Speakers:
Prof Stephen Rosen, Professor, Harvard University
Jacqueline Newmyer, Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia
Brig Arun Sahgal, Consultant, IPCS
Venue: IPCS Conference Room
By Invitation Only
Programme:
1045-1100hrs: Tea/Coffee
1100-1110hrs: Opening remarks
1110-1120hrs: Brig Arun Saghal
1120-1135hrs: Prof Stephen Rosen
1135-1150hrs: Prof Jacqueline Newmyer
1150-1300hrs: Discussion
The discussion centered around China’s strategic culture in light of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). A differentiation between RMA pursued by the US and the Chinese RMA was made. While American RMA was a continuation of developments during the Cold War related to attempts at reducing collateral damage, Chinese focus was on information rather than precision. Chinese thinking on ‘winning without fighting’, 'information umbrella' as supplementing a nuclear umbrella and the idea of ‘warfare engineering’ was discussed. It was asserted that RMA in Chinese strategy would be extremely important in the early stages of conflict and in managing perceptions about capabilities and likely outcomes. Extrapolating from literature on Chinese strategy, it was noted that activities capable of influencing the outcome of conflict could begin months or years ahead of the actual conflict. These activities could include the use of proxies to interfere with military preparedness, the use of cyber warfare, disruption of early warning signals necessary for military preparation as well as physical attacks on civilian and military infrastructure.
Speakers Profile
Stephen Peter Rosen is the Beton Michael Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Affairs in the Government Department at Harvard University. In the 1980s, he served in the Office of Net Assessment at the Defense Department and there developed candidate United States strategies for East Asia before moving to the professional staff of the National Security Council where he developed and executed U.S. strategies for Central Asia. Dr. Rosen also served on the staff of the President's Commission on Integrated Long Term Strategy and taught in the Strategy and Policy Department of the U.S. Naval War College before returning to Harvard, where he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees, as an associate professor in 1990. Also in 1990, he joined Samuel Huntington at Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, which he has led since 2000. His current research focuses on strategic issues raised by the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Asia and the Middle East and on the national security implications of advances in bioscientific understanding of the human stress response. Dr. Rosen is the author of War and Human Nature (2004) and Societies and Military Power: India and Its Armies (1996). His first book, a study of military innovation called Winning the Next War (1994), won the Furniss Prize from the Mershon Center at Ohio State University.
Jacqueline Newmyer is President and CEO of the Long Term Strategy Group, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based research firm. For the last seven years, she has supported the Office of the Secretary of Defense and other US government sponsors on projects related to military modernization and strategy in East Asia and the Middle East. Dr. Newmyer has led seminars at the US Naval War College and the Naval Academy, in addition to holding postdoctoral fellowships at the Kennedy School and the Government Department at Harvard, where she also co-taught a prize-winning course called “Strategies of Tyrants.” She currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and has been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, Orbis, Policy Review, the American Interest, the Weekly Standard, World Politics Review, and War in History, among other outlets, in addition to appearing on CNN. Dr. Newmyer earned her BA, summa cum laude, at Harvard and holds a doctorate from Oxford.
RSVP: Ms Devyani Srivastava, Research Officer
Email: devyani@ipcs.org
Ext: 313
