“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win…The greatest victory is that which requires no battle…To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.” ― Sun Tzu,
The Art of War
The new National Security Strategy (NSS) that the White House issued on December 18, 2017, called for the United States to focus on competition with China and Russia in order to focus on the potential military threat they posed to the United States. This call to look beyond the current U.S. emphasis on counterterrorism was all too valid, but its implementation has since focused far too narrowly on the military dimension and on providing each military service with all of the U.S. military forces that are needed to fight “worst case wars.
This focus on fighting major wars with China and Russia is a fundamental misreading of the challenges the U.S. actually faces from Chinese and Russian competition as well as a misinterpretation of their strategy and capabilities. It ignores the fact that China and Russia compete on a diplomatic and economic level as well as a military one, and that this competition is equally serious.