1. Creating a Global Antiterrorist Environment. Examining the multifaceted challenges involved in shaping popular attitudes toward terrorism within the Islamic world.
2. Refining Concepts for Combating Terrorism. Exploring new operational concepts that aim to eliminate the ability of jihadist networks to conduct operations, recruit followers and otherwise extend their influence.
3. Meeting the Challenges of Ungoverned Areas. Assessing key issues in shrinking ungoverned and under-governed spaces and measures that can be taken by the U.S. to bring to bear all available developmental capabilities to meet those challenges.
4. Pandemic Influenza: Threat and Response. . Examining the coordination and assistance requirements arising from more intensive collaboration aimed at containing the spread of any outbreak across borders.
5. Energy Security: Supply and Demand Dimensions. Examining the implications of evolving global energy supply and demand patterns for U.S. national security policy.

Selected Output:

Strategic Forum 212 - Apocalyptic Terrorism: The Case for Preventative Action, by Joseph McMillan, NDU Press, November 2004

Related Commentary:

"New Players on the Scene: A.Q. Khan And the Nuclear Black Market", by Colonel Charles D. Lutes, USAF, Senior Military Fellow, EJournal USA, U.S. Department of State, March 2005.

"Treating Terrorist Groups as Armed Bands: The Strategic Implications", by Joseph McMillan, Senior Research Fellow, in Topics in Terrorism: Toward a Transatlantic Consensus on the Nature of the Threat, Atlantic Council, July 2005.

Key Staff: John (Jay) Cope, Jaime Laughrey, Joseph McMillan, Robert Oakley

1. Toward a Theory of Spacepower. Examining the theoretical precepts underlying the behavior of state and non-state actors in all sectors of space activity and how those insights shape national choices regarding the appropriate utilization of space.
2. Tailoring Deterrence and Dissuasion for 21st Century Challenges. Examining ways and means of deterring or dissuading near-peer competitors, rogue powers, and terrorist networks.
3. New Concepts of Deterrence in the Asia-Pacific Region. Investigating new concepts of deterrence, particularly how tradeoffs between offensive and defensive capabilities are viewed by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan (joint effort with East Asia & Pacific team).

Selected Output:

"Force Posture and Dissuasion", by M. Elaine Bunn, Strategic Insights, Volume III, Issue 10, October 2004

"The Role of Dissuasion in Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction" by Chuck Lutes, Strategic Insights, Volume III, Issue 10, October 2004

Strategic Forum 209 - Deploying Missile Defense: Major Operational Challenges , by M. Elaine Bunn, NDU Press, August 2004

Key Staff:  Elaine Bunn, Charles Lutes

• The Global Defense Strategy, Planning and Requirements team examines challenges arising in the formulation and conduct of U.S. national security policy and defense strategy. Key work areas include:

1. Enhancing U.S. National Security Organizational Agility. Exploring problems in current organizational of the national security bureaucracy as well as alternatives to existing structure, processes and cultures.
2. Restructuring Special Operations Forces (SOF). Investigating reforms within the special operations community that would enable SOF to achieve its full potential in both direct and indirect forms of warfare.
3. Transforming Defense Planning. Exploring planning issues associated with defense transformation, including the emphasis on managing uncertainty and balancing risk across multiple defense requirements.
4. Capabilities-based Planning: Implementation. Assessing progress toward and obstacles to further development of CBP.
5. Formulating National Military Strategy. Reassessing analytic approaches to linking challenges, threats, and opportunities to national military objectives, military missions, and tasks.
6. Stability Operations: Improving the State of the Art. Exploring key issues arising in the implementation of the new DOD directive to establish stability operations as a core mission of U.S. armed forces.

Selected Output:

Strategic Forum 219 - Restructuring Special Operations Forces for Emerging Threats
by David Tucker and Christopher J. Lamb, January 2006, NDU Press

Review of Psychological Operations Lessons Learned from Recent Operational Experience, by Christopher J. Lamb, September 2005

Transforming Defense, by Christopher J. Lamb, September 2005

Strategic Forum 214 - Insurgency: Modern Warfare Evolves into a Fourth Generation, by T.X. Hammes, NDU Press, January 2005

Post Conflict Stabilization and Crisis Management reports. Select from drop down menu items. "Afghan Presidential Elections," INSS Workshop Report, November 2004 "Facing the Counter Narcotics Challenge in Afghanistan", INSS Workshop Report, September 2004 "Afghanistan: Rebuilding Security Institutions", INSS Workshop Report, July 2004 "Planning for Post-Conflict Reconstruction: Learning from Iraq", INSS Workshop Report, July 2004 “Stability Operations”, INSS Workshop Report, June 2004 "Liberia: Intervention to Stabilization", INSS Workshop Report, March 2004 "Afghanistan: Current and Future Challenges", INSS Workshop Report, February 2004 "Iraq's National Security Strategy", CSIS Workshop Report, February 2004

Key Staff: Elaine Bunn, Christopher Lamb, Jim Murtha, Robert Oakley

1. China’s Regional and Global Reach. Exploring the implications of increasing Chinese power and influence for U.S. strategic and military interests in the Asia-Pacific region.
2. Managing the Korean Nuclear Standoff. Assessing ways in which the United States can work with China, Japan, South Korea and Russia to increase the chances for diplomatic success in the six-party talks while also hedging against their failure.
3. China, Taiwan, and Cross-Strait Relations. Explicating trends within and between the PRC and Taiwan and what they imply for crisis prevention and management in the Taiwan Strait.
4. The Strategic Implications of Sino-Japanese Tensions. Analyzing sources of tension in Sino-Japanese relations, their potential consequences and ways in which they might be mitigated.
5. U.S.-China Strategic Relations. Explicating key aspects of U.S.-China strategic relations, including China’s nuclear modernization, the long-term compatibility of U.S. and Chinese interests in different areas, and critiques of U.S. strategy toward China.
6. U.S. Asian Alliances in Transition. Exploring ways and means of further adapting U.S. alliances to meet regional and global security challenges of the post-9/11 international environment.

Upcoming Events:

To Be Announced

Selected Output:

“Korea as viewed from China," by Phillip C. Saunders, in Jonathan D. Pollack, ed., Korea: The East Asian Pivot. (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2006), pp. 233-252.

AEI-NDU Seminar Series. The American Enterprise Institute and the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies are collaborating on a seminar series that is examining China's growing influence in Asia and its implications for the United States. Click here for more information, including links to products of the completed seminars and to the registration site for upcoming seminars.

U.S.-Japan Relations: Progress Toward a Mature Partnership, by James J. Przystup, NDU Press, July 2005

2005 Pacific Symposium. Papers and presentations from this event are now available for viewing online on the INSS Conferences page. Click here to visit that page.

"China's Strategic Force Modernization", presented by Phillip Saunders, in the conference "Development of the Chinese Military: Implications for the United States and Asia" hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center, the National Defense University and the Library of Congress, January 2005.

"Indonesia's Aceh Conflict in Perspective: Security Considerations for Tsunami Relief and U.S.-Indonesia Relations"
By Tamara Renee Shie, INSS Background Paper, February 1, 2005

Strategic Forum No. 213 - Japan's Constitution and Defense Policy: Entering a New Era? , by Rust Deming , November 2004, NDU Press

Related Commentary:

"China’s Future in Space: Implications for U.S. Security" By Phillip C. Saunders, adAstra - The Magazine of the National Space Society, September 2005

VOA web cast Interview with Dr. Phillip Saunders on China-Taiwan relations. Originally broadcast on May 8th, 2005. Available for listening at http://www.voanews.com/english/NewsAnalysis/encounter.cfm

"Hope for peace in Aceh?" by Tamara Renee Shie, CSIS PacNet Newsletter, January 21, 2005

"U.S. researcher says cuts in troops not act of pique", article by Chae Byung-gun featuring an interview with Stephen J. Flanagan, JoongAng Daily, October 2004

Key Staff: James Przystup, Phillip Saunders, Ellen Frost (adjunct), CAPT Renata Louie, USN, Tamara Shie

CHINA CENTER: INSS's Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs web site can be viewed at http://www.ndu.edu/inss/China_Center/INSS_About_CSCMA.htm

1. NATO-Led Operations: Maintaining Allies’ and Partners’ Commitments. Assessing ways of sustaining longer-term, more equitable allied sharing of responsibilities, risks, and burdens.
2. Turkey: At a Turning Point? Assessing the key influences upon Turkish security policy and ways of strengthening U.S.-Turkish relations.
3. European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) and U.S. Interests. Assessing the development of EU operational experience and cooperation with NATO in the Balkans and Africa, as well as ways and means to enhance U.S.-EU and NATO-EU cooperation.
4. U.S.-European Dialogue on China. Exploring ways to encourage European governments to be responsive to U.S. strategic concerns about relations with China (in concert with INSS’ Asia-Pacific team).
5. France: Prospects for Defense Policy Realignments. . Exploring underlying trends in French defense policy, the scope for possible changes, and implications for U.S. policy.
6. West Balkans: The Challenges of Consolidation. . Assessing the scope for a coordinated NATO and EU agenda vis-а-vis the governments of the West Balkans as well as subregional institutions with defense, security and related missions.
7. Russia Resurgent – Strategic Surprise in the Making? Assessing Russia’s internal recovery, military capabilities, foreign policy priorities and domestic politics with a view toward identifying areas of potential strategic surprise and challenge to U.S. interests.
8. Ukraine Defense Reform. Analyzing Ukraine’s progress toward long-term defense reform challenges and prospects for progressive integration into the Euro-Atlantic community.
9. Regional Security in the Caucasus. . Studying key drivers in the security environment of the Caucasus—both, North and South—in relation to U.S. and Russian interests and those of other major actors—Europe, Turkey, Iran.
10. EU: Measuring Counterterrorism Cooperation. Analyzing EU efforts in the aftermath of the Madrid and London attacks to determine what reasonably can be expected in terms of commitment and progress.
11. U.S. Strategy for Mediterranean Dialogue Countries. Assessing how to give further dynamism to NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Cooperative Initiative to engage countries of the Eastern Mediterranean/Middle East and Maghreb in more effective multilateral security cooperation.

Selected Output:

A Transatlantic Workshop - NATO AND THE EUROPEAN UNION: IMPROVING PRACTICAL COOPERATION, Organized by the Institute for National Strategic Studies in Partnership with the Ministry of Defence of Finland, March 20-21, 2006

Strategic Forum 218 - Constabulary Forces and Postconflict Transition: The Euro-Atlantic Dimension, by David T. Armitage, Jr., and Anne M. Moisan, November 2005

Strategic Forum 217 - Sustaining U.S.-European Global Security Cooperation, by Stephen J. Flanagan, September 2005

NATO Expeditionary Operations: Impacts on New Members and Partners by Jeffrey Simon, NDU Press, March 2005

CONFERENCE REPORT "Changing Security Dynamics in the Crossroads of Eurasia", INSS 2004 Eurasian Security Conference, September 8–9, 2004

РУССКИЙ ПЕРЕВОД — Отчет о конференции «Меняющаяся динамика безопасности на перекрестках Евразии», 8-9 сентября 2005 г.

Strategic Forum 202 - NATO Decisionmaking: Au Revoir to the Consensus Rule?, by Leo Michel, NDU Press, August 2003

Related Commentary:

"NATO-EU-United States: Why not a virtuous 'menage а trois'?" by Leo Michel.
Time and understanding has improved American and European understanding of the strengths and limitations of NATO, the EU’s European Security and Defense Policy, and bilateral or “coalition of the willing” arrangements. Given the complex and demanding global security environment in the post-9/11 world, it is time to think more grandly—but also more pragmatically—of a virtuous “mйnage а trois” among the Union, the Alliance, and the United States. Will France help or hinder this effort?
This article appears in the forthcoming Spring 2006 issue of Politique americaine (Paris, Editions Choiseul) and is posted with publisher permission, April 2006

"NATO-EU-United States: Why not a virtuous 'menage а trois'?" by Leo Michel. (Version en franзais)
Le temps et l’experience ont permis de mieux juger les forces et les limites de l’OTAN, l’UE, des operations bilaterales et autres “coalitions volontaires.” Etant donne la complexite des questions de securite internationale apres le 11/9, n’est-il pas temps de reflechir de faзon a la fois plus ambitieuse et plus pratique a un menage a trois vertueux entre l’Union, l’Alliance, et les Etats-Unis? La France soutiendra-t-elle ou affaiblira-t-elle cet effort?

"Observations on the Special Relationship in Security and Defense Matters" by Leo Michel, Chapter 11 of the book U.S.-UK Relations at the start of the 21st Century, edited by Jeffrey D. McCausland and Douglas T. Stuart, U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, January 2006

"Russia's strong arm tactics may do Ukraine a favour", by Eugene Rumer, The Financial Times, January 3, 2006

"Transatlantic Ricochet: How U.S. Reassessments Will (or will not) Transform Europe" by Leo Michel, EuroFuture, Autumn 2005

"Don't go wobbly on the orange,"by Stephen J. Flanagan and Eugene Rumer, International Herald Tribune, 30 September 2005

"Chaos, Not Democracy May Be Real Alternative to Dictators in Central Asia," by Eugene Rumer, In the National Interests, July 2005.

"A Fresh Start or Plus Ça Change? Transatlantic Security Relations in the Second Bush Term," by INSS Director Stephen J. Flanagan, Politique Americaine, Summer/Fall 2005.

"For Real Results, Let's Get Real" by Eugene Rumer, Los Angeles Times, 8 May 2005.

CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY. Subcommittee on Europe and Emerging Threats Hearing on "Developments in U.S.-Russia Relations," by Eugene B. Rumer, Senior Fellow, NDU-INSS, March 9, 2005

"U.S.-NATO-EU: a virtuous menage a trois?", by Leo Michel, Le Soir (Bruxelles), http://www.lesoir.be/ , February 22, 2005

"NATO and the EU - Stop the Minuet; it’s Time to Tango!", by Leo Michel, EuroFuture, Winter 2004

"Why 'Contain' Russia?" by Eugene B. Rumer, The Washington Post, December 17, 2004

Key Staff: David Armitage, Leo Michel, Anne Moisan, Jim Murtha, Eugene Rumer, Jeffrey Simon

1. The Chavez Phenomenon: Implications for the United States. Exploring the substance and implications of Chavez’s policies vis-а-vis the United States and Venezuela’s ability to be the hub of an anti-American coalition.
2. U.S.-Brazilian Relations: Exploring Defense Cooperation. Analyzing Brazil’s strategic aspirations and geopolitical traditions, and the scope for closer bilateral cooperation.

Selected Output:

“Democratic Security Consolidation Policy: Evolution of a Successful Strategy”
By His Excellency, Juan Manuel Santos, Minister of Defense of Colombia addressed this topic at the February 2, 2007 Trans-American Dialogue.

“US-Mexico Security Relations: The Possibility of a Strategic Partnership”
By Suzanne J. Petrie, Director for Latin America, Department of Homeland Security addressed this topic at the May 22, 2006 Colleagues for the Americas Seminar Series.

“Political Change in Latin America: Regional Geopolitical Implications”
By Gabriel Gaspar, Ph.D., Chilean Ambassador Designate to Colombia addressed this topic at the April 20, 2006 Colleagues for the Americas Seminar Series.

The Caribbean Strategic Environment: Coping with Problems Without Passports
Ivelaw L. Griffith, Ph.D., Dean, The Honors College and Professor of Political Science, Florida International University addressed this topic at the February 23, 2006 Colleagues for the Americas Seminar Series.

Cuban Foreign and Security Policy in Latin America
Hal Klepak Ph.D., Professor of History, Royal Military College of Canada addressed this topic at the January 12, 2006 Colleagues for the Americas Seminar Series.

Venezuelan Rearmament
INSS Senior Fellow Jay Cope addresses this topic in the November 30, 2005 issue of Latin America Advisor.

* Key Staff: John (Jay) Cope.