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The role of information warfare in global strategic competition has become much more apparent in recent years. Today's practitioners of what this report's authors term hostile social manipulation employ targeted social media campaigns, sophisticated forgeries, cyberbullying and harassment of individuals, distribution of rumors and conspiracy theories, and other tools and approaches to cause damage to the target state. These emerging tools and techniques represent a potentially significant threat to U.S. and allied national interests. This report represents an effort to better define and understand the challenge by focusing on the activities of the two leading authors of such techniques-Russia and China. The authors conduct a detailed assessment of available evidence of Russian and Chinese social manipulation efforts, the doctrines and strategies behind such efforts, and evidence of their potential effectiveness. RAND analysts reviewed English-, Russian-, and Chinese-language sources; examined national security strategies and policies and military doctrines; surveyed existing public-source evidence of Russian and Chinese activities; and assessed multiple categories of evidence of effectiveness of Russian activities in Europe, including public opinion data, evidence on the trends in support of political parties and movements sympathetic to Russia, and data from national defense policies. The authors find a growing commitment to tools of social manipulation by leading U.S. competitors. The findings in this report are sufficient to suggest that the U.S. government should take several immediate steps, including developing a more formal and concrete framework for understanding the issue and funding additional research to understand the scope of the challenge

"Leap of Faith is the first comprehensive and objective history of the decision to invade Iraq. Mike Mazarr shows how the most impressive and experienced foreign policy team made the greatest strategic folly of the century"--

From Saddam Hussein's first bold threats in 1990 to the stunning ground phase of Desert Storm in early 1991, the crisis in the Gulf captured the world's attention. This high-tech, low-cost war was televised nightly from beginning to end, accompanied by on-the-spot interpretations of strategy and its implications. But what did we learn from this crisis? Did the United States bungle its attempts at discouraging Saddam's aggressive actions, or is deterrence simply not a reliable foreign policy tool? Are chemical weapons truly the "poor man's atom bomb"? Does the war represent a good model for future crises, or did circumstances make this war more of an anomaly than a precedent? How did the ail-volunteer U.S. force perform? By combining exciting, detailed vignettes of the crisis with insightful discussions of its consequences, this book opens up an informed debate concerning the true military and geopolitical lessons of the conflict. Representing a distillation of the best thinking on defense and foreign policy in Washington, Desert Storm also incorporates the testimony of the inside players during the crisis--the people who actually planned and fought the war. Combining academic rigor and in-depth military expertise, the authors challenge the complacency of the emerging conventional wisdom regarding the conflict, taking us beyond mere chronicling and instant analysis to a riveting reenactment of the war and the serious consideration of its long-term implications.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Preface -- Contents -- Figures and Tables -- Summary -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- CHAPTER ONE: The Role of International Order in U.S. Strategy -- Risks to the Current Order -- Roadmap and Methodology -- CHAPTER TWO: Defining the International Order -- The Post-World War II, Rules-Based Liberal Order -- The Order's Purposes and Its Effects -- Conclusion and Policy Implications -- CHAPTER THREE: Engines of International Order -- Rational Pursuit of Common Interests -- Interests of a Hegemonic Power -- Domestic Politics -- Socialization and Constructed Identities -- Systemic Effects -- Conclusion and Policy Implications -- CHAPTER FOUR: U.S. Approach to the International Order -- U.S. Visions of the International Order -- The International Order in U.S. National Security Strategy Documents -- U.S. Interests and Approaches to the International Order -- Conclusion and Policy Implications -- CHAPTER FIVE: Implications for a Research Agenda -- References

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Tables and Boxes -- Acknowledgments -- Part I Background -- 1 Risk, Judgment, and Uncertainty -- 2 Defining Risk -- 3 Approaches to Risk in National Security -- Part II Lessons of the Crisis-The Character of Risk -- 4 Risk and Uncertainty -- 5 Risk Is What We Make of It -- 6 Indifferent to Consequences -- 7 The Swans to Worry About Are Gray -- 8 Risk Becomes Personalized -- 9 What You Don't Know Can Destroy You: Ignorance and Correlated Risk -- 10 Risk, Incentives, and Culture

Cover -- Half-Title -- Title -- Copyright -- 1 Introduction: Information Technology and World Politics-The Growing Connection -- Part One: Information Technology and the "Global Village -- 2 Stateless Nations: "I Pledge Allegiance To … ? -- 3 Come Together? Debunking the Myth of the Internet and the Global Village -- 4 Subnational Groups and the Internet: An Irritant to Globalization, Not a Threat -- 5 The International Security Implications of Internet Use Via Satellite -- Part Two: Information Technology, Freedom, and Civil Society-Case Studies -- 6 Fujimori Meets Cabinas Publicas: The Internet, Journalism, and Democracy in Peru -- 7 Beyond the Internet: Democracy on the Phone? -- 8 China, Democracy, and the Internet -- 9 The Internet and the Evolution of Civil Society in Iran -- Part Three: The Internet and Economic Development -- 10 From Tea Sheds to Cyber Cafes: Could an Internet-Driven Modernization Strategy Succeed in India? -- 11 Brain Drain: An Unintended Consequence of Wiring Brazil? -- 12 www.AfricanOpportunity.com -- About the Authors -- Index.