Through its publications, INSS aims to provide expert insights, cutting-edge research, and innovative solutions that contribute to shaping the national security discourse and preparing the next generation of leaders in the field.
March 4, 2024
Lessons and Legacies of the War in Ukraine: Conference Report
The international conference titled “Lessons and Legacies of the War in Ukraine” took place on November 17, 2023, at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. Hosted by the University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies, the conference brought together perspectives from practitioners in the U.S. Government and uniformed military, along with experts from academia and the think tank community in the United States, United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Taiwan, to discuss the lessons that the United States and its allies should take from the first year and a half of the effort to repel Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
July 11, 2023
Priorities for NATO Partnerships in an Era of Strategic Competition
Since 2014, NATO has paid relatively little strategic attention to partnerships with nonmember states around the world. This study evaluates how select NATO partner states in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region see the strategic value of cooperating with NATO as the Alliance adapts for strategic competition, and it assesses the prospects for future cooperation.
Dec. 21, 2022
The Inevitable U.S. Return and the Future of Great Power Competition in South Asia
More than a year after America’s painful Afghanistan withdrawal, the future of U.S. and Western security interests in South Asia no longer relates mainly to the terrorism threat from Salafi jihadism, which has receded and reoriented there to be most menacing toward Pakistan and China. Instead, American security interests now require the proper posture for long-term Great Power competition (GPC) with China. Such a posture in South Asia requires patient, persistent growth in the slowly maturing, overt strategic security partnership with India and a quiet regeneration of a transactional one with Pakistan.
Dangerous Alliances: Russia’s Strategic Inroads in Latin America
Russia’s growing strategic presence in the U.S. near abroad empowers anti-U.S. populist authoritarian regimes while gaining potentially important access points for Russia in the Western Hemisphere. Understanding and developing a comprehensive response to this asymmetric threat should be a hemispheric priority as the United States faces numerous strategic challenges with waning influence in the region. The response should include ongoing proactive engagement in the media and on social platforms to create a fact-based counternarrative to Russian propaganda as well as coordination with regional allies to expose and counter Russian activities and the threats they pose.
This study evaluates how select NATO partner states in Europe and the Indo-Pacific region see the strategic value of cooperating with NATO as the Alliance adapts for strategic competition, and it assesses the prospects for future cooperation.
Aug. 9, 2022
Lawfare in Ukraine: Weaponizing International Investment Law and the Law of Armed Conflict Against Russia’s Invasion
This paper explores Ukraine’s innovative use of international investment law to hold Russia financially liable for damages arising out of its 2014 invasion and occupation of Crimea, and how this use of “lawfare” strategy can be further leveraged considering Russia’s renewed military invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
May 24, 2022
Gangs No Longer: Reassessing Transnational Armed Groups in the Western Hemisphere
Download PDFExecutive SummaryMS-13 (Mara Salvatrucha) in the Northern Triangle of Central America
Oct. 19, 2021
The PRC’s Changing Strategic Priorities in Latin America: From Soft Power to Sharp Power Competition
The willingness of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to give billions of dollars in loans across Latin America created the perception that the PRC is spending unlimited resources to woo allies in a region where the United States historically carries significant influence. Currently, the PRC is heightening this perception by delivering millions of COVID-19 vaccines to Latin America, buttressed by a robust media operation to shape the information environment. Far less visible are the PRC’s concerted regional efforts to reshape commercial supply chain architecture, cyber and telecommunications systems, and markets to depend on Chinese technologies, standards, and hardware for the PRC’s long-term benefit and America’s loss.
Sept. 28, 2021
Doing Well by Doing Good? Strategic Competition and United Nations Peacekeeping
This study thus evaluates the benefits that U.S. competitors have gained through their engagement in UN peacekeeping and assesses the extent to which these benefits necessarily challenge U.S. interests. It finds the threat to U.S. interests from Russian and Chinese participation in UN missions and deliberations to be most pronounced at UN headquarters.
June 14, 2021
Russia and Saudi Arabia: Old Disenchantments, New Challenges
The Joseph Biden administration can manage its recalibration of relations with Saudi Arabia without unwarranted fear that Riyadh will view Russia as a safe-harbor alternative to the United States on a myriad of state-to-state interactions that are most important to the Kingdom. While Russia’s transactional approach to foreign partners has at times given it advantages in some areas over the more value-based framework of U.S. foreign relations, there clearly have been limits to the Russian style of dealing with Saudi Arabia in this century.