Strategic Competition and the Next American Century

Thomas Mahnkin has edited a new book presenting the competitive strategies (CS) approach as the most useful framework to analyze the long-term competition between the United States and China. Eighteen authors contributed to the work, with essays on the theory of peacetime competition, application of the framework during the Cold War, the U.S.-China military balance in the South Pacific, and finally, specific competitive strategies that the United States should adopt vis-à-vis China. Overall, the book provides a thorough analysis and convincing argument for the framework’s employment.

Mahnkin begins by asserting that three enduring challenges face the United States: Al Qaeda and affiliated organizations, nuclear-armed hostile states such as Iran and North Korea, and, most significantly, China. Stephen Rosen and Bradford Lee describe the theoretical and historical basis for strategic competition, tracing its lineage to Sun Tzu and the practice of inducing an opponent into self-defeating action. Barry Watts describes the barriers to thinking strategically, including uncertainty, the lack of an appealing option, the problem of bounded rationality, and the misconception of goals as strategies. The competitive strategies framework requires that the competitors be sophisticated, have a long time horizon, can interact with one another, make constrained choices, and understand the motivations of their competitors. It follows that the Cold War provides one of the best precedents for competitive strategies in U.S. history, and the authors spend about one–fifth of the book on the conflict. Gordon Barrass describes the creation of the Office of Net Assessment and the evolution of strategic thinking during the 1970s and 1980s, and the institutionalization of the U.S. military’s thinking on the Soviet Union’s positions. CS was the natural evolution of net assessment, and it drew from military and business theory. It was an appropriate tool during the Cold War because, in a sense, the Soviet Union was a cooperative player. However, the utility of CS cannot be fully determined by this precedent, since the Cold War ended within a few years of its official adoption.

Half of the book is devoted to the competition between the United States and China, in which, according to James Holmes, only China has seriously applied itself. Since CS is proactive and non-Clausewitzian in its emphasis on interaction, intelligence, and inducing the enemy to action, it is much better aligned with Chinese strategy and historical perspectives. Jacqueline Deal analyzes China’s approach to strategy and compares it with that of the United States. In her essay, and in the book’s broader analysis of China’s approach overall, there is a similarity to the goals and techniques of an insurgent against a ruling regime. China’s need for a cause, in this case a public commitment to control nearby sea lanes, and its ability to focus resources on incremental gains (while the United States must maintain its already substantial commitment in the region) are two examples supporting this theory. Dan Blumenthal describes a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan and escalation to nuclear war as one of several concerning scenarios for the United States. Other authors subsequently describe specific resources or techniques that China and the United States possess, and how they may be exploited or employed, respectively.

The analyses are comprehensive, and include thought-provoking discussions on regional powers such as Japan and Australia, but often lack a strong connection between CS and the appraisals themselves. While the analysis is strong overall, the authors at times stretch their analyses in order to fit the framework in some essays’ final paragraphs. The final three chapters restate the optimal characteristics of competitive strategy and suggest, in occasionally contradictory terms, some options for the United States to consider in the future.

It is difficult to find fault with the competitive strategies approach to the U.S. relationship with China. It is likely that CS fell out of favor in the military bureaucracy soon after its implementation because, until China’s emergence, there was not an appropriate counterpart...