ISP Brief April 2019
April 30, 2019
It's our pleasure to send you the April Edition of the ISP Brief, the monthly newsletter of the CSIS International Security Program. The ISP Brief features articles and commentary written by our scholars including analysis as published in various media sources (including video and audio highlights) and links to recent events. We hope the newsletter provides you, our readers, a snapshot of the excellent work underway in ISP, and the engaging thoughts of our experts. As always, your feedback is welcome.
Featured
The Future of Statecraft
The 2019 Future Strategy Forum was held on April 2, 2019. "The Future of Statecraft" featured three panels that examined the future of great power cooperation, international institutions, and economic statecraft. The event also featured a keynote conversation with former National Security Advisor Ambassador Susan Rice.
Civil-Military Relations in the United States: A Conversation with the Hon. Leon E. Panetta
Alice Hunt Friend, Senior Fellow, sat down with the Honorable Leon E. Panetta, former Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA to discuss what makes civil-military relations break down and promote what a healthy civil-military relationship can do to reinvigorate our democracy.
Shifting the Burden Responsibly: Oversight and Accountability in U.S. Security Sector Assistance
Shifting burden responsibly requires the United States to integrate oversight and accountability measures into the implementation of security sector assistance. The latest report from the Cooperative Defense Project assess the levels of progress on implementing reforms throughout the security sector assistance enterprise and develops a plan that addresses specific issues along planning, operations, policy and doctrine, and training lines of effort.
Photo: DOD PHOTO BY GERTRUD, ZACH, U.S. ARMY/RELEASED
Commanding Space: The Story Behind the Space Force
Space is an increasingly disordered and dangerous domain. This new documentary from the CSIS Aerospace Security Project highlights the history of space reorganization and showcases several perspectives of the Trump administration's Space Force proposal.
Acquisitions Trends, 2018: Defense Contract Spending Bounces Back
The latest in the annual series of reports from the Defense-Industrial Initiative Group examines trends in what DoD is buying, how DoD is buying it, and from whom DoD is buying. This report combines detailed policy and data analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of the current and future outlook for defense acquisition.
Photo: U.S. NAVY PHOTO BY MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 2ND CLASS JONATHAN CLAY/RELEASED
ISP Spotlight
Our Marine Corps Fellow, Lieutenant Colonel William Pacatte III, arranged a field trip to Quantico for a group of CSIS employees to experience a variety of Marine Corps training activities including indoor simulated marksmanship, meal-ready-to-eat lunches, and a vehicle combat convoy trainer.
Publications
READ - "Space Threat Assessment 2019" by Todd Harrison, Kaitlyn Johnson, and Thomas G. Roberts
READ - "Pursuing Effective and Conflict-Aware Stabilization: Partnering for Success" by Melissa Dalton, Erol Yayboke, Hijab Shah, and MacKenzie Hammond
READ - "The Pentagon Shouldn't be a Landlord" by Mark Cancian and Sandy Agpar
READ - "FAOs Lead the Way" by Captain Joshua Taylor, U.S. Navy
READ - "Will Business Expertise Reform the Pentagon? Fuggedaboutit!" by Mark Cancian
READ - "Neo-Ottomanism: Turkey's Foreign Policy Approach to Africa" by Asya Acka
READ - "Civil-Military Relations: Increasing Awareness and Reducing the Gap" by Simone Williams
Multimedia
WATCH - Seth G. Jones spoke with TODAY about the 35-year-old American woman and her local guide who were kidnapped by gunmen in Uganda in early April.
LISTEN - Smart Women, Smart Power podcast host Beverly Kirk sat down with Rukmini Callimachi, New York Times Foreign Correspondent, to discuss her career covering terrorists and war zones and why ISIS remains a threat despite its loss of territory.
WATCH - Brian Katz, Visiting Fellow, joined a panel at the Center for a New American Security on improving U.S.-Arab cooperation to counter irregular warfare.
WATCH - Kathleen Hicks spoke on a panel at Brookings on the future of U.S. extended deterrence.
LISTEN - Melissa Dalton sat down with Erol Yayboke to discuss what they've learned so far in their ongoing examination of the implementation of the Trump administration's Stabilization Assistance Review.
WATCH - Todd Harrison testified in front of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on "China in Space: A Strategic Competition?" His full testimony can be read here .
WATCH - The CSIS iLab's latest series, High Resolution, features video shorts utilizing satellite imagery, advanced mapping, and geopolitical expertise to spotlight national security issues. In this episode, Seth Jones and Joseph Bermudez explain how Iran's IRGC-Quds Force trains and deploys Shia militias to expand its influence in the Middle East.
LISTEN - Beverly Kirk and Alice Hunt Friend sat down on the Smart Women, Smart Power podcast with RAND's Radha Iyengar Plumb and CNAS's Loren DeJonge Schulman to discuss mentoring young women (and men) and what it's like to be leading women in international affairs and national security.
Upcoming Events
Pursuing Effective and Conflict-Aware Stabilization
April 30, 2019
3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
CSIS Headquarters, 1616 Rhode Island Ave, NW
Democracy and Justice in the Age of Disinformation
May 1, 2019
3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
CSIS Headquarters, 1616 Rhode Island Ave, NW
The Senkaku Paradox: Risking Great Power War Over Small Stakes
May 6, 2019
10:00 a.m. - 11:15 p.m.
CSIS Headquarters, 1616 Rhode Island Ave, NW
The Army's New Air and Missile Defense Strategy
May 7, 2019
2:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
CSIS Headquarters, 1616 Rhode Island Ave, NW
In Case You Missed It
Shifting the Burden Responsibly
April 24, 2019
Evaluating the Global Counterspace Landscape
April 23, 2019
Maritime Security Dialogue: A Conversation with ADM William Moran, USN, Vice Chief of Naval Operations
April 16, 2019
The Fight Against ISIS: A Conversation with Rukmini Callimachi
April 5, 2019
Challenges in Nuclear Verification: A CSIS PONI Event with Director General Yukiya Amano of the International Atmoic Energy Agency (IAEA)
April 5, 2019
The Future of Arms Control
April 3, 2019
Media Highlights
"That's just enough to build some paper satellites. That's not prioritizing the space sensor layer as it needs to be - that's kicking the can." - Tom Karako in The Hill on April 11, 2019.
"We are already behind schedule - even before the shutdown started - it was going to be hard for states to do all the things that they should do to secure elections for 2020, and a number of them - including Virginia - have elections in 2019. Losing four weeks in that effort is problematic." - Suzanne Spaulding in Security Management on April 1, 2019
"My sense is that this is the year of the decision. Either it'll happen this year or we'll have to wait another generation." - Todd Harrison in The Washington Post on April 11, 2019
"On the one hand, you have a strategy that is focusing on high-end conflict with great powers. On the other hand, you have the [executive branch] and regional commanders asking for forward presence, for crisis response, for supporting ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, etc." - Mark Cancian in The National Interest on April 10, 2019.
"Certain Russian weapon systems are seen as inherently threatening to the United States regardless of who is operating them and for what purpose." - Andrew Hunter in Reuters on April 1, 2019.