 It is not just climate change. COVID-19 has shown that transnational challenges can hit with the destructive force of major wars. COVID-19 has killed millions of people and damaged the livelihoods of hundreds of millions, if not more. It exposed the insufficiency of our global health architecture and supply chains, widened inequality, and wiped out many years of development progress. It also weakened food systems, brought humanitarian need to record levels, and reinforced the need to redouble our efforts to reduce poverty and hunger and expand access to education in order to get back on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Meanwhile, communicable diseases like Ebola continue to reemerge and can only be dealt with if we act early and with other nations. The pandemic has made clear the need for international leadership and action to create stronger, more equitable, and more resilient health systems—so that we can prevent or prepare for the next pandemic or health emergency before it starts. The global economic challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have been extended and deepened globally as uneven, recovering demand has outpaced suppliers and put strains on supply chains. Consumers and policymakers the world over have also struggled with surging energy prices and mounting food insecurity, which sharpen security challenges like migration and corruption. Moreover, autocratic governments often abuse the global economic order by weaponizing its interconnectivity and its strengths. They can arbitrarily raise costs by withholding the movement of key goods. They leverage access to their markets and control of global digital infrastructure for coercive purposes. They launder and hide their wealth, often the proceeds of foreign corrupt practices, in major economies through shell and front companies. Nefarious actors—some state sponsored, some not—are exploiting the digital economy to raise and move funds to support illicit weapons programs, terrorist attacks, fuel conflict, and to extort everyday citizens targeted by ransomware or cyber-attacks on national health systems, financial institutions and critical infrastructure. These various factors constrain our policy options, and those of our allies and partners, to advance our security interests and meet the basic needs of our citizens. We have also experienced a global energy crisis driven by Russia’s weaponization of the oil and gas supplies it controls, exacerbated by OPEC’s management of its own supply. This circumstance underscores the need for an accelerated, just, and responsible global energy transition. That’s why — even as we continue to explore all opportunities with our allies and partners to stabilize energy markets and get supplies to those who need it — we are also focused on implementing the most significant piece of climate legislation in our nation’s history, to bring innovative energy technologies to scale as quickly as possible. We must work with other nations to address shared challenges to improve the lives of the American people and those of people around the world. We recognize that we will undertake such effort within a competitive environment where major powers will be actively working to advance a different vision. We will use the impulses released by an era of competition to create a race to the top and make progress on shared challenges, whether it is by making investments at home or by deepening cooperation with other countries that share our vision. Overview of Our Strategic Approach Our goal is clear—we want a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order. We seek an order that is free in that it allows people to enjoy their basic, universal rights and freedoms. It is open in that it provides all nations that sign up to these principles an opportunity to participate in, 10 NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY