Research and Case Studies

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  The International Atomic Energy Agency's Decision to Find Iran in Non-Compliance, 2002-2006

  Nima Gerami and Pierre Goldschmidt

  On August 14, 2002, at a press conference in Washington, DC, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an exiled Iranian opposition group, drew worldwide attention when it publicly accused Iran of clandestinely developing nuclear weapons. Alireza Jafarzadeh, then-U.S. media spokesperson for the NCRI, described two “top secret” nuclear facilities being constructed in Iran at Natanz and Arak under the guise of front companies involved in the procurement of nuclear material and equipment. Noting that media attention had focused on Iran’s publicly declared civilian facilities, Jafarzadeh claimed that “in reality, there are many secret nuclear programs at work in Iran without knowledge of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” the international body responsible for verifying and assuring compliance with safeguards obligations under the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

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  Cross-currents in French Defense and U.S. Interests

  Leo G. Michel

  France is the only European ally—except for the United Kingdom (UK)—that regards its military capabilities, operational performance, and defense industry as vital levers to exert global influence. While the French believe strongly in their need to preserve “strategic independence,” they see new challenges in the evolving international security environment that will oblige them to accept greater cooperation with others, even in areas once considered too sensitive to discuss. Although some French strategists remain uncomfortable with the notion of closer defense ties with the United States, others ask whether there might be a greater danger ahead: specifically, if Europe’s strength dissipates as America “rebalances” toward the Asia-Pacific region, where does France turn to find capable and willing partners to protect its security interests?

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  Russia and the Iranian Nuclear Program: Replay or Breakthrough?

  John W. Parker

  Despite protests across Russia sparked by last December’s fraud-filled Duma (parliament) elections, Vladimir Putin is preparing to return to the presidency this May. Will Putin replay his 2004–2008 approach to Iran, during which Russia negotiated the S–300 air defense system contract with Tehran? Or will he continue Russia’s breakthrough in finding common ground with the United States on Iran seen under President Dmitriy Medvedev, who tore up the S–300 contract?

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  Japan-China Relations 2005–2010: Managing Between a Rock and a Hard Place An Interpretative Essay

  James J. Przystup

  Between China and Japan, the past is ever-present. Notwithstanding shared cultural and historic ties, throughout the past century and going back to the Sino-Japanese war at the end of the 19th century, a bitter legacy of history—the Boxer Rebellion; the Mukden Incident and Japan’s occupation of South Manchuria (1931); the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, Japan’s subsequent invasion of China, and the Nanjing Massacre (1937); and the Sino-Japanese War (1937– 1945)—has left an indelible mark on this relationship.

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  Managing Sino-U.S. Air and Naval Interactions: Cold War Lessons and New Avenues of Approach

  Mark E. Redden and Phillip C. Saunders

  The United States and China have a complex, multifaceted, and ambiguous relationship where substantial areas of cooperation coexist with ongoing strategic tensions and suspicions. One manifestation involves disputes and incidents when U.S. and Chinese military forces interact within China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Three high-profile incidents over the last decade have involved aggressive maneuvers by Chinese military and/or paramilitary forces operating in close proximity to deter U.S. surveillance and military survey platforms from conducting their missions. Why do these incidents continue to occur despite mechanisms designed to prevent such dangerous encounters? Could new or different procedures or policies help avoid future incidents?

  The problem in the U.S.-China case lies not with inadequate rules (for maritime operations) or history of practice (for air operations), but rather in the motivations that sometimes drive the Chinese to selective noncompliance with their provisions. China regards military surveillance and survey operations in its EEZ as hostile, threatening, illegal, and inappropriate. China’s harassment of U.S. naval vessels and aircraft conducting surveillance and survey operations is intended to produce a change in U.S. behavior by raising the costs and risks of these operations.

  The U.S. military has confronted this problem before. U.S. doctrine and operational practice in conducting and responding to surveillance operations derives primarily from Cold War interactions with the Soviet military. The two countries were eventually able to develop a mutually beneficial protocol, known as the Incidents at Sea Agreement (INCSEA), for managing air and naval interactions, thereby reducing the potential for an incident to occur or escalate. Given the success of INCSEA and tactical parallels between U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-China interactions, the factors that led the Soviet Union to seek an agreement provide a useful prism for evaluating the current situation.

  Three primary factors motivated the U.S.-Soviet agreement: concern over the escalation potential of future incidents, a growing parallelism in the nature and scope of surveillance operations, and a burgeoning period of détente. These factors do not presently exist in the U.S.- China relationship to the degree necessary to induce mutual restraint in maritime and air interactions within China’s EEZ. This situation may change over the next 10 to 15 years as Chinese global economic interests expand and naval modernization produces a more capable and active Chinese navy, but waiting for change is not an attractive solution given continuing operational risks and the potential for an incident to badly damage bilateral relations.

  If U.S. policymakers seek a faster change in Chinese behavior, they need to understand the underlying Chinese policy calculus, how it may change over time, and potential means of influencing that calculus. Based on Chinese policy objectives, official statements, patterns of behavior, and logical inferences, we identify seven decisionmaking variables:

  1. Sovereignty/security concerns: These reflect China’s historical concerns about sovereignty and the economic importance of defending China’s coastal provinces.
  2. Intelligence/counter-intelligence: China needs to gather strategic and tactical intelligence and also seeks to limit intelligence collection by potential adversaries.
  3. Geostrategic considerations: China has concerns about the U.S. role in Asia, needs a stable external environment that supports development, desires to shape international rules and norms, and seeks to project a positive international image.
  4. Chinese domestic context: Aggressive efforts by Chinese naval and maritime forces to defend sovereignty bolster their relative importance and justify increased resources. However, the Chinese navy also seeks to show that it can protect China’s interests and safeguard China’s economic development, missions that require cooperation with foreign militaries.
  5. Global commons access: Assured access to the global economy for resources and to reach markets is essential for continued Chinese economic growth and development.
  6. Escalation control: China shares an interest in preventing interactions with U.S. military assets from escalating into a broader conflict, but Chinese leaders and officers tend to regard the risk of such escalation as limited and manageable.
  7. Relations with the United States: A constructive relationship with the United States is important for China’s continued economic development and ability to achieve its national objectives, but Chinese leaders downplay the likelihood of a military incident causing irreparable damage to bilateral relations.

  U.S. policymakers have several broad avenues of approach to alter the Chinese policy calculus and thereby influence Chinese behavior:

  1. Intelligence/counter-intelligence approaches: These approaches link China’s own ability to gather intelligence with its tolerance of U.S. intelligence-collection activities. Options include creating direct parallels between U.S. operations in China’s EEZ and Chinese operations in Japan’s EEZ; linking Chinese tolerance of U.S. surveillance operations in its EEZ with U.S. tolerance of select Chinese intelligence-collection activities in other areas or using other means; and linking the frequency of U.S. surveillance operations to Chinese concessions or cooperation in other areas.
  2. Maritime cooperation/coercion: These approaches play on the distinction between contentious U.S.-Chinese interactions within China’s EEZ and more cooperative interactions in distant waters. Cooperative options include highlighting the value of agreed operational norms and expanding U.S.-China maritime cooperation, including via surveillance cooperation in support of counterpiracy operations; coercive options include responding to Chinese harassment with “tit for tat” actions against Chinese navy ships or commercial shipping outside China’s EEZ.
  3. Geostrategic and bilateral considerations: These approaches play on Chinese geostrategic interests in maintaining a stable regional environment and a U.S.-China relationship conducive to economic and social development. Options include a more structured, consistent, and sustained U.S. strategic communication plan that highlights international norms of airmanship and seamanship; drawing parallels between the rights of military units to conduct operations in EEZs under the freedom of navigation principle and the more general issue of commercial access to the global commons; and challenging the Chinese assumption that military incidents inside China’s EEZ are unlikely to escalate into broader conflict or seriously threaten bilateral relations.

  Given the importance that China places on sovereignty, no single option is likely to be sufficient. A mixed approach, particularly one that influences more Chinese decisionmakers, may maximize the probability of success. Cooperative approaches require time for benefits to accrue and for normative arguments to be heard and heeded. Some potential coercive approaches require violating preferred U.S. norms of freedom of navigation and U.S. military standard practice of safe airmanship and seamanship to generate the leverage necessary to alter Chinese behavior. This risks shifting international norms in undesired directions and would create greater tension and friction in military-military relations and bilateral relations generally.

  This study does not attempt to weigh the intelligence value of U.S. operations in China’s EEZ against their negative impact on U.S.-China relations or the costs of the coercive options identified above. U.S. policymakers will need to carefully consider whether the status quo is tolerable, the costs and risks of various approaches, and what mix of policies might move China in desired directions at an acceptable cost.

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  Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications: How One Interagency Group Made a Major Difference

  Fletcher Schoen and Christopher J. Lamb

  This study explains how one part-time interagency committee established in the 1980s to counter Soviet disinformation effectively accomplished its mission. Interagency committees are commonly criticized as ineffective, but the Active Measures Working Group is a notable exception. The group successfully established and executed U.S. policy on responding to Soviet disinformation. It exposed some Soviet covert operations and raised the political cost of others by sensitizing foreign and domestic audiences to how they were being duped. The group’s work encouraged allies and made the Soviet Union pay a price for disinformation that reverberated all the way to the top of the Soviet political apparatus. It became the U.S. Government’s body of expertise on disinformation and was highly regarded in both Congress and the executive branch.

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  The Ongoing Insurgency in Southern Thailand: Trends in Violence, Counterinsurgency Operations, and the Impact of National Politics

  Zachary Abuza

  Since January 2004, a Malay-Muslim–based insurgency has engulfed the three southernmost provinces in Thailand. More than 4,500 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded, making it the most lethal conflict in Southeast Asia. Now in its 8th year, the insurgency has settled into a low-level stalemate. Violence is down significantly from its mid-2007 peak, but it has been steadily climbing since 2008. On average, 32 people are being killed and 58 wounded every month. Most casualties are from drive-by shootings, but there are also about 12 improvised explosive device (IED) attacks a month.

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  A Review of the 2001 Bonn Conference and Application to the Road Ahead in Afghanistan

  Mark Fields and Ramsha Ahmed

  Ten years ago in Bonn, Germany, the United Nations Envoy to Afghanistan, Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, and U.S. Envoy to the Afghan Opposition, Ambassador James Dobbins, led a diverse group of international diplomats and warriors to consensus and charted the political course for Afghanistan well into the decade. The process that led to the Bonn Agreement (Bonn 2001, or Bonn I) reflects the best of U.S. and United Nations statesmanship and was the result of the effective application of military and diplomatic power.

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  Secret Weapon: High-value Target Teams as an Organizational Innovation

  Christopher J. Lamb and Evan Munsing

  This study argues that interagency teams were a major catalyst in turning around the Iraq War, and that they will disappear from America’s arsenal unless the knowledge base supporting the innovation can be secured. Most explanations credit the dramatic reduction in violence in Iraq between 2007 and 2008 to new U.S. leadership, the surge in U.S. forces, and/or U.S. financial support to Sunni tribal leaders. In contrast, we argue that the United States employed an underappreciated organizational innovation—interagency teams—to put insurgent clandestine organizations on the defensive and give population security measures a chance to take effect.

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  Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood Interagency Success

  Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb

  Joint Interagency Task Force–South (JIATF–South) is well known within the U.S. Government as the “gold standard” for interagency cooperation and intelligence fusion, despite its preference for keeping a low profile and giving other agencies the credit for its successes. It is often cited as a model for whole-of-government problem-solving in the literature on interagency collaboration, and other national security organizations have tried to copy its approach and successes. Despite the plaudits and attention, the way that JIATF–South actually operates has only received superficial analysis. In fact, few people actually understand why JIATF–South works as well as it does or how its success might be replicated.

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  Russia’s Revival: Ambitions, Limitations, and Opportunities for the United States

  John W. Parker

  Independent Russia is approaching the start of its third decade of post-Soviet existence. After the economic chaos of the Boris Yeltsin decade and the recovery and stabilization of the Vladimir Putin decade, Russia’s leaders have high ambitions for a return to great power status in the years ahead. Their aspirations are tempered, however, by the realities of Russia’s social, economic, and military shortcomings and vulnerabilities, laid painfully bare by the stress test of the recent global financial crisis. Looking ahead, some also calculate that Russia will be increasingly challenged in the Far East by a rising China and in the Middle East by an Iran that aspires to regional hegemony.

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  Korean Futures: Challenges to U.S. Diplomacy of North Korean Regime Collapse

  Ferial Ara Saeed and James J. Przystup

  There is no shortage of plausible scenarios describing North Korean regime collapse or how the United States and North Korea’s neighbors might respond to such a challenge. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to the strategic considerations that may shape the responses of the United States, the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan, China, and Russia to a North Korean crisis. These states are most likely to take action of some kind in the event the North Korean regime collapses. For the ROK (South Korea), North Korean regime collapse presents the opportunity for Korean reunification. For the other states, the outcome in North Korea will affect their influence on the peninsula and their relative weight in Asia. This study identifies the interests and objectives of these principal state actors with respect to the Korean Peninsula. Applying their interests and objectives to a generic scenario of North Korean regime collapse, the study considers possible policies that the principal state actors might use to cope with such a crisis.

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  Buy, Build, or Steal: China’s Quest for Advanced Military Aviation Technologies

  Phillip C. Saunders and Joshua K. Wiseman

  Although China continues to lag approximately two decades behind the world’s most sophisticated air forces in terms of its ability to develop and produce fighter aircraft and other complex aerospace systems, it has moved over time from absolute reliance on other countries for military aviation technology to a position where a more diverse array of strategies can be pursued. Steps taken in the late 1990s to reform China’s military aviation sector demonstrated an understanding of the problems inherent in high-technology acquisition, and an effort to move forward. However, a decade later it remains unclear how effective these reforms have been. Where are the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and China’s military aviation industry headed? What obstacles must be overcome for China to join the exclusive ranks of those nations possessing sophisticated air forces and aviation industries capable of producing world-class aircraft?

  This study identifies potential aviation technology development and procurement strategies, presents a general model of the options available to developing countries, and applies that model to explain Chinese procurement and aviation technology acquisition efforts over the last 60 years. The model articulates three main technology procurement avenues: purchase (buy), indigenous development (build), and espionage (steal), and three subavenues: reverse engineering (combining buy/steal and build), coproduction (combining buy and build), and codevelopment (combining buy and build, with an emphasis on build). It examines the costs, benefits, and tradeoffs inherent in each approach. Four variables influence decisions about the mix of strategies: (1) a country’s overall level of economic development, in particular the state of its technical/industrial base; (2) the technological capacity of a country’s military aviation sector; (3) the willingness of foreign countries to sell advanced military aircraft, key components, armaments, and related production technology; and (4) the country’s bargaining power vis-àvis potential suppliers.

  In applying the model, we divide the evolution of China’s military aviation industry into five periods based on China’s changing access to foreign suppliers of military aircraft and aviation technology. Soviet assistance (1950–1960) provided the foundation for China’s military aviation industry, which cut its teeth coproducing Soviet fighter, bomber, and transport aircraft. Given Western embargoes, Moscow offered the only viable path to advanced aviation technology and provided assistance on favorable terms to support its communist ally. The second period (1960–1977) is marked by the Sino-Soviet split, which eliminated Chinese access to cutting-edge aviation hardware. China continued to produce and make modest refinements to 1950s vintage Soviet aircraft designs, using reverse engineering to fill in gaps where technical information was lacking. In the third period (1977–1989), China gained some access to Western aviation components and technologies and sought to apply them to a variant of the J–8 (a twin engine fighter based on a modified MiG–21 design) and the JH–7 (a fighter-bomber with a British engine). The fourth period (1989–2004) is marked by Western bans on arms sales to China in the wake of Tiananmen, Sino-Soviet rapprochement (leading to sales of advanced Russian fighters and coproduction arrangements), and a brief but important window of access to Israeli technologies. Covert access to advanced Western fighters and espionage (in both traditional forms and via computer network operations) also began to make more contributions.

  In the fifth period (2004–present), China has enjoyed increased access to foreign commercial aviation technologies and has benefited from a “spin-off, spin-on” dynamic in gaining commercial access to dual-use technologies and applying them for military purposes. However, China’s legitimate access to advanced military-specific technologies has been reduced as Western sources of supply remained closed and Russia has become more reluctant to provide advanced aviation technology due to China’s reverse engineering of the Su-27, fear of future competition for export markets, and concerns about China’s long-term strategic direction.

  China has used coproduction, selected purchases of advanced aircraft, reverse engineering, and foreign design assistance to build a capable military aviation industry with a significant indigenous design and production capacity. The Chinese military aviation industry can now produce two fourth-generation fighters roughly equal to those in advanced air forces: the J–10 (indigenously developed with Israeli assistance) and the J–11B (based on coproduction and reverse engineering of the Su-27). Both aircraft still rely on imported Russian turbofan engines. Test flights of the new J–20 stealth fighter prototype demonstrate Chinese ambitions to build fifth-generation fighters, but the extent to which the J–20 will match the performance of state-of-the-art Russian and Western fighters is unclear. Significant technical hurdles in engine design, avionics, and systems integration are likely to delay operational deployment of the J–20 until about 2020. This would be about 15 years after the F–22 entered U.S. Air Force service, supporting an overall assessment that the Chinese military aviation industry remains 15–20 years behind.

  Producing state-of-the-art fighters requires an aviation industry to master a range of highly advanced, military-specific technologies. The historical development of China’s military aviation industry reflects an ongoing tension between the desire for self-reliance in defense and the need for access to advanced foreign technologies. China’s legitimate access to cutting-edge Western military technologies will likely remain curtailed and Russian reluctance to supply advanced military technologies will likely grow. These assumptions support two important conclusions. First, the Chinese military aviation industry will have to rely primarily on indigenous development of advanced “single-use” military aviation technologies in the future. The Chinese government is pursuing a range of “indigenous innovation” and technology development programs, but mastering advanced technologies becomes more difficult and expensive as a country moves closer to the technology frontier. This leads to a second, related conclusion: China will likely rely more heavily on espionage to acquire those critical military aviation technologies it cannot acquire legitimately from foreign suppliers or develop on its own.

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  U.S. Ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention

  Jonathan B. Tucker

  On October 1, 1990, two months after Iraq’s surprise invasion and annexation of Kuwait had put the United States and other members of the international community on a collision course with the Saddam Hussein regime, President George H.W. Bush spoke to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York. He described Iraq’s brutal aggression against its neighbor as “a throwback to another era, a dark relic from a dark time.” Noting that Saddam Hussein had waged a “genocidal poison gas war” against Iraq’s restive Kurdish minority during the 1980s, President Bush hinted that if it ultimately proved necessary to liberate Kuwait by force, the United States and its allies could face Iraqi attacks with chemical weapons—highly toxic chemicals designed to incapacitate or kill.

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  The Origins of Nunn-Lugar and Cooperative Threat Reduction

  Paul I. Bernstein and Jason D. Wood

  In a 1999 interview, Ashton Carter, a key figure in helping to create and implement the threat reduction program initiated by Senators Sam Nunn (D–GA) and Richard Lugar (R–IN), recalled four visits between 1994 and 1996 to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine. Planted in the soil of this base were the most powerful rockets mankind has ever made, armed with hundreds of hydrogen bombs and aimed at the United States. In turn, Pervomaysk was itself the target of similar American missiles and weapons. Under the Nunn-Lugar program, the missiles deployed at Pervomaysk by the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and the silos that housed them were destroyed.

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  Assessing Chinese Military Transparency

  Michael Kiselycznyk and Phillip C. Saunders

  The United States and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region have expressed concerns about China’s expanding military capabilities and called on Beijing to increase transparency on military issues. Chinese officials and military officers argue that Chinese transparency has increased over time and that weaker countries should not be expected to meet U.S. standards of transparency. Lack of an objective method for assessing military transparency has made it difficult to assess these Chinese claims and has inhibited productive dialogues about transparency.

  This paper presents a methodology for assessing military transparency that aims to confront the question of China’s military transparency from a comparative perspective. Drawing upon research done by Korean defense expert Dr. Choi Kang as part of a Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific working group, it focuses on defense white papers as a readily available and comparable source of official defense information. The paper develops an objective methodology for comparing the relative transparency of defense white papers by employing standardized definitions and a four-tiered set of criteria to evaluate transparency across 19 categories. This approach can be used to evaluate changes in transparency over time and to compare China’s transparency with that of other Asia-Pacific countries.

  We use this methodology to evaluate changes in transparency in China’s six defense white papers (from 1998 through 2008) and to compare its 2008 white paper with 13 other recent Asia-Pacific defense white papers. We find that there has been a gradual but modest increase in the transparency of China’s defense white papers over time. China’s degree of transparency is roughly comparable to that of most Southeast Asian countries and to India, but significantly less than Asia-Pacific democracies such as Japan and South Korea. We argue that China’s growing economic and military power makes major countries such as Japan, South Korea, India, and Australia a more appropriate basis of comparison.

  Despite some limitations in the methodology (most notably omitting information published in other government documents when assessing transparency), we believe that it provides a reasonably objective and comparable way to evaluate relative military transparency. Although a full assessment would require considering a country’s unique context and using all available information, the methodology employed in this study provides a useful starting point to compare how different countries within the Asia-Pacific region approach military transparency. We argue that this methodology could be used as the basis for broader comparative studies of transparency and as a way to support regional dialogues about military transparency.

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  Civil-Military Relations in China: Assessing the PLA’s Role in Elite Politics

  Michael Kiselycznyk and Phillip C. Saunders

  This study reviews the last 20 years of academic literature on the role of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Chinese elite politics. It examines the PLA’s willingness to support the continued rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to obey directives from top party leaders, the PLA’s influence on the selection of China’s top civilian leaders, and the PLA’s ability to shape the domestic political environment. Over the last two decades the discussion of these three issues has largely been shaped by five trends identified in the literature: increasing PLA professionalism, bifurcation of civil and military elites, a reduced PLA role in political institutions, reduced emphasis on political work within the PLA, and increased military budgets. Together, these trends are largely responsible for the markedly reduced role of the PLA in Chinese elite politics.

  The theoretical models of Chinese civil-military relations that exist within the literature during the period divide into three distinctive categories. “Traditional models” including the Factional, Symbiosis, Professionalism, and Party Control models, dominate the literature from 1989 to 1995. Scholars worked to integrate information becoming available as the PRC opened to the world into these already existing models of Chinese civil-military relations. However, evolving political dynamics within the PRC following Tiananmen marginalized the utility of the models. From 1995 to 1997 many scholars argued that these traditional models should not be considered mutually exclusive but complementary. This concept of a “combination model” was short lived as it became increasingly apparent that even a combination of traditional models had little predictive or even explanatory power in light of rapidly changing political dynamics. Two new models, the Conditional Compliance and State Control models, emerged in the period of 1997–2003. Both incorporated elements of the traditional models while attempting to address the implications of new political and military dynamics in the PRC.

  Examining the predictions of these models against four case studies involving major developments in civil-military relations, we found that although each model had some descriptive and explanatory power, none possessed strong predictive ability. The traditional models help explain the PLA’s reaction to intensified Party control following Tiananmen, but none was able to predict how Chinese civil-military relations evolved subsequently. Civil-military models offered their most specific (and ultimately least accurate) predictions regarding the leadership succession from Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin. Most models predicted a strong role for the PLA in the succession that did not materialize. This was the period when traditional civil-military models began to run up against the reality of changing political dynamics within the PRC. When the PLA was forced to withdraw from most commercial activities in the mid-1990s, the models predicted a far slower, more contentious, and less complete divestiture than ultimately occurred. Most analysts correctly predicted that the PLA would have only limited involvement in the leadership transition from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao following the 16th Party Congress in 2002, but subsequent explanations for why the transition went smoothly emphasize different factors. The models did agree in their emphasis on the importance of greater political institutionalization in reducing PLA influence and highlighted the implicit role and future potential importance of the PLA in elite politics, especially if divisions among the civilian leadership produce a political crisis in the future.

  Based on this assessment, we conclude that existing models serve a useful role in identifying key variables for analysis in the study of Chinese civil-military relations. However, most of the literature has been descriptive and interpretive rather than predictive. The widespread practice of using elements of multiple models to analyze civil-military relations makes it difficult to assess the validity of individual models or to generate falsifiable predictions, thus limiting the predictive ability of current models. Although China is a much more open society today, lack of reliable information continues to make the study of civil-military relations in China difficult, forcing analysts to rely on indirect evidence and dubious sources to speculate about the military’s influence on elite politics and about the relationships between top civilian and military leaders.

  Since 2003 the literature on Chinese civil-military relations has successfully exploited new sources of information to offer useful analysis of the PLA’s relationship with the Chinese economy and society at large.Yet there has been a notable lack of effort to develop, employ, or test new theoretical models that could help produce a new unified theory of Chinese civil-military relations. Future work may find fertile ground in exploring the nature of official and unofficial interactions between the PRC’s bifurcated civilian and military elite, comparing how broader trends in China’s civilian government are implemented in the PLA, or conducting a more genuinely comparative analysis with the experiences of other one-party states, transitioning democracies, or other Asian states.

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  Chief of Mission Authority as a Model for National Security Integration

  Christopher J. Lamb and Edward Marks

  The inability of the President of the United States to delegate executive authority for integrating the efforts of departments and agencies on priority missions is a major shortcoming in the way the national security system of the U.S. Government functions. Statutorily assigned missions combined with organizational cultures create “stovepipes” that militate against integrated operations. This obstacle to “unity of effort” has received great attention since 9/11 but continues to adversely affect government operations in an era of increasingly multidisciplinary challenges, from counterproliferation to counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Presidents have tried various approaches to solving the problem: National Security Council committees, “lead agencies,” and “czars,” but none have proven effective.

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  U.S. Withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty

  Lynn F. Rusten

  As President George W. Bush made these remarks in a speech at the National Defense University (NDU) on May 1, 2001, National Security Council (NSC) Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense Robert Joseph listened attentively. Within just 4 months of taking office, President Bush was articulating one of his key national security priorities: setting the conditions for the United States to move full steam ahead on developing, testing, and eventually deploying a wide range of missile defense technologies and systems—a priority that in all likelihood would mean U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

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  Redefining Success: Applying Lessons in Nuclear Diplomacy from North Korea to Iran

  Ferial Ara Saeed

  The United States has no good options for resolving the North Korean and Iranian nuclear challenges. Incentives, pressures, and threats have not succeeded. A military strike would temporarily set back these programs, but at unacceptable human and diplomatic costs, and with a high risk of their reconstitution and acceleration. For some policymakers, therefore, the best option is to isolate these regimes until they collapse or pressures build to compel negotiations on U.S. terms. This option has the veneer of toughness sufficient to make it politically defensible in Washington. On closer scrutiny, however, it actually allows North Korea and Iran to continue their nuclear programs unrestrained. It also sacrifices more achievable short-term goals of improving transparency and securing vulnerable nuclear materials to the uncertain long-term goal of denuclearization. Yet these short-term goals are deemed critical to U.S. national security in the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

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  Nuclear Politics in Iran

  Judith S. Yaphe

  This collection of analyses on the unintended consequences of Iran’s nuclear policy for its domestic and international relations is the first in a series of papers that will examine the impact of critical issues and developments on key countries in the Greater Middle East and on U.S. security interests. Succeeding papers will identify similar emerging issues in Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf region. For the most part, the papers will represent the independent research and opinions of academic scholars and regional experts prepared for and presented at the National Defense University.

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  China’s Out of Area Naval Operations: Case Studies, Trajectories, Obstacles, and Potential Solutions

  Christopher D. Yung, Ross Rustici, Isaac Kardon, and Joshua Wiseman

  This study seeks to understand the future direction of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) with regard to out of area deployments and power projection. The assessment is based on the history of past PLAN out of area deployments and an analysis of out of area operations of other military forces. Both short- and long-term lenses are employed to understand the scope and direction of China’s defense planning and strategic decisions.

  The study’s assessment of the PLAN’s short-term (1- to 5-year) trajectory is based on:

  • operational patterns of behavior observed in China’s out of area deployments
  • analysis of information about the PLAN’s current and recent difficulties during these deployments
  • the solutions China has applied to address these difficulties
  • an assessment of the extent to which the PLAN, PLA leadership, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership as a whole are likely to pursue other potential solutions within a 1- to 5-year timeframe.

  We apply the same categories to our analysis of case studies of other nations’ historical out of area deployments to draw out possibilities for the PLAN’s long-term (10-year) trajectory. Examination of the history of China’s out of area operations indicates that the Chinese have been operating out of area since the mid-1970s, they tend to “overprepare” for each out of area deployment, and they conduct deployments not only for operational reasons, but also for carefully calculated political benefits.

  The study identifies five categories of challenges that confront all navies operating at long distances from home ports: distance, duration, capacity, complexity of coordination, and hostility of environment. The recent PLAN Gulf of Aden deployment illustrated some of these difficulties. In the absence of a nearby facility or military base, that task force had difficulty maintaining its ships; the ships had difficulty maintaining supplies of fresh vegetables, fruits, and potable water; and personnel did not have access to comprehensive medical care.

  From the case studies, we derived specific lessons about how other militaries met the five challenges in conducting out of area operations listed above and assessed whether the Chinese leadership is likely to follow their example. We identified five groups of options:

  • access to a facility or base for maintenance, repair, and other logistical support
  • self-protection (for example, carrier support, out of area antisubmarine warfare [ASW], or antisurface warfare)
  • use of mobile supply depots and floating bases
  • intra–task force lift assets (helicopters, lighterage, and landing craft)
  • satellite communications.

  The operational and strategic implications of our findings are as follows:

  • The PLAN still has some ways to go before it can operate effectively out of area. At present, it can effectively replenish at sea, conduct intra–task force resupply, perform long-distance navigation, conduct formation-keeping with competent seamanship, and operate in all weather conditions. The PLAN cannot currently conduct a full-scale joint forcible entry operation, maintain maritime superiority out of area, conduct multicarrier or carrier strike group operations, or provide comprehensive protection against threats to an out of area task force (antiaircraft warfare, ASW, and antisurface warfare).
  • The PLAN appears to be expanding its out of area operations incrementally. This will allow the United States, its allies, and other countries time to work out (with each other and with the Chinese) how to respond to opportunities for greater cooperation and potential challenges posed by a more capable PLAN.
  • China has an even longer way to go before it can be considered a global military power. In particular, it has no network of facilities and bases to maintain and repair its ships. The possession or absence of such a network may ultimately be the best indication of China’s future intentions. If China lacks such a support network, it will have great difficulty engaging in major combat operations (MCOs) far from its shores.
  • Experience gained through out of area operations will help make the PLAN somewhat more effective (in areas such as navigation and seamanship) in some of its other operations. However, most of the tasks performed and lessons gained from out of area operations are not directly transferrable to either a Taiwan contingency or a notional out of area MCO. This implies that time spent on conducting nontraditional out of area deployments for a PLAN unit is time away from combat training for a Taiwan contingency or preparing for MCOs out of area.
  • A more capable and active PLAN will present new challenges for U.S. policy. On the one hand, the United States wants China to “become a responsible stake holder” in support of international security objectives, which implies a need for greater naval capability to operate out of area. On the other hand, improved PLAN operational capabilities potentially pose a greater military threat to the United States and its allies, especially Asia. The United States has to reassure its allies that it will remain present in the region as a hedge even as Chinese military capabilities improve.

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  President Nixon’s Decision to Renounce the U.S. Offensive Biological Weapons Program

  Jonathan B. Tucker and Erin R. Mahan

  The nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was a prominent feature of the Cold War. A lesser known but equally dangerous element of the superpower competition involved biological weapons (BW), living microorganisms that cause fatal or incapacitating diseases in humans, animals, or plants. By the late 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had both acquired advanced BW capabilities. The U.S. biological weapons complex, operated by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps, consisted of a research and development laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, an open-air testing site at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and a production facility at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas that manufactured biological warfare agents and loaded them into bomblets, bombs, and spray tanks.