Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images
December 10, 2020
Finding Strength in Decline
The U.S. Military Needs a Plan to Compete Without the Advantages of the Past
President-elect Joe Biden will enter office at a crucial time for the U.S. military. After decades of focusing on minor powers and substate actors, the United States must prepare for a new era of great-power competition with China and, to a lesser extent, with Russia. That realization makes the new administration’s review of U.S. defense strategy the most important of its kind since the end of the Cold War.
The United States must prepare for a new era of great-power competition with China and, to a lesser extent, with Russia.
Russia is a shadow of its Cold War self, but it retains its nuclear arsenal and has developed formidable cyberwarfare capabilities. Its conventional forces remain more than a match for those of NATO’s frontline states, stretching from Estonia to Bulgaria. China poses a much greater threat as a burgeoning economic, technological, and military superpower. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appears intent on constructing an Orwellian state even as it presents its political and economic model as superior to that of the United States. In recent years, it has flexed economic and military muscle in pursuit of its ambitions, expanding territorial claims along its land and maritime borders and seeking to establish a hegemonic position in the western Pacific.
Read the full article in Foreign Affairs.
More from CNAS
-
Marine Force Design: Changes Overdue Despite Critics’ Claims
Commentary
Imagine a Corps that can emulate what the Ukrainian army did to the Russian army during the first phase of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation,” but...
By Robert O. Work
-
Fireside Chat with Senator Jack Reed
Transcript
Transcript from the April 24, 2023, conversation between Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), and Stacie Pettyjohn, Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense program at the Center for a ...
By Stacie Pettyjohn & Jack Reed
-
Bad Blood: The TTX for the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Congressional Testimony
I. Introduction Chairman Gallagher, Ranking Member Krishnamoorthi, distinguished members of the committee and staff, thank you for inviting me to come today to talk about the ...
By Stacie Pettyjohn, Becca Wasser & Andrew Metrick
-
Why Security Assistance Often Fails
Commentary
The 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq has launched a set of reflections and recriminations over the decision to invade and subsequent bungling of the occupation. B...
By Rachel Tecott Metz
