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March 6, 2026

Strategic Rivalries: How Are They Won?

Antulio J. Echevarria II

ABSTRACT: This article argues strategic rivalries—distinct from general strategic competition—are best understood as contests in which states prioritize weakening a specific opponent’s capacity to compete. It departs from existing work by critiquing the Joint Concept for Competing’s narrow definition and by emphasizing rivalry termination as a central but understudied dimension. Drawing on decades of international relations scholarship and historical datasets of interstate rivalries since 1815, the article analyzes how rivalries end and identifies strategic preclusion as a proactive approach for winning them. Its insights offer policy and military practitioners guidance for shaping competitive strategies short of war.

Keywords: interstate strategic competition, strategic rivalry, enduring rivalry, strategic competition termination, Joint Concept for Competing

 

This edition of the Strategic Competition Corner builds on the inaugural one, which challenged the definition and nature of strategic competition as outlined in the US Joint Concept for Competing (JCC).1 The JCC defines strategic competition as the “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.”2 Yet, as history shows, strategic competition is not always persistent or long term; individual competitions can last but a few years, and individual competitors, such as Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, can and do end. Knowing that strategic competitions can end, and how, can shed constructive light on how to win them.

Even more egregiously, the JCC overlooked a special category of strategic competition, interstate rivalry. As readers will recall, rivalries account for more than 80 percent of wars from antiquity to the Cold War.3 It is one thing for states to pursue their interests, however incompatible, in a spirit open to bargaining. It is quite another thing for them to prioritize one particular incompatible interest over others, namely, the weakening of another state’s capacity to compete, and to do so with little regard for bargaining. That sentence defines strategic competition as we will use it in this and future editions of the Corner. It allows for the phenomenon of interstate—or the better term—strategic rivalry, which approaches competition less from the perspective of negotiating a deal and more from the standpoint of a zero-sum game. The former is unlikely to test the Joint Force. But the latter probably will. Hence, it deserves the bulk of our analytical efforts. Accordingly, this edition of the Corner extrapolates insights from the scholarly literature on strategic rivalry to inform how we might go about winning them.

What Are Strategic Rivalries?

Unsurprisingly, the academic literature concerning strategic rivalries is vast, idiosyncratic, and insufficient. It is emblematic of the academic paradox: the more one knows, the more one doesn’t know. For instance, some international-relations scholars define rivalries as two states in competition that possess the expectation of future conflict.4 Others offer a more detailed definition; strategic rivalries consist of states that (a) perceive their relationship with another state as more adversarial than cooperative, (b) are in the same competitive league (capable of challenging each other), and (c) are the source of recurring threats or disputes that have the potential to become militarized.5 The ongoing disputes between the United States and China, India and China, and Israel and Iran suit either definition. While the two descriptions are idiosyncratic, they are not incompatible; however, the more detailed one is preferred here because it draws from a more robust dataset and because its authors have been pioneers in this field for decades.

Historically, disputes among rivals have centered primarily on issues related to space (territory) and position (global or regional status), with ideology coming in as a distant third.6 Spatial and positional disputes may partially explain why rivals have not fought randomly but rather have “tended to fight each other.”7 Indeed, they have increasingly engaged in conflict with each other even though the overall number of great-power wars has declined since 1945.8 From 1816 to 1999, rivals accounted for 77.3 percent of wars; from 1900 to 1999, the proportion rose to 87.2 percent; but from 1945 to 1999, the proportion rose even higher to 91.3 percent.9 As always, more research remains to be done. But rivalries are clearly more than simply “intensified conflicts of interest” on a competition continuum.10

How Do Strategic Rivalries End?

An analysis of modern rivalries (post-1815) shows 62 of 139 cases (45 percent) ended when one side lost its competitive status (capacity to compete). In 48 of those 62 cases (77 percent), the loss of competitive status came about through (a) a decisive military defeat or (b) a political and/or economic collapse caused by the conflict becoming protracted and unsustainable. In 15 of the 139 total cases (11 percent), the loss of competitive status came about voluntarily, when one side acknowledged the superiority of the other and forfeited the competition to avoid war. Finally, in 76 of the 139 cases (55 percent), the rivalries ended peacefully with a de-escalation of the competition and, thus, without the loss of competitive status.11

To be sure, extrapolating from historical data is not without risk. Wall Street often warns investors not to consider past performance as a predictor of future performance. But this is not Wall Street, and the observations drawn here are not about the ups and downs of the stock market. In any case, prudence suggests strategists should account for historical data. The data above suggest the termination of a strategic rivalry—such as the ongoing one between the United States and the People’s Republic of China—is nearly as likely as not to require one party to lose its competitive status to the other (45 percent versus 55 percent). Obviously, the loss of competitive status can mean various things and can occur in ways that do not involve war. The value of certain military capabilities, for instance, can decline from technological obsolescence. Likewise, access to maritime or land-based trade routes, critical minerals, or other essential resources can take place via nonmilitary means. Similarly, smart investments and market exploitation can cause a rival to fall behind in the race for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing.12 Certainly, there is a risk of war should a rival lose too much of its capacity to compete too quickly. That risk must be managed. But it ought not stymie the development and implementation of competitive strategies.

How Might Strategic Rivalries Be Won?

A strategy designed to reduce or eliminate a rival’s competitive status would likely need to be more proactive in nature than the Cold War’s policy of containment and at least as preventative in nature as the popular understanding of deterrence by denial and of strategic preemption. A strategy of preclusion could serve as an umbrella concept embracing denial, preemption, and appropriate aspects of containment. In basic terms, strategic preclusion means shutting out, or foreclosing, an adversary’s options—as in the tech race—before they can be exercised. It is a close rhetorical cousin to denial, which essentially means making it impossible for someone to acquire something, and to preemption, which basically means destroying something someone has before it can be used.

Strategic preclusion could give the United States powerful options short of war. However, it can and should be used legally and ethically, since acting within such parameters works to the advantage of the United States and its allies. To be sure, preclusion is not without risks; any thinking rival will adapt and develop countermeasures. Accordingly, the next Strategic Competition Corner will address some of those risks as well as the strategy’s implications for the Joint Force.

 
 

Author’s Note
I would like to acknowledge the help of two of my research interns: Eleonora E. Schmidt, Dickinson College, and Jessica Hsu, The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

 
 

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. Antulio J. Echevarria II, “Reframing the Nature of Strategic Competition,” US Army War College Press, https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/News/Display/Article/4361802/reframing-the-nature-of-strategic-competition/.
  2. 2. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Joint Concept for Competing (JCC), (JCS, 2023), 1.
  3. 3. Great Strategic Rivalries from the Classical World to the Cold War, ed. James Lacey (Oxford University Press, 2016), 4.
  4. 4. P. F. Diehl and G. Goertz, War and Peace in International Rivalry (University of Michigan Press, 2000), 19–25.
  5. 5. William R. Thompson, “Identifying Rivals and Rivalries in World Politics,” International Studies Quarterly, 45, no. 4 (Dec. 2001): 557–86.
  6. 6. Disputes have also involved a secondary category including ethnicity, dissidence, resources, and access. Michael Colaresi et al., Strategic Rivalry in World Politics: Space, Position, and Conflict Escalation (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 79, table 3.3.
  7. 7. Zeev Moaz and Ben D. Mor, Bound by Struggle: Strategic Evolution of Enduring Rivalries (University of Michigan Press, 2002), 3.
  8. 8. Daniel S. Geller, “Power Differentials and War in Rival Dyads,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 2 (June 1993): 173–93; and Jack S. Levy, “Historical Trends in Great Power War,” International Studies Quarterly 26, no. 2 (June 1982): 278–300.
  9. 9. Colaresi et al., Strategic Rivalry, 21.
  10. 10. Colaresi et al., Strategic Rivalry, 25.
  11. 11. Karen Rasler et al., How Rivalries End (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 6–11.
  12. 12. 2024 Annual Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 118th Cong. (2024) (statements of Robin Cleveland, Chairman US-China Economic and Security Review Commission and Reva Price, Vice Chair US-China Economic and Security Review Commission), https://www.uscc.gov/annual-report/2024-annual-report-congress. On critical minerals, see “Interior Department Releases Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals,” November 14, 2025, https://www.usgs.gov/news/science-snippet/interior-department-releases-final-2025-list-critical-minerals; “Critical Minerals Atlas,” U.S. Geological Survey, n.d., accessed January 27, 2026, https://apps.usgs.gov/critical-minerals/critical-minerals-atlas.html; and Linda R. Rowan, “Critical Mineral Resources: National Policy and Critical Minerals List,” Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report R47982 (CRS, February 21, 2025), https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R47982/R47982.6.pdf.
 
 

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