Why and how America’s defense strategy must change in light of China’s power and ambition Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of U.S. defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America’s defense must change to address China’s growing power and ambition. Based firmly in the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America’s goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests. The most informed and in-depth reappraisal of America’s defense strategy in decades, this book outlines a rigorous but practical approach, showing how the United States can prepare to win a war with China that we cannot afford to lose—precisely in order to deter that war from happening.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the world’s largest, most powerful military alliance. The Alliance has navigated and survived the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the post-9/11 era. Since the release of the 2010 Strategic Concept, NATO’s strategic environment has again undergone significant change. The need to adapt is clear. An opportunity to assess the Alliance’s achievements and future goals has now emerged with the Secretary General’s drive to create a new Strategic Concept for the next decade—an initiative dubbed NATO 2030. A necessary step for formulating a new strategic outlook will thus be understanding the future that faces NATO. To remain relevant and adjust to new circumstances, the Alliance must identify its main challenges and opportunities in the next ten years and beyond. This book contributes to critical conversations on NATO’s future vitality by examining the Alliance’s most salient issues and by offering recommendations to ensure its effectiveness moving forward. Written by a diverse, multigenerational group of policymakers and academics from across Europe and the United States, this book provides new insights about NATO’s changing threat landscape, its shifting internal dynamics, and the evolution of warfare. The volume’s authors tackle a wide range of issues, including the challenges of Russia and China, democratic backsliding, burden sharing, the extension of warfare to space and cyberspace, partnerships, and public opinion. With rigorous assessments of NATO’s challenges and opportunities, each chapter provides concrete recommendations for the Alliance to chart a path for the future. As such, this book is an indispensable resource for NATO’s strategic planners and security and defense experts more broadly.
Since the 1949 Communist Revolution, China has devised nine different military strategies, which the People's Liberation Army (PLA) calls strategic guidelines. What accounts for these numerous changes? Active Defense offers the first systematic look at China's military strategy from the mid-twentieth century to today. Exploring the range and intensity of threats that China has faced, M. Taylor Fravel illuminates the nation's past and present military goals and how China sought to achieve them, and offers a rich set of cases for deepening the study of change in military organizations. Drawing from diverse Chinese-language sources, including memoirs of leading generals, military histories, and document collections that have become available only in the last two decades, Fravel shows why transformations in military strategy were pursued at certain times and not others. He focuses on the military strategies adopted in 1956, 1980, and 1993 when the PLA was attempting to wage war in a new kind of way to show that China has pursued major change in its strategic guidelines when there has been a significant shift in the conduct of warfare in the international system and when China's Communist Party has been united. Delving into the security threats China has faced over the last seven decades, Active Defense offers a detailed investigation into how and why states alter their defense policies.
"The goal of our strategic defense research program, the vision and hope of the President, is to stop Soviet missiles before they could destroy any targets, be they in the United States or anywhere else. The goal is noble and straightforward: to destroy weapons that kill people. Thus, based on a realistic view of Soviet military planning, the transition to strategic defense would not be destabilizing. In fact, any initial defensive capabilities would offer many benefits. . . . This objective is far more idealistic, moral, and practical than the position taken by those who still embrace the mutual assured destruction (MAD) theory that defenses must be totally abandoned."—Caspar Weinberger "This is basically a research program and should remain so, at least for the foreseeable future. . . . In a world that relies on an exquisite strategic balance to forestall the holocaust, it would be the worst of blunders to jolt the tightrope when the safety net is tied at only one end."—James Schlesinger "Neither Star Wars I or Star Wars II, in whatever form one considers them, is an effective response to the public's intuitive awareness of the unacceptable risk posed by our present nuclear strategy."—Robert McNamara "The goal of our innovative science and technology program is to establish scientific feasibility and engineering validation of revolutionary concepts. concepts with potential for full SDI technological development. This forward-looking office has a broad research charter which focuses on advanced directed energy concepts such as gamma-ray lasers. on novel sensing and data preprocessing techniques, on advanced materials for space applications, on innovations in spacepower, and on emerging spacescience applications and ultra-high-speed supercomputing. Interest in such exotic areas of science and technology clearly illustrates that SDI has greatly facilitated the mobilization of our nation's scientific community."—Lt . Gen. James Abrahamson Prominent world leaders and scientists came together in 1985 to discuss the technological feasibility and the political sensibility of "Star Wars." Their essays, presented in The Strategic Defense Debate, provide, for the first time a comprehensive look at this timely and controversial subject. Craig Snyder's introduction and headnotes to the collection highlight the critical points of each essay, as well as their conceptual significance to the overall topic. Contributors include: Caspar Weinberger, James Schlesinger, Lieutenant General James A. Abrahamson. Robert S. McNamara, Andrew Cockburn, Richard Pipes. Stephen F. Cohen, Adam Garfinkle, Leon Wieseltier. Michael Vlahos, Franklin Long, Francis Pym, Major Simon P. Worden, Richard Garwin, Robert S. Cooper, Colin S. Gray, Robert Bowman, Alex Gliksman, and Warren Zimmerman. Excerpts from President Reagan's speech "Peace and National Security" and Ambassador Paul H. Nitze's speech "On the Road to a More Stable Peace" are also included. The essays were originally presented at a conference sponsored by The World Affairs Council of Philadelphia in late 1985. The Strategic Defense Debate will be invaluable to students, scholars and lay persons interested in politics, history. military strategy and Soviet relations.
Central to US foreign policy, the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) was launched by Ronald Reagan in 1983. While the Reagan administration failed to deploy the SDI system, it featured prominently in the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union. This insightful book examines SDI and the Reagan administration through an evaluation of the role of the SDI in the end of the Cold War. Presenting an extensive range of primary and secondary material together with interviews, the book will be welcomed by academics and upper level students interested in politics and history.
