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This book explores how changes in the structure of the international system and technology incentivize major powers to adopt different types of military power--either the traditional threat and use of force, or "shaping" through the non-warfighting use of military organizations--to manage threats in world politics.
Winner of the Andrew F. Krepinevich Writing Award A 2022 Choice Reviews Outstanding Academic Title Selected for the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s Inaugural Reading List (2022) In today’s complex international environment, how do the United States, China, and Russia manage the return of great power competition as well as the persistent threat of violent non-state actors? This book explores "shaping": the use of military power to construct a more favorable environment by influencing the characteristics of other militaries, altering the relationships between them, or managing the behavior of allies. As opposed to traditional strategies of warfighting or coercion, shaping relies less on thr...
Tehran’s willingness to pause aspects of its nuclear program may offer opportunities to stroke regime concerns about the potential costs of moving forward. Since halting its crash nuclear weapons program in 2003, the Islamic Republic has pursued a cautious hedging strategy that has enabled it to become an advanced nuclear threshold state, while also avoiding a military confrontation with the United States and Israel. Yet Iran’s willingness to pause aspects of its nuclear program in order to ease pressure—and in turn to pursue more urgent objectives—may help Washington constrain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by amplifying its concerns about the potential risks and costs of proliferating. In this Policy Focus, military analyst Michael Eisenstadt surveys the evolution of Iran’s nuclear hedging strategy and suggests ways for the United States, along with its allies and partners, to shape the regime’s proliferation calculus with the goal of preventing an Iranian breakout and a nuclearized Middle East.
This book’s main objective is to determine the role, if any, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) plays in de-escalating tensions among its members. It argues that the SCO is uniquely suited to keep its disparate members, many of whom have border disputes with each other, from escalating tensions among themselves. The book proposes a rivalry de-escalation model that differs from the standard belief that rivalries de-escalate due to a shock or external pressure. This model states that trust can be built between two rival states when confidence-building measures are instilled and utilized repeatedly over a long period of time. The SCO provides these mechanisms in the form of annual summits between state leaders and routine military exercises involving military units from every member. Examining three case studies involving the founding six members of the organization, the book argues that the SCO is effective in keeping rivalries de-escalated among its members. This book will be of much interest to students of Asian politics, regional security, and international relations.
This book improves our understanding of battlefield coalitions, providing novel theoretical and empirical insight into their nature and capabilities, as well as the military and political consequences of their combat operations. The volume provides the first dataset of battlefield coalitions, uses primary sources to understand how non-state actors of varying types form such groupings, reports interviews with policymakers illuminating North Atlantic Treaty Organization operations, and uses cases studies of various wars waged throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries to understand how other such collectives have operated. Part I introduces battlefield coalitions as an ob...
The Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment (APRSA) examines key regional security policies and challenges relevant to the proceedings of the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier defence summit convened by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). It is published and launched at the Dialogue and the issues analysed within its covers are central to discussions at the event and beyond. This eleventh edition comes as the APRSA celebrates its first decade. A dozen IISS experts reflect on a decade of change and continuity across major security policies and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region. Three themes materialise across six chapters: the pressure and constraints ...