing of Terrorists

  Nicholas Rostow

  The struggle against terrorism—more specifically, the effort to prevent terrorist attacks—has raised difficult legal and policy issues including so-called targeted killing, or the killing of specific individuals because of their involvement in terrorist organizations and operations. As we shall see, this form of targeted killing involves domestic and international legal authorities and policy and prudential issues. A substantial number of countries confronting what they consider to be terrorist attacks and threats engage in targeted killings. Each has to resolve questions about authorities and prudence because, while terrorists are always criminals, they also may be lawful military targets. The dual character of terrorists leads to the conclusion that, as a matter of policy, a state should weigh the totality of the circumstances and conclude that no other action is reasonable to prevent a terrorist attack before engaging in the targeted killing. Careful analysis in advance may preempt problems later.

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  A Time to Tweet, as Well as a Time to Kill: ISIS’s Projection of Power in Iraq and Syria

  Heather Marie Marie Vitale and James M. Keagle

  On June 29, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or the Islamic State),1 a Sunni jihadist group with the capability of a paramilitary, established an Islamic caliphate. With 10,000 militants, the group took territory and achieved a goal that rival terrorist group al Qaeda has pursued for decades. Yet how did a group with relatively few fighters accomplish so much?

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  Russia Still Matters: Strategic Challenges and Opportunities for the Obama Administration

  John W. Parker and Michael Kofman

  Russia’s institution of a ban on American adoptions of Russian orphans, an appalling response by the Duma to U.S. sanctions against officials involved in the Sergei Magnitsky case,1 was a clear indicator that bilateral relations will assume a lower priority in the next 4 years for both capitals. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the measure despite open misgivings by some of his own key aides and against the opposition of most of Russia’s civil society. The Russian Internet response was scathing, producing an instant winner for best sick joke of 2012: “An educated American family has decided to adopt a developmentally disabled Duma deputy.”

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  Transitional Justice for Syria

  Nicholas Rostow

  Transitional justice is the provision of justice in the transition from one form of government, often perceived as illegitimate, unjust, and tyrannical, or an anarchic society, to one that observes the rule of law and administers justice. It also is about choices: how to allocate scarce prosecutorial, judicial, police, and prison resources. The goal is to make the rule of law ordinary.

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  The Rebalance to Asia: U.S.-China Relations and Regional Security

  Phillip C. Saunders

  Upon taking office in January 2009, Obama administration officials proclaimed a U.S. “return to Asia.” This pronouncement was backed with more frequent travel to the region by senior officials (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first trip was to Asia) and increased U.S. participation in regional multilateral meetings, culminating in the decision to sign the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and to participate in the East Asia Summit (EAS) at the head-of-state level. The strategic “rebalance to Asia” announced in November 2011 builds on these earlier actions to deepen and institutionalize U.S. commitment to the Asia-Pacific region.

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  Valued Sustainable Services: Building Partnership Capacity Through Collaborating Approaches

  Linton Wells II

  The Valued Sustainable Services (ValSServ) concept is an approach to building the capacity of local populations. It emphasizes the interdependency among telecommunications, reliable power, and information-sharing support, and encourages projects to be developed in integrated packages rather than in stovepiped lines of effort.¹ ValSServ focuses on bottomup projects in complex civil-military operations² that can be funded, planned, and executed at local levels, while being consistent with top-down national and theater strategies. It takes a system-of-systems approach,³ recognizing that successful projects can generate positive ripple effects in local environments and throughout extended networks. This paper focuses on ValSServ within the wide range of U.S. Department of Defense operating environments, such as capacitybuilding to help shape peacetime conditions in partner nations, post-disaster recovery, and helping to move from the “hold” to the “build” phases in counterinsurgency operations.⁴

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  Sharing to Succeed: Lessons from Open Information-sharing Projects in Afghanistan

  Linton Wells II, James Bosworth, John Crowley, and Rebecca Linder Blachly

  The sharing of information in complex civil-military operations1 is important, yet actors rarely do it well. U.S. and allied military forces must be able to communicate, collaborate, and exchange information effectively with the local populations they seek to influence, or they cannot achieve the goals for which they have been committed. Nonetheless, experience from stability operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, numerous humanitarian assistance/disaster relief missions, and efforts to build the capacity of foreign partners suggest that effective information-sharing is much harder than might be expected. This paper sheds light on the difficulties of setting up and sustaining projects to share information in such situations and suggests ways to do better in the future.

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  Next Steps in Syria

  Judith S. Yaphe

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  Space and the Joint Fight

  Robert L. Butterworth

  The world first saw the power of space to transform warfare in the 1991 Gulf War. In the years since, the U.S. military has come to depend heavily on space throughout its peacetime and combat operations. Satellites acquired by the Department of Defense (DOD) principally provide protected communications; data for position and timing, terrestrial and space weather, missile launch warning and tracking, and space situational awareness; and experiments and other research and development activities. Satellites for reconnaissance and surveillance are the domain of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

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  Post-Asad Syria: Opportunity or Quagmire?

  Patrick Clawson

  The government of President Bashar al-Asad in Syria faces strong pressure from its neighbors and the Western powers. In the background is the fall in 2011 of longstanding governments in Tunisia and Egypt to popular protests and, of course, the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in a civil war backed by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military action. It is not clear if Asad will fall or if he will hold on to power. It is fair to say that because his hold on power is sufficiently in doubt, it is well worth examining what would be the strategic consequences if he fell and what would be the strategic implications if he is able to muddle through Syria’s current difficulties. Moreover, given the many sudden and unpredicted Middle East developments in 2011, such an examination should note which low-probability developments might have major impacts on the region and on U.S. interests.

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  Trust, Engagement, and Technology Transfer: Underpinnings for U.S.-Brazil Defense Cooperation

  E. Richard Downes

  On the eve of the January 1, 2011, inauguration of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, the State Department noted that the United States “is committed to deepening our relationship on a wide range of bilateral, regional and global issues with Brazil’s government and people.” President Rousseff herself declared shortly thereafter, “We will preserve and deepen the relationship with the United States.” During President Barack Obama’s March 2011 visit to Brazil, both leaders cited “the progress achieved on defense issues in 2010” and stated their commitment to “follow up on the established dialogue in this area, primarily on new opportunities for cooperation.” While these rhetorical commitments are important, will they lead to greater cooperation on defense issues and improve U.S.-Brazil ties?

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  Raising Our Sights: Russian-American Strategic Restraint in an Age of Vulnerability

  David C. Gompert and Michael Kofman

  The United States and Russia have sought to reduce the danger of nuclear war by limiting offensive strategic capabilities through negotiated agreements, relying on mutual deterrence based on reciprocal threats and the corresponding fear of retaliation. Although nuclear arsenals have been pared, this is fundamentally the same way the United States and Soviet Union sought to reduce the danger of nuclear war during the Cold War, when both were impelled to do so because they were adversaries and able to do so despite being adversaries. It is ironic—not to say unimaginative—that although the two are no longer adversaries, they stick to a path chosen when they were. This current approach is inadequate given new strategic vulnerabilities brought on by technological change. Both the opportunity and the need now exist for a different, more ambitious approach to avoiding strategic conflict—one designed for new possibilities as well as new vulnerabilities. The United States and Russia can and should raise their sights from linear numerical progress to qualitative transformation of their strategic relationship.

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  Sino-American Strategic Restraint in an Age of Vulnerability

  David C. Gompert and Phillip C. Saunders

  For all their power, both the United States and China are increasingly vulnerable. Each faces a range of strategic dangers, from nuclear weapons to disruption of critical computer networks and space links. Because their relationship is at once interdependent and potentially adversarial, the United States and China are especially vulnerable to each other: interdependence exposes each to the other, while the potential for conflict impels each to improve strategic capabilities against which defenses can be futile. Strategic vulnerability cannot be eliminated, only mitigated.

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  Offshore Control: A Proposed Strategy for an Unlikely Conflict

  T.X. Hammes

  As America ends its military commitment to Iraq and continues its drawdown in Afghanistan, a lively discussion has emerged on what future challenges the Nation faces. High on every list is the requirement to deal with a rising China. In his remarks to the Australian Parliament on November 17, 2011, President Barack Obama stated, “As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority.” As part of this rebalancing to Asia, the administration has stated that it seeks “to identify and expand areas of common interest, to work with China to build mutual trust, and to encourage China’s active efforts in global problem-solving.” Clearly, the United States seeks prudent and coordinated political, economic, and military actions to further integrate China into the international system.