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Despite the devastating losses experienced by the Russian military and both the Ukrainian military and civilian population following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, both sides have refrained from pursuing several escalatory options to date. Although Russia has escalated its attacks on Ukraine in several ways, including strikes against critical infrastructure and the civilian population, it has refrained from other options—notable given the high stakes for the Kremlin and the potential capabilities Russia could bring to bear in the conflict. However, if Russian territorial, personnel, and materiel losses continue to mount without improvements on the battlefield, President Vladimir Putin will face an unpalatable set of choices. In the extreme, the conflict offers plausible scenarios for Russia to become the first state to use nuclear weapons in warfare since 1945. This report evaluates the potential for further escalation in the conflict in Ukraine, including the prospects for escalation to Russian nuclear use. It does so by evaluating Russian and Ukrainian behavior in the conflict to date and identifying and assessing the escalation options still open to both sides. The report is intended to inform U.S. and NATO policymakers as they consider how to avoid further escalation of the conflict while assisting Ukraine in its efforts to defeat the Russian invasion and to better inform the public debate around these issues.

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Ensuring military access to the territory of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific in the event of a future conflict with China is a critical concern for U.S. policymakers. The physical and political geography of the region sharply limits U.S. options to such an extent that some allied and partner decisions to provide or refuse access could determine the outcome of a conflict. A clearer understanding of how and why U.S. allies and partners are likely to make conflict-phase access decisions, and what U.S. policymakers can do to affect the decisions ahead of time, is therefore essential. In this report, the authors examine how U.S. allies and partners make conflict-phase access decisions and how the United States and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) might be able to influence decisions in advance. The authors developed a framework for assessing such decisionmaking, then applied it to five specific allies and partners in the region (Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and India) to assess their strategic outlooks, internal politics, and economic incentives and to identify the peacetime policy levers that are most promising for affecting the states' decisionmaking.

National security --- Security, International --- Military bases, American --- Access denial (Military science) --- International cooperation. --- United States --- Indo-Pacific Region --- United States --- Indo-Pacific Region --- China --- Military policy. --- Foreign relations --- Foreign relations --- Foreign relations --- Foreign relations

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"U.S. policies implementing the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) have increasingly restricted military activities over the past two decades. Greater concern for civilian casualties in particular has motivated the U.S. military to take increasing precautions in its planning and deterred it from undertaking military actions anticipated to place civilians at risk. Despite the clear impact of such implementations on military operations in recent years, however, relatively little attention has been paid to assessing their potential future direction. This report aims to fill this gap by surveying potential strategic, technological, and normative trends that may affect the future evolution of U.S. LOAC implementation, and assessing the resulting implications for the U.S. military. The report's assessment of these trends suggests that the U.S. military is likely to find it increasingly difficult to reconcile its operational responsibilities with political pressures to adopt highly restrictive implementations of the LOAC in the years to come, highlighting the need for policy options to mitigate both operational and political risks. The types of adversaries and operational environments that the United States is likely to face will tend to increase the difficulty of distinguishing between combatants and civilians and limiting collateral damage. At the same time, normative trends are likely to further increase the pressure on the United States to adopt restrictive rules of engagement and other implementations of the LOAC that emphasize the importance of avoiding civilian casualties, or place domestic public and foreign partner support for military operations at risk."--Back cover.

Military law --- War (International law) --- Military doctrine --- United States.

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In recent years, Iran has risen as one of the most significant regional challenges faced by the United States, with Tehran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, support for terrorist groups and militias, cyber activities and influence operations, and military interventions in the region. In this report, the authors assess when, where, why, and how Iran conducts military interventions and identify key signposts of Iranian military interventions that can be used as early warning indicators for U.S. military planners and that can guide decisions about the use of forces in the Middle East region. They identify the factors that are most likely to shape Iran's military intervention decisions and analyze those factors as they relate to two detailed case studies: (1) Iran's involvement in the ongoing Syrian civil war and (2) Iran's post-2014 intervention in Iraq to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The future of great-power competition and how it plays out in the Middle East, coupled with the regional landscape, are important factors that will shape how Iran sees its military activities. Although a move away from a period of greater U.S. power in the region would seem to provide fewer threats and more opportunities for Iran, the relations among Beijing, Moscow, and Washington and how they affect Iranian perceptions of the regional balance of power bear careful monitoring.

Intervention (International law) --- Government policy --- IS (Organization) --- Iran --- Syria --- Iran. --- Foreign relations. --- History