News

CSBA Announces New Advisory Council of National Security and Defense Leaders

September 23, 2019

The Center Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) announced today that it has launched the CSBA Council, an advisory board composed of accomplished individuals whose interests in contemporary security debates coincide with CSBA’s mission. The CSBA Council will further the institute’s efforts to develop innovative, resource-informed defense concepts, promote public debate, and spur policies to advance the interests of the United States and its allies.

CSBA Launches Congressional Defense Seminar Series

September 10, 2019

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), the world’s premier center for understanding future international competition and conflict, announced today the launching of its inaugural Congressional Defense Seminar Series. This highly selective program will bring together professional staff members from Congress for an evening series of topical seminars that aims to provide staffers with the tools to master the conceptual foundations of defense policy as well as the intricacies of contemporary national security processes.

Meeting Threats Within Our Means: Spurring Innovation in the Pentagon by Thomas G. Mahnken

April 18, 2019 RealClearDefense

Developing innovative operational concepts and fielding new organizations and capabilities to overcome these challenges should become the urgent focus of Defense Department investment. In an era of constrained resources, those concepts and capabilities that offer the greatest strategic and operational leverage should receive preferential funding over those that do not.

Studies

Which Way the Dragon? Sharpening Allied Perceptions of China’s Strategic Trajectory

August 6, 2020 Ross Babbage, Jack Bianchi, Julian Snelder, Toshi Yoshihara, Aaron Friedberg and Nadège Rolland

Given the rapid pace of change throughout Asia in recent decades, assessing China’s longer-term trajectory – and that of the Indo-Pacific region as a whole – represents a huge challenge for defense and security planners. Attempts to predict China’s strategic posture 15 to 30 years from now are hampered by a far more volatile security environment than that which governed the Cold War era.

Studies

Uncovering China’s Influence in Europe: How Friendship Groups Coopt European Elites

July 1, 2020 Toshi Yoshihara, Jack Bianchi

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seeks to shape the external environment to its liking through several means, ranging from coercive uses of military power to economic statecraft to influence operations. Beijing’s global campaign to influence perceptions and policies abroad, in particular, has drawn media attention and, increasingly, government scrutiny. In Europe, the CCP has opened a broad political front that could have implications for the region’s long-term policies toward China and for transatlantic relations. There is thus a growing need for policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic to better understand the goals, strategies, and methods of the actors that promote CCP influence in Europe.

Studies

Dragon Against the Sun: Chinese Views of Japanese Seapower

May 19, 2020 Toshi Yoshihara

Over the past decade, the Chinese navy overtook Japan’s maritime service in critical measures of power, including fleet size, aggregate tonnage, and firepower. China eclipsing Japan in naval power could introduce unwelcome strategic trends. It may well fuel an even more intense competition between Tokyo and Beijing, two seafaring rivals that already regard each other with deep suspicion. Japan’s displacement at sea could increase the probability of deterrence failure in the next crisis. It threatens to undercut U.S. confidence in Japan’s capacity to fulfill its allied responsibilities, sowing acrimony within the security partnership.

Studies

Deterrence by Detection: A Key Role for Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Great Power Competition

April 14, 2020 Thomas G. Mahnken, Travis Sharp, Grace B. Kim

In an era of renewed great power competition, one of the most significant challenges the United States and its allies face is the need to deny China or Russia the ability to launch opportunistic acts of aggression against an ally or partner in the Western Pacific or Eastern Europe. There is increasing concern among defense policymakers in the United States and its allies and partners that China and Russia are developing the ability to launch aggression rapidly against states on their periphery under the cover of increasingly capable reconnaissance-strike networks.

Studies

COVID-19 Analysis and Policy Implications

April 7, 2020 Harrison Schramm, Kevin A. Chlan, Peter Kouretsos

The novel Coronavirus-19 is currently impacting all facets of American life. In this report, CSBA Senior Fellow Harrison Schram, Federal Executive Fellow Kevin Chlan, and Research Analyst Peter Kouretsos characterize both the immediate and long-term policy implications of this pandemic, with a focus how it will impact today’s U.S. Department of Defense as well as future American military capabilities.

Studies

Forging the Tools of 21st Century Great Power Competition

March 16, 2020 Thomas G. Mahnken

The U.S. national security community has, in recent years, begun to focus its attention on the need to compete with China and Russia. The move to embrace the reality of great power competition, and with it the prospect of great power war, comes after a three-decade respite from serious thinking about what it means to face an economically powerful and technologically sophisticated adversary in peace and in war. How can our governmental organizations, our defense planning premises and priorities, and the linkages among diverse elements of national power be revamped to focus our collective energies on a more demanding set of security challenges than has been the case since the end of the Cold War?

Which Way the Dragon? Sharpening Allied Perceptions of China’s Strategic Trajectory

Uncovering China’s Influence in Europe: How Friendship Groups Coopt European Elites

Dragon Against the Sun: Chinese Views of Japanese Seapower

Deterrence by Detection: A Key Role for Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Great Power Competition

COVID-19 Analysis and Policy Implications

Forging the Tools of 21st Century Great Power Competition

Strengthening the U.S. Defense Maritime Industrial Base: A Plan to Improve Maritime Industry’s Contribution to National Security

Featured Event

Report Release Webinar—Deterrence by Detection: A Key Role for Unmanned Systems in Great Power Competition

CSBA Announces New Advisory Council of National Security and Defense Leaders

CSBA Launches Congressional Defense Seminar Series

CSBA Appoints Roger M. Poor as Chief Financial Officer

Meeting Threats Within Our Means: Spurring Innovation in the Pentagon by Thomas G. Mahnken

CSBA welcomes William C. Bodie as its Director of Development

CSBA Statement on FY2020 Budget Request by Travis Sharp

Latest Publications

Which Way the Dragon? Sharpening Allied Perceptions of China’s Strategic Trajectory

Uncovering China’s Influence in Europe: How Friendship Groups Coopt European Elites

Dragon Against the Sun: Chinese Views of Japanese Seapower

Deterrence by Detection: A Key Role for Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Great Power Competition

COVID-19 Analysis and Policy Implications

Forging the Tools of 21st Century Great Power Competition