The Problem with Great-Power Competition
Jack MacLennan | May 1, 2020
Liberal internationalism has hallmarked the US strategic vision since the end of the Cold War. After a new, unipolar order took shape in the early 1990s, American strategic and operational planners were asked to support a world, according to G. John Ikenberry, defined by “open markets, international institutions, cooperative security, democratic community, progressive change, collective problem solving, and the rule of law.†US military power was taken to be essential to the maintenance of this system. Global stability was sought through deterrence of would-be competitors (most conspicuously via the two-wars doctrine that defined defense planning in the 1990s), as well as through the targeted use of US military force. Liberal internationalism rested on various kinds of US military missions, ranging from freedom-of-navigation operations at sea to stability operations across Europe and the Middle East.
https://mwi.usma.edu/problem-great-power-competition/
