 the international order to create a world conducive to their highly personalized and repressive type of autocracy. Their pursuit of this vision is complicated by several factors. The PRC’s assertive behavior has caused other countries to push back and defend their sovereignty, for their own, legitimate reasons. The PRC also retains common interests with other countries, including the United States, because of various interdependencies on climate, economics, and public health. Russia’s strategic limitations have been exposed following its war of aggression against Ukraine. Moscow also has some interest in cooperation with countries that do not share its vision, especially in the global south. As a result, the United States and our allies and partners have an opportunity to shape the PRC and Russia’s external environment in a way that influences their behavior even as we compete with them. Some parts of the world are uneasy with the competition between the United States and the world’s largest autocracies. We understand these concerns. We also want to avoid a world in which competition escalates into a world of rigid blocs. We do not seek conflict or a new Cold War. Rather, we are trying to support every country, regardless of size or strength, in exercising the freedom to make choices that serve their interests. This is a critical difference between our vision, which aims to preserve the autonomy and rights of less powerful states, and that of our rivals, which does not. Cooperating to Address Shared Challenges in an Era of Competition Heightened competition between democracies and autocracies is just one of two critical trends we face. The other is shared challenges—or what some call transnational challenges—that do not respect borders and affect all nations. These two trends affect each other—geopolitical competition changes, and often complicates, the context in which shared challenges can be addressed while those problems often exacerbate geopolitical competition, as we saw with the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic when the PRC was unwilling to cooperate with the international community. We cannot succeed in our competition with the major powers who offer a different vision for the world if we do not have a plan to work with other nations to deal with shared challenges and we will not be able to do that unless we understand how a more competitive world affects cooperation and how the need for cooperation affects competition. We need a strategy that not only deals with both but recognizes the relationship between them and adjusts accordingly. Of all of the shared problems we face, climate change is the greatest and potentially existential for all nations. Without immediate global action during this crucial decade, global temperatures will cross the critical warming threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius after which scientists have warned some of the most catastrophic climate impacts will be irreversible. Climate effects and humanitarian emergencies will only worsen in the years ahead—from more powerful wildfires and hurricanes in the United States to flooding in Europe, rising sea levels in Oceania, water scarcity in the Middle East, melting ice in the Arctic, and drought and deadly temperatures in sub-Saharan Africa. Tensions will further intensify as countries compete for resources and energy advantage—increasing humanitarian need, food insecurity and health threats, as well as the potential for instability, conflict, and mass migration. The necessity to protect forests globally, electrify the transportation sector, redirect financial flows and create an energy revolution to head off the climate crisis is reinforced by the geopolitical imperative to reduce our collective dependence on states like Russia that seek to weaponize energy for coercion. NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY 9