This volume is the product of a conference, jointly sponsored by the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy (CAPP) and the Taiwan-based Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies (CAPS). The meeting was held in Washington, D.C., from 8 to 11 July 1999. The meeting brought together many of the nation's top experts to assess the last 20 years of trends in Chinese civil-military relations, force structure, doctrine, and capabilities, as well as the state of the China military studies field. The resulting volume is a comprehensive retrospective on Western research on the People's Liberation Army in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Support for the publication of this volume was provided by RAND's National Security Research Division (NSRD) through it's International Security and Defense Policy Center (ISDPC).

The decisions that shape the policy of weapons procurement are an important area of national security policy. This is all the more true for China, which during recent decades has vacillated between different sources and directions of military build-up. This book explores the politics of military procurement in China under the successive leaderships of Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. It shows how China’s political and military leaders have sought to adjust military procurement policy to meet China's strategic objectives, to relate it to non-military needs, to strike a balance between the import of weapons and indigenous production, and to determine the connections between hardware and other components of military power. Exploring in detail five major shifts in the nation’s military procurement, it traces the considerations and negotiations among China's civilian and military leaderships. By doing so, it offers both a conceptual framework and empirical grounds for evaluating the factors that shape China's military procurement directions, as well as their limitations, prospects, and operational implications. As the first book to study comprehensively and systematically the attributes shaping China's military procurement, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics, Chinese history and military and strategic studies.

Includes Reports (R-series), Rand Memorandums (RM-series), papers (P-series), and Books.

How military commanders interpret the rules of targeting impacts not only on whether civilians and civilian objects are harmed in the course of a military operation, but also on the scale of harm that ensues. Commentators have queried whether military commanders observed the law even when parties to a conflict acted in accordance with mandates to protect civilians, as was the case when a coalition of states bombed targets in Libya in 2011. However, limited guidance is publicly available on how military commanders apply these rules on the battlefield. In order to allow military commanders to exercise judgment in determining what steps they are required to take to spare civilians in a specific set of circumstances, the rules of targeting are formulated in an open-ended fashion, which complicates one’s ability to evaluate whether a particular military operation complies with the law. By examining case studies ranging from Operation Desert Storm in 1991 to Operation Protective Edge in 2014, this book addresses lacunae in current scholarship. It puts forward principles which capture how military commanders deliberate while interpreting what the rules of targeting require in particular scenarios. International humanitarian law, this book contends, places a duty on attackers to assume risk in order to mitigate danger to civilians. Drawing on the field of psychology, this study provides an explanation of how military commanders assess when circumstances do not permit them to inform civilians about a forthcoming attack.

In this timely volume, M. Parvizi Amineh brings together a multitude of studies of modern Asian postcolonial states and societies. This part of the world has undergone major transitions over the past decade and is quickly becoming a major player in international policy and the global economy. Grounded in the most recent scholarship, State, Society and International Relations in Asia covers several large-scale global concerns, including nationalism, democratization, corruption, religious tension, globalization, and regionalization.

International politics have become ever more volatile over the last decade, increasing the risk of large-scale military violence. Yet the precise character of future war will depend on a range of factors that relate to adversaries, allies, technology, geographical scope and multiple domains of warfighting. Few would question that land forces will be important also in the foreseeable future. However, given that the battlefield is in a state of transformation, so is the mission, purpose and utilization of land forces. Indeed, the future conduct of land warfare is subjected to serious and important questions in the face of large and complex challenges and security threats. Advanced Land Warfare explores the evolving role of land forces, paying particular attention to the changes that have taken place in the art of commanding and executing combat, as well as the role of rapid technological innovation and information dissemination in shaping warfare. The book provides insights into key contemporary developments in land warfare and presents case studies on land tactics and operations in different national contexts, drawing on the best of theory, practice, and professional experience and featuring chapters written by leading international scholars and practitioners. Relating to the realities of the modern battlefield, the book addresses a number of critical questions about land tactics and operations, combining a conceptual basis with empirical examples of tactical thinking and practice and emphasising the importance of understanding the perspectives of various national armies, in order to provide a current understanding of the central issues of land warfare. An open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence.

This work provides an in-depth and up-to-date examination of civil-military relations in China. It reflects the significant changes taking place in Chinese society and their impact on the civil-military dynamic, with particular attention to how the military will fit in with the new class of entrepreneurs. Rather than focusing exclusively on elite Party-Army relations, the book examines civil-military relations from various vantage points: at "the center" and in the provinces; between civilian leaders and military leaders; from a strictly military perspective and from a civilian perspective; and from the angle of specific issue areas. Chapters explore issues, such as the impact of AIDS, the defense budget, the emerging dynamic between the military and China's new leadership, resettling demobilized troops back into civilian life, and the role of the militia, reserve units, and other civilian groups. The contributors are highly respected specialists in China studies, including political scientists, historians, PLA specialists, and sociologists. They present a vibrant portrait of the new civil-military dynamic in the PRC within the complex social changes that China is exploring today.

This book uses case analyses and industry insights and blends them with forays into philosophy and ethics to conceptualise the mismatch between human values and the values inherent in an increasingly technologized world. Bringing together contributors from the disciplines of law, politics, philosophy, and communication studies, this volume develops an interdisciplinary vocabulary for thinking about the questions and antinomies of human-technology interaction while also resisting any deceptively straightforward synthesis. The topics discussed include the competition over and regulation of technology, the harm induced by autonomous technologies, and the place and role of humans in a world that is undergoing rapid and radical change.

This volume explains the beginnings and expansion of China's space program, analyzing how China is now able to hold such ambitions and how the interaction between technology, politics and economics has influenced the Chinese space program. It opens by tracing out the earlier development of the space program and identifying the successes and problems that plagued this initial effort, later focusing upon its development over the past decade and into the future. As China is now able to reach into outer space with its machines and, since 2003, with its humans, the authors examine how this move from a non-participant status to a state operating at the highest level of space activities has confirmed its potential place as the new economic and military superpower of the twenty-first century. They also demonstrate how recent successes mean that China is now confronted by an issue previously encountered by other space ‘powers’, such as the United States and the former Soviet Union: what is the value of the space program, given its high costs and likelihood of dramatic failure? Chinese Space Policy will be of great interest to students of space studies, Chinese politics, security studies, and international relations in general.

This book provides a comprehensive assessment of China's military capabilities in 2000 and 2010, with projections for 2020. Recognizing that military power encompasses more than weaponry, it develops an original empirical framework for measuring militaries that also includes doctrine, training, and organizational structure.