Thread by @ElbridgeColby

In @ForeignAffairs Wess Mitchell & I describe how Trump Administration has refashioned American strategy for an era of great power competition in #NSS & #NDS & Indo-Pac strategy inter alia here: foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-… 1/

@ForeignAffairs Most accounts say US is in decline/abandoning post-WWII role. But step back from day-to-day commotion, and a different picture emerges. In truth, the United States is gearing up for a new era—one marked not by unchallenged U.S. dominance but by a rising China & revanchist RF 2/

@ForeignAffairs When future historians look back at the actions of the United States in the early twenty-first century, by far the most consequential story will be the way Washington refocused its attention on great-power competition. 3/

@ForeignAffairs Beneath today’s often ephemeral headlines, it is this shift, and the reordering of U.S. military, economic, and diplomatic behavior that it entails, that will stand out—and likely drive U.S. foreign policy under presidents from either party for a long time to come. 4/

@ForeignAffairs Dispensing w/ paradigm of unipolarity, the Trump Admin created an opening to articulate new grand strategy. In #NSS & #NDS & ancillary regional strategies, the United States made clear it saw relations w/ PRC & RF as competitive & that it would maintain edge over these rivals. 5/

@ForeignAffairs The idea behind this shift is not to be blindly confrontational but to preserve central objective of U.S. foreign policy since the end of WWII: the freedom of states, particularly U.S. allies, to chart their own courses w/out interference from a domineering regional hegemon. 6/

@ForeignAffairs The United States will realize this vision of a free and open world only if it ensures its own strength and economic vitality, maintains an edge in regional balances of power, and communicates its interests and redlines clearly. 7/

@ForeignAffairs Engaging in a war with Iran, sustaining a large military presence in Afghanistan, or intervening in Venezuela, as some in the administration want to do, is antithetical to success in a world of great-power competition. 8/

@ForeignAffairs Nor is US on course yet to compete successfully—progress thus far has been uneven and halting. But US now has a template for reorienting its foreign policy that enjoys bipartisan support and is likely to endure, at least in its fundamental tenets, in future administrations. 9/

@ForeignAffairs This is where things now stand for Washington. At home, that course correction has enjoyed far more bipartisan support than is often appreciated; the administration’s tough approach to China, in particular, has the backing of most members of Congress, D and R. 10/

@ForeignAffairs Yet this is only the beginning of what is likely to be a decades-long effort. China shows no sign of giving up its pursuit of ascendancy in Asia. Moscow looks no more likely to mend ties with the West. US must prepare for a generational effort. 11//

@ForeignAffairs To thwart China’s bid for ascendancy in Asia and beyond, the United States must maintain favorable regional balances of power with yet far more urgency. Building and sustaining the necessary coalitions in Asia and Europe should be at the heart of its strategy. 12/

@ForeignAffairs The overarching purpose of this strategy is neither to decouple the U.S. and Chinese economies entirely nor to force U.S. allies and partners to pick a side 12/

@ForeignAffairs Instead, it is to better protect intellectual property and sensitive technologies and, by extension, to reduce China’s economic leverage over the United States and other places. Canada, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, states in central and southeastern Europe 14/

@ForeignAffairs Extensive integration with the Chinese economy is necessary for all states, but they must limit Beijing’s ability to turn that exposure into coercive leverage—not as a favor to Washington but for the sake of their own sovereignty. 15/

@ForeignAffairs In addition, US should try to create some distance between Beijing and Moscow...To the extent that a future interests-based détente with Russia is possible, it will be because Moscow concludes that resurrecting its Soviet-era influence by force is too costly to be worthwhile. 16/

@ForeignAffairs Even with allied help, however, the United States will not be able to achieve the kind of military dominance over China and Russia that it once had over its opponents in the unipolar era. Trying to do so would be wasteful and counterproductive. 17/

@ForeignAffairs US needs capacity to resist successful assaults on its allies & partners. It means ensuring they cannot be occupied, especially in a fait accompli, or strangled by a blockade or coercion—a strategy that might be termed “denial defense.” 18/

@ForeignAffairs Getting there means other commitments will have to be put on the back burner or even sacrificed. In a unipolar world, US might have been able to be all things in all regions, like a colossus bestriding the world, but this is wholly untenable in era of great-power competition. 19/

@ForeignAffairs Washington will have to scale back its efforts in secondary and peripheral regions. Consider the U.S. footprint in the Middle East. 20/

@ForeignAffairs The United States is entering what is likely to be a protracted struggle over who will decide how the world works in the twenty-first century. The coming era will be less forgiving of hubris and unpreparedness than were the circumstances of the recent past. 21/

@ForeignAffairs Doing so will require painful tradeoffs and sacrifices. It will mean relinquishing old dreams of unfettered military dominance and ill-suited weapons platforms and asking greater material contributions of U.S. allies. It will also mean sharpening the U.S. technological edge. 22/

@ForeignAffairs Returning to somnolent complacency of years past—when US assumed the best intentions of its rivals, maintained economic policies that undercut its national security, & masked dangerous shortcomings among its allies in the name of superficial political unity—is not an option. 23/

@ForeignAffairs Neither is withdrawing in the hopes of sitting out geopolitical competition altogether. As in the past, the United States can guarantee its own security and prosperity as a free society only if it ensures favorable balances of power where they matter most 24/

@ForeignAffairs & systematically prepares its society, economy, and allies for a protracted competition against large, capable, and determined rivals that threaten that aim. END/