Policy Briefs

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Cyber Influence and International Security

Franklin D. Kramer and Larry Wentz

Cyber influence is an ongoing source of power in the international security arena. Although the United States has an enormous cyber information capacity, its cyber influence is not proportional to that capacity. Impediments to American cyber influence include the vastness and complexity of the international information environment, multiplicity of cultures and differing audiences to which communications must be addressed, extensiveness and significance of contending or alternative messages, and complexity and importance of using appropriate influential messengers and message mechanisms.

Enhancing the influence of the United States in cyberspace will require a multifaceted strategy that differentiates the circumstances of the messages, key places of delivery, and sophistication with which messages are created and delivered, with particular focus on channels and messengers.

To improve in these areas, the United States must focus on actions that include discerning the nature of the audiences, societies, and cultures into which messages will be delivered; increasing the number of experts in geographic and cultural arenas, particularly in languages; augmenting resources for overall strategic communications and cyber influence efforts; encouraging long-term communications and cyber influence efforts along with short-term responses; and understanding that successful strategic communications and cyber influence operations cannot be achieved by the United States acting on its own; allies and partners are needed both to shape our messages and to support theirs.
The Absence of Europe: Implications for International Security?

Steven Philip Kramer

In the face of economic and military difficulties, the next U.S. administration will likely return to a more multilateral foreign policy. It will look favorably on working with international organizations. It will focus on greater cooperation with allies. Above all, it will turn to Europe.
Energy Security in South Asia: Can Interdependence Breed Stability?

Joseph McMillan

Despite possessing nearly a quarter of the world’s population, South Asia has long been a backwater in terms of global economic clout, accounting for less than 3 percent of worldwide gross domestic product (GDP). In the last two decades, however, the economic stagnation that has historically characterized the region has been overcome, thanks to significant policy shifts, so that the subcontinent is now the locus of some of the fastest growth in the world. India has led the way, averaging over 8 percent real growth over the last 5 years, but Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka have also been sustaining rates of 6 percent or more since 2005. The rise of South Asia in general and India in particular as a force on the economic scene is now almost universally recognized.
Defense Transformation à la française and U.S. Interests

Leo G. Michel

French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged that France “will remain a great military power” when he unveiled the White Book on Defense and National Security and endorsed its wide-ranging reforms.² The next day, a group of anonymous general officers condemned it as an “amateurish” and “incoherent” exercise that “cannot mask the downgrading of our military in a more dangerous world,” and former conservative Prime Minister Alain Juppé criticized Sarkozy’s intention to enhance France’s role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a “fool’s bargain.”³
Strategic Fragility: Infrastructure Protection and National Security in the Information Age

Robert A. Miller and Irving Lachow

Modern societies have reached unprecedented levels of prosperity, yet they remain vulnerable to a wide range of possible disruptions. One significant reason for this growing vulnerability is the developed world’s reliance on an array of interlinked, interdependent critical infrastructures that span nations and even continents. The advent of these infrastructures over the past few decades has resulted in a tradeoff: the United States has gained greater productivity and prosperity at the risk of greater exposure to widespread systemic collapse. The trends that have led to this growing strategic fragility show no sign of slowing. As a result, the United States faces a new and different kind of threat to national security.

This paper explores the factors that are creating the current situation. It examines the implications of strategic fragility for national security and the range of threats that could exploit this condition. Finally, it describes a variety of response strategies that could help address this issue. The challenges associated with strategic fragility are complex and not easily resolved. However, it is evident that policymakers will need to make difficult choices soon; delaying important decisions is itself a choice, and one that could produce disastrous results.
NATO’s Uncertain Future: Is Demography Destiny?

Jeffrey Simon

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is no stranger to controversy. Over the past 60 years, it has endured disputes over defense strategy, the role of nuclear weapons, the size and composition of its membership, and how best to respond to looming challenges beyond its immediate territory. Today, however, the Atlantic Alliance finds itself increasingly stressed by emerging socioeconomic and political changes among the Allies—changes that are fundamentally influenced by larger demographic shifts now occurring within its membership and that, taken together, will almost certainly hamper its collective ability to deploy operational forces and further strain the transatlantic relationship in the years ahead. This paper offers a preliminary assessment of these trends, focusing specifically on the kinds of impacts that each is having, or will have, upon the Allies and the challenges for Alliance solidarity that may result.
The Role of Medical Diplomacy in Stabilizing Afghanistan

Donald F. Thompson

Comprehensive stabilization and reconstruction of Afghanistan are not possible given the current fragmentation of responsibilities, narrow lines of authorities, and archaic funding mechanisms. Afghans are supportive of U.S. and international efforts, and there are occasional signs of progress, but the insurgent threat grows as U.S. military and civilian agencies and the international community struggle to bring stability to this volatile region. Integrated security, stabilization, and reconstruction activities must be implemented quickly and efficiently if failure is to be averted. Much more than a course correction is needed to provide tangible benefits to the population, develop effective leadership capacity in the government, and invest wisely in reconstruction that leads to sustainable economic growth. A proactive, comprehensive reconstruction and stabilization plan for Afghanistan is crucial to counter the regional terrorist insurgency, much as the Marshall Plan was necessary to combat the communist threat from the Soviet Union.¹ This paper examines the health sector as a microcosm of the larger problems facing the United States and its allies in efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.
Challenges to Persian Gulf Security: How Should the United States Respond?

Judith S. Yaphe

For the United States, any consideration of Persian Gulf security must begin with Iran: its ambitions, perceptions, and behavior. For many in the West, Winston Churchill’s famous quip about the Soviet Union—being a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma—could apply equally well to Iran given its complex, opaque, and often turbulent politics. And yet the key to understanding Iran is to figure out what it sees when it looks in the mirror. What are the fundamental influences that shape Iran’s view of its role in the world?
The European Union: Measuring Counterterrorism Cooperation

David T. Armitage Jr.

The United States and European Union (EU) are natural partners in the global war on terror, but bureaucratic, cultural, and tactical differences threaten to hinder progress. Multilateral counterterrorism cooperation is inherently difficult because the degree of threat perception and capabilities to fight terrorism vary significantly among the different actors. Even if Americans and Europeans agree on the need to fight global terrorism, especially after clear evidence (for example, the 9/11, 3/11, and 7/7 terrorist attacks), there may be a lack of consensus on the mix of causal or aggravating factors, as well as what steps to take to overcome those factors. One thing that everyone does seem to agree on is that this is a fight no country can undertake alone.
Privatizing While Transforming

Marion E. “Spike” Bowman

The Armed Forces of the United States are designed to be supported by capabilities provided by civilians. The Army, for example, depends not only on Reserve and National Guard components for warfighting elements, but also on private contractors for numerous roles no longer performed by military personnel. Originally working in small contingents focused on logistical functions, private contractors now rival military personnel in number in the battlespace. In addition to providing direct logistical support to the military, contractors perform equipment maintenance and reconstruction work, train military and police, and work as civil affairs staff, interpreters, and even interrogators. They also provide private armed security services. The issues arising from new roles are exacerbated by the growth of the contractor population in conflict zones at a pace that defies effective recordkeeping.

This rapid increase in the number of contractors has outstripped procedures meant more for acquisition of tangible objects than services. It has also placed private contractors in harm’s way in a manner not envisaged in previous conflicts. Legal and regulatory schemes have been challenged and perhaps stretched beyond limits. The laws of war divide the world neatly into combatants and civilians, but on today’s battlefields, the distinctions blur. Moreover, there are neither recognized nor logical rules of engagement for private individuals. The laws of armed conflict not only fail to accommodate armed private citizens, but also, in some instances, may treat them as unlawful combatants. Put simply, the requirements of the contemporary battlespace do not mesh well with procedures, regulations, and laws devised for a different era.
Can Deterrence Be Tailored?

M. Elaine Bunn

North Korea’s nuclear weapons test is only the latest illustration of how dramatically the international security environment has changed over the last 15 years. Given the wider variety of actors that could inflict mass casualties upon the United States, its allies, or its interests, it makes sense to explore whether and how deterrence could be adapted, adjusted, and made to fit 21st-century challenges.
Trans-American Security: What’s Missing?

Luigi R. Einaudi

World politics are at once globalizing and fragmenting.¹ The world’s only superpower, the United States, is focused so intensely on Iraq that its attention elsewhere sometimes wanders. The other major powers—China, the European Union, India, Japan, and Russia—are deeply immersed in domestic concerns, international economic competition, and their immediate neighborhoods. Latin America and the Caribbean continue to seek their place on the world stage but are torn internally over how to overcome the injustices and social exclusion that hamper their progress.
Organizing for National Security: Unification or Coordination?

James M. Keagle and Adrian R. Martin

Experience gained from the 9/11 attacks, combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, disaster assistance during and after Hurricane Katrina, and the ongoing war on terror provides the basis for amending our anachronistic national security structures and practices. Many analysts and officials have called for a secondgeneration version of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 to address the array of organizational and management challenges that we face. Some argue that the new security environment requires even more fundamental change, similar to what was enacted after World War II. The principal legislation that emerged from that era was the National Security Act of 1947. Goldwater-Nichols aimed to fix inter-Service problems by streamlining the chain of command and promoting “jointness” but did not fundamentally alter the structure of the U.S. military.

These earlier efforts attempted to strike a balance between those who wanted to unite bureaucracies to improve efficiency (primarily resource considerations) and produce more effective outcomes and those who opposed potentially dangerous concentrations of power and desired to preserve their heart-and-soul missions (as well as congressional support for their strategic view and related combat systems and force structures). Today, the debate rages anew with the security of this nation dependent on the outcome.

This paper explores two options for reorganization: unification and coordination. We investigate each against the backdrop of the two previous attempts at reorganization in the context of the Madisonian political culture that constitutes part of who we are as a nation. Finally, each option is judged against its ability to contribute to the development and implementation of the kinds of strategies and operations needed to wage the new kind of war and peace in the emerging global security environment.
I-Power: The Information Revolution and Stability Operations

Franklin D. Kramer, Larry Wentz, and Stuart Starr

Information and information technology (I/IT) can significantly increase the likelihood of success in stability operations—if they are engaged as part of an overall strategy that coordinates the actions of outside intervenors and focuses on generating effective results for the host nation. Properly utilized, I/IT can help create a knowledgeable intervention, organize complex activities, and integrate stability operations with the host nation, making stability operations more effective.

Key to these results is a strategy that requires that 1) the U.S. Government gives high priority to such an approach and ensures that the effort is a joint civilian-military activity; 2) the military makes I/IT part of the planning and execution of the stability operation; 3) preplanning and the establishment of I/IT partnerships are undertaken with key regular participants in stability operations, such as the United Nations and the World Bank; 4) the focus of the intervention, including the use of I/IT, is on the host nation, supporting host-nation governmental, societal, and economic development; and 5) key information technology capabilities are harnessed to support the strategy. Implementing the strategy will include 1) development of an information business plan for the host nation so that I/IT is effectively used to support stabilization and reconstruction; 2) agreements among intervenors on data-sharing and collaboration, including data-sharing on a differentiated basis; and 3) use of commercial IT tools and data provided on an unclassified basis.
Responding in the Homeland: A Snapshot of NATO’s Readiness for CBRN Attacks

Michael Moodie, Robert E. Armstrong, and Tyler Merkeley

The possibility of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members having to respond to a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) incident is not a hypothetical scenario reserved for training exercises. Indeed, a number of countries worldwide have considerable experience in dealing with a variety of naturally occurring, accidental, and deliberate CBRN incidents. NATO itself, however, has no clear conceptual vision of its role in civil emergencies because preparedness of this sort remains a national responsibility.

For many years, NATO’s military forces have addressed CBRN issues as part of their military planning. But the question remains as to how NATO nations view the capability of their military forces and the contribution that these forces can make in dealing with the consequences of a domestic CBRN attack within one or several member countries. This paper provides insights into current thinking of NATO members—based on an informal survey of Alliance military attaches assigned to Washington, DC—regarding the planning, assets, and training for such a contingency.

The resulting snapshot of NATO CBRN capabilities suggests specific initiatives that should be considered within the Alliance to improve its collective response to a CBRN incident. Areas recommended for particular emphasis and further study include bolstering Alliance capabilities for biological and radiological contingencies; strengthening command and control and logistics capabilities; addressing the airlift shortfall; intensifying multilateral exercises; and creating an Alliance-wide mechanism for sharing lessons learned.
The Country Team: Restructuring America’s First Line of Engagement

Robert B. Oakley and Michael Casey

U.S. Embassies face unprecedented challenges. The kinds of issues that confound governments today—from organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism to nuclear proliferation, human rights, ethnosectarian conflict, global disease, and climate change—no longer fit within diplomacy’s traditional categories.¹ Just as nonstate actors everywhere are becoming more powerful, regions of geostrategic importance in the developing world find themselves beset by weak or dysfunctional governments and increasingly perilous socioeconomic situations. While some might reasonably question the categorical quality of the 2002 National Security Strategy’s assertion that “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones,” there is still plenty of reason to be concerned about the trends.²
The Comprehensive Approach Initiative: Future Options for NATO

Friis Arne Petersen and Hans Binnendijk

Experience has shown that conflict resolution requires the application of all elements of national and international power—political, diplomatic, economic, financial, informational, social, and commercial, as well as military. To resolve conflicts or crises, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should adopt a Comprehensive Approach that would enable the collaborative engagement of all requisite civil and military elements of international power to end hostilities, restore order, commence reconstruction, and begin to address a conflict’s root causes. NATO can provide the military element for a comprehensive approach. Many other national, international, and nongovernmental actors can provide the civilian elements.

In May 2007, the Royal Danish Embassy in Washington, DC, and the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University held an informal workshop of experts from across the Alliance to explore options for creating an international comprehensive approach to postconflict stabilization and reconstruction. This paper is the product of that workshop and subsequent collaborations. It endeavors to describe the major requirements for conflict resolution, what NATO has learned from its post–Cold War experiences to date in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, and how a more effective program of international civil and military engagement can be put in place.

Much work remains to be done to flesh out the initiative, but already it is clear that military efforts in the field must be complemented throughout any operation by nonmilitary means that bring to bear the expert civil competencies of other actors, both national and international. In the Balkans and Afghanistan, NATO engaged with other actors belatedly through ad hoc, situational arrangements. Not knowing in advance what roles and which participants will eventually come into play results in longer and more costly conflict resolution in terms of lives, treasure, and ultimate effectiveness.
Preventing Balkan Conflict: The Role of Euroatlantic Institutions

Jeffrey Simon

Since the end of the Cold War, the Balkan region has presented major security challenges to the United States and Europe. The instability and weak governance of the region remain an important concern in the post-9/11 period. Balkan regional tensions erupted in several wars resulting from the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in 1991. After a slow initial response from Europe and confronted by an inadequate United Nations (UN) effort in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), the United States convinced the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to initiate a decade-long peacekeeping mission to safeguard implementation of the Dayton Accords. Then, in an effort to halt a humanitarian catastrophe stemming from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, NATO engaged in an air campaign against Serbia and another major peacekeeping operation in Kosovo.¹
After the Surge: Next Steps in Iraq?

Judith S. Yaphe

With the collapse of Iraq’s Ba’thist government in 2003, the United States appeared to be in a position to shape the country’s political direction and establish a civil society. Despite Iraq’s record of serious political violence, especially Saddam Hussein’s repression of Kurdish and Shi’a populations at the end of the war with Iran and after the abortive rebellions of 1991, the turmoil had never taken the form of outright intersectarian warfare. There was at least some reason to hope that such warfare could be avoided in the post-Saddam transition as well, and indeed that was the case—for a while. Initially, the need for Kurd and Arab, Sunni and Shi’a, to establish bases of power and lines of authority in the nascent political process masked communal unease. Early attempts by Sunni extremists and renegade Ba’thists to provoke violence and civil war were unsuccessful. At that moment, America’s ability to influence nationbuilding and create a more equitable and secure country was at its greatest.
Custer in Cyberspace

David C. Gompert and Richard L. Kugler

The combination of abundant networked information and fluid, unfamiliar situations in the current era makes it at once possible and imperative to improve decisionmaking in combat. The key to improvement is to integrate faster reasoning and more reliable intuition into a cognitive whole to achieve battle-wisdom. Although the technologies that both demand and facilitate battle- wisdom are new, military history holds lessons on combining reasoning and intuition in conditions of urgency, danger, and uncertainty.

Today’s fast and distributed style of war has antecedents in the reconnaissance and strike operations of 19th-century American cavalry, which depended on similar qualities—speed, flexibility, and command “at the edge.” Cavalry officers had to make quick decisions in unfamiliar circumstances with imperfect information, and without seeking instructions.

There may be no more arresting case of fateful decisionmaking by a commander in combat than that of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Custer’s reliance on his legendary intuitive powers, which had produced many victories during the Civil War, was his undoing. Instead of analyzing his options when he learned of Major Reno’s failed attack and Indian strength, he evidently satisfied himself that his original plan still made sense. Famous for his self-confidence, Custer never asked himself the critical question: Could I be wrong?

Although intuition remains central to decisionmaking under time pressure, the ability to combine intuition with reason in the crush of battle is increasingly important to commanders. The need for this combination of cognitive skills has implications for the recruitment, retention, development, selection, training, and education of military decisionmakers.
Lee’s Mistake: Learning from the Decision to Order Pickett’s Charge

David C. Gompert and Richard L. Kugler

At the Battle of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee made a mistake that doomed the hopes of the Confederate States of America to compel the United States to sue for peace. Why one of the great generals of his time made such a blunder continues to be a topic of research and intense debate. Lee said little at the time or afterward to justify his decision to launch what has become known as Pickett’s Charge, so analysis must be inferential and inconclusive. Our aim is to explain Lee’s fateful decision not with new facts but with new analytical methods to illuminate decisionmaking in combat.

Understanding how commanders draw on reason and experience to make sense of information, weigh alternatives, and make decisions in conditions of urgency and uncertainty is central to improving military performance in the fast, unfamiliar, “wired” warfare of the information age. Lee’s leadership of Confederate forces at Gettysburg constitutes a valuable case to study: the order of battle and technology of both sides are known in detail, and the terrain and troop movements have been studied thoroughly. Only the cause of Lee’s misjudgment remains elusive.

The pages that follow examine the facts that might have influenced Lee’s state of mind and his decision, offer and test alternative hypotheses on how he was thinking, draw conclusions, and apply those conclusions to matters of current interest.
Creating a NATO Special Operations Force

David C. Gompert and Raymond C. Smith

In the post-9/11 security environment, special operations forces (SOF) have proven indispensable. SOF units are light, lethal, mobile, and easily networked with other forces. While the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have extensive SOF capabilities, these forces are not formally organized to collaborate with one another. There would be much to gain if U.S. and allied SOF trained to work together: national SOF assets would be improved, obstacles to effective combined operations would be removed, and a coherent Alliance capability would be readily available for NATO.

The Alliance can focus and grow its SOF capabilities by providing a selective and small combined “inner core” of NATO special operations forces for operations, while using an outer network to expand and improve SOF cooperation with interested allies.
Combating Opium in Afghanistan

Ali A. Jalali, Robert B. Oakley, and Zoe Hunter

Opium poses an enormous threat to stability and good governance in Afghanistan.¹ President Hamid Karzai put it well: “If we don’t destroy poppy, it will destroy us.”² However, the counternarcotics challenge is not one that the government of Afghanistan has been prepared to meet thus far.
Reforming Pentagon Strategic Decisionmaking

Christopher J. Lamb and Irving Lachow

The recent 2006 Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Report to Congress gives a surprising prominence to decisionmaking reform. Prior to the 2006 QDR Report, Pentagon leaders thought reforms they made between 2001 and 2005 were sufficient to produce major shifts in military capabilities that would move the Department of Defense (DOD) into the 21st century.¹ Yet by the time Pentagon leaders finished the report, they believed strategic decisionmaking reforms were one of only two fundamental imperatives for DOD to emerge from the QDR (the other being the need to continue efforts to reorient military capabilities toward new threats).²
Southeast Asian Security Challenges: America’s Response?

Marvin C. Ott

The security situation in Southeast Asia is remarkably complex, with multiple forces and trends emanating from within the region and impacting it from without. The forces at work fall into two broad categories. One involves globalized, transnational, and multinational factors, such as rapid economic change with profound implications for political stability; the sudden emergence of militant jihadist networks that have mounted violent attacks against the political and cultural status quo in much of the region; and transnational environmental and health issues typified by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic and current concerns regarding avian flu. Second, the dramatic growth in Chinese power (economic, military, and diplomatic) confronts the region with a situation familiar to traditional geopolitics. Both Chinese policy and some regional responses (notably those of Singapore) reflect a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of classic realpolitik.