Bøker av Bryan Frederick

Ensuring military access to the territory of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific in the event of a future conflict with China is a critical concern for U.S. policymakers. The physical and political geography of the region sharply limits U.S. options to such an extent that some allied and partner decisions to provide or refuse access could determine the outcome of a conflict. A clearer understanding of how and why U.S. allies and partners are likely to make conflict-phase access decisions, and what U.S. policymakers can do to affect the decisions ahead of time, is therefore essential. In this report, the authors examine how U.S. allies and partners make conflict-phase access decisions and how the United States and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) might be able to influence decisions in advance. The authors developed a framework for assessing such decisionmaking, then applied it to five specific allies and partners in the region (Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and India) to assess their strategic outlooks, internal politics, and economic incentives and to identify the peacetime policy levers that are most promising for affecting the states' decisionmaking.

This report evaluates the potential for further escalation in the war in Ukraine, including possible escalation to Russian nuclear use, to better inform U.S. and allied decisions and the public debate.

The expansion of Chinese military activity and capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region has led the United States to undertake its own increase in activity in the region over the past decade. As the United States expands its military activities to safeguard its regional interests, the potential reactions of China are a crucial consideration. This report provides U.S. military planners and policymakers with guidance regarding how the characteristics of different potential U.S. military activities may affect Chinese perceptions and reactions, either in ways that the United States may prefer, such as by enhancing deterrence of People's Republic of China (PRC) aggression against U.S. allies and partners, or in ways that the United States may wish to avoid, such as by increasing the risk of aggression and escalation. The authors developed a framework for assessing likely Chinese reactions to U.S. military activities. The framework identifies the key factors that drive Chinese thinking and reactions, assesses how the characteristics of U.S. activities-their location, the U.S. allies or partners involved, their military capabilities, and the public profile or messaging that accompanies them-have the potential to affect Chinese reactions through each key factor, and provides a typology of potential Chinese reactions organized by their level of intensity. The authors also developed a comprehensive set of potential military activities that the United States could undertake in the Indo-Pacific and evaluated the implications of the framework, highlighting how the PRC would likely perceive and react to different types of activities.

This volume of the Future of Warfare series examines trends in factors affecting the use of restraint in warfare that could affect U.S. national security, notably effectiveness of false accusations and public concern for civilian casualties.

RAND researchers develop a framework to assess likely Russian reactions to ongoing and proposed NATO posture enhancements in Europe in order to help policymakers determine the utility and advisability of different options.