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C O R P O R A T I O N
RESEARCH SUMMARY
Improving Conflict-Phase Access
Identifying U.S. Policy Levers
BRYAN FREDERICK, KRISTEN GUNNESS, GABRIELLE TARINI, ANDREW STRAVERS, MICHAEL J. MAZARR, EMILY
ELLINGER, JONAH BLANK, SHAWN COCHRAN, JEFFREY W. HORNUNG, LYLE J. MORRIS, JORDAN ERNSTSEN, LYDIA
GREK, HOWARD WANG, LEV NAVARRE CHAO
To access the full report, visit www.rand.org/t/RRA1742-1
ISSUE
Ensuring access to the territory of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific in the event of a future conflict with
China is a critical concern for U.S. policymakers. The physical and political geography of the region sharply
limits U.S. options for access to such an extent that some allied and partner decisions regarding providing access
could determine the outcome of a conflict. A clearer understanding of how and why U.S. allies and partners are
likely to make conflict-phase access decisions, and what U.S. policymakers can do to affect the decisions ahead
of time, is therefore essential.
APPROACH
This report addresses the questions of how U.S. allies and partners are likely to make conflict-phase access
decisions and what the United States and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) may be able to do to affect these decisions
ahead of time through a detailed investigation of the decisionmaking processes of U.S. allies and partners. It
begins with a review of prior literature on these questions and a survey of relevant historical case studies of
conflict-phase access decisions to develop a framework that summarizes how states consider conflict-phase
access requests. The authors then adapt this general framework to five specific U.S. allies and partners in the
Indo-Pacific region—Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and India—through a deep-dive investigation
of their strategic outlooks, internal politics, and economic incentives. Next, the authors develop a typology of the
full range of potential policy levers that the United States might use to shift allied and partner decisionmaking,
then consider the levers in this typology in light of the key factors identified in the country-specific deep-dive
analyses to identify those that would be most promising for affecting allied and partner decisionmaking.
CONCLUSIONS
• U.S. policymakers and planners should limit their expectations for how much U.S. peacetime policies, and
USAF policies in particular, may be able to shift the conflict-phase access decisionmaking of U.S. allies and
partners. The specific characteristics of the future conflict, as well as the broader geopolitical alignment
decisions of states that are difficult to influence absent large shifts in U.S. policy, are likely to affect these
decisions more.
• For some allies or partners, there is potential for lower-level access, such as overflight and logistics,
granted during peacetime to increase the likelihood that similar requests will be granted during conflict.
