Antulio J. Echevarria II
ABSTRACT: This essay explores the advantages and risks associated with leveraging interstate rivalry frameworks for strategy development and planning. Advantages include reducing strategic uncertainty and gaining efficiencies in some aspects of force planning. Risks include trusting the data and accepting the methodical pace of research. While US security documents typically describe adversaries as threats or competitors, they rarely acknowledge that the behavior patterns among America’s three current interstate rivals—China, Russia, and Iran—differ fundamentally from those of mere threats or competitors. This analysis will benefit defense professionals responsible for developing regional or global strategies and for directing war-gaming efforts.
Keywords: strategic rivalry, interstate competition, grand strategy, great-power competition, threat framework, rivalry framework
The previous Strategic Competition Corner, “Strategic Rivalries: How Are They Won?,” described interstate rivalries, what they are, and why prevailing against a rival typically requires more than a strategy of decapitation or “mowing the lawn.” It requires a grand strategy, preferably a combination of containment and preclusion. “Strategic Rivalries” also discussed why interstate rivalry is not just an intense form of competition. It is a specific kind of competitive behavior in which the parties involved prioritize a particular interest—weakening or neutralizing each other. For this reason, rivals engage in serial wars with each other, which can run either hot or cold, or a combination of both. In a word, rivals are each other’s repeat offenders. Or, to borrow Captain Louis Renault’s wonderfully apposite line from the movie Casablanca, strategic rivals are each other’s “usual suspects.”1 While Renault used it to misdirect his subordinates (since he knew who the culprit was), it is meant to be taken literally here. America’s crises usually involve one of these three repeat offenders—China, Russia, and Iran.
America’s most recent national security and defense strategies have duly identified these three states as threats or competitors. The 2025 National Security Strategy identifies China as an economic competitor, portrays Russia as the source of Europe’s misplaced insecurity, and casts Iran as the Middle East’s “chief destabilizing force.”2 Similarly, the 2026 National Defense Strategy describes China as a rising economic and military challenger against which the United States must maintain a “favorable balance of military power,” Russia as a “persistent but manageable threat,” and Iran as a threat determined to reconstitute its “conventional military forces” and “obtain a nuclear weapon.”3 While the characterization of these states as threats or challengers is not entirely wrong, it fails to capture the full spirit of their strategic rivalry with the United States, which essentially means being locked in a cold war with occasional hot flashes. Accordingly, this edition of the Strategic Competition Corner introduces readers to some of the advantages and risks of incorporating a rivalry framework into our strategic thinking.4
Advantages
Augmenting the traditional threat paradigm (where threat = capability + intention) with a rivalry paradigm (where rival = capability + intention + a history of hostile behavior) would yield several advantages.5 First, it would provide a critical distinction between a one-time offender and a repeat offender bent on doing the United States harm over the long term. Whereas the United States can afford to treat the former as a one-time crisis, it cannot do the same with the latter, which must be approached as a long-term problem.
Second, using rivalry paradigms in each of the geographic combatant commands would reduce strategic uncertainty, though obviously not eliminate it. Since rivals habitually fight each other, conflicts among rivals are not just possibilities, they are probabilities. In the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility, Iran and the United States are rivals as are Israel and Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia and Iran. The probability of conflict involving some combination of these rivals is much higher than a conflict between Iran and Pakistan, which are not rivals. While Israel and Saudi Arabia are also rivals, both have made efforts to dampen their rivalry, with the Abraham Accords, which stalled since the terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023, being the latest step in that direction.6 Reduced strategic uncertainty can yield efficiencies in planning by permitting the allocation of limited resources to high-probability contingencies; expert assessments can now be supported by historical data.
Third, the historical data in rivalry paradigms offer empirically defensible strategic rationales for force-structure requirements (the what), force-sizing demands (the how much), and force-posture decisions (the where). Such rationales can assist planners and operators to allocate essential war-fighting assets, such as interceptors and minesweepers, as well as intelligence data, to the right theaters to offset the munitions shortages that have reportedly plagued the US military before they became critical problems.7
Fourth, the use of rivalry frameworks would encourage US strategists and military planners to view crises not as discrete events, as is our wont, but as episodes linked in a series of episodes. The manner in which one rivalry crisis ends sets the stage for the next one, thereby underscoring the importance of eliminating a rival’s capacity to compete as far as possible. For Iran, its capacity to compete is tied to its ability to enrich uranium as well as to control the Strait of Hormuz.8 Both are vital to Iran's pretensions to regional hegemony. To prevent that, the United States and its regional partners must score tangible wins vis-à-vis nuclear enrichment and control of the strait, which in turn may lead to a “better state of peace” which, as B. H. Liddell Hart postulated, is the object of war.9 Otherwise, when the United States and its regional partners confront Iran again, Tehran will have taken additional measures to increase the costs of military action further.
Simply put, a rivalry framework can provide historical data to inform decisionmakers about the differences between the behaviors of threats versus rivals, while also reducing strategic uncertainty and increasing the odds that US military forces have the right weapons, in the right quantities, in the right places, and at the right times. It can also enhance US strategic thinking by encouraging us to look beyond the crisis at hand to the ones likely to follow.
Risks
The principal risk in employing rivalry frameworks comes with trusting the data. How reliable are the data, and how might we hedge our actions accordingly? How might new data alter how we understand strategic rivalry? Clearly, we do not live in a world of complete data. We make decisions with the data we have, closing the gap with experienced judgment. A rivalry framework does not necessarily provide guidelines for dealing with a crisis between nonrivals, such as the United States and Venezuela. Such a crisis would fall into the category of a low-consequence, low-probability contingency. Joint planners would have to develop a contingency plan for such a scenario, but it might not receive the top priority. That risk is acceptable.
Secondly, academic research moves slowly, and its idioms can prove opaque to nonacademics. Research into interstate rivalries only began in earnest in the early 1990s, following the end of the Cold War. It accelerated after 2013–14, leaving a knowledge gap of almost two decades for defense professionals. At present, we can say political scientists have diligently and patiently refined their interpretations and findings regarding strategic rivalry over 40-plus years. Meanwhile, the US government has published new strategy documents every four or five years. In other words, US strategy documents tend to turn well inside the cycles of academic research. A parallel problem is that some academics have not incorporated knowledge into their research that is familiar to defense professionals, such as the phenomena of gray-zone tactics and hybrid warfare. Such omissions raise questions concerning where these phenomena fit in a strategic rivalry, though the answer is not difficult.
Thirdly, the academic research into strategic rivalry focuses almost exclusively on states. It thus overlooks rivalries among alliances, such as the NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It also neglects asymmetric rivalries, particularly between states and violent nonstate actors such as terrorist groups and militias. Such groups typically cannot compete symmetrically with a state’s military or economic power. They can and often do compete asymmetrically, however, albeit often at the behest of states, as in the case of Hezbollah. Indeed, the use of proxies deserves a closer look in rivalry research. While defense professionals should be wary of some of the gaps in rivalry research, they should look at those as gaps they can help fill.
On balance, the advantages of using rivalry frameworks outweigh the risks. Moreover, the risks that do exist can be mitigated through greater teaming of academics and professionals to share language and ideas. Indeed, senior US officials should consider employing war-gaming platforms to explore the utility of rivalry frameworks and how to mitigate their risks.
Conclusion
Rivalry frameworks clearly hold a great deal of promise for crafting regional and global strategies. Since armed clashes among rivals are serial in nature and more frequent than clashes among nonrivals, the US military should anticipate their recurrence and shape strategic planning accordingly. Doing so would reduce strategic uncertainty, though never eliminate it entirely. If we can reduce strategic uncertainty and make it more manageable, however, we should. Rivalry frameworks can also lead to more effective strategies because they will compel us to look beyond the current crisis to those that will likely follow. Each crisis is an opportunity to put ourselves in a better position next time and our rival in a worse one. Otherwise, our usual suspects will become unfamiliar, and we will misplace the criminal records of our repeat offenders.
Strategic Competition Center Hosted First Special Event
Readers will be interested to know the USAWC Strategic Competition Center hosted its first guest speaker, Professor Sir Hew Strachan, on April 28, 2026. He spoke to USAWC faculty and students on the topic of “Strategic Competition and the Role of Allies.” After the lecture, he recorded a podcast with a small group of USAWC faculty members in which he addressed the question whether arms races cause wars. A recording of his lecture will be available on the Strategic Competition Center web page along with a link to his podcast.
Author’s Note
To learn about the mission of the new Strategic Competition Center, please visit its website at: https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/Research-Commentary/Strategic-Competition-Center/.
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. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Casablanca, Film by Curtiz (1942)," by John M. Cunningham, updated April 24, 2026, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Casablanca-film-by-Curtiz.
- 2. Donald J. Trump, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (The White House, November 2025), 18, 25, 28, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf.
- 3. Pete Hegseth, 2026 National Defense Strategy: Restoring Peace Through Strength for a New Golden Age of America (Department of War, January 2026), 9–12, https://media.defense.gov/2026/Jan/23/2003864773/-1/-1/0/2026-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY.PDF. The classified version of the NDS may reflect different priorities, but those cannot be discussed here.
- 4. See Antulio J. Echevarria II, “Strategic Rivalries: How Are They Won?,” Parameters 56, no. 1 (Spring 2026), https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol56/iss1/10/.
- 5. These points expand upon those found in Antulio J. Echevarria II, “What Is Strategic Rivalry? Why Should We Care?,” War on the Rocks, April 9, 2026, https://warontherocks.com/what-is-strategic-rivalry-why-should-we-care/.
- 6. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, s.v. “Abraham Accords, International Agreements,” by Adam Zeidan, March 7, 2026, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Abraham-Accords.
- 7. Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan, “Iran War Has Drained U.S. Supplies of Critical, Costly Weapons,” The New York Times, April 23, 2026, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/us/politics/iran-war-cost-military.html.
- 8. Gavin Butler et al., “Why the Strait of Hormuz Matters So Much in the Iran War,” BBC, April 7, 2026, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c78n6p09pzno.
- 9. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd rev. ed. (Praeger, 1967), 338.
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