Adapting US Defense Strategy to Great-Power Competition

Ionut C. Popescu
©2025 Ionut C. Popescu

ABSTRACT: American defense strategy must shift to face the challenges of the new era of great-power competition. This article outlines the trade-offs involved among competing priorities and regions and proposes five strategic pillars to guide the development of a US military strategy, doctrine, and force structure optimized for the needs of the great-power competition era. Without the strategic planning needed to align the Pentagon’s investments and decisions according to great-power competition requirements, the United States may fail to prevent an avoidable strategic disaster by not preparing properly for China’s likely military quest for regional and, later, global hegemony.

Keywords: grand strategy, Department of Defense, China, great-power competition, US foreign policy

Long-term successful strategic planning depends on the close connection between grand strategic objectives and military budgets, doctrine, and operational plans. After the September 11 attacks, US defense strategy emphasized preparation for irregular conflicts against insurgents and terrorists while some high-end conventional warfare capabilities atrophied and not enough investment occurred in cyber warfare, space, or artificial intelligence (AI) futuristic technologies. In recent years, the Pentagon’s primary mission has made the needed shift to great-power competition, as witnessed by the strategic guidance spelled out in the 2018 National Defense Strategy: “Long-term strategic competitions with China and Russia are the principal priorities for the Department, and require both increased and sustained investment, because of the magnitude of the threats they pose to U.S. security and prosperity today, and the potential for those threats to increase in the future.”¹

This shift has been more rhetorical, however, rather than reflected in the force structure, posture, investments, budgeting, and force employment decisions of the Department of Defense or the White House over the past few years. Despite moves in the right direction, such as the Replicator initiative, the focus of US defense resources on Eastern Europe (Ukraine) and the Middle East (Iran/Houthis) betrays a lack of a strategic shift toward China, the only great-power rival capable of rising to peer-rival status.²

In this article, I outline trade-offs involved in competing priorities and argue for developing a US military strategy, doctrine, and force structure optimized for the needs of the great-power competition era—in other words, a great-power competition–oriented defense strategy. I propose the following five interrelated strategic pillars to guide this change.

1. American defense strategy must be predicated on a “deterrence by denial” approach vis-à-vis China in the Asia-Pacific theater and a buck-passing approach vis-à-vis Russia and Iran. The US military in the near-to-medium term cannot afford to fight two major conventional wars, and pretending otherwise is strategically dangerous.
2. Military-strategic planning in the great-power competition era must center around great-power war and admit the challenges such a conflict would realistically pose to the current US military.
3. The Taiwan scenario should be the main driver in posturing US troops and in weapons acquisition decisions where trade-offs are inevitable.
4. In addition to preparing for a great-power war, the United States should prioritize winning the new naval arms race against the PLA Navy to maintain its maritime supremacy and deny China global peer-rival status.
5. America’s fiscal budgetary realities must be incorporated more honestly into the Pentagon’s planning decisions, and trade-offs must be made to counter China at the expense of other threats.

The most fundamental implication of the great-power competition–era grand-strategic paradigm for Department of Defense strategic planning efforts is the prioritization of high-end, conventional conflict against another great power. For the United States to deny China’s quest for regional hegemony, it must be able to deter—and, if deterrence fails, defeat—the People’s Liberation Army in a potential military conflict in East Asia. That goal should be the number one priority for Pentagon defense planners and should be reflected throughout the military’s doctrine, planning, and procurement plans. The latest National Defense Strategy (published in 2022), building on its 2018 predecessor, appears to identify the need to adapt to the new strategic realities of the great-power competition era: “The Department will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as our most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department.” Despite strong rhetorical warnings about the increasing dangers of a Chinese invasion and renewed commitments to come to Taiwan’s aid, the Biden-Harris administration has failed to speed up preparations for this scenario.³

Currently, the Pentagon neither invests sufficient resources to match the PLA’s increased capabilities nor prioritizes those resources toward the Asia-Pacific theater. For example, in 2022, the then–Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael M. Gilday testified that “even the most optimistic option in the navy’s latest shipbuilding plan would be unable to meet the operational requirements for defeating a Chinese attack against Taiwan before the 2040s.” Unless the Department of Defense aligns its limited resources with its most important priority during great-power competition, which is the core of competent strategic planning, the US military runs the unacceptable risk of losing the one war that would most damage US national security for decades.⁴

The “Strategy of Denial” Doctrine in Asia

First, the United States must shift its defense planning paradigm toward a “strategy of denial,” in which it focuses its military planning primarily toward denying China the ability to conquer Taiwan or coerce Taiwan (or any other neighboring country) militarily into accepting Beijing’s regional hegemony. Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development Elbridge A. Colby developed this concept in detail in his excellent book on US defense strategy in the new great-power competition era. Other experts have also recently promoted the strategic concept of a “denial” approach to China’s rise, such as RAND military analyst David A. Ochmanek, former Congressman and Marine Corps officer Mike Gallagher, and two Australian scholars.⁵

Deterring Chinese aggression by convincing Beijing it would lose a war against the United States and defeating the PLA, if deterrence fails, should, therefore, be the Pentagon’s main goals in the current strategic era. This type of military strategy is best suited for the objectives of a grand-strategic framework focused on great-power competition because it best matches the means and ends available to the United States. Compared to the common alternative of “deterrence by punishment,” the denial approach is superior because it presents a credible and cost-efficient response to potential PRC aggression. The signaling mechanism in a denial approach is more direct and, therefore, more effective than threatening massive retaliation.

How to address America’s relative decline in conventional military power vis-à-vis a potential peer rival is one of the most important grand-strategic controversies of our great-power competition era. A vigorous debate has emerged between scholars representing the various schools of strategic thought outlined here. The Department of Defense, following its internal strategic reviews, made a major doctrinal shift in its force-planning construct by abandoning the so-called “two-war standard” in favor of a “one-war” standard. The 2018 National Defense Strategy, according to one of its authors, Jim Mitre, intended to transition from the “unipolar era” (1991–2014), when the United States prepared for “the two-war construct—winning two near-simultaneous regional wars against rogue states,” to the great-power competition era (2014–present), when the United States began to prepare for winning one war against a major power like China or Russia. Focusing on two simultaneous wars left the US military potentially underprepared to fight against a modern great-power foe because it ignored new conceptual developments and needed high-tech investments to focus on achieving dominance against two low-tech, nonnuclear adversaries, such as Iran, Iraq, or North Korea. Given the new geopolitical realities, the 2018 National Defense Strategy tried to reverse this trend by refocusing on great-power foes, but the shift was inadequate because it did not recognize the modern limits of only being able to fight one great-power war at a time.⁶

The contours of the debate on US defense strategy mirror the higher-level grand-strategic debate. At one end of the spectrum, defensive realists call for reducing defense spending and abandoning what they see as a self-defeating quest for “military primacy.” At the other, conservative internationalists (and, particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many hawkish liberal ones, as well) argue that the United States needs to return to a strategy of global military supremacy and the two-war standard. Along these lines, Hal Brands and Evan Braden Montgomery advocate that the United States should remain committed to preserving stability simultaneously in three theaters (Asia, Europe, and the Middle East), in addition to other “world-ordering” interventions, such as punishing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or preventing the collapse of states like Venezuela. If that is the case, Brands and Montgomery are correct that designing a “one-war” military focused on China poses an unacceptable risk to other global commitments. Similarly, Thomas G. Mahnken argues for increasing defense investments to be able to fight Russia and China simultaneously and employs the analogy of having had to fight two other authoritarian regimes (Germany and Japan) during World War II.⁷

On the contrary, a great-power competition–oriented defense strategy resolves this strategic planning conundrum by making clear that the United States will abandon the global liberal hegemonic strategy along with the “world-ordering” interventions associated with defending the liberal order. Instead, the Pentagon will optimize defense planning for winning one major high-end war while shifting the burden to regional partners for lesser contingencies It is crucial to realize that the Asia-Pacific region is the only key geopolitical area where America’s capable allies cannot balance against a would-be regional hegemon without significant direct US military assistance. Therefore, it makes strategic sense to focus on the PLA as the number one adversary for planning purposes and consider other scenarios as “lesser included” (as the Pentagon refers to secondary missions). Military commitments to important theaters where a regional hegemon is unlikely to arise, such as Europe and the Middle East, will, therefore, be reduced and will focus on supporting local partners.

The limits and risks of the “deterrence by denial” approach to great-power competition lie in the narrow and focused approach it takes to defense planning in an uncertain world. Prior US combat experiences in the Pacific (the Philippines, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam) all had significant Landpower contributions, and if deterrence fails, the US military would likely be underprepared for a drawn-out conflict. A cynical but strategically ruthless argument could be made, however, that if deterrence fails in Taiwan, the United States should cut its losses instead of pouring massive numbers of troops into the island. Setting up defenses in South Korea and Japan, while boosting nuclear deterrence, would be the right move in that unfortunate eventuality. The denial defense has the best costs-benefits ratio of deterring the invasion, thus making it the best option.

Preparing for the Return of High-Intensity Great-Power War

The second required adaption to the great-power competition era in defense strategy is coming to terms with the type of warfare in which the US military would have to engage in a great-power war, the type of conflict that is now the main priority. Unlike the previous 20 years of fighting low-tech insurgents in the greater Middle East, the United States must be ready to fight a complex multidomain battle against a sophisticated technological adversary that could deny US and allied forces the situational awareness, air dominance, and freedom of maneuver they enjoyed in the post-9/11 wars. While parts of the US military (like the Navy and Air Force) were not directly, or heavily, involved in counterinsurgency and continued investing in their legacy programs, other major military components and the defense industrial base focused on improving US capabilities to track and kill terrorists, not to fight peer adversaries.

The American military technological advantage over its great-power rivals has reduced dramatically over the past two decades, and the Washington Defense establishment should admit to this new reality and adjust its strategic planning accordingly. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., one of Washington’s most senior defense analysts, warned that the United States can no longer assume it will enjoy local superiority at the high-end conventional end of the warfare spectrum against the PLA. Former high-level Pentagon strategists are sharing the same dire warnings more frequently. For example, Michèle A. Flournoy predicts the PLA will continuously try to “disrupt and degrade U.S. battle-management networks” across all domains—sea, air, space, and cyber. The US Office of Naval Intelligence also sounded the alarm in recent years that “China’s military has become ‘a formidable, highly lethal fighting force’ that is ‘very much a peer’ of the US military.”⁸

Moreover, the Russia-Ukraine War has raised the alarm about how underprepared the US military industrial base is for modern conventional warfare against a great power.⁹ The amount of advanced ammunition expended in the fight between Kyiv and Moscow has strained US manufactures to the breaking point in what Seth G. Jones accurately describes as a real munitions crisis:

The number of Javelins transferred to Ukraine over the first six months of the war is the same number the United States would normally produce over seven years. . . . In addition, the rate at which several weapons systems are being exported—such as Javelins, Stingers, HIMARS [high-mobility artillery rocket systems], Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS), and Harpoon antiship missiles—may mean there will not be enough munitions in stock to match the requirements of U.S. war plans for China and Russia.¹⁰

The same is true for less sophisticated munitions, such as 155mm rounds, of which Ukraine is firing as many “in five days as the United States produces in a month.” Unsurprisingly, a series of war games the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conducted in 2023 warned that the United States “would likely run out of some munitions—such as long-range, precision-guided munitions—in less than one week in a Taiwan Strait conflict.” The Russia-Ukraine War awakened the US Defense establishment to how low the stockpiles are for some advanced weapons that would be needed in a Taiwan scenario.¹¹

Prioritizing great-power conflicts at the strategic level must impact the Department of Defense’s planning decisions more directly and urgently. As far as a potential objection to downgrading global war on terrorism–era counterinsurgencies and the global counterterrorism campaign in favor of great-power competition–derived conventional requirements, one must admit the objectively immense costs and paltry strategic benefits of military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the broader Middle East. This admission is painful for the current generation of US military leaders, but a ruthless costs-benefits calculus of the risks of losing a great-power war compared to more instability in secondary theaters points to a needed shift in priorities.

Optimizing Around the Taiwan Strait Scenario

Third, while there are several ways the United States and China could end up in a direct military conflict, including contingencies in the South China Sea or cyberspace, none is more likely or more dangerous than a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. If Washington cannot stop Beijing from conquering Taiwan, it cannot prevent China from becoming a de facto regional hegemon. Australia, Japan, and South Korea would have to accommodate China in that scenario.

Assuming the PLA’s best strategy for taking over Taiwan is attempting a fait accompli, Colby argues the United States should focus all its efforts on making it extremely costly for Beijing to succeed in the early stages of what would be a difficult amphibious operation. The United States should pre-deploy its forces in the area and enhance its intelligence and surveillance capabilities, stock up on necessary munitions, and conduct more credible complex military exercises “to demonstrate to Chinese military planners that launching an attack would be unlikely to succeed.”¹²

A Marathon Initiative study by Austin J. Dahmer fleshes out the US military requirements of the “deterrence by denial” approach to China: since the main goal is preventing the invasion of Taiwan, “Forces that can credibly sense, target, destroy, degrade, or otherwise neutralize PLA ships and aircraft” are critical.¹³ Therefore, the most-needed US platforms and forces would include:

• surface combatants that can generate long-range fires, such as
  • frigates/FFGs
  • destroyers/DDGs, and
  • cruisers/CGs;
• submarines;
• long-range, long endurance aircraft (especially stealthy ones), including
  • B-21, B-2, B-1, and B-52 bombers,
  • unmanned aerial vehicles, and
  • maritime patrol aircraft (P-8s);
• surface-to-surface strike systems (high-mobility artillery rocket systems / HIMARS and multiple launch rocket systems / MLRS);
• surface-to-air systems (maneuver short-range air defense systems / MSHORAD and Patriot);
• and counter-space and offensive cyber capabilities.¹⁴

Defending Taiwan will ultimately rest on Taiwan’s military preparedness and will to resist. This observation is one of the main conclusions of the recent series of CSIS war games where a Chinese assault was simulated 24 times. In the simulations, the PLA invasion was usually blunted and defeated at a high cost to American, Taiwanese, and Chinese forces, contingent on Taiwan’s initial ability to hold the line until US forces arrived. To achieve that outcome, the CSIS authors recommend strengthening the Taiwanese army’s ground forces. Strengthening these forces should be the main priority of Taipei’s investments, as opposed to buying advanced aircraft or other flashy purchases.¹⁵

Currently, Taiwan’s forces show “severe weaknesses” that must be addressed by increasing their ability to conduct rigorous combined armed exercises. Another lesson from the war game is that “[t]here is no ‘Ukraine model’ for Taiwan”; in other words, the United States and its allies (mainly Japan) must provide Taiwan with everything it needs before the war starts and quickly join in once hostilities begin. To be in a position to join in short order, the United States should pre-position more forces and materiel in theater. Former Pentagon official Michael Brown recently argued that to strengthen its ground forces, Taipei must take its commitment to deterring China more seriously: “Taiwan should double the proportion of its budget reserved for defense and double its current troop strength of 169,000. At present, Taipei spends about $19 billion on defense, a figure that pales in comparison with China’s $293 billion.” Lastly, others suggest helping Taiwan to adopt a “porcupine” strategy that would render it virtually impossible to invade at a reasonable cost. Supplying Taiwan with large quantities of American-made anti-ship missiles, sea mines, and Stinger missiles would go a long way toward implementing this approach.¹⁶

Even with all these measures, the United States must prepare for a longer and messier war than many anticipate, if the history of great-power conflicts serves as a guide. Strengthening US deterrence by convincing the PLA leadership that such a war is unwinnable for them should, therefore, be the Pentagon’s most urgent priority. Unfortunately, there are increasing signs that deterrence is failing, and President Xi Jinping and the PLA leadership are growing more confident that they could militarily annex the island in the near future.¹⁷

While it may sound like hyperbole, in 2021, Admiral Philip S. Davidson, the then commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), predicted China might invade Taiwan “during this decade, in fact in the next six years.” Indeed, Xi now speaks more menacingly about preparing for “extreme scenarios,” including conflict with the West. The PLA no longer maintains direct channels of communication with the Pentagon to improve military-to-military understanding and avoid accidents and purposely acts aggressively around its coast to increase the risk for US forces patrolling international waters in the area. In conclusion, reversing these trends by strengthening deterrence in the Taiwan Strait should be the US defense strategy’s primary objective.¹⁸

The Return of Naval Arms Races

Fourth, in addition to a direct conflict over Taiwan, the other concerning trend in the American-Chinese military balance of power is the PLA’s naval buildup. Implementing a great-power competition–focused defense strategy requires the United States to maintain dominance over its main rival in this area of military competition. Dominance is key for ensuring Beijing cannot militarily conquer or coerce its neighbors or challenge the United States for global hegemony in the military domain. Maintaining “command of the sea” is a strategic necessity in terms of ensuring China cannot become a true peer rival of the United States in the decades to come. The Indo-Pacific, the most strategically important region for the United States, is fundamentally a maritime theater, from a military operational planning point of view. Any Chinese attempt to establish hegemony by force in Taiwan or the South China Sea will involve intense naval combat against the US Navy and its allies.

The PLA’s ambition to push the US Navy out of Asia is arguably its most important military operational goal, as it would make its invasion of Taiwan and its de facto regional hegemony all but certain, which is why, in turn, America’s main goal must be to counter it. Moreover, Beijing’s assertive global naval presence in the last few years is increasingly concerning for the United States, as most recently evidenced by China’s basing agreement with the Pacific nation of Solomon Islands.¹⁹

In addition to the Western Pacific theater, China’s naval presence allows it to interfere with the United States in its backyard in Latin America. As US Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro warned:

The Chinese are everywhere: they’re down the Pacific coast of Central and South America, they’re down the West Coast of Africa, for example, and it’s so important for us to be able to continue to engage with our maritime partners around the world to better understand why is it their countries are making the investments they’re making.²⁰

More important than its global presence is that the PLA Navy “consistently attempts to violate the maritime sovereignty and economic well-being of other nations, including our allies in the South China Sea and elsewhere.”²¹

The recent trends in the naval balance of power between the PLA Navy and the US Navy reveal a dangerous level of risk: the US maritime supremacy is waning, or, worse, the United States has already lost the “command of the seas” to the Chinese, as former Congressman and retired Rear Admiral Joe Sestak provocatively stated in a 2020 article. Indeed, although war-fighting capabilities are measured by more than just numbers, the Chinese navy has surpassed the US Navy in its number of ships and, by some estimates, is scheduled to reach 400 ships by 2030, compared to approximately 300 for the United States. Moreover, China’s shipyards have a much larger capacity than American ones.²²

Unsurprisingly given these numbers, INDOPACOM head Davidson testified before Congress in 2018 that “China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States” and that “there is no guarantee that the United States would win a future conflict with China.” Moreover, as Bruce D. Jones of the Brookings Institution shows in his latest book, China’s naval ambitions expanded from operating in its own littoral to global projects, like exploring the Arctic or Indian Oceans, laying undersea cables, and building a network of global ports. Lastly, as PLA Navy expert Toshi Yoshihara warned, “Chinese strategists envision future naval combat as ‘extremely intense, extremely lethal, and very quick,’ involving the launch of ‘hundreds of missiles by both sides within about ten minutes’ that could destroy an entire fleet in an afternoon.” Therefore, the US Navy must prepare for a level of high-intensity conflict unmatched since World War II.²³

To counteract China’s naval buildup, the Pentagon should first shift resources from other parts of the US military not directly involved in a China fight (like the ground forces, mainly the Army) to the Navy to fund the 367 ships that are part of its “unconstrained” 30-year shipbuilding plan.²⁴ The Navy should, in turn, reform to optimize for great-power competition and the Indo-Pacific theater. For example, a group of experts from the Pentagon-funded think tank Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments recommends:

Instead of mainly operating in CSGs [Carrier Strike Groups] and ARGs [Amphibious Ready Groups], naval forces should be separated into forward-postured Deterrence Forces of submarines, surface combatants, and unmanned vehicles that rely on missiles for defensive and offensive fires; CSGs and ARGs should be postured in a Maneuver Force outside littoral areas such as the East and South China Seas or Mediterranean.²⁵

This recommendation implies the Navy should abandon or reconfigure the traditional geographical basing of its fleets to reflect the new priorities by shifting more aircraft carriers to the Pacific theater and away from the Middle East and Persian Gulf, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean.

Confronting Fiscal Realities and Budgetary Constraints

Fifth and last, the US defense budget and force allocations must reflect the emphasis on containing China. Although at the level of rhetoric and National Security Strategy documents China is considered the main priority, this prioritization has arguably not yet fully permeated the decision-making and budgetary processes inside the national security establishment, which still overreact to daily headlines or legacy commitments to NATO or the Middle East.

Evidence of this lack of the necessary laser-focus attention on China abounds. For example, Washington sent so many weapons to Ukraine that it depleted its stockpiles of advanced weapons, as noted above. Similarly, Congress appropriated a $40 billion aid package to Ukraine larger than Australia’s or Italy’s entire defense budget. And when Iran seized foreign oil tankers in summer 2023, as they often do, the Department of Defense rushed to send more warships and marines to the area to deter this behavior. Spending these precious resources in the European or Middle Eastern theaters would be fine if the United States would still benefit from what defense analysts call “overmatch” in the Asian theater, but that is not the case anymore. Moreover, Russia’s military limitations were made obvious during its recent botched invasion of Ukraine. Moscow’s military inability to pursue hegemony over Eastern Europe should make it easier for the United States to outsource European security to other NATO members and focus on the main priority, China’s PLA.²⁶

A great-power competition–oriented grand strategy, unlike the current internationalist strategy of defending the rules-based order, does not require higher levels of defense spending but rather a divestment of some commitments in Europe and the Middle East to free up resources for preparing to fight the PLA. The Marathon Initiative think tank analyzed three scenarios:

• keeping defense spending about the same,
• decreasing it by 10 percent, and
• increasing it by 9.5 percent.²⁷

Its study then shows how a strategy of denial could be financed with the current level of defense spending, assuming some cuts are made to programs not essential for a Taiwan scenario (mostly Army programs and United States European Command resources) and that those funds are used for Navy, Air Force, and INDOPACOM requirements.²⁸ Table 1 shows the report’s specific proposed cuts and additions.

Table 1. Major adjustments from baseline FYDP, forces and capabilities

Therefore, the realist strategy of “defense by denial” could be resourced within the current level of defense spending scheduled to increase by 3.6 percent over the five-year Future Years Defense Program (FYDP). Defensive realists at places like the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft would prefer a decrease in spending, while conservative internationalists at places like the American Enterprise Institute would prefer an increase in spending. Increasingly, liberal internationalists are also advocating for an increase in spending and have been since the Russia-Ukraine War began. Reducing defense spending in an era of heightened geopolitical competition would be shortsighted, particularly as China is constantly increasing its military power. Given the ever-larger debt threatening the US economy and the dollar as a reserve currency, however, increasing defense spending would not be optimal, either, because domestic politics considerations mean an increase will worsen the deficit (as opposed to being financed by cutting other types of discretionary spending).

Conclusion

The top defense policymakers must make the tough calls needed to adapt military strategic planning for the new era of great-power competition now. The unipolar era of US military global hegemony is over. In the emerging multipolar world, the United States does not have the luxury of avoiding painful trade-offs between competing priorities in various regions of the world. Moreover, the US advantage in high-end conventional warfare can no longer be taken for granted; as the war in Ukraine shows, new tactics and technologies, such as ubiquitous cheap drones, pose unique and unexpected challenges to the conduct of conventional military operations.

The military balance of power has been shifting steadily in China’s favor in East Asia, and Beijing has often stated that it desires to establish itself as a regional hegemon by controlling the South China Sea and bringing Taiwan under its control. China’s ambition represents the greatest grand-strategic threat to US security and prosperity because losing control of Asia to the Chinese Communist Party would mean losing global superpower status. High-level strategy documents and speeches in Washington often repeat this assessment. Without the strategic planning needed to shift defense investments and force employment choices according to great-power competition requirements, however, the United States runs the risk of failing to prevent an avoidable strategic disaster.

Ionut C. Popescu
Dr. Ionut C. Popescu is an associate professor of political science at Texas State University. He is the author of No Peer Rivals: American Grand Strategy in the Era of Great Power Competition (University of Michigan Press, 2025).

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Endnotes

1. Jim Mattis, Department of Defense (DoD), “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge,” DoD, 2018, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf. Return to text.
2. Jim Garamone, DOD News, “Hicks Discusses Replicator Initiative,” DoD, September 7, 2023, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3518827/hicks-discusses-replicator-initiative/. Return to text.
3. Ionut Popescu, “Only Offensive Realism Can Contain China,” The National Interest, December 7, 2022, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/only-offensive-realism-can-contain-china-205988; and DoD, “Fact Sheet: 2022 National Defense Strategy,” DoD, March 28, 2022, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Mar/28/2002964702/-1/-1/1/NDS-FACT-SHEET.PDF. Return to text.
4. Elbridge Colby, “America Must Prepare for a War over Taiwan: Being Ready Is the Best Way to Prevent a Fight with China,” Foreign Affairs, August 10, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/america-must-prepare-war-over-taiwan. Return to text.
5. Colby, Strategy of Denial, 1–37; Elbridge A. Colby, Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict (Yale University Press, 2021), 147–71; David Ochmanek, Wisdom and Will? American Military Strategy in the Indo-Pacific: Reflections by David Ochmanek, Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development (The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, November 2018), 6, https://cdn.sanity.io/files/ooh1fq7e/production/6de1fec9609170a95906b5aceb5779888a09b892.pdf/American-military-strategy-in-the-Indo-Pacific.pdf; Mike Gallagher, “State of (Deterrence by) Denial,” The Washington Quarterly 42, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 31–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2019.1626687; and Adam Lockyer and Michael D. Cohen, “Denial Strategy in Australian Strategic Thought,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 71, no. 4 (2017): 423–39, https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2017.1278743. Return to text.
6. Paul K. MacDonald et al., “Policy Roundtable: The Pursuit of Military Superiority,” Texas National Security Review, June 26, 2018, https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-the-pursuit-of-military-superiority/; Jim Mitre, “A Eulogy for the Two-War Construct,” The Washington Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2018.1557479; and Mitre, “Eulogy,” 11, 20–22. Return to text.
7. Stephen Wertheim, “The Price of Primacy: Why America Shouldn’t Dominate the World,” Foreign Affairs, February 10, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2020-02-10/price-primacy; Hal Brands and Evan Braden Montgomery, “One War Is Not Enough: Strategy and Force Planning for Great-Power Competition,” Texas National Security Review 3, no. 2 (Spring 2020): 80–92, http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/8865; and Thomas G. Mahnken, “Could America Win a New World War? What It Would Take to Defeat Both China and Russia,” Foreign Affairs, October 27, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/could-america-win-new-world-war. Return to text.
8. Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., “The U.S. Military and the Coming Great-Power Challenge: Can an American-Led Coalition Prevent the Next War?,” Foreign Affairs, November 17, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2021-11-17/us-military-and-coming-great-power-challenge; Michèle A. Flournoy, “America’s Military Risks Losing Its Edge: How to Transform the Pentagon for a Competitive Era,” Foreign Affairs, April 20, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-04-20/flournoy-americas-military-risks-losing-its-edge; and John A. Tirpak, “Navy Intel Brief Urges Robust Challenge to China,” Air & Space Forces Magazine, July 6, 2023, https://www.airandspaceforces.com/intel-challenge-china/. Return to text.
9. Seth G. Jones, Empty Bins in a Wartime Environment: The Challenge to the U.S. Defense Industrial Base (Center for Strategic & International Studies [CSIS], January 2023), https://www.csis.org/analysis/empty-bins-wartime-environment-challenge-us-defense-industrial-base. Return to text.
10. Seth G. Jones, “America’s Looming Munitions Crisis: How to Fill the Missile Gap,” Foreign Affairs, March 31, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/americas-looming-munitions-crisis. Return to text.
11. Jones, “Munitions Crisis”; and Mahnken, “New World War.” Return to text.
12. Elbridge Colby, “Opinion – America Can Defend Taiwan,” The Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-can-defend-taiwan-11611684038. Return to text.
13. Austin J. Dahmer, Resourcing the Strategy of Denial: Optimizing the Defense Budget in Three Alternative Futures (The Marathon Initiative, 2023), 10, https://themarathoninitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/FINAL_Resourcing-the-Strategy-of-Denial_Dahmer.pdf. Return to text.
14. Dahmer, Strategy of Denial, 11–12. Return to text.
15. Mark F. Cancian et al., The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan (CSIS, January 2023), 3, https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-wargaming-chinese-invasion-taiwan. Return to text.
16. Cancian, Cancian, and Heginbotham, Next War, 3; Michael Brown, “Taiwan’s Urgent Task: A Radical New Strategy to Keep China Away,” Foreign Affairs (website), January 25, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/taiwan-urgent-task-new-strategy-to-keep-china-away; and Robert C. O’Brien and Alexander B. Gray, “How to Deter China from Invading Taiwan,” The Wall Street Journal (website), September 15, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-invade-taiwan-strait-pla-missile-mines-counterinsurgency-biden-xi-tsai-ing-wen-11631721031. Return to text.
17. Hal Brands and Michael Beckley, “Washington Is Preparing for the Wrong War with China,” Foreign Affairs, December 16, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2021-12-16/washington-preparing-wrong-war-china; and Joel Wuthnow, “How to Out-Deter China: Washington Must Make Beijing Understand the Costs of a Conflict over Taiwan,” Foreign Affairs, March 24, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/deter-china-taiwan. Return to text.
18. Mallory Shelbourne, “Davidson: China Could Try to Take Control of Taiwan in ‘Next Six Years,’ ” USNI News, March 9, 2021, https://news.usni.org/2021/03/09/davidson-china-could-try-to-take-control-of-taiwan-in-next-six-years; Lingling Wei, “Xi Prepares China for ‘Extreme’ Scenarios, Including Conflict with the West,” The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-xi-jinping-plays-up-possibility-of-worsening-tensions-with-the-west-aac2dff8; and Austin Ramzy, “China Wants U.S. to Feel Risk When Operating in Its Backyard,” The Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-wants-u-s-to-feel-risk-when-operating-in-its-backyard-93cd8950. Return to text.
19. James T. Areddy and Rhiannon Hoyle, “China Signs Solomon Islands Pact, Over U.S., Australia Opposition,” The Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-signs-solomon-islands-pact-over-u-s-australia-opposition-11650388369. Return to text.
20. Megan Eckstein, “Navy Secretary’s New Strategic Guidance Focuses on Deterring China from Invading Taiwan,” Defense News, October 5, 2021, https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2021/10/05/navy-secretarys-new-strategic-guidance-focuses-on-deterring-china-from-invading-taiwan/. Return to text.
21. Brad Lendon and Haley Britzky, “US Can’t Keep Up with China’s Warship Building, Navy Secretary Says,” CNN, February 22, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/22/asia/us-navy-chief-china-pla-advantages-intl-hnk-ml/index.html. Return to text.
22. Joe Sestak, “The U.S. Navy’s Loss of Command of the Seas to China and How to Regain It,” Texas National Security Review 4, no. 1 (Winter 2020/2021): 147–64, https://tnsr.org/2020/11/the-u-s-navys-loss-of-command-of-the-seas-and-how-to-regain-it/; Blake Herzinger, “The Budget (and Fleet) That Might Have Been,” War on the Rocks, June 10, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2021/06/the-budget-and-fleet-that-might-have-been/; and Lendon and Britzy, “US Can’t Keep Up.” Return to text.
23. Philip Davidson, Advance Policy Questions for Admiral Philip Davidson, USN Expected Nominee for Commander, U.S. Pacific Command (Senate Armed Services Committee, April 2018), 11, 18, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Davidson_APQs_04-17-18.pdf; Bruce Jones, “The Challenge of China’s Rising Power on the Seas,” The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-challenge-of-chinas-rising-power-on-the-seas-11631808521#. For more on Chinese sea power, see Bruce D. Jones, To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World’s Oceans Shapes the Fate of the Superpowers (Scribner, 2021); and John S. Van Oudenaren, “Contested Waters: Great Power Naval Competition in the 21st Century,” The National Interest, February 4, 2019, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/contested-waters-great-power-naval-competition-21st-century-43247. Return to text.
24. Diana Stancy, “Navy’s 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan Offers Three Options to Increase the Size of the Fleet,” Navy Times, April 21, 2022, https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2022/04/21/navys-30-year-shipbuilding-plan-offers-three-options-to-increase-the-size-of-the-fleet/. For an even more ambitious plan for achieving 500 ships by 2045, see James Holmes, “Battle Force 2045: The U.S. Navy’s Bold Plan for a 500-Ship Fleet,” The National Interest, October 7, 2020, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/battle-force-2045-us-navy’s-bold-plan-500-ship-fleet-170317. Return to text.
25. Mark Gunzinger et al., Force Planning for the Era of Great Power Competition (Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessments, 2017), 10, https://csbaonline.org/research/publications/force-planning-for-the-era-of-great-power-competition. Return to text.
26. Josh Christenson and Caitlin Doornbos, “Pentagon Warns Congress Military Stock Depleted by Ukraine Fund Fail,” New York Post, October 2, 2023, https://nypost.com/2023/10/02/pentagon-tells-congress-us-military-stockpiles-depleted-by-failure-to-fund-ukraine/; Bryant Harris, “House Passes $40 Billion Ukraine Aid Package,” Defense News, May 10, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2022/05/10/house-to-vote-on-40-billion-ukraine-aid-package/; Dion Nissenbaum, “U.S. Sending More Warships, Marines to Middle East amid Rising Tensions with Iran,” The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sending-more-warships-marines-to-middle-east-amid- rising-tensions-with-iran-dfc3a048; Mike Gallagher, “Taiwan Can’t Wait: What America Must Do to Prevent a Successful Chinese Invasion,” Foreign Affairs, February 1, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-02-01/taiwan-cant-wait; Joyu Wang and Alastair Gale, “Does Taiwan’s Military Stand a Chance Against China? Few Think So,” The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwan-military-readiness-china-threat-us-defense-11635174187; and Popescu, “Offensive Realism.” Return to text.
27. Dahmer, Strategy of Denial, 23–30. Return to text.
28. Dahmer, Strategy of Denial, 20. Return to text.