Aligning Strategic Priorities and Foreign Military Sales to Fill Critical Capability Gaps

📖 The Scoop

"Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the heightening tensions related to China and Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific region have translated into an increase in worldwide demand for U.S. defense equipment. Yet the U.S. defense industrial base and U.S. government's foreign military sales (FMS) enterprise have limited ability to address all the capability needs of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in a timely manner. In this report, the authors propose a conceptual framework that would allow the U.S. government to systematically prioritize the FMS cases of countries in the European Command (EUCOM) area of responsibility (AOR) in alignment with U.S. and NATO defense priorities for a ground-based contingency in Europe. The authors used a qualitative, multimethod approach that combined subject-matter expert interviews and workshops with a literature review of existing scholarly articles, open-source media reporting, and government and think-tank reports for the United States and NATO members. Six NATO allies were selected for in-country field research: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, and Sweden. In addition to the prioritization framework, this report also presents insights and recommendations regarding the strategic use of other security cooperation tools in support of, or complementary to, FMS, with the aim of advancing U.S. strategic interests in the EUCOM AOR."--

Genre: Political Science / International Relations / Treaties (fancy, right?)