IDA Research Notes

IDA Research Notes is the Institute's semiannual research newsletter which highlights recent analytic activities being conducted by IDA staff. If you are interested in being added to the IDA Research Notes mailing list, please contact Ms. Elaine Timberlake. Please include your name, your organization's name, and mailing address.

Our Winter 2007 issue focuses on IDA's recent analyses of the Asia-Pacific Region. (Download Issue)

Articles include:

• Making American Security Partners Better Resource Managers (pdf of article)
• Collaborating with Singapore to Better Understand the U.S. and Asian Defense Environments (pdf of article)
• Intellectual Outreach to the Muslim World: The Council for Asian Terrorism Research (pdf of article)
• Inside North Korea (pdf of article)
• Red Teaming for Terminal Fury (pdf of article)
• Promoting Interagency Cooperation in Shaping U.S. - China Relations (pdf of article)
• Extending Trilateral Cooperation in Dealing with Disaster (pdf of article)
• Developing Human Capital in China - Implications for the United States (pdf of article)
• Nanotechnology in the Pacific (pdf of article)

 Issue Overview

United States national security is inextricably tied to the Asia-Pacific region. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the continuing struggle against terrorism may have pushed some Asian security concerns off the nightly news, but events – North Korean nuclear tests, concerns over U.S. dependence on consumer products from China, and the outsourcing of American high-technology jobs to India, just to name a few – remind us of the importance of maintaining strong and effective partnerships in Asia.

This issue of IDA Research Notes describes some IDA research programs focused on evolving U.S. strategic relationships in the Asia Pacific region. These projects fall into three general methodological groups:

•  IDA analytical and capacity-building partnerships with governments and research institutes across the region.
• Strategic and policy analyses of the rapidly changing landscape of Asia, focusing on issues related to the new nuclear triad, WMD proliferation, strategic communications, and countering terrorism.
• Technical analyses of the rise of China as a producer of scientists and engineers.

IDA has established ongoing bilateral and multilateral partnerships with a number of Asian agencies and institutions in an effort to forge cooperative responses to the challenges of 21st century security. The Defense Resource Management Studies program has sent teams of IDA analysts to Mongolia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines to help these Asian security partners improve their military capabilities and strengthen civil-military relations by building more effective defense resource management processes. IDA teams have also worked with the Taiwan Ministry of Defense to improve its cost analysis capability to better inform Taiwan’s decision-making on security needs. In a series of workshops on the Asian defense environment, IDA and Singaporean ministries and think tanks have explored a range of vital issues related to defense management and global security. IDA also has partnered with universities and security studies experts across the south and southeast Asian regions to create the Council of Asian Terrorism Research, a virtual think tank dedicated to fostering cooperative international studies and analysis to advance the common understanding of the challenges posed by violent, transnational terrorist movements.

A multi-year program of IDA studies has focused on Asia’s nuclear future. We have applied various analytical tools – including game theory, strategic personality analysis, Track Two engagement, Red Teaming, and interviews with North Korean defectors – to analyze the implications of the rise of new and potential Asian nuclear powers for U.S. and Asian regional security. The implications of China’s nuclear modernization and strategic force modernization for managing the evolving U.S.-China-Russia strategic relationship have been an area of special focus of several of the studies mentioned here. Political and strategic affairs on the Korean peninsula are similarly in flux. IDA’s access to political elites in South Korea as well as defectors from North Korea continues to produce studies that track the important trends in U.S.-Korean relations and their implications for U.S. security partnerships across Asia.

The rapid rise of Asian nations as economic, technological, and military players is a source of both satisfaction and concern for U.S. political and military leadership. The rise of China and India as major powers, the changing nature of U.S. alliances with Japan and the Republic of Korea, and the unpredictable nature of North Korea all pose major challenges for the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM). As part of a wide-ranging analytical program in support of PACOM, IDA Red Teams have participated in its annual Terminal Fury exercises, adding a dimension of cultural and political fidelity that enhances PACOM’s strategic communications capabilities. A series of IDA-led interagency workshops have helped promote more effective interagency cooperation in response to the changing economic and security relationships between the United States and China. Chinese potential to challenge U.S. engineering dominance is another concern. IDA studies of China’s contribution to nanotechnology research and its production of new engineering graduates point to important implications for U.S. economic and military competitiveness in the decades ahead.