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Cogesoa Resarc Servic
March 8, 2019
Strategic Competition and Foreign Policy: What is Political
Warfare?
In recent years, scholars have formed a consensus around
the notion that the United States has reentered an
international strategic competition with other great powers,
notably Russia and China. This great power competition
has political, economic and military dimensions, with
potentially far-reaching implications for U.S. foreign and
national security policy.
Background
Most observers of contemporary international security
trends contend that the United States and its allies are
entering an era of unprecedented- and dangerous-
strategic complexity. In particular, the 2014 Russian
invasion of the Crimean peninsula and subsequent proxy
war in eastern Ukraine was arguably a watershed moment
in international security, as it awakened dormant concerns
about an aggressive and revanchist Russia. Months before
Russia's Crimea intervention, China began a territorial
expansion as well, building artificial islands on disputed
features in the South China Sea which it later turned into
military outposts.
Complicating matters some states are collaborating with
non-state proxies (including, but not limited to, militias,
criminal networks, corporations and hackers) and
deliberately blurring the lines between conventional and
irregular conflict. Some states are also sowing confusion as
to what constitutes civilian versus military activities.
Recent events involving China and Russia have raised a
number of questions that highlight this complexity:
* Are sales of Chinese multinational Huawei's 5G
networks around the world- including to key U.S.
allies- a commercial undertaking or a national security
challenge? What is an appropriate U.S. response?
* Are infrastructure investments underwritten by China as
part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) about
improving Chinese access to foreign markets, or is it a
de facto way to establish a global presence that could be
utilized for security and defense purposes- or both?
* Is Russian production and dissemination of media with
pro-Moscow narratives to Russian minority groups in
neighboring countries routine messaging, or is it
designed to destabilize NATO countries?
* Is Russian interference in U.S. and European elections
in 2016, as described by the intelligence community, a
national security threat?
* Some European and Commonwealth countries that have
maintained strong economic and political relationship
with the United States are becoming increasingly
economically dependent on China. At what point does
this interdependence, potentially underpinned by greater
reliance on China-led economic institutions, alter the
security calculus of U.S. Allies and partners?
Altogether, these events underscore to many observers that
the United States must be prepared to compete with other
powers- powers that are willing to employ both military
and nonmilitary means to accomplish their objectives and
potentially reshape the world order.
Strategic Competition and the 201 7 U.S. National
Security Strategy
In response, the Trump Administration has framed the
emerging global geopolitical landscape as one characterized
by strategic competition. The 2017 U.S. National Security
Strategy (NSS) notes:
China and Russia challenge American power,
influence, and interests, attempting to erode
American security and prosperity. They are
determined to make economies less free and less
fair, to grow their militaries, and to control
information and data to repress their societies and
expand their influence... [these challenges] are
fundamentally contests between those who value
human dignity and freedom and those who
oppress individuals and enforce uniformity
(page 2, emphasis added).
In other words, these global geopolitical friction points are
undergirded by a common theme: adversaries are
questioning- if not outright rejecting- the post-World
War II liberal international order that the United States and
its allies constructed in the late 1940s. Moreover, the
contests the NSS is framing appear to have significant
geopolitical dimensions in addition to its moral ones. This
is because to U.S. competitors, advancing human dignity
and freedom are means by which the United States retains
its dominant standing in the world. Both China and Russia
for example, according to Understanding the Current
International Order (a 2016 RAND report), resent key
elements of the U.S. conception of postwar order, such as
promotion of liberal values ... viewing them as tools used
by the United States to sustain its hegemony.
China appears to be using its wealth to assert security
interests in the Pacific, deepen and formalize the region's
economic integration through efforts such as BRI, and
assert larger influence at international institutions such as
the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International
Monetary Fund. These institutions, however, are rooted in a
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