The Military Balance 2023 Pdf Free Download __LINK_

The assessment covers the policies and security forces of Iran, the Arab Gulf states, and the U.S. role in the Gulf. It sets out the baseline conditions now shaping the balance and addresses three major changes in the Gulf military balance:

The assessment presents a mix of narratives, quantitative data, maps, and charts that address each aspect of these changes in the balance. It draws heavily on data provided by the reports from IISS and SIPRI, excerpts from official U.S. government sources like the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Energy Information Administration (EIA), as well as a wide range of work from other institutions, think tanks, and media sources.

The Military Balance 2023 Pdf Free Download

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It should be noted that the Coronavirus may have a massive future impact on U.S. deployments and national security expenditures, Arab military expenditures and arms imports, and Iranian military expenditures and domestic military production.

These events have led to changes in the levels of national influence and the military balance that extend from Israel and the Levant to Yemen and the Red Sea. They also reflect the impact of the growing political-military struggle between Iran (and its supporters) and the United States and most Arab Gulf states, a growing emphasis on asymmetric and gray area conflicts, and major changes in the role of outside powers like Russia and Turkey.

This part of the assessment not only assesses the naval balance, it looks beyond the current focus on the Al Quds Force to include all of the asymmetric elements in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the regular Iranian military forces or Artesh, and other key parts of the Iranian government. It also uses maps and charts to highlight the fact that these forces are sometimes more important in terms of their ongoing political and strategic impact than their potential impact on large-scale war fighting. This is further illustrated by a graphic and map analysis of the critical strategic importance of the flow of petroleum and liquid natural gas exports.

This assessment is being distributed at a time when the it is clear that the Coronavirus could have a major impact on the regional balance, but that impact is still so unclear that it is not possible to address in any detail. Even if one only examines the major ongoing trends that now affect the Gulf balance, however, it is clear that changes are taking place in virtually every aspect of the political and strategic alignments that shape the balance. The days in which a relatively simple set of divisions between a bloc formed by the United States and the Arab Gulf states, and a smaller bloc of states and non-state actors led by Iran, are long over. The major changes reshaping the Gulf balance include the following trends, many of which have come to favor Iran:

These shifts have interacted with other important shifts in the regional power. First, they have allowed Iran to become a far more successful competitor than its military resources might indicate. If one examines the balance in abstract terms, the United States and the Arab Gulf states should have a decisive advantage.

The force comparisons throughout this analysis show that the Arab Gulf states alone have more capable conventional forces than Iran, and the tables that follow show that that the Arab Gulf states are spending and modernizing their forces far more quickly than Iran, and that there are many areas where the total forces of the Arab Gulf states now have much larger and more modern total forces. If one examines U.S. force and power projection capabilities, once again, the United States alone has the military strength to dominate the region. The combination of total Arab Gulf and U.S. forces are vastly superior in both quantitative and qualitative terms, and allies like Britain and France can deploy significant additional power projection forces.

Iraq has been the exception to these trends in Arab Gulf forces. In spite of its success in the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq survived a major series of blunders and defeats in the Iran-Iraq War after 1982 because it received extensive Western and Russian aid in reorganizing, modernizing, and expanding its military forces, and massive aid from its Arab neighbors. As a result, Iraq was able to defeat Iran to the point where Iran was forced to withdraw from its gains in Iraq after 1984 and accept a ceasefire in 1988. It was Iraq that emerged as the dominant military power in the region.

This near power vacuum in Iraq has made the current U.S.-Iranian struggle for influence in Iraq a critical part of the current military balance, and it is a struggle that is far from clear that the United States and the Arab Gulf states will win.

Iran is also now in the process of carrying out another critical set of military developments by improving its missile and rocket forces. Ever since the Iran-Iraq War, Iran has developed ballistic missiles in an effort to compensate for its inability to modernize its air force and air defense capabilities and offset its reliance on aging U.S. combat aircraft, export versions of Russian and Chinese aircraft, and decades old designs of surface-to-air missiles. As various sections of this report show, Iran demonstrated in 2019 that it had made major advantages in conventional precision strike capability in both its ballistic missiles and in its air breathing cruise and unmanned combat aerial vehicles when it executed precision strikes on a U.S. occupied base in Iraq and on Saudi oil facilities. It also has shown that it can deploy systems that can be used by allied non-state actors like Hezbollah and the Houthi.

And yet, events may also change behavior. The Coronavirus may have a massive future impact on how the Gulf state perceive their security challenges and the relative priority of civil versus national security expenditures. It may lead to cuts in U.S. deployments, Arab military expenditures and arms imports, and Iranian military expenditures and domestic military production.

On July 19, 2021, the National Committee hosted a virtual program with Lyle Goldstein and Oriana Skylar Mastro to discuss China/Taiwan/U.S. military relations. NCUSCR President Stephen Orlins moderated and NCUSCR Director Admiral Dennis Blair offered commentary.

Many analysts argue that China will soon dominate East Asia militarily. In reality, China is far from achieving this goal and will remain so for the foreseeable future. China's maritime neighbors have developed antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities that can deny China sea and air control throughout most of its near seas, and China cannot afford the power-projection capabilities it would need to overcome these A2/AD forces. This regional balance of power enables the United States to preserve the territorial status quo in East Asia at moderate cost and risk to U.S. military forces.

For 70 years, the U.S. military has dominated the seas and skies of East Asia, enjoying almost total freedom of movement and the ability to deny such freedom to enemies. Now, however, China may be able to destroy U.S. ships, aircraft, and bases within 500 miles of China's territory and disrupt the satellite and computer networks that underpin U.S. military power throughout East Asia.1 Many American analysts fear that China could use these antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities to hold the U.S. military at bay while enforcing its expansive territorial claims, which include most of the East and South China Seas.2 Left unchecked, some analysts fear, China will eventually become the hegemon of East Asia and start projecting military power into other regions, including the Western Hemisphere.3

The debate about how the U.S. military should respond to China's A2/AD capabilities has focused on two options. One option would be to gear up by preparing to wipe out China's offensive forces at the outset of a conflict.4 The other would be to give up by withdrawing U.S. forces from East Asia, abrogating U.S. alliances in the region, and granting China a sphere of influence.5

This strategy, according to its proponents, would maintain deterrence by denying China the possibility of a decisive military victory while enhancing crisis stability by reassuring China that it will not suffer a massive attack on its homeland on the first day of a war. The potential Achilles' heel of the strategy, of course, is that it requires China's neighbors to hold the line against Chinese expansion for extended periods of time and perhaps indefinitely. Are they up to the task?

To date, there has been little rigorous research on this vital question. With few exceptions, American studies on the East Asian military balance suffer from a bilateral bias: they focus on U.S. and Chinese capabilities while ignoring the capabilities of China's neighbors.8 For example, the most detailed studies of the military balance in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea assume, implausibly, that Taiwan and Southeast Asian nations do nothing in their own defense and that the U.S. military has to save the day single-handedly.9 As a result of this bilateral bias, it remains unclear whether the denial strategy described above is a viable option for the United States.

To address this shortcoming, this article assesses the local military balance in East Asia. Specifically, I analyze the extent to which China's neighbors can deny China sea and air control in the East and South China Seas and prevent China from conquering Taiwan.

Admittedly, this is a limited ambition, as I evaluate only the capabilities of China's neighbors, not their resolve to use them. China's neighbors have suggested, in both word and deed, that they would fight to defend their sovereignty and maritime claims, but one can imagine scenarios in which some of them shrink in the face of Chinese coercion. Without a systematic analysis of these nations' domestic politics, it is impossible to know how likely such scenarios are. That said, figuring out whether China's neighbors could repel Chinese military expansion is a vital first step in determining whether they would do so. e24fc04721