Publications

By the middle of the 21st century, ground forces will employ tens of thousands of robots, and the decisions of human commanders will be shaped by artificial intelligence; trends in technology and warfare make this a near certainty. The military organizations of the United States and its allies and partners must plan now for this new era of warfare.

The threat of nuclear attack by a great power or a rogue state is a major reason why every U.S. administration since the end of the Cold War has validated the need to maintain a safe, secure, and credible nuclear triad. Russia maintains a large stockpile of nuclear warheads and continues to adhere to military doctrine that indicates it might be willing to use nuclear weapons to coerce the United States and its allies in a crisis. Both Russia and China are funding multiple programs to modernize their nuclear arsenals, and the proliferation of advanced military technologies has allowed North Korea to fast-track its nuclear weapons development program.

For more than two decades, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has provided consistent, high-quality, and innovative research on defense strategy, budgets, and the security environment. CSBA’s mission today is to promote innovative thinking and debate about national security strategy, defense planning, and military investments, as well as to provide timely, impartial, and insightful analyses to senior members of the executive and legislative branches, the media, and the broader national security establishment to make informed decisions regarding strategy, security policy, and resource allocation.

Dr. Thomas Mahnken, testified before the House Armed Services Committee in a hearing on "Readying the U.S. Military for Future Warfare" on Tuesday, January 30, 2018.

Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John McCain and Ranking Member, Senator Jack Reed hosted a hearing to explore the U.S. policy and strategy in the Middle East. CSBA Counselor Eric Edelman was invited to give testimony.

Choosing analytic criteria for making strategic choices or judging historical outcomes is a recurring, if not universal, problem. It recurs because no general method for choosing appropriate criteria is known to exist despite the early hopes for methodological innovations ranging from macroeconomic models to operations research, systems analysis, and game theory.