Center for a New American Security

This policy  brief  provides an  analysis of the FY 2011 defense budget  request, places it in the context of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review and historical budgetary trends, and outlines the uncertain budgetary future that looms ahead. 

Contested Commons is an edited volume featuring five chapters and a capstone piece on the future of American power in the sea, air, space and cyberspace.  Authors include CNAS Fellow Abraham M. Denmark, Dr. James Mulvenon, Frank Hoffman, CNAS Military Fellow Lt Col Kelly Martin (USAF), Oliver Fritz, Eric Sterner, Dr. Greg Rattray, Chris Evans, Jason Healey, and CNAS Senior Fellow Robert D. Kaplan.

The Contested Commons capstone report, authored by CNAS Fellow Abraham M. Denmark and Dr. James Mulvenon, provides an overview of the future of American power in a multipolar world.  The authors advocate that the United States renew its commitment to the global commons by pursuing three mutually supporting objectives: build global regimes that preserve the openness of the commons; engage pivotal actors that have the will and ability to protect and sustain them; and develop the hard-power tools and capabilities necessary for the United States to defend the global commons.

In this working paper, CNAS Bacevich Fellow Christine Parthemore and Research Assistant Will Rogers provide observations about how the Department of Defense incorporated climate change into the QDR process in order to meet its congressional requirement and some potential outcomes of that process.

This policy brief makes a compelling case for how the State Department could embrace network diplomacy by creating an independent organization – called USA•World Trust – that would unleash the power of the private sector to further America’s public diplomacy objectives.

To help inform the State Department's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), this policy brief lays out lessons learned from the Department of Defense’s Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) that the State Department and USAID can learn from to optimize the review process and avoid common pitfalls. 

This report  critically examines the relevance of the U.S. intelligence community to the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and provides a blueprint for how the United States can make the intelligence community more relevant to the current mission.

U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) have played a key role in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in the broader U.S. effort to destroy al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. This policy brief describes the unintentional difficulties and misunderstandings that flow from the current list of SOFOF activities; disaggregates and re-categorizes them into a new construct that differentiates missions from activities; and redefines the two general approaches to the conduct of special operations.

When our nation goes to war, contractors go with it. This working paper explores the problems posed by the increased reliance of contractors in  Afghanistan and Iraq, including  insufficient oversight, inadequate integration into operational planning, and ambiguous legal status.

President Obama’s recent visit to Beijing highlighted several issues of mutual interest and concern for the U.S.-China relationship, yet the fact that Taiwan was not a major issue of contention highlights the rapidly changing dynamics of the cross-Strait relationship.