The foreign policy framework proposed here assumes that of the world's 140 developing states, there is a group of pivotal states whose futures are poised at critical turning points, and whose fates will strongly affect regional and even global security. These nine states - Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, Brazil, Algeria, and Mexico - are the ones upon which the United States should focus its scarce foreign policy resources. Events of the past year in Indonesia, India, and Pakistan have already affirmed the wisdom of this policy. In a series of cogent, original case studies, area experts explore the pivotal states strategy for each of the nine states.
Can the U.S. seize strategic opportunities and achieve its "Rebalance to Asia?" A more tailored implementation of U.S. national security policy and strategy is required if the U.S. is to achieve the desired ends. Building capacity among consequential nations strengthens internal security postures and supports regional stability. The unwise allocation of Security Assistance funds consumes precious resources that could otherwise address other pressing issues. A Pivotal States policy will better discriminate among competing national security objectives. Identifying Pivotal States will allow the U.S. to prioritize security assistance recipients and fund only those nations or programs that represent strategic necessities. Using a principled approach within the framework of the Pivotal States policy and establishing clear criteria for the identification of Pivotal States will facilitate a more successful Security Assistance strategy. Creating an NSC-led Interagency Policy Committee to oversee Foreign/Security Assistance planning and execution is necessary. Overcoming bureaucratic friction and developing common competencies among Foreign Assistance professionals from all agencies is critical.
Michael Oppenheimer's Pivotal Countries, Alternate Futures is both a synthesis of our knowledge on scenario planning and a practical guide for policymakers. One of America's leading scenario planners, Oppenheimer has advised the Department of State, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the President's Science Advisor, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Brookings Institution. In this book, he develops a sophisticated and coherent method for foreign policy specialists who necessarily deal with rapidly changing situations involving high levels of uncertainty. As he explains, figuring out possible outcomes and designing and appropriate policy requires an ability to identify the drivers of change, the potential wild card events, and the central policy questions in any given situation. Once policymakers determine these, they must plan a scenario. To do that, planners need to know how to build the best team of experts possible, run a session, and create credible narratives for different scenario alternatives. To illustrate how it all works, Oppenheimer draws from a range of real-life planning scenarios, including China and Syria. To be sure, new crises will arise that supplant these current ones, but his basic method will aid policymakers in almost every future situation. While nothing ever goes completely to plan-least of all international conflict-preparing with multiple scenarios in mind will always be the least worst approach to global and regional crises. Methodologically rigorous and comprehensive, Pivotal Countries, Alternate Futures will be essential reading for policymakers and policy students trying to determine the best path forward in any given crisis.
Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has enjoyed primacy in world affairs. Yet the 21st century promises to be characterized by multiple major powers (MMP). A seminar explored and assessed how the U.S. can continue to prosper in an age of MMP; how and if shifting patterns of power -- incl. the diffusion of destructive power to non-state actors -- will affect U.S. interests; what multi-polarity means for global security; and how multilateral approaches to global problem solving provides solutions to the challenges in the new global order. This report provides both analysis of the dynamics driving the diffusion, redist. and redef. of power around the globe, and policy options for how the U.S. can continue to play a global leadership role in an age of MMP.
"Like Gulliver in Lilliput, the United States risks being tied down by a thousand threads Walter Mead thus concisely summarizes, I think, the challenges facing the United States in adopting a national security strategy adequate to the task of taking it into the next century It is in those "thousand threads" that I find the basic flaw of President Clinton's policy of engagement, and why I will argue that the idea of pivotal states, as proposed by Chase, Hill, and Kennedy,2 is the preferred organizing concept for U S national security strategy.
This book explains why the idea of the Indo-Pacific is so strategically important and concludes with a strategy designed to help the West engage with Chinese power in the region in such a way as to avoid conflict.
From former assistant secretary of state Kurt M. Campbell comes the definitive analysis and explanation of the new major shift in American foreign policy, its interests and assets, to Asia. There is a quiet drama playing out in American foreign policy far from the dark contours of upheaval in the Middle East and South Asia and the hovering drone attacks of the war on terror. The United States is in the midst of a substantial and long-term national project, which is proceeding in fits and starts, to reorient its foreign policy to the East. The central tenet of this policy shift, aka the Pivot, is that the United States will need to do more with and in the Asia-Pacific hemisphere to help revitalize its own economy, to realize the full potential of the region's dramatic innovation, and to keep the peace in the world's most dynamic region where the lion's share of the history of the twenty-first century will be written. This book is about a necessary course correction for American diplomacy, commercial engagement, and military innovation during a time of unrelenting and largely unrewarding conflict. While the United States has intensified its focus on the Asia-Pacific arena relative to previous administrations, much more remains to be done. The Pivot is about that future. It explores how the United States should construct a strategy that will position it to maneuver across the East and offers a clarion call for cunning, dexterity, and ingenuity in the period ahead for American statecraft in the Asia-Pacific region.
Taking the period from the end of the 1970s to the end of the 1990s, this book critically examines the evolution of the strategic relationship between the US and Turkey during this period, with a particular focus on the Middle Eastern context. Strategic Relations Between the US and Turkey employs interviews with US, Turkish and Israeli officials and archival research in order to offer an alternative reading of the realities that shaped bilateral co-operation through multi-level analysis. The unraveling of these realities enlightens the reader about the past course of events but also aids the understanding of the dynamics of the relationship today. Essential reading for students and scholars of U.S. and Turkish foreign policy, this study of co-operation between a super-power and a relatively weak state in the international system will also be of use to those interested in International Relations, Diplomatic History and World Politics more broadly.
