There can be little doubt (except, perhaps, in the White House) that terrorism poses an immediate, deadly, and significant threat to the safety of the American people. However, there is an even more dangerous peril facing the nation.
As previously noted by the New York Analysis of Policy & Government, American defense policy remains trapped in a time warp assumption that the potential of massive scale, nation vs. nation warfare, including the use of extensive conventional forces as well as nuclear weapons ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, that assumption couldn’t be more incorrect. The extraordinary military buildup, and accompanying aggressiveness, of Russia and China, and the alliance of those two great powers together with Iran and North Korea pose perhaps the greatest threat to the United States since the British burned the White House during the 1812 War. The problem is magnified by the decline in American military power, which is both increasingly outdated, underfunded, and basically half the strength it possessed a quarter century ago
While the Executive Branch downplays the problem, Congressional researchers are documenting the challenge. A newly released study by the Congressional Research Service, “A Shift in the International Security Environment: Potential Implications for Defense,” addresses it. The New York Analysis has reviewed the documented, and excerpts key portions of it. Our review concludes tomorrow.
A Shift in the International Security Environment: Potential Implications for Defense
World events since late 2013 have led some observers to conclude that the international security environment has undergone a shift from the familiar post-Cold War era of the last 20 to 25 years, also sometimes known as the unipolar moment (with the United States as the unipolar power), to a new and different strategic situation that features, among other things, renewed great power competition and challenges to elements of the U.S.-led international order that has operated since World War II.
…Russia’s seizure and annexation of Crimea, as well as subsequent Russian actions in eastern Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, have already led to a renewed focus among policymakers on U.S. and NATO military capabilities in Europe, and on how to counter Russia’s so-called hybrid warfare tactics.
China’s actions in the East and South China Seas have prompted a focus among policymakers on how to counter China’s so-called salami-slicing tactics in those areas.
A shift in the international security environment may also be generating implications for areas such as nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, maintaining technological superiority in conventional weapons, defense acquisition policy, submarines and antisubmarine warfare, and DOD reliance on Russian-made components.
Background Shift in International Security Environment: Overview
The United States must come to grips with a new security environment as surging powers like Russia and China challenge American power, said Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work. “Great power competition has returned…Russia is now a resurgent great power and I would argue that its long term prospects are unclear. China is a rising great power. Well, that requires us to start thinking more globally and more in terms of competition than we have in the past 25 years… Both Russia and China are challenging the order that has been prevalent since the end of World War II…
The New Situation
Observers who conclude that the international security environment has shifted to a new strategic situation generally view the new period not as a bipolar situation (like the Cold War) or a unipolar situation (like the post-Cold War era), but as a multipolar situation characterized by renewed competition among three major world powers—the United States, China, and Russia. Other emerging characteristics of the new international security situation as viewed by these observers include the following:
- renewed ideological competition, this time against 21st -century forms of authoritarianism in Russia, China, and other countries;
- the promotion in China and Russia through their state-controlled media of nationalistic historical narratives emphasizing assertions of prior humiliation or victimization by Western powers, and the use of those narratives to support revanchist or irredentist foreign policy aims;
- the use by Russia and China of new forms of aggressive or assertive military and paramilitary operations—called hybrid warfare or ambiguous warfare, among other terms, in the case of Russia’s actions, and called salami-slicing tactics or gray-zone warfare, among other terms, in the case of China’s actions—to gain greater degrees of control of areas on their peripheries;
- challenges by Russia and China to key elements of the U.S.-led international order, including the principle that force or threat of force should not be used as a routine or first-resort measure for settling disputes between countries, and the principle of freedom of the seas (i.e., that the world’s oceans are to be treated as an international commons); and
- additional features alongside those listed above, including:
- continued regional security challenges from countries such as Iran and North Korea;
- a continuation of the post-Cold War era’s focus (at least from a U.S. perspective) on countering transnational terrorist organizations that have emerged as significant non-state actors (now including the Islamic State organization, among other groups); and
- weak or failed states, and resulting weakly governed or ungoverned areas that can contribute to the emergence of (or serve as base areas or sanctuaries for) non-state actors, and become potential locations of intervention by stronger states, including major powers.
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The Report Continues Tomorrow