For almost five years now, the U.S. government, the think-tank community, and academics working in the field of international relations have been refocusing on the resurgence of great-power competition. The Trump administration articulated early on the changing strategic environment in its National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, and, to judge from the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance released by the Biden administration in March, the overall focus on China and Russia as pacing threats is likely to remain at the center of our priorities. Still, despite the constant discussion of this topic, no consensus has emerged when it comes to our desired end state. This is a fundamental question, for without a clear sense of what victory looks like, we cannot credibly assess how to go about shaping the desired outcome and identify what resources we are willing to commit to it. As the cliché goes: If you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there.
The liberal institutionalism that has dominated the strategic thought of the past three decades and drained American power on misconstrued projects and wars in secondary theaters is still wafting in the air. Our policy elites seem unwilling, or perhaps unable, to come to terms with the legacy of their fundamental misreading of where America found itself in 1990 after its decisive victory in the twilight struggle against the Soviet Union. Our grand strategy post-1990, if we can call it that, was first and foremost centered around an overweening triumphalism — history, after all, had “ended” — and about savoring our “unipolar moment.” Fueled by the post–Cold War dogma concerning the universality of democracy as well as by an eagerness on the part of our policy elites to embrace imperial liberalism and globalist export-driven modernization theories as foundational to the country’s peace and prosperity, we behaved as though we had been launched onto an inexorable path to Kantian democratic peace. After the 9/11 terror attack, whatever remained of strategic design devolved into arguably the most chaotic American ideological meanderings to date, producing a headlong dash into “democracy-building,” “state-building,” and “nation-building” projects that have sucked the United States into 20 years of the 21st-century equivalent of the Boer War, costing thousands of American lives and trillions of dollars. Meanwhile, China continued to grow right under our noses, propelled by American and European capital investment and a U.S. technology and educational system that trained hundreds of thousands of Chinese engineers. During this time, Russia regained its footing, modernized its military, and set about revising the post–Cold War settlement in Eurasia.
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