Competition with China and U.S. defence strategy: from net assessment to competitive strategies

ABSTRACT

What does the decision to designate China as a “long-term strategic competitor” imply for U.S. defence strategy? To address this question, we draw on net assessment and competitive strategies, two complementary frameworks developed in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) during the Cold War to understand and manage long-term competition with the Soviet Union, respectively. Net assessment and competitive strategies are tailored around specific competitors and follow a characteristically dialectical approach to strategic planning, based on complex, recursive calculations of move and countermove. We argue that the identification of China as a long-term strategic competitor has paved the way for an increasingly systematic application of net assessment and competitive strategies within DoD, even if obstacles to such application still remain.

KEYWORDS:

• Net Assessment
• competitive strategies
• China
• United States
• competition

Acknowledgments

We thank Jonathan Caverley, Zack Cooper, Andrea Gilli, Frank Hoffman, Alexander Lanoszka, Thomas Mahnken, Evan Brayden Montgomery, Diego Ruiz-Palmer and Toshi Yoshihara for comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Between October 2016 and December 2020, we have conducted 35 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with senior U.S. defense officials and experts over multiple field trips to Washington, D.C. Several of the U.S. officials and experts interviewed have worked for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) or conducted consultancy work for ONA. The information extracted from the interviews has been triangulated with data from official U.S. government documents and secondary literature.

2. Interviews with multiple U.S. defense officials in Washington, D.C., October 2016 and December 2019. See also Gouré, “Overview of the Competitive Strategies Initiative”

3. Interviews with multiple U.S. defense officials in Washington, D.C., October 2016 and December 2020.

4. Interview with former U.S. defense official, 24 May 2021.

5. We use the definition provided by Cohn et al, who refer to theater range missiles as ground-launched missiles with INF-covered range of 500 to 5,500 km: Jacob Cohn et al., “Leveling the Playing Field,” 1.

6. Interviews with multiple U.S. defense officials in Washington, D.C., October 2016 and December 2020. See also Cohn et al., “Leveling the Playing Field”

7. Interview with U.S. defense official, 12 March 2019.

8. Interview with U.S. defense official, 12 March 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luis Simón

Dr. Luis Simón is director of the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) at the Brussels School of Governance and director and senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (European University Institute). His research focuses on US foreign and defence policy, European security, transatlantic relations, and Asian security

Maximilian Ernst

Dr. Maximilian Ernst is an associate researcher at the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) at the Brussels School of Governance. His research focuses on Asia-Pacific security and Chinese statecraft in the Indo-Pacific.