The Missing, Irregular Half of Great Power Competition
Eric Robinson | September 8, 2020
The US military has embraced great power competition as its organizing principle, but cannot seem to agree on what the term actually means.
While the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) has driven a monumental shift toward great power competition, the document failed to define the term in any meaningful fashion, nor did it build a common understanding across the US military regarding what it means to actually compete. Beyond the oblique directive to do more against China and less against terrorism, America’s military has been left to organize around a defining principle that gets defined differently in the eyes of each beholder.
Take, for example, the public statements of America’s military leadership regarding great power competition. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has declared that competition with China requires deploying troops abroad to new bases in the Indo-Pacific. Yet Gen. Mark Milley, as chief of staff of the Army, declared instead that competition requires forces at home to reorganize, refit, and retrain to prepare for high-end conflict.
https://mwi.usma.edu/the-missing-irregular-half-of-great-power-competition/
