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Dec. 17, 2025

Reframing the Nature of Strategic Competition

Antulio J. Echevarria II

ABSTRACT: In this Corner, Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II, professor of strategic competition at the US Army War College, critiques the essential concepts underpinning US doctrine concerning intrastate strategic competition. In this, his inaugural contribution, Dr. Echevarria discusses the shortfalls in the Joint concept of interstate strategic competition, namely, its failure to capture the true nature of that competition. A more extensive reading of the scholarly literature on strategic rivalry suggests the nature of strategic competition should be reframed to align more closely with the nature of war.

Keywords: intrastate strategic competition, interstate strategic competition, doctrine, National Security Strategy, Joint Concept for Competing

 

Understanding the nature of a thing, including a violent political instrument like war, is more than a philosophical exercise. It constitutes critical knowledge for military practitioners because what they believe the nature of a thing like war to be informs what they can expect to accomplish with it, and how they should prepare for it. Concepts that violate or ignore the nature of a thing, like war— particularly its special qualities of violence and uncertainty—can impair US military operations and the accomplishment of US national security objectives. As the then–Commanding General of Joint Forces Command, General James N. Mattis, noted in 2008, concepts that violate the nature of war cause confusion and hinder rather than help the execution of Joint operations.1 By the same token, the Joint community’s concept of strategic competition should clarify, not confuse US strategists and war planners, and it should help, not hinder the execution of Joint operations. This contribution to the Strategic Competition Corner critiques how the Joint Concept for Competing (JCC) describes the nature of strategic competition, a definition that does not avail itself of the vast literature available on strategic rivalries. That literature suggests the nature of strategic competition parallels the nature of war.

The JCC draws from several foundational publications (such as Competition Continuum, Joint Doctrine Note 1-19, 2019; Joint Campaigns and Operations, Joint Publication 3-0, 2022).2 These, in turn, follow guidance articulated in the National Security Strategies of 2017 and 2021, and in the National Defense Strategies of 2018 and 2022, which announced the United States would shift its strategic focus from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations to “inter-state strategic competition,” centering on America’s “special challengers,” China and Russia.3 As readers will know, strategic competition has been a familiar, if implicit, theme in US strategy documents since as least the early Cold War.4 It is the conceptual heir of great-power competition. But it is also more accurate because states and other parties do not have to be great powers to compete with and pose serious threats to the United States. The theme of strategic competition also continues in the 2025 National Security Strategy, though in more diffuse form.5

Importantly, the JCC aims to “expand [the Joint Force’s] mindset to understand the nature of the strategic competition it is engaged in.”6 To that end, it urges practitioners to think less in terms of end states and more in terms of outcomes, less in terms of either-or distinctions regarding war and peace and more in terms of continuous competition. States never cease pursuing their interests and vying for “influence, advantage, and leverage,” though that pursuit does not necessarily result in war. Strategic competition itself is framed as a “competition continuum” encompassing (1) cooperation, (2) competition below armed conflict, and (3) armed conflict.7 The continuum’s main purpose is to draw attention to the space before war, or between wars, and to encourage practitioners to design operations to win in that space, in a word, to “win without fighting.” The JCC defines success as “retaining freedom of action to pursue national interests at an acceptable risk and sustainable cost and avoiding armed conflict with adversaries.”8 Accordingly, strategic competition is a “condition to be managed, not a problem to be solved.”9

The aim of broadening the competitive mindset of the Joint Force is a commendable one. One might quibble with the logic of encouraging practitioners to expand their mindset and think outside the box by providing them with another box: the competition continuum. But doctrine must start somewhere. Doctrine writers and military educators need a baseline, and basing the JCC on a realist, international-relations perspective that views states as continuously pursuing their own interests is a defensible starting point.

However, the JCC’s definition of the nature of strategic competition is more problematic and could generate the type of confusion for the Joint Force that Mattis warned against. The JCC defines that nature as “complex” because it can involve any combination of cultural, economic, geographic, and political dimensions (or all of them); it also claims the nature of strategic competition is “indefinite,” not bounded by time and space.10 By comparison, it asserts wars are “finite,” with identifiable beginnings and endings—one actor wins, and the other loses. That assertion might come as a surprise to veterans of the US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. All the complex dimensions of strategic competition were also at play in those campaigns, as indeed they are in any war. Nor do wars necessarily have discernible beginnings and endings, though Congress has officially declared some, or an executive order has authorized the use of military force; likewise, when wars end is not always clear. President Theodore Roosevelt declared the US war in the Philippines to be over on July 4, 1902, but fighting continued for several more years. The Korean War has yet to end officially. Despite an announced cease-fire agreement, the killing in Gaza continues. Conversely, the JCC overlooks the many ways in which strategic competition itself is bounded, such as by defense agreements like the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I and II) and economic agreements like the Articles of the International Monetary Fund. Most states, moreover, have recognized territorial boundaries. Understanding the nature of strategic competition, in other words, should not require the Joint Force to forfeit what it already knows about the nature of war.

This critique is not intended as a knock against doctrine writers. They are a busy lot, after all. Having been one, I can sympathize. Nonetheless, a useful book entitled Great Strategic Rivalries: From the Classical World to the Cold War appeared in 2016, just before the decisive turn toward strategic competition in 2017–18.11 The introduction to this book succinctly summarizes the research of dozens of historians and international relations scholars, and it was available in plenty of time to help inform the JCC’s notion of the nature of strategic competition. Due to space limitations, only a few of the insights from that research can be mentioned here.

First, disputes among major rivals are twice as likely to lead to war, even if via proxies; in fact, more than 80 percent of all wars from antiquity to the Cold War have been between rivals or “proto rivals.”12 These facts mean strategic competition is much more than the space before war, or between wars. Rather, it is the primary cause of war, even if not necessarily the proximate one.

Second, strategic competition may be continuous in an abstract sense, but individual competitions and the parties involved can end and do end. Examples include Carthage, Wihelmine Germany, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. It is less the physical destruction of a city or a state that matters in these cases, but the termination of the political regimes that governed them. Put differently, while competition may continue after war, some competitors will not.

Third, even if strategic competition is not a problem to be solved, the competitors involved in it usually are. An aggressive Beijing, for instance, is a problem to be solved, preferably through deterrence. The threat posed by Beijing begs for intelligent solutions. Otherwise, managing that threat will not be possible.

These insights barely scratch the surface of what the research on this topic has to offer. The three points presented here suffice to show the nature of strategic competition is much closer to the nature of war than to the essence of peace. War is an instrument of strategic competition, even as strategic competition is an instrument of policy. Ergo, one can use strategic competition in the same way one uses war, either with or without kinetic force.

Urging the Joint Force to open its mental aperture regarding strategic competition is, again, a laudable aim. Nonetheless, the JCC may have inadvertently introduced a bias by downplaying the violent and governing aspects of strategic competition in favor of its less controlling qualities. Strategic competition does end things, important things. Winning such a competition requires a mindset that thinks in terms of preclusion, that is, reducing or stealing away the options one’s rivals have available, or could hope to acquire. It is like war in that way. Unlike “competition on the fields of friendly strife,” strategic competition is about ensuring the game being played, whatever its intensity, is never a fair contest. That is its true nature.

 
 

Antulio J. Echevarria II
Antulio J. Echevarria II currently serves as the professor of strategic competition at the US Army War College. He holds a doctorate in modern history from Princeton University and has authored six books and more than 100 articles and chapters on strategic thinking. He formerly held the General MacArthur Chair of Research and the Elihu Root Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College and has served as the editor in chief of the US Army War College Press.

 
 

Endnotes

  1. 1. James N. Mattis, “USJFCOM Commander’s Guidance for Effects-Based Operations,” Parameters 38, no. 3 (Autumn 2008): 18–25, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol38/iss3/10/. General Mattis also served as the US Secretary of Defense from January 20, 2017, to December 20, 2018, a pivotal period in the redirection of US national and defense strategies.
  2. 2. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Joint Concept for Competing (JCC) (JCS, 2023); JCS, Competition Continuum, Joint Doctrine Note 1-19 (JCS, 2019); and JCS, Joint Campaigns and Operations, Joint Publication (JP) 3-0 (JCS, 2022), 18.
  3. 3. Jim Mattis, Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge (US Department of Defense, 2018), 2; see also Kathleen J. McInnis, The 2018 National Defense Strategy: Fact Sheet, Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report R45349 (CRS, February 5, 2018), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45349, 1.
  4. 4. Examples include “NSC 20/4, 1948,” U.S. Objectives with Respect to USSR to Counter Soviet Threats to Security, and the better known “NSC 68, 1950,” Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations, which expanded the competition space by including political entities other than great powers, an ill-defined term in any case.
  5. 5. Laura Kelly, “Trump’s New National Security Strategy: 5 Key Takeaways,” The Hill, December 5, 2025, https://thehill.com/policy/international/5635890-trump-national-security-strategy/; and “Experts React: What Trump’s National Security Strategy Means for US Foreign Policy,” New Atlanticist (blog), Atlantic Council, December 5, 2025, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/experts-react/experts-react-what-trumps-national-security-strategy-means-for-us-foreign-policy/.
  6. 6. JCC, iii, emphasis original; see also Curriculum Development Guide for Strategic Competition, June 25, 2025, 4, 9.
  7. 7. The JCC characterizes strategic competition as a “persistent and long-term struggle that occurs between two or more adversaries seeking to pursue incompatible interests without necessarily engaging in armed conflict with each other.” JCC, 1. JP 3-0 defines it as the “interaction among actors in pursuit of the influence, advantage, and leverage necessary to advance and protect their respective interests.” JP 3-0, V-1; and JDN-19, v.
  8. 8. JCC, 9.
  9. 9. JCC, 2. Readers will note this space is also known as the gray zone.
  10. 10. JCC, 9.
  11. 11. James Lacey, ed., Great Strategic Rivalries: From the Classical World to the Cold War (Oxford University Press, 2016).
  12. 12. Lacey, Great Strategic Rivalries, 4.
 
 

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