Annually, CSIS senior adviser Mark Cancian publishes a series of papers on U.S. military forces—their composition, new initiatives, long-term trends, and challenges. The overall theme of this year’s report is the struggle to align forces and strategy because of budget tradeoffs that even defense buildups must make, unrelenting operational demands that stress forces and prevent force structure reductions, and legacy programs whose smooth operations and strong constituencies inhibit rapid change. This report takes a deeper look at the strategic and budget context, the military services, special operations forces, DOD civilians and contractors, and non-DOD national security organizations in the FY 2020 budget.

CSIS senior adviser Mark Cancian annually produces a series of white papers on U.S. military forces, including their composition, new initiatives, long-term trends, and challenges. This report is a compilation of these papers and takes a deep look at each of the military services, the new Space Force, special operations forces, DOD civilians, and contractors in the FY 2021 budget. This report further includes a foreword regarding how the Biden administration might approach decisions facing the military forces, drawing on insights from the individual chapters.

CSIS's Mark Cancian annually produces a series of white papers on U.S. military forces, including their composition, new initiatives, long-term trends, and challenges. This report is a compilation of these papers. It takes a deep look at each military service, as well as special operations forces, DOD civilians, and contractors in the FY 2022 budget. The report also discusses the debate about legacy equipment, the interaction of the budget and force size, and the decline in force size that the services face with retiring older systems without adequate replacements.

The Trump administration’s FY 2019 budget proposal laid out a set of priorities. To pay for these initiatives, the FY 2019 defense budget rose 14 percent above the FY 2017 level. The Congress generally endorsed the administration's approach. However, the choices showed that there is no escaping the tradeoff among readiness, modernization, and force structure. This study examines the changes in the FY 2019 budget for each of the military services, DOD civilians, and contractors, how the budget shapes the forces, and the challenges ahead for building and maintaining the forces needed to implement the administration's stated strategy.

The Department of Defense (DOD) faces a strategic choice: whether to focus on modernization for high-tech conflicts with China and Russia or expand forces and improve readiness to meet a superpower’s commitments for ongoing conflicts and crisis response. In their FY 2018 budgets, the services all complain that they are too small for the demands being put on them and hedge toward expanding forces and readiness. In the new DOD strategy being developed for 2019 and beyond, the services hope to pursue all three goals—expand forces, improve readiness, and increase modernization—but the fiscal future is highly uncertain, and they will likely have to make difficult trade-offs.

This timely study examines the Defense Department’s FY 2017 budget proposal for the size and shape of military forces; what that proposal means for cost, strategy, and risk; and challenges the proposal faces in implementation. The study covers all four military services plus government civilians, contractors, and department-wide initiatives.

A unique and much-needed perspective on the transitions veterans go through after returning home from war service. It is a difficult time to be a veteran of a small war in the United States. After twenty years of combat and counter-insurgency, a generation of Afghan, Iraq, and Global War on Terror veterans struggle to integrate back into civilian society and lead productive lives. As the wars these men and women have participated in continue—while they simultaneously recede to the past—many feel a sense of estrangement from their country, friends, and prior lives. They often long to return to war but hope to never go again and are stuck in a nether world of war without end and peace that does not exist. In Front toward Enemy: War, Veterans, and the Homefront, Daniel R. Green uses his own experiences with war from having served five military and civilian tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and provides a different perspective on the transition home. Using sociological, philosophical, literary, cultural, historical, and political perspectives he provides a venue for the countless conversations he has had with his fellow veterans about their own experiences as a way to assist others with their transition from war and the military to peace and civilian life. Green provides not just a war veteran’s views but the amplifying perspective of a political scientist—as well as a reserve officer—in order to rescue the issue of the “returning veteran” from the field of psychology and to broaden the understanding of the experience of war for veterans. This book bridges the gap between war veterans and their fellow citizens, sheds light on the quiet conversations that take place among veterans about their experiences, and enriches the collective understanding of how wars affect people.

Exploring how the U.S. military can move beyond Iraq and Afghanistan Since the September 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. military has been fighting incessantly in conflicts around the globe, often with inconclusive results. The legacies of these conflicts have serious implications for how the United States will wage war in the future. Yet there is a stunning lack of introspection about these conflicts. Never in modern U.S. history has the military been at war for so long. And never in U.S. history have such long wars demanded so much of so few. The legacy of wars without end include a military that feels the painful effects of war but often feels alone. The public is less connected to the military now than at any point in modern U.S. history. The national security apparatus seeks to pivot away from these engagements and to move on to the next threats—notably those emanating from China and Russia. Many young Americans question whether it even makes sense to invest in the military. At best, there are ad hoc, unstructured debates about Iraq or Afghanistan. Simply put, there has been no serious, organized stock-taking by the public, politicians, opinion leaders, or the military itself of this inheritance. Despite being at war for the longest continuous period in its history, the military is woefully unprepared for future wars. But the United States cannot simply hit the reset button. This book explores this inheritance by examining how nearly two decades of war have influenced civil-military relations, how the military goes to war, how the military wages war, who leads the military and who serves in it, how the military thinks about war, and above all, the enduring impact of these wars on those who waged them. If the U.S. military seeks to win in the future, it must acknowledge and reconcile with the inheritance of its long and inconclusive wars. This book seeks to help them do so.

Employs the framework of anti-oppressive “Liberation Counseling The first multicultural counseling book to use a strengths-based perspective, this innovative text emphasizes culture and diversity as an asset to be nurtured and approached with humility, empathy, and culturally responsive interventions. The book is also unique in its consideration of marginalized experiences not limited to ethnicity, race, or poverty, but those that also include polyamory, gamers, immigrants, refugees, people with disabilities, and other marginalized populations. Separate sections consider the particular situations of more than 20 distinct populations to foster treatment that is imbued with sensitivity and understanding. The book calls for counselors to deeply examine their own beliefs, attitudes, and judgments to ensure they have productive work with diverse clients. Distinct chapters explore the counselor’s worldview, the client's worldview, and include demonstrations of how to apply multicultural counseling by addressing race and culture; providing culturally responsive assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning; and designing a culturally sensitive workplace. Content is enhanced by self-reflection questions, end-of-chapter discussion questions, and multifaceted clinical case scenarios providing an in-depth look at the lived reality of marginalized people. Key Features: Emphasizes cultural considerations in treating more than 20 different marginalized populations Engages counselors to deeply examine their own values and beliefs so they don't adversely impact treatment of different populations Written by counselor educators and other subject matter experts with expertise in treating varied populations Uses multifaceted case studies to illustrate content and apply concepts Provides podcast interviews with members of diverse groups Each chapter includes learning objectives, key terms, chapter summary, and discussion questions Delivers robust instructor ancillaries, including an Instructor's Manual that maps to CACREP standards

Donald Trump's New World Order addresses U.S. foreign policy initiatives during Mr. Trump’s Presidency, appeasing traditional enemies such as Russia and undermining allies such as NATO and the European Union. In the book, Ambassador T. Hamid Al-Bayati outlines, region by region, policy by policy, the administration’s misguided, and sometimes corrupt, initiatives and decisions, which could potentially lead to regional conflict and global war. Highlighted within the text are the administration’s relationships and interactions with Russia, China, North Korea, and the Middle East, as well as within the United States. The author’s critical review of Trump’s foreign policy includes the impact of trade wars, military escalation, and changing global relationships, Ambassador Al-Bayati paints a stark picture of the present standing of the U.S. and a dark future that looms on the horizon. Many experts agree that Trump’s foreign policy lacks coordination, consistency, and organization. Trump often contradicts himself and his supporting staff. Concerned Americans and U.S. allies struggle to find coherence in the Trump administration’s foreign policy. It zigs and zags, with senior administration officials saying one thing and President Trump contradicting them without warning the next day. It punishes U.S. allies and coddles U.S. adversaries; it privileges demagogy over democracy. Mr. Trump’s approach appears impulsive, improvisational and inchoate—devoid of clear purpose, values or even ideology. Ambassador Al-Bayati leaves nothing unexplored as he strives to organize and explain the current and future implications of Mr. Trump’s presidency and policy.