“For almost a decade, U.S. defense officials have deemed the return of great-power competition to be the most consequential challenge to U.S. national security. In 2012, during the Obama administration, the Defense Department announced that ‘U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations,’ such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq, marking a sharp departure from the United States’ post-9/11 defense strategy. In 2016, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter highlighted a ‘return to great-power of competition.’ And in 2018, the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy crystallized this shift: ‘Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security,’ it declared, with a particular focus on China as the pacing threat…”
Read the full article here: