Improvements to strategic situational awareness (SA)—the ability to characterize the operating environment, detect and respond to threats, and discern actual attacks from false alarms across the spectrum of conflict—have long been assumed to reduce the risk of conflict and help manage crises more successfully when they occur. However, with the development of increasingly capable strategic SA-related technology, growing comingling of conventional and nuclear SA requirements and capabilities, and the increasing risk of conventional conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries, this may no longer be the case. The Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the University of California, Berkeley’s Nuclear Policy Working Group undertook a two-year study to examine the implications of emerging situational awareness technologies for managing crises between nuclear-armed adversaries.
Foreign policy in the post–cold war era is profoundly complex, and so too are the institutions that share the responsibility to guide and manage America's relations with other countries. Policymakers struggle within porous and fragmented institutions, in which policy is driven more powerfully by clusters of like-minded individuals than by disciplined organizations. The nation's political parties face deep divisions over foreign policy and are unable to forge a coherent vision for the future. Congress is increasingly polarized along ideological lines, while traditional internationalist foreign policy spans a truncated political center. Few aspects of U.S. politics are more contentious or controversial than the respective roles of Congress and the executive branch in formulating foreign policy. In this complex environment, scholars, pundits, and policymakers look to the public and high-profile battles between Congress and the president as a bellwether of the future of U.S. foreign policy.In reality, foreign policy is often shaped, debated, and made out of public view. In Friends and Foes, Rebecca K. C. Hersman shifts the focus away from headline-grabbing events and disagreements to the day-to-day interactions that form the backbone of policymaking.Hersman illustrates the ebb and flow of foreign policy development through many examples and anecdotes. She also includes three in-depth case studies from the mid-1990s: the controversial transfer of three U.S. warships to Turkey; the dispute over relaxing sanctions against Pakistan because of concerns about that nation's nuclear proliferation record, and the 1995–97 battle over the Chemical Weapons Convention. The book also illuminates the role of the media in influencing the outcome of foreign policy decisionmaking. Countering the conventional wisdom that a president and a Congress of the same political party are best able to "get things done," Friends and Foes sheds new light on the institutional dynamics, conflic
In 2012, a 20-year moratorium on state employment of chemical weapons use was broken. Since then, there have been more than 200 uses, against civilians, military targets, and political enemies. These attacks have broken norms against the use of weapons of mass destruction and create a gap in the nonproliferation fabric—despite the robust international architecture of laws, treaties, agreements, and norms designed to restrain the proliferation and use of these weapons. Accountability for these recent attacks has been limited or nonexistent, which threatens the credibility of the nonproliferation regime and only encourages further use. Leaders must find the political and moral strength to use a full spectrum of tools to reestablish this system of restraint. By understanding the system—built on taboos, norms, deterrence, and a lack of benefits—and corresponding accountability approaches—military, legal, political, diplomatic, economic, and educational—leaders can utilize a menu of potential actions for building more diverse, flexible, scalable, and implementable options to hold accountable users of chemical weapons.
Can contemporary arms control keep pace with the rapid rate of change in both geopolitics and technology? While the challenges to future arms control point to a rocky road ahead, measures that build confidence, reduce miscalculation, enhance transparency, restrain costly and dangerous military competition, and offer useful mechanisms and venues for addressing sources of conflict will be of increasing value. For arms control tools to succeed, however, they must be adapted to the current security environment, account for rapidly evolving technological and informational factors, and consider alternative structures, modalities, and participation models. Indeed, now is the time for a recoupling of arms control with deterrence in a way that recognizes these new realities. Now is the time for integrated arms control that enhances stability, embraces plurality, and reinforces resiliency. This CSIS study examines the implication and prospects for the future of arms control in a highly competitive security environment in which challenges from advanced technologies and diminished state control over processes of verification become increasingly prominent features, even as the scope and modalities of arms control grow more complex and multifaceted. The report offers a reexamination of the broad contours of arms control and its role in managing competitive security risks and challenges and the implications for U.S. policymakers, academics, and strategic thinkers engaged in U.S. nuclear policy.
In 2012, a 20-year moratorium on state employment of chemical weapons use was broken. Since then, there have been more than 200 uses, against civilians, military targets, and political enemies. These attacks have broken norms against the use of weapons of mass destruction and create a gap in the nonproliferation fabric—despite the robust international architecture of laws, treaties, agreements, and norms designed to restrain the proliferation and use of these weapons. Accountability for these recent attacks has been limited or nonexistent, which threatens the credibility of the nonproliferation regime and only encourages further use. Leaders must find the political and moral strength to use a full spectrum of tools to reestablish this system of restraint. By understanding the system—built on taboos, norms, deterrence, and a lack of benefits—and corresponding accountability approaches—military, legal, political, diplomatic, economic, and educational—leaders can utilize a menu of potential actions for building more diverse, flexible, scalable, and implementable options to hold accountable users of chemical weapons.
Can contemporary arms control keep pace with the rapid rate of change in both geopolitics and technology? While the challenges to future arms control point to a rocky road ahead, measures that build confidence, reduce miscalculation, enhance transparency, restrain costly and dangerous military competition, and offer useful mechanisms and venues for addressing sources of conflict will be of increasing value. For arms control tools to succeed, however, they must be adapted to the current security environment, account for rapidly evolving technological and informational factors, and consider alternative structures, modalities, and participation models. Indeed, now is the time for a recoupling of arms control with deterrence in a way that recognizes these new realities. Now is the time for integrated arms control that enhances stability, embraces plurality, and reinforces resiliency. This CSIS study examines the implication and prospects for the future of arms control in a highly competitive security environment in which challenges from advanced technologies and diminished state control over processes of verification become increasingly prominent features, even as the scope and modalities of arms control grow more complex and multifaceted. The report offers a reexamination of the broad contours of arms control and its role in managing competitive security risks and challenges and the implications for U.S. policymakers, academics, and strategic thinkers engaged in U.S. nuclear policy.
In recent years, it has become increasingly clear to many observers that the Department of Defense must better communicate to the officers at the tactical end of the nuclear mission a rationale for nuclear weapons and deterrence, the critical role that they play in the post–Cold War strategy of the United States, and the value of nuclear weapons to the security of the American people. This report tracks the changing conceptual and political landscape of U.S. nuclear deterrence to illuminate the gap in prioritizing the nuclear arsenal and to build a compelling rationale for tactical personnel explaining the role and value of U.S. nuclear weapons.
Improvements to strategic situational awareness (SA)—the ability to characterize the operating environment, detect and respond to threats, and discern actual attacks from false alarms across the spectrum of conflict—have long been assumed to reduce the risk of conflict and help manage crises more successfully when they occur. However, with the development of increasingly capable strategic SA-related technology, growing comingling of conventional and nuclear SA requirements and capabilities, and the increasing risk of conventional conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries, this may no longer be the case. The Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the University of California, Berkeley’s Nuclear Policy Working Group undertook a two-year study to examine the implications of emerging situational awareness technologies for managing crises between nuclear-armed adversaries.
Foreign policy in the post–cold war era is profoundly complex, and so too are the institutions that share the responsibility to guide and manage America's relations with other countries. Policymakers struggle within porous and fragmented institutions, in which policy is driven more powerfully by clusters of like-minded individuals than by disciplined organizations. The nation's political parties face deep divisions over foreign policy and are unable to forge a coherent vision for the future. Congress is increasingly polarized along ideological lines, while traditional internationalist foreign policy spans a truncated political center. Few aspects of U.S. politics are more contentious or controversial than the respective roles of Congress and the executive branch in formulating foreign policy. In this complex environment, scholars, pundits, and policymakers look to the public and high-profile battles between Congress and the president as a bellwether of the future of U.S. foreign policy.In reality, foreign policy is often shaped, debated, and made out of public view. In Friends and Foes, Rebecca K. C. Hersman shifts the focus away from headline-grabbing events and disagreements to the day-to-day interactions that form the backbone of policymaking.Hersman illustrates the ebb and flow of foreign policy development through many examples and anecdotes. She also includes three in-depth case studies from the mid-1990s: the controversial transfer of three U.S. warships to Turkey; the dispute over relaxing sanctions against Pakistan because of concerns about that nation's nuclear proliferation record, and the 1995–97 battle over the Chemical Weapons Convention. The book also illuminates the role of the media in influencing the outcome of foreign policy decisionmaking. Countering the conventional wisdom that a president and a Congress of the same political party are best able to "get things done," Friends and Foes sheds new light on the institutional dynamics, conflic
At a moment when the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under duress, Rebecca Davis Gibbons provides a trenchant analysis of the international system that has, for more than fifty years, controlled the spread of these catastrophic weapons. The Hegemon's Tool Kit details how that regime works and how, disastrously, it might falter. In the early nuclear age, experts anticipated that all technologically-capable states would build these powerful devices. That did not happen. Widespread development of nuclear arms did not occur, in large part, because a global nuclear nonproliferation regime was created. By the late-1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had drafted the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and across decades the regime has expanded, with more agreements and more nations participating. As a result, in 2022, only nine states possess nuclear weapons. Why do most states in the international system adhere to the nuclear nonproliferation regime? The answer lies, Gibbons asserts, in decades of painstaking efforts undertaken by the US government. As the most powerful state during the nuclear age, the United States had many tools with which to persuade other states to join or otherwise support nonproliferation agreements. The waning of US global influence, Gibbons shows in The Hegemon's Tool Kit, is a key threat to the nonproliferation regime. So, too, is the deepening global divide over progress on nuclear disarmament. To date, the Chinese government is not taking significant steps to support the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and as a result, the regime may face a harmful leadership gap.
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