This translation volume compiles texts by Russian military experts and planners and covers key factors in Russian military forecasting that inform military planning decisions on force structure and training.
The international system appears headed for a renewed era of intense competition among major powers. The authors sought to identify the factors that keep such rivalries stable and those that lead to conflictual outcomes. Leveraging theory and historical case studies, the authors created a framework for assessing the stability of a strategic rivalry, then applied it to the current U.S.-Russia and U.S.-China competitions.
In this report, the authors examine Russian arms exports and the impact of sanctions designed to discourage third country purchases and raise the cost of future Russian malign interference in other nation-states. The authors draw from publicly available information compiled in a database to illustrate when U.S. diplomatic engagement or the prospect of U.S. sanctions has led third countries to reconsider importing Russian weapons.
The research team found that both Russia and China appear to have employed information manipulation during the COVID-19 pandemic in service to their respective global agendas. This report, the second in a series, describes these efforts, as well as the analytic workflows employed for detecting and documenting state-actor malign and subversive information efforts.
The authors of this report describe strategic global trends related to Russian global influence and behavior and provide an overview and assessment of hostile activities — including information warfare, political subversion, and the use of violence or the threat of violence through proxies to undermine political order and influence vulnerable governments — that Russia has undertaken in the face of these trends.
The authors examine evidence on the effectiveness of campaigns to influence public opinion in target populations — sometimes referred to as "information warfare" — in the context of strategic competition between the United States and Russia, and they provide recommendations for how the United States can maximize the effectiveness of its public communications in competition with Russia.
The authors of this report assess the role of U.S. Army special operations forces (ARSOF) in great-power competition, focusing on the types of activities the United States will need to conduct in competition with Russia and ARSOF's effectiveness in conducting them, as well as ARSOF's advantages and disadvantages relative to conventional military forces and the efforts of nonmilitary agencies.
In an occupation of Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, conventional military intervention by allies would be crucial for the Baltic countries to achieve national independence. But Baltic civilians could play a powerful role in their own defense by pursuing a resistance strategy that imposed costs on the occupier, secured allied support, denied political or economic consolidation, reduced capacity for repression, and expanded popular support.
Since 2014, China and Russia have strengthened their relationship, increasing political, military, and economic cooperation. In this report, the authors seek to understand the history of cooperation between Beijing and Moscow, the drivers of and constraints on the relationship, the potential future of cooperation between China and Russia, the impact of the Chinese-Russian relationship on the United States, and implications for future U.S. policy.
In recent years, Iran has risen as one of the most significant regional challenges faced by the United States. In this report, the authors assess when, where, why, and how Iran conducts military interventions and identify key signposts of Iranian military interventions that can be used as early warning indicators for U.S. military planners and can guide decisions about the use of forces in the Middle East region.
