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The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), from its most-senior leaders to military operators in the field, has expressed a strong commitment to complying with the law of war and to mitigating civilian harm for legal, moral, and strategic reasons and for reasons related to mission-effectiveness. But above and beyond its law of war obligations, DoD implements policies and procedures at multiple levels to mitigate civilian harm during armed conflict. In this report, researchers from the RAND Corporation and CNA conduct an independent assessment of DoD standards, processes, procedures, and policies relating to civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations. In particular, the researchers examine DoD's efforts to assess, investigate, and respond to civilian harm, as well as DoD's resourcing and structure to address such issues. The researchers outline their findings and recommendations for how DoD can improve in these areas.

The mystery surrounding the so-called Havana Syndrome-an unexplained illness first experienced by U.S. Department of State personnel stationed in Cuba in late 2016-illustrates the challenge of mustering a response to a national security threat when the threat, the underlying method, and the actor behind the threat are not understood with certainty. This report explores the applicability of existing concepts for deterrence and compellence using brief case studies. In addition to Havana Syndrome, the authors explore the SolarWinds cyberattack, in which hackers linked to Russian intelligence conducted a massive cyberattack against American companies and government agencies, and the Chinese Communist Party's connections to organized crime syndicates around the world. The core finding is that few of the standard response options are effective against these types of threats. Without certainty about who is conducting the actions, strategies that rely on threats of punishment, normative taboos, or rallying of international condemnation are largely ineffective. Denial-by-defense strategies are thus likely to be the most effective but may be difficult to design effectively if the method underlying the attacks is poorly understood.

The battle for Raqqa, Syria, seemed like a perfect storm of strategic and operational challenges. When the city was finally liberated from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in October 2017, 60 to 80 percent of it was estimated to be uninhabitable. In fact, the battle for Raqqa is a cautionary tale about civilian harm in 21st-century conflicts. The purpose of this report is to discuss how the U.S. military-which is the best-trained and most technologically advanced military in the world, is supported in Operation Inherent Resolve by an international coalition of more than 80 countries, and was partnered in Raqqa with a well-respected militia force on the ground-could cause significant civilian harm despite a deeply ingrained commitment to the law of war. In this report, RAND researchers study the causes of civilian harm in Raqqa and provide insights into how the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) can reduce civilian harm in future operations.

Russia launched its war against Ukraine in early 2022, expecting a rapid victory. Ukrainian resistance in the ensuing months not only dispelled any notion of that outcome but has raised the possibility that Ukraine might win the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has staked everything on this invasion, and he is unlikely to accept defeat without exhausting significant resources at his disposal. This dynamic between Ukrainian momentum and Russia's desperation has raised concerns that Russia might resort to nuclear escalation to turn the tide of the war. Given this reality, U.S. policymakers and planners must consider appropriate responses. In this report, the authors attempt to identify such responses and levers using a game theory approach to the situation. They do so by first providing an overview of Russia's nuclear doctrine and capabilities, considering its discourse on nuclear escalation and declaratory policies relevant to the possible use of nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs). They then look at Russia's nuclear escalation through the lens of game theory, examining which potential levers for shifting decisionmaking and outcomes exist in the game. Finally, they assess how a particularly relevant historical example, the Kargil War, sheds light on possible U.S. responses for avoiding escalation without conceding to adversary demands.

This report explores how U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific are likely to respond to military access requests in the event of a conflict with China and what policy levers the United States might use in peacetime to affect those responses.

Since 2016, Plan Blue wargames have explored scenarios that depict large-scale war fights against state adversaries in order to help U.S. Department of the Air Force (DAF) leaders better understand the demands of these potential war fights, evaluate the capabilities and limitations of programmed forces to meet those demands, and test new approaches to projecting power. The 2021 iteration of the game (Plan Blue 21) was set in the Arctic, in keeping with the Department of Defense's 2019 Arctic strategy, which calls for enhancing capabilities for operations in the region and strengthening the rules-based order there. The purpose of the game was to increase the DAF's understanding of the capabilities, posture, allied command, control, and communication relationships that may be called for to support future Arctic operations. Focusing on competition with Russia in the year 2030, game play took place in the context of steady-state competition and crisis operations rather than large-scale combat, and it explored the intersection of two key trends: (1) changing environmental conditions and (2) the completion of current Russian investments in new military capabilities and infrastructure in the Arctic. Plan Blue 21 was also specifically designed to test the extent to which capabilities for persistent and visible intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance can provide real-time situational awareness and potentially contribute to "deterrence by detection." U.S. players in Plan Blue 21 benefitted greatly from the participation of officers from key allied and partner countries that have important interests in and capabilities for operations in the Arctic region.

The authors (1) identify tasks that the Chinese military would likely be assigned in peacetime competition with the United States and in a hypothetical low-intensity conflict and (2) analyze potential vulnerabilities in execution of those tasks.

Researchers from RAND Corporation develop a new concept for strategic disruption by special operations forces, involving proactive campaigns to delay, degrade, or deny an adversary's ability to achieve core interests through its preferred strategies. This research provides a clear framework, grounded in concrete historical examples, for how strategic disruption campaigns can create the time, space, and opportunity for strategic gains across diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power. For the special operations community, this research provides a rubric for how future campaigns can disrupt nation-state competitors' efforts to win without fighting, particularly when potentially escalatory options rooted in conventional deterrence are ill-suited or infeasible to achieve similar disruptive effects.

In this report, the authors consider how the United States can enhance engagement with highly capable allies and partners to improve interoperability by identifying some of the main barriers to security cooperation with these countries.

Using four historical case studies, the authors found that limited less-hardline approaches can lead to durable but narrow gains. However, issues left unaddressed by these approaches may still undermine the relationship over the long term.