![]() In 2015, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Just a few years ago national security officials referred to the fight with Islamic extremists as being the top national security threat that could only be countered through a multiyear war. If not, all foreign policy is war and we are all combatants. Let us leave the notion of war for those destructive and consequential activities that are worthy of the label. Even states within the United States are in competition all the time, and therefore, using this logic, they must be at war as well. Moreover, why would one consider the peaceful contestation for relative influence in various regions throughout the world as akin to “warfare?” If metaphorically fighting for political outcomes, market access, manufacturing plants, and research and development funding are the equivalent of war, then dozens and dozens of nations are presently at war. This assumes that there is a finite pool of military power and economic influence and diplomatic suasion, and therefore the material or soft-power gains of one of these three powers is made at the expense of one or two of the others. Mike Holmes termed, “infinite war: longtime competition against peer adversaries.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines infinite as “Limitless or endless in space, extent, or size impossible to measure or calculate.” The implication here is that in every place in the universe, in every conceivable domain, China, Russia, and the United States will challenge each other for the end of time. One frequently heard comment is that geopolitical competition is “war.” Air Force Gen. Official narratives shape and limit thinking, which then can then lead to extremely costly or counterproductive foreign-policy initiatives.Ĭonsider a few recent quotes from defense officials about the emerging conventional wisdom surrounding the much-welcomed Cold War II. An important Cold War-era lesson for today is that it’s consequential how American officials talk about the country’s adversaries. The emergence of Pentagon-sanctioned great-power politics has been accompanied by a rise in confused talk by senior civilian and military officials about geopolitical competition. national security.” This means that China and Russia are now the top priority for defense planners, not the Islamic State, al Qaeda, or self-directed terrorists living in the United States. That strategy document proclaimed that “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. ![]() The diagnosis has now been formally enshrined in the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy, a summary of which was published by the Pentagon in mid-January. ![]() “Great-power politics is back,” is a mantra civilian and military officials have repeated with increasing frequency over the past half-decade.
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