Based on an analysis of security cooperation (SC) data and state fragility scores for 107 countries in 1991-2008, the report describes the correlation between provision of SC by the United States and a reduction in partner state fragility.

Much activity is being aimed at revising the approach to planning and implementing Stabilization, Security, Transition, and Reconstruction (SSTR) operations. The changes are meant to ensure a common U.S. strategy rather than a collection of individual departmental and agency efforts and on involving all available government assets in the effort. The authors find that some elements essential to the success of the process are not yet in place.

What is the potential for a divergence in views among civilian and military elites (sometimes referred to as the civil-military gap) to undermine military effectiveness? Although a variety of differences were found among the views of military and civilian survey respondents, these differences mostly disappeared when the authors focused on the attitudes that are pertinent to civilian control of the military and military effectiveness.

Discusses the Army's current process for planning and resourcing its security cooperation activities and explores avenues for improvement. In the realm of security cooperation--peacetime activities undertaken by the U.S. armed services with other armed forces and countries--the U.S. Army's current planning process is exceedingly complex and difficult to coordinate, control, and measure. This monograph seeks to help the U.S. Army improve its ability to assess future demand for resources devoted to security cooperation and to evaluate the impact of these demands upon the resources available to the Army.

This report outlines a process-based heuristic model for anticipating ethnic and communitarian conflict. The model is demonstrated through it's application to case studies, two retropective (Yugoslavia and South Africa) and two prospective (Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia).

One-liner: A framework for intelligence analysts to use to think systematically about the potential for the rise of a peer competitor to the United States. The potential emergence of a peer competitor is probably the most important long-term planning challenge for the Department of Defense. This report addresses the issue by developing a conceptual framework of how a proto-peer (meaning a state that is not yet a peer but has the potential to become one) might interact with the hegemon (the dominant global power). The central aspect of the framework is an interaction between the main strategies for power aggregation available to the proto-peer and the main strategies for countering the rise of a peer available to the hegemon. Then, using exploratory modeling techniques, the pathways of the various proto-peer and hegemon interactions are modeled to identify the specific patterns and combinations of actions that might lead to rivalries. The dominant power has an array of options available to limit the growth of its rivals or to change their ultimate intentions. Too confrontational a strategy, however, risks making a potential neutral power into a foe, while too conciliatory a stance may speed the growth of a competitor. Exploratory modeling suggests which attributes of the countries are most important and the sensitivity of the dominant power to perception errors.