RAND

Recent high-profile outbreaks, such as Ebola and Zika, have illustrated the transnational nature of infectious diseases. Countries that are most vulnerable to such outbreaks might be higher priorities for technical support. RAND created the Infectious Disease Vulnerability Index to help U.S. government and international agencies identify these countries and thereby inform programming to preemptively help mitigate the spread and effects of potential transnational outbreaks.
The authors employed a rigorous methodology to identify the countries most vulnerable to disease outbreaks. They conducted a comprehensive review of relevant literature to identify factors influencing infectious disease vulnerability. Using widely available data, the authors created an index for identifying potentially vulnerable countries and then ranked countries by overall vulnerability score. Policymakers should focus on the 25 most-vulnerable countries with an eye toward a potential "disease belt" in the Sahel region of Africa.
The infectious disease vulnerability scores for several countries were better than what would have been predicted on the basis of economic status alone. This suggests that low-income countries can overcome economic challenges and become more resilient to public health challenges, such as infectious disease outbreaks.

What might the future of mobility be in China in 2030? Mobility is defined as the ability to travel from one location to another, regardless of mode or purpose. RAND researchers, working with the Institute for Mobility Research, used a six-step process to develop two scenarios that address this question. The six steps are (1) select influencing areas (domains that affect mobility directly: demographics, economics, energy, and transportation supply and constraints); (2) elicit projections on descriptors (via expert workshops in Washington, D.C., and Beijing); (3) integrate these into scenario frameworks (using two analysis methods and a computer-based tool); (4) produce scenario narratives (based on the clusters produced by the tool); (5) draw qualitative consequences for future mobility; and (6) create a wild-card scenario (by looking at events that might disrupt trends).

Three key drivers differentiate the resulting scenarios: economic growth, the presence of constraints on vehicle ownership and driving, and environmental conditions. In scenario 1, the Great Reset, continued (albeit slightly slower than previous) economic growth fuels demand for automobiles, including hybrids, but cities also invest heavily in transit and nonmotorized infrastructure. Scenario 2, Slowing but Growing, assumes that the economy goes through a downturn marked by instability and that future growth in travel demand is lower than in the first scenario. By making potential long-term mobility futures more vivid, the aim is to help decisionmakers at different levels of government and in the private sector better anticipate and prepare for change.

This report is the third in RAND's ongoing Strategic Rethink series, in which RAND experts explore the elements of a national strategy for the conduct of U.S. foreign and security policy in this administration and the next. The report evaluates three broad strategies for dealing with U.S. partners and adversaries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in a time of diminishing defense budgets and an American public preference for a domestic focus. The three strategies are to be more assertive, to be more collaborative, or to retrench from international commitments. All three of these alternative approaches are constrained and a balance will need to be struck among them — that balance may differ from region to region. In general, however, the United States may need to follow a more collaborative approach in which it seeks greater collaboration and burden sharing from strong partners who have until now not been pulling their weight. To further reduce risk, the United States should seek to prevent deeper security ties from developing between China and Russia. It should work closely with its most vulnerable partners not only to reassure them, but to coordinate crisis management with them to limit the risk of unwanted escalation of incidents. And it should sponsor new trilateral efforts to draw together partners in both Europe and Asia that face similar security, political, economic, societal, and environmental problems. Only by working together across regions can many of these challenges be effectively managed. Trilateralism might serve as a useful follow-on strategy to the pivot to Asia.

This report highlights selected inputs the researchers made to the government team to summarize the essential mechanics and roles for bringing a strategic perspective to the consideration of policy. In doing so, it provides the example of problems associated with an aging population as an illustration of how one can use a strategic perspective in an analysis of policy choices.

Israel will benefit from bringing a systemic strategic perspective into its policy process. The concept is integral to formal strategic planning but distinct; although the latter places emphasis on an output (a strategic plan), a strategic perspective is a process for bringing an analytical element into policy decisionmaking. A strategic perspective helps to bridge not only the gap between a short-term focus and longer-term outcomes but also that across ministerial portfolios and responsibilities.

A strategic perspective typically begins with a vision of what a desirable future state of the world might be. Translating a vision into policy requires an understanding of the challenges to achieving the vision and employing processes for setting specific goals to meet those challenges, identifying indicators to measure both status and progress toward goals, and designing and implementing policy measures that will contribute to achievement of goals.

China and India, the world's two most populous countries, will exercise increasing influence in international affairs in the coming decades, and each country's role on the world stage will be affected by the progress that it makes and by the competition and cooperation that develop between them. This monograph focuses on the progress China and India seem likely to achieve from 2010 through 2025 in four domains: demography, macroeconomics, science and technology, and defense spending and procurement. In each domain, the authors seek answers to these questions: Who is ahead? By how much? and Why? The authors find that India has distinct advantages over China in terms of demographics; that the two countries are surprisingly close in terms of forecasted economic growth, although China's overall economic output is likely to remain significantly higher than India's; and that, for both science and technology and defense spending and procurement, China's current substantial margins over India are likely to rise but by amounts that will vary widely depending on several alternative scenarios. The monograph concludes with implications for policy and for further research.

In the coming decade, NATO faces growing fiscal austerity and declining defense budgets. This study analyzes the impact of planned defense budget cuts on the capabilities of seven European members of NATO — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland — that together represent more than 80 percent of NATO Europe's defense spending. The result of the anticipated cuts and future financial constraints is that the capacity of the major European powers to project military power will be highly constrained: The air, land, and sea forces of key U.S. European allies are rapidly reaching the point at which they can perform only one moderate-sized operation at a time and will be hard-pressed to meet the rotation requirements of a protracted, small-scale irregular warfare mission. Power projection and sustainment of significant forces outside Europe's immediate neighborhood will be particularly difficult. The authors discuss these challenges in a strategic context, including the operational and planning weaknesses exposed by NATO's intervention in Libya in 2011, and make recommendations for U.S. policy with regard to NATO.