Key Points
- Although American politics today are defined by sharp, bitter disagreement, a bipartisan US grand strategy for great-power competition has emerged.
- This report makes explicit 17 critical assumptions underpinning US grand strategy today and subjects them to an intellectual stress test. In other words, it asks whether they can bear the weight of world affairs.
- Prevailing in great-power rivalry is likely to be more difficult, expensive, dangerous, and all-consuming than US policymakers have so far been willing to admit—or than the American public presently understands.
Executive Summary
Although American politics today are defined by sharp, bitter disagreement, a bipartisan US grand strategy for great-power competition has emerged. This grand strategy has taken shape over the course of the Trump and Biden administrations. Like all grand strategies, it is built on a range of critical assumptions about how the world works and how America can and should use its power to address a range of challenges.
But how solid are those assumptions? This report makes explicit 17 critical assumptions underpinning US grand strategy today and subjects them to an intellectual stress test. In other words, it asks whether they can bear the weight of world affairs. While the assumptions we survey are of varying strength, this assessment leads to a sobering conclusion: Prevailing in great-power rivalry is likely to be more difficult, expensive, dangerous, and all-consuming than US policymakers have so far been willing to admit—or than the American public presently understands.
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