This report, one of two, focuses on whether partners and allies have the willingness to support U.S. operations in a major Indo-Pacific conflict. The companion report focuses on technical and operational issues.

Few studies have systematically tracked how China is using gray zone tactics-coercive activities beyond normal diplomacy and trade but below the use of kinetic military force-against multiple U.S. allies and partners. Lacking a foundational empirical baseline, it is difficult to determine patterns and trends in Chinese activities to develop effective counters to them. The authors developed a framework to categorize China's use of gray zone tactics against five U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and to identify the most problematic People's Republic of China (PRC) tactics that the United States could prioritize countering. Based on open-source material, this report provides a more in-depth understanding of Chinese operations in the gray zone. Among other conclusions, the authors observe that China views gray zone activities as natural extensions of how countries exercise power. China employs such tactics to balance maintaining a stable, favorable external environment with efforts to alter the status quo in China's favor without triggering major pushback or conflict. It has used nearly 80 such tactics on its neighbors, often in relation to territorial disputes.

How are state adversaries using disinformation on social media to advance their interests? What does the Joint Force-and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) in particular-need to be prepared to do in response? Drawing on a host of different primary and secondary sources and more than 150 original interviews from across the U.S. government, the joint force, industry, civil society, and subject-matter experts from nine countries around the world, researchers examined how China, Russia, and North Korea have used disinformation on social media and what the United States and its allies and partners are doing in response. The authors found that disinformation campaigns on social media may be more nuanced than they are commonly portrayed. Still, much of the response to disinformation remains ad hoc and uncoordinated. Disinformation campaigns on social media will likely increase over the coming decade, but it remains unclear who has the competitive edge in this race; disinformation techniques and countermeasures are evolving at the same time. This series overview presents recommendations to better prepare for this new age of communications warfare.

The authors examine the nature of the emerging era of international competition, assess the perspectives of the major powers?beginning with the primary challengers to the U.S.-led international order?and evaluate various characteristics for each country.

Although Japan and the United States are in close alignment regarding their threat perceptions of the regional security environment, this report examines the assumption that Japan will accommodate any change in U.S. force posture in Japan.

This report explores how U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific are likely to respond to military access requests in the event of a conflict with China and what policy levers the United States might use in peacetime to affect those responses.

Rapidly advancing and emerging technology areas-such as artificial intelligence, autonomy, big data, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, low-cost satellites, directed-energy weapons, and unmanned systems-will likely shape how defense operations are conducted in the future. As a result, governments and defense organizations must determine how to allocate investments to prepare their forces for future conflicts. In this Perspective, RAND researchers explore considerations for shaping Japan's defense technology portfolio, in light of both technological developments themselves and how other countries may employ them. Key trends include the increasing pace of warfare, the enhanced criticality of network security and disruption, the central role of unmanned systems, the increasing accuracy of long-range targeting, the growing ability of aggressors to achieve plausible deniability, the expanding importance of emerging warfare domains, and the elevated importance of deception.

The growth of Chinese military power over the past three decades raises questions about deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. One widely discussed question among defense thinkers in Japan is whether Japan needs to procure long-range, conventional land-attack precision-guided munitions to preserve deterrence with China. If so, what types of platforms and weapon systems would be ideal? To strike what targets and with what concept of operations or in support of what theory of victory? Is a Japanese approach to deterrence based on retaliatory kinetic military operations against China plausible, given the latter's substantially greater size and nuclear arsenal? If Japan does choose to develop and field such capabilities in support of an approach to deterrence premised not only on denial but also counterstrike capabilities, would this be likely to work? In a February 2021 virtual conference, experts contributed to a growing debate in U.S. and Japan defense policy by exploring this issue and Japan's defense strategy. They considered the types of capabilities that Japan might procure, the concept of employment for such capabilities, and the ways these capabilities could fit within the U.S.-Japan alliance.

The authors of this report seek to provide an engaging and structured narrative to clearly describe the U.S. Army's role throughout the Indo-Pacific region in the present day and into 2035. The authors present three scenarios that span from competition occurring in the present day to potential crisis and conflict in the year 2035, using an illustrated narrative to communicate the breadth and complexity of the U.S. Army's roles in the region.