Our Work

Washington cannot shrink from great-power competition where U.S. security is threatened, but nor can it form a strategy on the assumption that it possesses unlimited resources to compete, with equal effort, in all the world’s major theaters at the same time. This paper details that dilemma and outline foreign policy approaches that could be framed in response. The goal is not to dictate a specific American strategy, but to develop a framework for focusing debate.

China is making strides in its effort to secure its energy supply, undercutting the threat of an American blockade, potentially increasing Beijing’s willingness for war.

Built on the conviction that political order is engineered through a top-down process, Western foreign policy assumes that the state apparatus creates domestic order, while international institutions and rules build global order. Accordingly, what establishes a more efficient and lasting order is nothing more than the right application of power in its military, economic, or institutional forms.

The reform package best adapted to generate the broadest possible corporate and state-based coalition is by focusing on strengthening what this report designates as the defense industrial “sub-base” (DISB).