Bridging Rhetoric and Policy: A Preliminary Critique of “Great-Power

Competition”

Ali WyneCDSN Capstone

Canadian Forces CollegeMarch 10, 2020

The End of the Cold War: A Pyrrhic Victory?

While the end of the Cold War removed an existential threat to the United States, it also deprived the country of its erstwhile lodestar, anticommunism, thereby rendering it susceptible to strategic drift.• George Kennan warned of this risk

in 1994, when asked to weigh the legacy of containment: “Our statesmen and our public are unaccustomed to reacting to a world situation that offers no such great and all-absorbing focal points for American policy.” [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/14/opinion/the-failure-in-our-success.html

The 2018 National Defense Strategy concluded that “[t]he central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competitionby…revisionist powers” (emphasis the document’s). [2]

A New Ballast: “Great-Power Competition” (GPC)

[2] https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf

A Resurgent China and a Revanchist Russia A resurgent China has emerged into a formidable economic and technological competitor.

A revanchist Russia, meanwhile, has hived off territory in its near abroad, is abetting right-wing nationalist movements in the European Union, and continues to support Bashar al-Assad’s brutal rule.

Complicating matters, a deepening Sino-Russian alignment could undercut a range of U.S. foreign policy objectives.

A Joint Challenge?The 2017 National Security Strategy stipulates “[t]hree main sets of challengers,” the first of which are “the revisionist powers of China and Russia.” The document refers to the two countries in immediate juxtaposition on eight occasions in total; for example:• “China and Russia challenge

American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.”

• “China and Russia want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests.” [3]

[3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf

Distinctions Between the Chinese and Russian Challenges

While China holds the existing postwar order to be obsolescent, it has been the chief beneficiary of that system, perhaps excepting the United States. It presently seeks a gradual modification of that system, not a wholesale dissolution.

Russia, by contrast, does not have the economic wherewithal to pose a gradualist challenge, only the tactical savvy to be an opportunistic disruptor.

The Nebulousness of GPC (1)

The Nebulousness of GPC (2)Jim Garamone, “Dunford Describes U.S. Great Power Competition with Russia, China,” Department of Defense (March 21, 2019)

Eric Schmitt and Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “Russia Projects Increasing Influence in Africa, Worrying the West,” New York Times (January 29, 2020)

Uncircumscribed Competition?

As presently conceived, GPC would appear to invite, if not compel, the United States to compete with China and Russia across the world and on every issue.

America’s Long-Term Strategic Objectives

What long-term strategic objectives does the United States seek to achieve by pursuing a GPC-rooted foreign policy?• Remain the world’s foremost

power?• Uphold the postwar order?• Prevent China’s comprehensive

national power from passing a certain threshold?

• Forestall the emergence of a Sino-Russian condominium that matures from a partnership of convenience into an alliance of consequence?

Fiscal Constraints

Fiscal imperatives will increasingly require the United States to pursue a foreign policy that prioritizes the defense of the postwar order’s core over that of its periphery.• The Congressional Budget Office

projects that the United States “will spend…more in 2025 than it spends on all nondefense discretionary programs combined.” [4]

• The Census Bureau forecasts that Americans 65 and over will outnumber those under 18 by 2034. [5]

[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-on-a-course-to-spend-more-on-debt-than-defense-1541937600[5] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/03/graying-america.html

Public Opinion

Richard Fontaine: “Survey after survey shows that while concerns about China are gradually rising, the vast majority of Americans are relatively unconcerned with great-power competition and much more focused on other threats. That could pose a problem for the United States’ new competitive strategy.” [6]

[6] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-09-09/great-power-competition-washingtons-top-priority-not-publics

Conclusion

A construct, such as GPC, that is neither fiscally sustainable nor politically tenable cannot hope to offer policymakers rigorous guidance for formulating foreign policy. Beyond specifying that China and Russia are its primary foci—and even here, as noted earlier, it fails to distinguish sufficiently between the respective challenges that the two countries pose to U.S. national interests—it essentially enjoins the United States to participate in a competition of indefinite duration that traverses the globe and broaches every issue.

Ali WyneNonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Councilawyne@alum.mit.edu@Ali_Wyne