Governance

From July 11-12, 2023, NATO leaders gathered in Vilnius, Lithuania for one of the most significant NATO summits in history. This timely brief by Eric Rosenbach, Grace Jones, and Olivia Leiwant serves as a background piece on Ukraine’s history with NATO, potential future pathways for accession, and the operational impact Ukraine’s NATO membership could have on the alliance. 

The American public is increasingly losing trust and confidence in the military and has a lower propensity to serve. This has significant implications for the safety and security of the nation. To overcome these issues, the Army must develop a long-term strategy to create a positive organizational culture. This requires senior leaders to focus on educating and training junior Army leaders on how to improve the organizational climate while also modernizing bureaucratic processes that frustrate soldiers and undermine morale.

Intelligence agencies have struggled to define how open source intelligence fits into its broader work, but the wide breadth of publicly available information about the Ukraine conflict, combined with proactive disclosures of classified information, are providing some clarity about OSINT’s role. Lauren Zabierek and Maria Robson Morrow spoke with the Federal News Network on how the public and private sectors are leveraging open source intelligence, including challenges and opportunities.

With the looming threat of increased conflict in Ukraine, businesses around the world should be preparing now, write Paul R. Kolbe, Maria Robson Morrow, and Lauren Zabierek. Corporate security and intelligence teams have said they’re seeing an increase in cyber probes, and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the European Central Bank have both issued warnings about potential Russian cyberattacks. At this point, companies should be taking the following steps: 1) Review business continuity plans; 2) Closely examine supply chains; 3) Actively engage peer networks, vendors, and law enforcement around cyber intrusions; 4) Instill a security mindset in employees; and 5) Make sure corporate intelligence and IT teams are working closely together on solutions.

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

Joseph Nye writes that although the United States has long commanded the technological cutting edge, China is mounting a credible challenge in key areas. But, ultimately, the balance of power will be decided not by technological development but by diplomacy and strategic choices, both at home and abroad.

The powerful effects of artificial intelligence are already being felt in business, politics, medicine, war, and almost every other domain of twenty-first century life. For all of its positive potential, the technology presents significant risks that are best addressed sooner rather than later.

The U.S. should accept with humility its inability to fully eliminate terrorism. Specifically, U.S. policy must balance “ends, ways, and means;” establish clear and achievable objectives; adopt efficient, effective, and resource-sustainable strategies; ensure synchronization of diplomatic and military efforts; build alliances to share the burden of countering terrorism; and leverage cooperative mechanisms and regional partnerships to increase the capacity and willingness of regional states to defend their sovereignty and contribute to multinational coalitions against terrorism.  A balanced, integrated, and synchronized strategy encompassing defense, diplomacy, economic, and humanitarian assistance lines of effort should be cornerstone of a revamped foreign policy in the coming decades.

Tarah Wheeler and Ciaran Martin write that banning ransomware payments may be seen as as unwarranted state interference in private commerce, but they believe that a coordinated country level response would rectify the glaring deficiency in the current reality: the near-total privatization of national security risk. 

Even if formal cybersecurity treaties are unworkable, it may still be possible to set limits on certain types of civilian targets, and to negotiate rough rules of the road. Whether U.S. President Joe Biden succeeded in launching such a process at his meeting last month with Russian President Vladimir Putin may become clear soon.