Paul K. Davis

Despite its global advantages, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s current deterrent posture in the Baltic states is militarily weak and generally questionable. A Russian invasion there would almost surely capture some or all of those states' capital cities within a few days, presenting NATO with a fait accompli. This report examines what role nonstrategic nuclear weapons could play in deterring such an invasion.

In a fluid global security environment such as ours, assessing the costs, risks, and likely consequences of alternative national defense strategies is as hard as it is essential. The authors show how, even in the face of uncertainty, the costs and other implications of any strategy can be assessed by examining the capabilities needed by U.S. combatant command - the chief agents of strategy - to fulfill what the strategy expects of them.

A debate will likely occur in 2009 about U.S. global national-security strategy. The authors describe and illustrate a methodology to help frame and evaluate resource-informed strategies. The core is an integrated portfolio-analysis approach that compares options by their anticipated effectiveness, risks, and resource implications. Three illustrative grand strategies are compared, which deal in different ways with the problems of our time.The monograph describes a portfolio-analysis approach for integrated comparison of alternative strategies, in terms of effectiveness, risks, and resource implications.

It may not be possible to deter fanatical terrorists, but members of terrorist systems may be amenable to influence. The U.S. counterterrorism strategy should therefore include political warfare, placing at risk things the terrorists hold dear, a credible threat of force against states or groups that support acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, and maintaining cooperation with other nations engaged in the war on terror, while also preserving core American values. (JDL)

DynaRank is a Microsoft Excel based program that allows detailed high-level evaluation of policy options. This report describes the development of DynaRank through a series of RAND policy studies, culminating in its application to the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The authors provide an overview of the process and why it was developed, describing its application to a domestic transportation project and a long-range planning study for the Air Force. They then provide detail about its application late in the QDR process and describe how it assisted them in reaching certain conclusions. The appendixes provide a tutorial, instructing a new user how to set up and apply DynaRank; show a step-by-step example of its use; and list DynaRank's functions.

This briefing describes a simple model for aggregate-level capabilities analysis of halt-phase issues; the aim is to accomplish an early halt in the defense of Saudi Arabia.

In this report, the authors describe an experimental "thinking-Red" approach to analysis, wargaming, and other exercises that might help inform strategies to avoid aggression or escalation in a crisis. The approach can be applied to (1) diverse potential adversaries, (2) direct and gray-zone conflicts, and (3) different levels of crisis, conflict or competition. The approach features alternative models of the adversary.

Modeling and simulation, if well rooted in social-behavioral (SB) science, can inform planning about some of the most vexing national problems of our day. Unfortunately, the current state of SB modeling and related analysis is not yet up to the job. This report diagnoses the problems, identifies the challenges, and recommends ways to move ahead so that SB modeling will be more powerfully useful for aiding decisionmaking.

This report stems from a congressional request for an independent report about the U.S. Department of Defense s capabilities for joint analysis and ways to improve them. Congressional concerns largely involved the activity called support for strategic analysis (SSA) and whether to revise it. The report recommends making fundamental revisions to the overall planning construct to which SSA contributes."

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confronts a variety of organizational-level risks within its programs that could influence the success of its missions or programs. This report provides NASA s Office of Strategy and Plans with a risk assessment methodology that integrates risk factors tailored to NASA s management, operations, and acquisition structures, allowing decisionmakers to compare risks within a common framework."

This report presents research on various methods for heterogeneous information fusion combining data that are qualitative, subjective, fuzzy, ambiguous, contradictory, and even deceptive, in order to form a realistic uncertainty-sensitive assessment of threat. The context is counterterrorism, for both military and civilian applications, but the ideas are more generally applicable in intelligence and law enforcement."

Defense analysis can improve support of policymakers dealing with multiple objectives and deep uncertainties. Doing so will involve both seeing through the fog with simple analysis and undergirding results with depth as necessary. It will emphasize balancing across objectives and hedging against uncertainty. Modern methods for doing so are available but they require displacement of some familiar processes and analytic expectations.

Government organizations have put substantial effort into detecting and thwarting terrorist and insurgent attacks by observing suspicious behaviors of individuals at transportation checkpoints and elsewhere. This report reviews the scientific literature relating to observable, individual-level behavioral indicators that might, along with other information, help detect potential violent attacks.

Using and testing a conceptual model that draws on social science and particularly social movement theory, this volume examines public support for al-Qa'ida's transnational jihadist movement, the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey, and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal. The authors discuss which factors were most salient across cases, how their importance varied in each case, and how this understanding can inform strategy.

A discontinuity in U.S. defense planning may be looming because of diffusion of inexpensive military technology, geostrategic changes, and the need to prepare forces for diverse adversary types. The way ahead is not yet clear, and economic constraints are a problem. It also seems that the nation needs a comprehensive rebalancing of national security strategy, not just of military capabilities.