NATO's Strategic Concept

Weapons of Mass Destruction: What Will Be New In The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept?
Rose Gottemoeller, Steven C. Házy Lecturer at CISAC
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 6/27/22

• A focal point of NATO’s new Strategic Concept is bound to be weapons of mass destruction.
• A particular question is whether NATO nuclear policy will undergo any changes under the current circumstances, when Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian leaders have been rattling the nuclear saber.
• NATO leaders seem set on making resilience against nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological attacks a centerpiece of alliance declaratory policy in the new Strategic Concept.
• NATO will likely resume the two-pronged approach to deterrence that it pursued during the Cold War: denying the enemy the ability to achieve its war aims by ensuring that NATO forces, populations, and territory will survive an attack (deterrence by denial), and threatening overwhelming retaliation against an attack (deterrence by punishment).
• NATO will want to prepare itself for an eventual return to negotiated restraint on weapons of mass destruction.

Ukraine and U.S. Politics

January 6 and Ukraine
Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at FSI
American Purpose, 6/27/2022

• The congressional Jan. 6 committee hearings and the war in Ukraine are actually directly connected.
• The slowing of Ukrainian military momentum has predictably led to fractures in Western unity compared to the unity expressed in the early weeks of the war, with calls for negotiations.
• Leaving Russia in control of Ukraine’s southeastern coastline would mean the economic strangulation of Ukraine over the coming years, and is in no way a sustainable outcome for Kyiv.
• The simplest path to a Russian victory in Ukraine would be the return to power of Trump and his hardcore supporters.
• The Ukrainians need to turn the military momentum back in their favor quickly and the United States and NATO need to keep pumping in new weapons and ammunition with renewed urgency.
• This needs to happen before the fall elections, to break the trend toward growing pessimism that will peel away Republican support.

Arming Ukraine

U.S. Should Send More HIMARS to 'Help Speed the End' of Putin's War
Michael McFaul, FSI Director
Newsweek, 7/17/2022

• The U.S. Department of Defense has had success arming Ukraine with HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems).
• The use of HIMARS is impacting Russians ability to fight on the frontlines in Ukraine.
• The U.S. needs to continue to supply Ukraine with more weapons in order to quickly end the conflict with Russia.
• The faster the U.S. sends more long range artillery and multiple rocket launchers to Ukraine, the sooner the Russian invasion of Ukraine will end.
• The Ukrainians are still fighting and dying for their sovereignty and democracy against an enemy that threatens not only Ukraine but European security as well.

U.S. Cyber Strategy

Confronting Reality in Cyberspace: Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet
Amy Zegart, FSI Senior Fellow at CISAC
Council on Foreign Relations, 7/14/22 (co-author)

• The utopian vision of an open, reliable, and secure global network has not been achieved and is unlikely ever to be realized. Today, the internet is less free, more fragmented, and less secure.
• U.S policymakers should confront reality and consolidate a coalition of allies and friends around a vision of the internet that preserves—to the greatest degree possible—a trusted, protected international communication platform.
• The U.S. should balance more targeted diplomatic and economic pressure on adversaries, as well as more disruptive cyber operations, with clear statements about self-imposed restraint on specific types of targets agreed to among its allies.
• Washington policymakers need to link more cohesively its policy for digital competition with the broader enterprise of national security strategy.
• U.S. goals moving forward will be more limited and thus more attainable, so it needs to act quickly to design strategies and tactics that can ameliorate an urgent threat.

Japan After Shinzo Abe

Cause to Fear What Comes After Abe's Death
Daniel Sneider, Lecturer in International Policy at the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy
Asia Times, July 11, 2022

• American analysts and commentators credit the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for the expansion of Japan’s security role, based on the reinterpretation of the constitutional restrictions on collective self-defense.
• The issues of wartime history are one realm where Abe’s dual role as statesman and as a domestic political leader came into visible conflict for outsiders.
• Abe’s removal from the Japanese political scene opens a door to what some American analysts fear is a dangerous moment.
• The shock over his assassination could shake Japanese confidence in their future, coming at a time of war in Europe, challenges from China, and questions about the future of American politics and credibility.
• Moves to rapidly raise defense spending, or even to use the death of Abe to push quickly for his long-held goal of revision of the anti-war clause of Japan’s constitution may now be more politically viable in Japanese politics.

Abortion and Data Collection

Federal Government Will Help States Punish Abortion — Using Our Phones
Riana Pfefferkorn, Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory
The Hill, 7/1/2022

• For years, federal law enforcement has quietly assisted its local counterparts with digital evidence collection. Post-Roe, it will inevitably do so in abortion cases as well, unless the attorney general intercedes.
• Phones are treasure troves of highly revealing information – health apps, Google searches, web browsers, payment information, call logs, and location data, to name a few areas.
• The police can seize and search someone’s phone if they have a warrant, but no warrant is necessary if she consents to the search — consent that may have been procured under pressure.
• Federal grants often pay for law enforcement’s mobile device forensic tools purchases, and local agencies without their own tools can access them through partnerships with larger agencies such as the FBI.
• Congress should pass a slate of actions for the executive branch to take in defense of Americans’ abortion rights.
• Attorney General Merrick Garland should issue a policy prohibiting every component of the Department of Justice, especially the FBI, from using any federal resources to assist state or local law enforcement agencies in abortion-related investigations and prosecutions.

Receive updates on our policy outreach and engagement straight to your inbox.

See All Commentary and Analysis

• Weekly Digest July 25, 2022
• Weekly Digest July 18, 2022
• Weekly Digest July 11, 2022
• Weekly Digest July 5, 2022