CRS on the international security environment

The Congressional Research Service issued a report recently that looks at the potential defense implications of a shift in the international security environment.

The March 30 report notes that some observers have concluded that the international security environment has changed from the post-Cold War era into a new phase involving a "renewed great power competition with China and Russia and challenges by these two countries and others to elements of the U.S.-led international order that has operated since World War II."

The end of the Cold War era "prompted a broad reassessment by the Department of Defense and Congress of defense funding levels, strategy, and missions that led to numerous changes in DOD plans and program," according to the CRS report.

The shift in the international arena that began in late 2013 "has become a factor in the debate over the size of the U.S. defense budget in coming years, and over whether the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 . . . should be further amended or repealed," the report states.

Additional implications of that shift, according to CRS, include:

* grand strategy and geopolitics as part of the context for discussing U.S. defense budgets, plans, and programs;

* U.S. and NATO military capabilities in Europe;

* capabilities for countering so-called hybrid warfare and gray-zone tactics employed by countries such as Russia and China;

* capabilities for conducting so-called high-end warfare (i.e., large-scale, high-intensity, technologically sophisticated warfare) against countries such as China and Russia;

* maintaining U.S. technological superiority in conventional weapons;

* nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence;

* speed of weapon system development and deployment as a measure of merit in defense acquisition policy; and

* minimizing reliance in U.S. military systems on components and materials from Russia and China.

Consequently, the report states:

The issue for Congress is whether to conduct a broad reassessment of U.S. defense analogous to the 1993 Bottom-Up Review (BUR), and more generally, how U.S. defense funding levels, strategy, plans, and programs should respond to changes in the international security environment. Congress's decisions on these issues could have significant implications for U.S. defense capabilities and funding requirements.