FC / NETWORK
Registry 01 · Domain
National Security
Seventy-five years of patient work, and a door held open for you.
Strategy, intelligence, and the architecture of resilience in contested domains.
Classification
Research domain
Cross-disciplinary index
Brief / 01
Context record
National-security research at RAND treats strategy as the design of decision processes that remain coherent under stress, across great-power competition, deterrence, and the contested commons.
National security has been RAND's anchoring discipline since its founding in 1948. The institution produced the foundational work on nuclear strategy, deterrence theory, and operations research that defined Cold War analytic doctrine, and has updated that work continuously through the post-9/11, Indo-Pacific, and great-power-competition eras.
RAND's Signature Themes in National Security
Great-power competition
Doctrine, force posture, and the long-horizon shape of U.S.–China and U.S.–Russia competition across military, economic, and technological dimensions.
Deterrence under new conditions
How classical deterrence theory adapts to cyber, space, AI-enabled systems, and grey-zone competition below the threshold of conflict.
Indo-Pacific strategy
Basing, posture, alliance architecture, and the operational implications of contested geography across the first and second island chains.
Allied and coalition strategy
NATO adaptation, European security, and the institutional plumbing of multilateral defense cooperation.
Representative Work
The U.S. Air Force in the Indo-Pacific
RAND · Project AIR FORCE
Stretching and Exploiting Thresholds for High-Order War
RAND · RR-2784
Russia's Hostile Measures in Europe
RAND · RR-2539
Methodological Emphasis
Wargaming, scenario planning, and structured strategic analysis grounded in classified-quality empirical work.
Methodological Lineage →Affiliated Researchers
Dr. Michael Mazarr
Senior Political Scientist
Current Focus
Grand strategy and great-power competition.