Mark F. Cancian – författare

This study identifies five alternative strategies and, using CSIS’s Force Cost Calculator, builds a cost-capped force structure, modernization program, and readiness profile for each strategy. It then stress-tests each strategy against four sets of simultaneous conflict scenarios, which the authors devised. The study explores potential ways to mitigate the fiscal pressure forcing these strategic tradeoffs. It concludes by making recommendations for the FY 2017 defense budget and the next Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

This study identifies five alternative strategies and, using CSIS’s Force Cost Calculator, builds a cost-capped force structure, modernization program, and readiness profile for each strategy. It then stress-tests each strategy against four sets of simultaneous conflict scenarios, which the authors devised. The study explores potential ways to mitigate the fiscal pressure forcing these strategic tradeoffs. It concludes by making recommendations for the FY 2017 defense budget and the next Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).

In 2015, Congress tasked the Department of Defense to commission an independent assessment of U.S. military strategy and force posture in the Asia-Pacific, as well as that of U.S. allies and partners, over the next decade. This CSIS study fulfills that congressional requirement. The authors assess U.S. progress to date and recommend initiatives necessary to protect U.S. interests in the Pacific Command area of responsibility through 2025. Four lines of effort are highlighted: (1) Washington needs to continue aligning Asia strategy within the U.S. government and with allies and partners; (2) U.S. leaders should accelerate efforts to strengthen ally and partner capability, capacity, resilience, and interoperability; (3) the United States should sustain and expand U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region; and (4) the United States should accelerate development of innovative capabilities and concepts for U.S. forces.

This is the inaugural report in the CSIS Defense Outlook Series, an annual review of what happened in the U.S. Department of Defense in the past year and what CSIS experts are looking for in the next. It is meant to serve as a roadmap to track where the course of policy and actions relating to strategy, budget, forces, and acquisition has run and what curves lie ahead.

This timely study examines the Defense Department’s FY 2017 budget proposal for the size and shape of military forces; what that proposal means for cost, strategy, and risk; and challenges the proposal faces in implementation. The study covers all four military services plus government civilians, contractors, and department-wide initiatives.

Investments in amphibious capabilities by U.S. partners and allies in the Asia Pacific is altering the range of capabilities available in that region. It is also changing the types and frequency of exercises partner nations seek to undertake with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps team. This study examines ally- and partner-nation investments in amphibious capabilities, how those capabilities will impact demand for U.S. forces, and the range of U.S. amphibious fleet composites to meet the changing demand.

The Department of Defense (DOD) faces a strategic choice: whether to focus on modernization for high-tech conflicts with China and Russia or expand forces and improve readiness to meet a superpower’s commitments for ongoing conflicts and crisis response. In their FY 2018 budgets, the services all complain that they are too small for the demands being put on them and hedge toward expanding forces and readiness. In the new DOD strategy being developed for 2019 and beyond, the services hope to pursue all three goals—expand forces, improve readiness, and increase modernization—but the fiscal future is highly uncertain, and they will likely have to make difficult trade-offs.

Surprise has always been an element of warfare, but the return of great power competition—and the high-level threat that it poses—gives urgency to thinking about surprise now. Because the future is highly uncertain, and great powers have not fought each other for over 70 years, surprise is highly likely in a future great power conflict. This study, therefore, examines potential surprises in a great power conflict, particularly in a conflict’s initial stages when the interaction of adversaries’ technologies, prewar plans, and military doctrines first becomes manifest. It is not an attempt to project the future. Rather, it seeks to do the opposite: explore the range of possible future conflicts to see where surprises might lurk.

The Trump administration’s FY 2019 budget proposal laid out a set of priorities. To pay for these initiatives, the FY 2019 defense budget rose 14 percent above the FY 2017 level. The Congress generally endorsed the administration''s approach. However, the choices showed that there is no escaping the tradeoff among readiness, modernization, and force structure. This study examines the changes in the FY 2019 budget for each of the military services, DOD civilians, and contractors, how the budget shapes the forces, and the challenges ahead for building and maintaining the forces needed to implement the administration''s stated strategy.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan after the attacks on September 11, 2001, and then overthrew the Taliban regime, senior military officers were not predicting that the United States would be militarily involved 18 years later. Yet, after expending nearly $800 billion and suffering over 2,400 killed, the United States is still there, having achieved at best a stalemate. This CSIS report concludes that the mission in Afghanistan expanded from a limited focus on counterterrorism to a broad nation-building effort without discussions about the implications for the duration and intensity of the military campaign. This expansion occurred without considering the history of Afghanistan, the Soviet experience, and the decades-long effort required in successful nation-building efforts. The report makes a series of recommendations: improving the dialogue between senior military and civilian officials about desired goals/end states and the implied intensity/duration of a military campaign; continuing the development of military strategists; revising military doctrine publications to include discussion of choices about goals/end states; and taking more seriously the history and experience of others.

Annually, CSIS senior adviser Mark Cancian publishes a series of papers on U.S. military forces—their composition, new initiatives, long-term trends, and challenges. The overall theme of this year’s report is the struggle to align forces and strategy because of budget tradeoffs that even defense buildups must make, unrelenting operational demands that stress forces and prevent force structure reductions, and legacy programs whose smooth operations and strong constituencies inhibit rapid change. This report takes a deeper look at the strategic and budget context, the military services, special operations forces, DOD civilians and contractors, and non-DOD national security organizations in the FY 2020 budget.

Great power competition has returned after a generation of absence, and the U.S. military edge over prospective opponents is eroding. Whereas the United States previously could overwhelm adversaries with sheer force, if necessary, it now needs every advantage it can get. This study analyzes how the United States might inflict surprise on its adversaries to gain a strategic advantage. Surprise is one aspect of a broader discussion in the national security literature on innovative operational concepts, which may serve as force multipliers to enable the United States to get more out of existing capabilities. A follow up to CSIS’s highly successful 2018 study Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts, this report highlights several components of a successful surprise, including exploiting adversary vulnerabilities, using intelligence and technology, employing secrecy and deception, and doing the unexpected. The report also contains over a dozen vignettes illustrating potential future surprises.

Great power competition has returned after a generation of absence, and the U.S. military edge over prospective opponents is eroding. Whereas the United States previously could overwhelm adversaries with sheer force, if necessary, it now needs every advantage it can get. This study analyzes how the United States might inflict surprise on its adversaries to gain a strategic advantage. Surprise is one aspect of a broader discussion in the national security literature on innovative operational concepts, which may serve as force multipliers to enable the United States to get more out of existing capabilities. A follow up to CSIS’s highly successful 2018 study Coping with Surprise in Great Power Conflicts, this report highlights several components of a successful surprise, including exploiting adversary vulnerabilities, using intelligence and technology, employing secrecy and deception, and doing the unexpected. The report also contains over a dozen vignettes illustrating potential future surprises.

CSIS senior adviser Mark Cancian annually produces a series of white papers on U.S. military forces, including their composition, new initiatives, long-term trends, and challenges. This report is a compilation of these papers and takes a deep look at each of the military services, the new Space Force, special operations forces, DOD civilians, and contractors in the FY 2021 budget. This report further includes a foreword regarding how the Biden administration might approach decisions facing the military forces, drawing on insights from the individual chapters.

Past NATO enlargement helped create a Europe whole, free, and at peace, but future enlargement, should it occur, faces a hostile and militarily revitalized Russia. This report examines the military requirements and resulting budget costs of extending NATO’s Article 5 commitment to countries such as Ukraine, Georgia, or Bosnia-Herzegovina, which are actively seeking NATO membership, and Sweden and Finland, about which there has been analysis and speculation about membership. Costs to the United States range from $11 billion per year to defend Ukraine to half a billion dollars or less to defend Sweden. The project recommends that NATO incorporate force requirements and cost considerations into its future decisionmaking.