The Great Power Competition Volume 4

Over the past decade, the international political system has come to be characterized as a Great Power Competition in which multiple would-be hegemons compete for power and influence. Instead of a global climate of unchallenged United States dominance, revisionist powers, notably China and Russia alongside other regional powers, are vying for dominance through political, military, and economic means. A critical battleground in the Great Power Competition is the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and the Central Asia South Asia (CASA), also known as the Central Region. With the planned withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Afghanistan, the U.S. has stated its intention of shifting attention away from the CASA Region in favor of a more isolationist foreign policy approach. This book provides an in-depth understanding of the implications for this shift related to regional diplomacy & politics, economic opportunities & rivalries, security considerations & interests, and the information environment. Amplifying the vital importance of success in the Central Region to U.S. prosperity and security, this volume advances dialogue in identifying key issues for stakeholders within and beyond the Central Region to gain a holistic perspective that better informs decision-making at various levels. This collection of work comes from scholars, strategic thinkers, and subject matter experts who participated in the Great Power Competition Conference hosted by the University of South Florida, in partnership with the National Defense University Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Strategies in January 2020.

Lessons Learned from Afghanistan: America’s Longest War examines the lessons of how America’s “longest war” came to an ignominious end with staggering consequences for the United States and the Afghan nation. Afghanistan today faces an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, looming threat of a civil war and a resurgence of violent extremism organizations similar to pre-9/11. As the U.S. enters a new era in the strategic geopolitical Great Power Competition, an analysis of the original mission intent, shifting policy and strategic objectives, and ineffective implementation of security, political and economic programs reveal critical lessons and questions such as: What led to the “strategic failure” of the U.S. in Afghanistan? What decisions resulted in the present-day humanitarian, civil, and political crises in Afghanistan? Were these consequences in fact avoidable? Was there an alternative approach that could have maintained the hard-fought gains of the last two decades, and better demonstrated America's standing as a defender of global human rights? Lessons Learned from Afghanistan: America’s Longest War further explores lessons of the past negotiations between the United States, Taliban, and former U.S. backed Afghan government to suggest alternative pathways that honor the original intent of the mission and meet present-day obligations to an Afghan nation in crisis.

With a focus on China, the United States, and India, this book examines the economic ambitions of the second space race. The authors argue that space ambitions are informed by a combination of factors, including available resources, capability, elite preferences, and talent pool. The authors demonstrate how these influences affect the development of national space programs as well as policy and law.

Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases: The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy explores the geopolitics of the major powers' overseas basing systems in relation to global strategies and changes in the international system in three fairly distinct phases: the interwar, early postwar, and recent postwar periods. This book links the great powers' competition for overseas bases to several streams of more or less contemporary international relations theory. This monograph consists of seven chapters and opens with an introduction to the diplomacy of basing access, followed by a discussion on the different types or purposes of basing access as they have evolved over the past several decades in response to changes in diplomacy and military technology. The major powers' overseas basing-access networks in the consecutive interwar, early postwar, and recent postwar periods are then reviewed, along with the earlier corpus of geopolitical theory, specifically as it relates to basing diplomacy. Emphasis is on the conflicting assumptions about what reciprocal strategic advantages and disadvantages inhere to the geographic positions of the United States and USSR. The final chapter considers a number of ""functional"" areas of world politics that are closely intertwined with basing diplomacy, and relates the competition for facilities to raw materials access, surrogate wars, strategic deterrence, arms control, balances of payments, arms sales and aid, alliances, and other such staple concerns of international relations. This book will be of interest to political scientists, military and government officials, diplomats, and policymakers.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Implications for the Central Region addresses national security threats and strategic opportunities for the United States and its allies in the Middle East and Central Asia following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Recognizing that integrated deterrence is not constrained by geography or domain, this book focuses on the complex threats and challenges confronting U.S. national security and foreign policy in a post-Ukraine invasion environment. That is to say, what happens in Ukraine does not stay in Ukraine. It affects everyone from the region to the cyberspace domain to people on the other side of the world, due to changes in commodity prices. Specifically, this volume explores how revised analyses of Russia may alter U.S. and allied strategies in a shifting international system and within the framing of strategic competition. Experts in this volume examine how the war in Ukraine will influence Russian strategy and foreign policy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and globally; what effect the Ukraine invasion could have on global and regional geopolitics and geoeconomics; and the United States’ ability to protect national interests in the Central Region. The reasons for this are multiple and complex. In this volume, we explore many issues that have confounded security experts by asking questions such as: What happens after the Russian invasion? What lessons did the U.S., Ukraine, NATO, and the European Union learn about Russia? What lessons did Russia learn about itself and its military after the Ukraine invasion? What lessons did the U.S. learn in Afghanistan that apply to Ukraine? Why was the initial analysis of the Russian invasion so wrong? How has power shifted in the international system since the Ukraine invasion? How has the security environment shifted since the Ukraine invasion? For the U.S. to continue supporting its partners in the Middle East and Central Asia, it must anticipate what new opportunities will arise from Russia’s missteps in Ukraine. The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Implications for the Central Region addresses these challenges and opportunities and informs policymakers on the changing contours of the Great Power Competition.

For millennia, humans waged war on land and sea. The 20th century opened the skies and the stars, introducing air and space as warfare domains. Now, the 21st century has revealed perhaps the most insidious domain of all: cyberspace, the fifth domain. A realm free of physical boundaries, cyberspace lies at the intersection of technology and psychology, where one cannot see one’s enemy, and the most potent weapon is information. The third book in the Great Power Competition series, Cyberspace: The Fifth Domain, explores the emergence of cyberspace as a vector for espionage, sabotage, crime, and war. It examines how cyberspace rapidly evolved from a novelty to a weapon capable of influencing global economics and overthrowing regimes, wielded by nation-states and religious ideologies to stunning effect. Cyberspace: The Fifth Domain offers a candid look at the United States’ role in cyberspace, offering realistic prescriptions for responding to international cyber threats on the tactical, strategic, and doctrinal levels, answering the questions of how can we respond to these threats versus how should we respond? What are the obstacles to and consequences of strategic and tactical response options? What technological solutions are on the horizon? Should the U.S. adopt a more multi-domain offensive posture that eschews the dominant “cyber vs. cyber” paradigm? To answer these questions, experts examine the technological threats to critical infrastructure; cyber operations strategy, tactics, and doctrine; information influence operations; the weaponization of social media; and much more.

Even before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central Region has faced numerous obstacles to building a stable and prosperous future. The region, which encompasses the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia, has been beset, especially in post-conflict and fragile areas, by uncertainty as recent decades have brought dramatic shifts in the global system. Challenges to the modern nation-state system, the emboldening of individuals and groups through the advances of the digital age, and the intensification of the great power competition among the U.S., China, and Russia for influence have all provided fertile ground for violent extremist organizations (VEOs) to take advantage of vulnerable, aggrieved, and traumatized populations to fuel radicalization, recruitment, and unrest. Exacerbating the instability in some parts of the Central Region has been the influx of an unprecedented number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, particularly in Afghanistan and Syria, inflaming the many social and ethnic cleavages that underpin regional instability. Layered on top of these concerns are sophisticated efforts by regional and global powers to wield economic, security, religious, and cultural levers of power to influence and shape population groups across the region. With the pandemic now exacerbating the stresses in this already fragile region, the U.S.’s strategic objectives are rife for re-examination. While it is still early to understand how the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic will impact U.S. interests, objectives, and capabilities in the Central Region, this book will consider how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact the U.S. military readiness, reach, and effectiveness there. The book will expand current considerations of popular radicalization and information to explore the threats and opportunities posed by the U.S. response to the pandemic across key challenges in the region. Key themes include the Great Power Competition, popular unrest, violent extremism, information and influence operations, and new capabilities for recognizing and preparing for other such black swan events.

This book explains the development of the international system's present-day balance of power by exploring three central questions: (1) Under what conditions has the international system order evolved from a unipolar system to the current multipolar system? (2) What are its major states? (3) How do weak powers affect great power competition? It puts forward the following hypotheses: (1) if China and Russia are expanding their military, political, and economic influence into weaker states globally, then the unipolar American order is unraveling; and (2) if the international system is multipolar, then great power balancing may enhance international security. However, balancing may be made difficult because of weak state aid-seeking behavior. When weak states engage competing great powers, they become spheres of competition. This book delves into these states. Whether in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, East Asia, or Eastern Europe, great powers hope to establish some control over weaker units for security, economic, and at times, prestige purposes. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science and IR, security studies, and IPE, as well as members of the think tank community and policy analysts.