Chinese Military Modernization and Force Development

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the political utility of US drone strikes theoretically and deductively. Placing strikes within the context of the theorized political functions of force and considering how they fit into two grand strategies, restraint and selective engagement, I argue that these strikes buy the United States relatively little in the way of political effects assuring its own security because the terrorism threat they are intended to combat is a limited one within the skein of US global interests. Furthermore, their contribution to counter-terrorism efforts is likely to diminish with the adoption of armed drones by non-state actors. Drone strikes can, however, provide leverage over recalcitrant US client states while reassuring liberal partners and giving them some leverage over US choices. In addition, within the counter-terrorism sphere, drone strikes are less likely to inflame popular opinion than are alternative uses of force. This analysis contributes to an increasingly rigorous examination of the strikes’ role in US foreign and security policy.

The US has been the Indo-Pacific’s most important security actor since the Second World War. During this time its approach has been to retain its position of primacy in which it is the dominant military power and substantial hostile players are kept in abeyance. The basic aim of the US over this time has remained remarkably stable, however, the means through which it pursues that goal has varied considerably both in approach and effect. This chapter examines seven decades of US security policy in the region and does so in three parts. The first covers the thirty years from the end of the Second World War, a time in which US security policy led the country into major conflicts on the Korean Peninsula and Vietnam. The second part explains the part US security policy played in making the four subsequent decades the most stable and prosperous period in the region’s modern history. The third covers the period from the accession of Xi Jinping in 2012 until the end of the Trump Administration in 2020 and shows how the US continuing to pursue the same core strategy as it has for so many prior decades in spite of quite different geopolitical has helped produce more contested regional security dynamic.

(2003). Absolute gains, relative gains, and US security policy on China This paper is translated from a Chinese version published at World Economics and International Politics, 11, 2002, pp. 17–21. Defense & Security Analysis: Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 309-317.

The Taiwan Strait crisis of 1996 was the greatest challenge to Sino‐American relations in several decades. This study examines the crisis and its implications for US security policy. It outlines US policy toward the defense of Taiwan, discusses the US response to Beijing's military intimidation of Taiwan and analyzes several of the major lessons gleaned from the crisis. The paper suggests that, while China's aggressive behavior should not lead to a dramatic shift in the American position toward Taiwan's defense, some modest adjustments in policy may be warranted.

The article discusses the position of burden sharing in the US security policy vis-à-vis its European allies. It argues that this issue has always been important for the US administration, but never to the extent it is today. This is due to several factors, including: (a) current White House America First policy, which embraces a critical position against international institutions and emphasizes the importance of economic elements of US multi- and bilateral relationships; (b) reluctance of some of European allies—with Germany as the biggest concern for the US—to keep defense expenditures on the level of 2% of GDP, including 20% for major equipment, as it is required by NATO financial guidelines; and (c) a scale of US overpayment, which is lesser than presented by US officials. I suggest that burden sharing will remain a priority for the current US government and would cause certain economic and political-military (new posture of US troops in Europe) consequences.

COOPERATING FOR PEACE AND SECURITY Evolving Institutions and Arrangements in a Context Changing US Security Policy Bruce D. Jones, Shepard Forman, and Richard Go wan, editors New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 348 pp, US $85.00 cloth ISBN 978-0-521-88947-6It is a platitude the conversation on multilateralism global institutions have not adapted to 21st century realities. Setting the record straight is the first reason to pay attention to this volume edited by Bruce Jones, Shepard Forman, and Richard Gowan. The table contents serves as a reminder the transformations have occurred over the last 20 years. Despite not being reformed itself, the UN security council has strengthened peacekeeping, created international courts, stepped into counterterrorism, and diversified its toolbox for preventing the proliferation weapons mass destruction. It has also added legal and regulatory efforts to its usual crisis-management work, and, as David Malone argues in his contribution to the volume, has even advanced a new understanding international sovereignty.Yet this book is more than just a list changes have taken place and problems remain unsolved. Rather, it builds upon Helga Haftendorn's, Robert Keohane's, and Celeste Wallander's claims, made in their 1999 book, Imperfect Unions, that the ability an institution to thrive, or even to survive, depends on its adaptability and that adaptation requires organisations be sensitive not only to general changes in their environment, but specifically to the interests and foreign policy preferences their most important members (313).The editors and contributors Cooperating for Peace and Security rely on the distinction between two worlds international security. Washington is a prominent actor in the first one, which deals with its national security priorities, proliferation, and terrorism. Its in the second world - focused on such issues as humanitarianism, peacekeeping, and international criminal justice - oscillates between benign ignorance and disruption, even as the United States devotes considerable sums to international cooperation and arrangements on these issues. Obviously, even in the so-called first world, the American is not free from historical fluctuations and traditional ambivalence, as Stewart Patrick skilfully demonstrates. Most the book's essays address his fundamental questions of whether the UN could serve as an effective collective security organization, capable confronting the main threats the twenty-first century - and whether the United States [is] willing to allow it to play such a role (39).Still, in both worlds there was only a limited extent to which the United States, for all its unrivaUed power, shaped the evolution the multilateral security architecture in the post-Cold War era (9). The book therefore analyzes the roles - diplomatic brokers, resources contributors, norm entrepreneurs - played by others, be they states (such as the UK on humanitarianism) or international secretariats (the UN itself) in these efforts to adapt and innovate so as to deal more effectively with the threats and challenges a quickly changing international system.None the essays pretends these reforms have been perfect. The book is not shy about the fact many them foUowed crises, some missed their target, and a few significant and needed reforms did not take place at aU. But most the authors are also quick to assert there are no quick or easy fixes for current chaUenges. …

This book discusses US foreign and security policy in contemporary Eastern Mediterranean, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and renewed great power competition. It examines US relations with Tukey, Greece, and Cyprus and a balancing strategy in the region towards Russia. The author assesses the impact on Eastern Mediterranean politics and US interests, drawing on neorealist theories and the dynamics of an international system in transition and explores the impact of the global redistribution of power in regions which do not traditionally constitute top strategic priorities. Contributing to discussions on great power balancing strategies and taking into consideration the transition to a post-unipolar international system, this book will appeal to scholars and students of international relations, security studies, US foreign and security policy, great power, and Mediterranean politics.

As the racial and ethnic composition of the United States’ population becomes increasingly diverse, government agencies must adhere to the theory of representative bureaucracy and promote a workforce reflective of the diverse American population (Mosher, 1968). Scholars reason that public administrators must be diligent in developing systems and structures to ensure that the public administration workforce appropriately embodies the communities they support (Pitts & Wise, 2010). Organizations have adopted diversity management practices to establish a mechanism that promotes diversity within their workforce. Researchers argue that organizations must accompany diversity management with a culture of inclusion to build an environment that cultivates and supports a diverse workforce and achieves representative bureaucracy (Pless & Maak, 2004). As a result of understanding the intertwined relations between diversity and inclusion, the public sector has implemented diversity management practices to foster an environment and organizational climate that enhances a sense of inclusion among the staff (Bae et al., 2017). The development of representative bureaucracy is critical to the Department of Defense. As America’s largest government agency, the Department of Defense (DoD) holds the responsibility to “provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security” (U.S. Department of Defense About, n.d.). In efforts to ensure diversity, the Department of Defense has enacted a joint diversity management practice and inclusion strategy for its civilian workforce to ensure that the agency can adapt to support the needs of the military forces to confront evolving global threats. This program evaluation aims to understand the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DoD) Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Strategic Plan 2012-2017 (2012) in impacting the work culture of the civilian workforce and the DoD’s ability to shift the agency's culture to go beyond accepting diversity to creating an inclusive work environment. This investigation proposes the following research question - What impact has the Department of Defense (DoD) Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Strategic Plan (2012) had on the perception of inclusion among civilian minority personnel within the DoD military departments and defense agencies? This study is intentionally positioned to investigate the perception of inclusion within ethnic/racial and gender minorities because of the ongoing underrepresentation of these groups across all sectors of American society (Brown & Kellough, 2020; Hunt et al., 2020; Kellough, 1990). By understanding the impact of the DoD Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, the investigation aspires to contribute to the limited scholarship of civilian ethnic minority employees’

The key argument of the presented text is the idea that the reform of theUS security policy that started after 9/11; the US participation on counter-insurgency, stabilization and nation-building operations in Iraq andAfghanistan; and the big pressure on the domestic security structure led toa reorganization of the US security policy and a transformation of thedomestic governance structures and practices according to the model ofsecurity governance. In an effort to defend the US against possible futureterrorist attacks and formulate the robust counter-insurgency operation inIraq and Afghanistan, the US Government started to create a new model ofsecurity policy organization and integrate diplomacy, development anddefense instruments. While security policy used to have a clear chain ofcommand, security governance is marked by a non-linear, horizontal, andnetworked policy coordination.

: There continues to exist a paradigm within the majority of the Department of Defense (DoD) civilian personnel community that Civilian Personnel Offices (CPOs) cannot be consolidated without significant loss of customer service and that CPOs cannot effectively provide civilian personnel servicing to employees and managers of other Military Departments or Defense Agencies. It is obvious that the DoD is no longer the growth industry that it was in the 1980's. The question is, can the DoD continue to afford the luxury and overhead of civilian personnel staffs at headquarters and subordinated headquarters throughout the DoD and of the numerous CPOs, sometimes collocated, in the midst of a declining management structure and a shrinking civilian work force? The author believes the answer is 'no' Jointness is the future for DoD. It is time for the Army to form a new paradigm for civilian personnel administration. That new paradigm should accept reality as well as avoid parochialism, and is two-fold. It should be based on the acceptance that consolidation is absolutely necessary, not just within Army, but across DoD. No less important, it should stress jointness over uniqueness in the development of guidelines for streamlining and simplifying the personnel system.

This article explores the discursive performance and political significance of ‘American exceptionalism’ under President Obama. Moving beyond a critical examination of geopolitical identity, it investigates how representations of exceptionalism, understood as ideational construct of uniqueness and superiority, are linked to practices of US foreign and security policy that confirm, but also contest, established notions of American leadership in world politics. A particular focus lies on the 2012 presidential campaign, and how diverging ‘exceptionalist’ visions between Obama and Mitt Romney testified to competing ideas for American primacy and cooperative engagement. The article will further examine the cases of ‘leading from behind’ in Libya, American non-intervention against Assad in Syria, and US reactions to current crises concerning Ukraine and ISIS. The contextualisation of these episodes in contemporary, geopolitical discourse reveals how the practice of US foreign and security policy under Obama is shaped by a conflicted and paradoxical vision of post-American hegemony.

Nuclear weapons, once thought to have been marginalized by the end of the Cold War, have returned with a vengeance to the centre of US security concerns and to a world bereft of the old certainties of deterrence. This is a major analysis of these new strategic realities. The George W. Bush administration, having deposed the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, now points to a new nuclear "Axis of Evil": Iran and North Korea. These nations and other rogue states, as well as terrorists, may pose key threats because they are "beyond deterrence", which was based on the credible fear of retaliation after attack. This new study places these and other developments, such as the clear potential for a new nuclear arms race in Asia, within the context of evolving US security policy. Detailing the important milestones in the development of US nuclear strategy and considering the present and future security dilemmas related to nuclear weapons this is a major new contribution to our understanding of the present international climate and the future. Individual chapters are devoted to the key issues of missile defenses, nuclear proliferation and Israel’s nuclear deterrent. This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of strategic studies, international relations and US foreign policy.

: This monograph addresses the perplexing issue of ensuring US security strategy is coherently mated with emerging defense doctrines. America 5 current security strategy, engagement, is inherently dynamic in nature. Consequently, it has surfaced four defense related issues: mission profiles beyond the design of US armed forces, debate over the role of US armed forces within an construct, debate over the future nature of US Security Policy and doctrinal changes by the Armed forces to meet the demands generated by engagement This monograph investigates the challenges facing the US Armed Services to develop relevant doctrines adaptable to dynamic changes in national security strategies. To meet the challenges of Engagement the services have adopted new doctrines affecting they way they organize, train and equip: USAF, Global Engagement; USN, Forward From the Sea; and USA, Army Vision 2010. Simultaneously, itself has been debated with three schools of thought emerging: the dynamic, selective and disengagement schools. Consequently, a programmatic dilemma is emerging; while the services are actively developing new doctrines to satisfy national security needs, the more cardinal issue of long-term national security policy is unsettled.

In this chapter, I introduce the topic by showing that US-India relations could be characterized as estranged and were marked by dramatic oscillations. Following this discussion, I will refer to the construction of security issues/problems related to India and security policies toward India within the discourse from Roosevelt through Bush Sr. during five periods. As the chapter will demonstrate, the US security policies toward India were often tied to the US containment policy—they were constructed as more important—which limited other policy options toward India within the discourse.

The aim of this article is to analyse the US security policy during the presidency of Joe Biden, with the main emphasis on military security and its importance for the Baltic states, which perceive the US as the main guarantor of their security. This is particularly important in the context of challenges related to China’s expansion in the region or Russia’s display of strength. Based on realist theories of international relations, using methods of content analysis, synthesis, and comparison, it was possible to analyse the role of the so-called B3 Baltic states in US foreign policy. There is no doubt that the US is positioning itself as one of the key strategic partners of the B3 states; therefore, in this context, it is necessary to consider the US strategic options toward the B3, which have evolved along with the change in the geopolitical situation in the European region. The Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine confirmed the decisive response of the B3 states, perceiving Russia as a threat to the security of the region. The time frame is limited to Biden’s four-year term in 2021–2024. For research purposes, the contemporary literature in the field of political science and security was used, as well as primary sources related to US decisions and presidential statements that are relevant to this article.