Click on the banner above to explore the Tiger Project.

Executive summary

Production diplomacy integrates the defense industrial bases (DIB) of allies and partners by protecting supply chains, strengthening alliances and partnerships, enhancing deterrence, and building defense readiness, though it is not without risks and challenges. In order to meet growing challenges of an evolving geostrategic environment including facing multiple adversaries simultaneously, the United States should rapidly develop and implement new production diplomacy initiatives in the Indo-Pacific.

The term production diplomacy was coined by Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William A. LaPlante, and subsequently defined in the National Defense Industrial Strategy as a strategy to protect DIB supply chain. It can additionally support national security objectives in the Indo-Pacific geostrategic environment.

Production diplomacy plays a key role in deepening and broadening integration among allies and partners, while enhancing resilience and building stockpiles and surge capacity. The application of production diplomacy also comes with risks and challenges, including difficulties creating sustainable industry environments, unintended technology transfer to adversaries, and domestic political environments.

While production diplomacy will not apply in every case, when applied creatively under the right circumstances, it has the potential to enhance US, allied, and partner national security. This creativity can include both coproducing and assembling forward, as well as multilateral coproduction to create win-win-win outcomes.

Maximizing effectiveness of production diplomacy initiatives to support US, allied, and partner national security objectives will require executive branch and congressional action. The full issue brief includes recommendations that think creatively; craft programs to support multiple national security objectives; assess and manage risks; overcome gaps and seams; and apply historical lessons.

The Tiger Project, an Atlantic Council effort, develops new insights and actionable recommendations for the United States, as well as its allies and partners, to deter and counter aggression in the Indo-Pacific. Explore our collection of work, including expert commentary, multimedia content, and in-depth analysis, on strategic defense and deterrence issues in the region.

Report Aug 16, 2023

The United States and its allies must be ready to deter a two-front war and nuclear attacks in East Asia

By Markus Garlauskas

This report highlights two emerging and interrelated deterrence challenges in East Asia with grave risks to US national security: 1) Horizontal escalation of a conflict with China or North Korea into simultaneous conflict; 2) Vertical escalation to a limited nuclear attack by either or both adversaries to avoid conceding.

Arms Control China

New Atlanticist Apr 5, 2024

The US and Japan are upgrading their security alliance. Here’s what needs to come next.

By Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi

The upgrades to the US-Japan Security Treaty are welcome, but their effectiveness will depend on how they are implemented in the coming years.

New Atlanticist Mar 19, 2024

There will be no ‘short, sharp’ war. A fight between the US and China would likely go on for years.

By Brian Kerg

US policymakers and military leaders must rigorously study and plan for a broad range of implications from a years-long war against China.

China Conflict

The Indo-Pacific Security Initiative (IPSI) informs and shapes the strategies, plans, and policies of the United States and its allies and partners to address the most important rising security challenges in the Indo-Pacific, including China’s growing threat to the international order and North Korea’s destabilizing nuclear weapons advancements. IPSI produces innovative analysis, conducts tabletop exercises, hosts public and private convenings, and engages with US, allied, and partner governments, militaries, media, other key private and public-sector stakeholders, and publics.

Learn more

Image: A worker at Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, a government-owned, contractor-operated installation under US Army Joint Munitions Command, packages 40 mm grenades. Source: DVIDS.