New Security Challenges
Policy Issues and
Analytic Approaches
Monday through Thursday,
September 10–13, 2007
9:00 a.m.–noon and 1:30–4:30 p.m.
Friday, September 14,
9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
RAND CORPORATION
WASHINGTON OFFICE
1200 SOUTH HAYES STREET
ARLINGTON, VA 22202-5050
The Program
September 11th drove home just how dramatically the security challenges that confront
all nations have changed since the end of the Cold War. Today’s threats include not only the conventional forces of potentially hostile nation states but also the threats of insurgency and of terrorist
acts by nonstate organizations. Hanging over this strategic landscape is the increasing proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction that can be delivered by a variety of means. The transformed strategic
situation challenges defense planners to take a dynamic approach in the development of security
policy for their nations.
Since its inception in 2000, “New Security Challenges,” an intensive weeklong program offered by
the Pardee RAND Graduate School, has equipped participants with both an understanding of the
most critical current policy challenges and the most up-to-date analytical techniques for addressing
them. The program aims to give participants both knowledge and tools they can employ upon
their return to their organizations. Past participants have been from a variety of countries and backgrounds, from defense to other national security agencies, and from private industry to academia.
Through the program, participants will
• be exposed to the latest analytic approaches to key defense challenges
• gain a better understanding of select security topics of importance to the United States and
other nations
• develop a better understanding of many of the most pressing issues that confront security
planners in the United States and other nations
• participate in a hands-on exercise in strategic planning, examining the demands on U.S.
military capabilities in a new strategic landscape.
This year’s program will be held in RAND’s Washington office, located near the Pentagon City
metro station in Arlington, Virginia. Each session will be led by a prominent RAND researcher who
has personally made a significant contribution to the topic at hand.
Topics covered will include the following:
• The evolution of alliance and coalition partnerships
• The major issues and challenges in East Asia
• Applicable lessons from past stability operations
• How military forces transform
• Theater-level campaign planning in today’s environment
• The evolving relationship between air and ground forces
• High-resolution tactical models
• Gaming techniques for strategists and planners
• Missile defense technology and policy
• Transforming intelligence agencies to be better prepared to deal with today’s threats
• Revolutions in military affairs since the early 20th century
• Current challenges in Iraq—countering the IED threat.
Curriculum
Alliance and Coalition Partnerships in Transition. During the past several years, the United
States has shifted away from its traditional reliance on permanent alliances in favor of more flexible
“coalitions of the willing.” Nora Bensahel will discuss how this transition affects the United States’
security relationship with its international partners and how existing alliances such as NATO are adapting to ensure their continued relevance. She will also discuss recent examples of coalition operations,
including Afghanistan and Iraq, and their implications for future multinational military operations.
The Future Evolution and Implications of the U.S.-China Military Balance. Although the
United States today is the dominant military power in the Asia-Pacific region, China’s official defense
budget has been growing at double-digit rates for over a decade. China’s defense industries, meanwhile,
have begun producing a wide range of modern military systems, most recently demonstrated by China’s
January 2007 test of an anti-satellite weapon. The combination of these trends suggests that over the
coming decade China may begin to acquire the capability to challenge U.S. military dominance in the
region. Roger Cliff will present a methodology for projecting possible future force structures for China
and for assessing the implications of those force structures for the U.S.-China military balance.
America’s Role in Nation-Building: From World War II to Iraq. Past U.S. roles in nation-
building missions, from the post–World War II occupations of Germany and Japan through the
more recent operations in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, suggest lessons applicable to current
efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. James Dobbins will trace and discuss the difficulties encountered
in both these current operations, including problems in planning, strategy, and execution, and will
suggest ways to improve U.S. performance of such missions in the future.
Learning Large Lessons: The Evolving Roles of Ground Power and Air Power in the
Post–Cold War Era. The relative roles of U.S. ground and air power have shifted since the end
of the Cold War. At the level of major operations and campaigns, the Air Force has proved capable
of and committed to performing deep strike operations, which the Army long had believed the Air
Force could not reliably accomplish. If air power can largely supplant Army systems in deep strike
operations, the implications for both joint doctrine and service capabilities would be significant.
David Johnson will examine issues with joint doctrine and service culture and the need for the U.S.
military to attain significant capabilities beyond those required in major operations and campaigns,
to ensure that the United States can attain its future strategic political objectives.
The U.S. Military Transforming. The U.S. military has been transforming to respond to a
dynamically changing security environment. In doing so, it is availing itself of advantages offered by
rapid advances in technology (information technology in particular) and of new operational concepts
that highly networked organizations have utilized to great advantage in the commercial world. Stuart
Johnson will lead the group in taking stock of how far the U.S. military has come in transforming and
in exploring future high-leverage directions that the Defense Department’s leadership is planning.
Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Following the initial success of U.S. and Afghan forces
in overthrowing the Taliban regime in 2001, an increasingly violent insurgency began to develop.
U.S. and coalition efforts in Afghanistan offer a useful opportunity to assess what works—and what
does not—in counterinsurgency warfare. Seth Jones will examine the insurgency in Afghanistan and
ask three major questions: What is the nature of the insurgency in Afghanistan? What factors have
contributed to the success (and failure) of past insurgencies? What does this mean for today’s efforts
in Afghanistan?
High-Resolution Modeling and Simulation for Joint Warfare Analysis. John Matsumura
and Randall Steeb will discuss the evolution of high-resolution modeling and simulation to meet the
demands of joint warfare analysis and planning. In particular, they will describe the RAND Joint
Warfare Simulation and Analysis (JWSA) suite of models, along with the many critical challenges
that lie ahead as part of the transformation process, including modeling of network-centric forces,
exploring advanced technologies (e.g., robotics), and understanding the impact of complex terrain.
Exemplary analysis using these tools will also be presented.
An Exercise-Based Look at Future Crisis Situations. A key feature of the course will be a
table-top strategic planning exercise, led by Roger Molander and Peter Wilson, that will explore how
the U.S. may have to respond to a future domestic crisis. The exercise aims to identify what new and
demanding capabilities will be needed—using a scenario in the relatively near future—and to elicit
a menu of promising concepts from participants to meet those needs. Applying the RAND “Day
After…” exercise methodology, groups will go though fast-moving steps in parallel with the same
tasking and will compare the results of their deliberations in plenary sessions.
Building Partnership Capacity. Jennifer Moroney will discuss the Department of Defense strat-
egies and challenges for security cooperation and building partnership capacity, and will focus primarily on policy changes since the last Quadrennial Defense Review. Issues of coordination among
the Combatant Commands, Services, and other DoD agencies will be highlighted, as well as areas
for improvement in terms of planning, resourcing, and execution. The lecture will draw heavily upon
completed and ongoing RAND work for the U.S. Army and Air Force, the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency on building partnership capacity.
Current Challenges in Ballistic Missile Defense: Responding to Proliferation. While
most of the nation’s defense efforts are focused on Iraq and the war on terrorism, the Pentagon has
been quietly spending $10 billion a year to develop defenses against ballistic missiles. David Mosher
will examine the technical and operational challenges that must be addressed to deploy effective
defenses against a variety of threats and the role that missile defenses might play in future conflicts.
Minimizing the Threat from IEDs in Iraq. Walter Perry will cover the threat to coalition forces
from improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which continue to impede and threaten convoys, patrols, and
other operations in Iraq. IEDs have been responsible for a significant number of casualties and deaths to
date. Countering them requires blending technological countermeasures and counter-countermeasures
with operational procedures to substantially reduce the threat. Beyond the experience in Iraq, U.S.
and coalition forces will face similar tactics from future enemies that are incapable of prevailing in
conventional combat. This suggests the need for a well-structured systems analysis process to address
the IED threat as it is evolving in Iraq, and to assist in the development of more general approaches
to such threats in future operations.
Advances in Defense Modeling. The defense decision environment has grown more complex as a
small number of planning scenarios with some lesser included cases have been replaced by a dizzying
array of potential conflicts, each with unique demands. Exploratory modeling harnesses the capabilities
of advanced computer hardware and software to illustrate possible outcomes across a broad range of hundreds or thousands of alternative cases. Ron Trees will discuss the state of the art in military modeling
and present examples of the application of exploratory modeling to illustrate the utility of the technique.
Transformation and the Intelligence Community. As the military transforms, intelligence
operations also face the challenge of transforming to meet new enemies and make use of new technologies. Surveillance technologies designed for the Cold War have been impressively adapted to
support war fighters. But 9/11 demonstrated that ways of collecting and analyzing information that
worked against the Soviet Union set up the United States to fail against a nonhierarchical, nonstate,
networked set of adversaries. The December 2004 U.S. legislation for the creation of a director of
national intelligence began, but hardly ended, the reshaping of U.S. intelligence. Greg Treverton will
explore the challenges of transforming the intelligence community to face the threats of today and
tomorrow, a transformation that has its parallels in the experiences of many other nations.
Understanding “Transformation” from the Perspective of the 20th Century Revolutions
in Military Affairs. Peter Wilson’s hypothesis is that “revolutions in military affairs” (RMAs) are
unique ways of war that interact with each other in a Hegelian cycle of thesis and antithesis. He will
examine that hypothesis from the perspective of the four RMAs of the 20th century. Then he will
turn to the current 21st-century concept of “transformation” to examine it in light of the hypothesis,
with the intent of exploring what might be the emerging next revolution in military affairs.
Faculty
The faculty is selected from the RAND professional staff. They draw on their own cutting-edge research
and a wealth of practical experience in presenting their courses.
Nora Bensahel is a senior political scientist at RAND, specializing in military strategy and doc-
trine. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A.
Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her recent work has examined stability
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, post-conflict reconstruction, military coalitions, and multilateral
intervention. Her recent publications include “Mission Not Accomplished: What Went Wrong with
Iraqi Reconstruction,” and The Counterterror Coalitions: Cooperation with Europe, NATO, and the
European Union.
Roger Cliff is a senior political scientist at RAND and was formerly Assistant for Strategy Development in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense. His research focuses
on Chinese defense policy and capabilities and U.S. defense strategy. Recent publications include
Entering the Dragon’s Lair: Chinese Anti-Access Strategies and Their Implications for the United States
and U.S.-China Relations After Resolution of Taiwan’s Status.
James Dobbins directs RAND’s International Security and Defense Policy Center. He has held State
Department and White House posts including Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Special Assistant
to the President for the Western Hemisphere, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for
the Balkans, and Ambassador to the European Community. He is the principal author of The Beginner’s
Guide to Nation Building (2007). He served as the Clinton Administration’s Special envoy for Somalia,
Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo and was the Bush Administration’s first envoy for Afghanistan.
John Gordon joined RAND in 1997 following a 20-year U.S. Army career. He has participated in
and led numerous studies for the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Departments of the Army
and Navy. He has led or participated in RAND research projects for the governments of the United
Kingdom, Sweden, Italy, and Germany. Additionally, he has authored or co-authored numerous RAND
reports and book-length works and more than 20 articles on defense topics in professional journals.
David Johnson is a retired Army officer who has been with RAND since 1998. His research focuses
on joint military transformation, doctrine and strategy; leader development; U.S. civil-military relations; and military history. His publications include: Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the
U.S. Army, 1917–1945; Modern U.S. Civil-Military Relations: Wielding the Terrible Swift Sword; and
Conventional Coercion Across the Spectrum of Operations: The Utility of Military Force in the Emerging
Security Environment.
Stuart Johnson is a senior research analyst at RAND, where he directs projects on military force
transformation and force planning and programming. He has been the Chair for Force Transformation Studies at the National Defense University, Senior Scientist at the Naval War College, and
Director of Systems Analysis at NATO headquarters. His publications have focused on the impact of
information on dominating the battlespace.
Seth G. Jones is a political scientist at RAND and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He has focused recently on U.S. counterinsurgency
operations in Afghanistan. He is the author of The Rise of European Security Cooperation (2007), and
has published articles in The National Interest, Security Studies, Chicago Journal of International Law,
International Affairs, and Survival, as well as The New York Times, Newsweek, Financial Times, and
International Herald Tribune.
John Matsumura is a senior engineer at RAND who has worked on a wide range of defense-related
research, with particular emphasis on understanding how advanced concepts and technologies can
improve military capability. During his more than 15 years at RAND, his research has ranged from
providing detailed assessments of system performance to shaping acquisition decisions and defense
policy.
Roger Molander is a senior research scientist at RAND. His current focus is terrorism and the
use of exercises to enable more effective decisionmaking on homeland security and counterterrorism
strategy, policy, and operational issues. He has also recently worked on the challenges presented to
critical U.S. infrastructures by major hurricanes and the challenges to the U.S. intelligence community presented by a possible influenza pandemic. A major component of his work is leading the
application of RAND’s “Day After…” exercise methodology to these issues.
Jennifer Moroney is a senior political scientist at RAND. Currently, she is leading studies for the
U.S. Army, Air Force, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency
that focus on U.S. government and allied security cooperation and building partnership capacity, stability operations, and coalition building. Her recent publications include “Building Partner Capacity
for Combating WMD Proliferation” in Joint Forces Quarterly (August 2006) and “NATO Stability
Teams: The Next Stage of Capability Development” in Joint Forces Quarterly (October 2006).
David Mosher is a senior policy analyst at RAND. He also teaches a course at Georgetown University on the technology of missiles and missile defense. His research currently focuses on proliferation;
terrorist acquisition of nuclear, biological, chemical (NBC) and radiological weapons; deterring and
responding to the use of NBC weapons in regional conflicts; individual preparedness for catastrophic
terrorism; and Army planning for homeland security. He was the study director of the American
Physical Society’s 2003 report on boost-phase defense.
Walter Perry is a retired U.S. Army officer who has been with RAND since 1984. He has conducted
extensive work on developing metrics for assessing military information systems. He recently co-led an
Army-sponsored Iraq study that resulted in a multi-volume, fully documented account of the conflict.
He has published extensively at RAND and in several scholarly journals.
Randall Steeb is a senior scientist at RAND, specializing in quantitative analysis of advanced
military and commercial systems. He has led efforts on distributed simulation (both constructive and
virtual), rapid reaction force improvements, advanced fire support systems, future air traffic control
systems, decision support systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, military operations in urban terrain,
combat vehicle design, robotic ground vehicles, and counter-IED studies.
Ron Trees is a senior operations research analyst at RAND who specializes in military analysis and
gaming. His recent work includes applying combat models to a variety of analytical problems examining potential conflicts in Korea and the Persian Gulf in order to assess the impacts of alternative
threats, concepts of operation, and force developments.
Greg Treverton is director of the RAND’s Center for Global Risk and Security. His recent work
has examined terrorism, intelligence and law enforcement, with a special interest in new forms of
public-private partnership. He has served in government for the first Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, handling Europe for the National Security Council, and as vice chair of the National
Intelligence Council. His latest books are Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information,
Cambridge University Press, 2001; and New Challenges, New Tools for Defense Decisionmaking
(edited), RAND, 2003.
Peter Wilson is a senior political scientist who specializes in defense policy and planning research.
He has conducted numerous studies for the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, the Office of the
Secretary of Defense, and various foreign clients. He has also coauthored a variety of RAND studies
and has published articles on a broad range of national security issues.
Pardee RAND Graduate School
The Frederick S. Pardee RAND Graduate School, established in 1970, has evolved into a model for
graduate programs in policy analysis. Students and faculty examine a wide range of issues, including
national security studies. Graduates typically go on to careers in government or private industry,
applying their research and strategic planning skills to such areas as defense, health, and education.
Through courses and workshops, the school and its parent organization, the RAND Corporation,
are at the forefront of defense-related policy analysis. The Pardee RAND Graduate School is a
founding member of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
About the Program
The course is offered at RAND’s Washington Office at Pentagon City, Arlington, VA. Sessions will
be held from 9:00 to noon and from 1:30 to 4:30 on Monday through Thursday, September 10–13,
2007, and from 9:00 to 1:00 on Friday, September 14, 2007. RAND faculty will be available for
informal discussion one-half hour before and after each session. Light refreshments will be provided.
A social hour is planned for the first evening of the course.
The fee for this course is $2,500. All materials are provided. Graduate students can take the course
(space available) for one credit at a cost of $1,100 with proof of full-time graduate student status.
Payment is due at the time of registration.
Enrollment is available via our secure Web site:
www.rand.org/about/edu_op/rand.course
or by contacting:
Mr. Paraag Shukla
RAND Corporation
1200 South Hayes Street
Arlington, VA 22202-5050
Phone: 703/413-1100, ext. 5529
Fax: 703/413-8111
Email: shukla@rand.org
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective
solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world.
What earlier participants had to say about the program:
“Excellent course.
I look forward to attending future courses at RAND.”
“The exercises were engaging and
provided substantive discussions of a high caliber.”
“Instructors were experts on their topics
and it was wonderful learning directly from them.”
“Presentations were challenging and
stimulated debate and discussion.”
“Well-balanced mix of personnel and perspectives in the class.”
“Overall, a wonderful impression.
The course was well worth the time.”
CP-381(7/07)