The military dimension of great power competition manifests itself in the efforts China and Russia have made to undermine the ability of the United States and its allies to meet commitments in Europe and the Pacific. “Our responsibility is to ensure we can assure allies, we can deter and we can respond in case deterrence fails,” he said.
Competition does not equal conflict, the chairman said, but competition certainly ups the stakes. In the past, “we didn’t have much hot breath on the back of our neck from a competition standpoint and that informed the decisions that we made and that informed how we prioritize and allocate resources,” he said.
Some of this was forced on the department as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011 and sequestration. “I think that was where we might have been out of balance for a few years is that we were spending most of our budget dealing with the fight that we had, and probably not being as attentive as we needed to be in terms of developing the capabilities we need tomorrow based on the trends that are taking place in emerging technologies,” he said.
Russia and China look to undermine the cohesion of U.S. allies and partners, and they have studied American military doctrine and operations. The U.S. achievements in Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1990, in Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 and in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, highlighted U.S. capabilities to move large amounts of men, materiel and equipment anywhere in the world. Chinese and Russian military planners identified what they perceive to be vulnerabilities and have developed systems specifically designed to disrupt U.S. ability to project power.
The change to great power competition is more than merely buying more of the same capabilities. It means more than just adapting new technologies. It is investing in ideas, the chairman said. “We carefully analyze 14 competitive areas – space, cyberspace, the maritime domain, electromagnetic spectrum and so forth – and we have analyzed the path of capability development that Russia and China have been on,” he said.