NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT ty environment,The National Defense Strategy acknowledges an increasingly complex global security environment, re-emergence ofcharacterized by overt challenges to the free and open international order and the re-emergence of appraisal of thelong-term, strategic competition between nations. These changes require a clear-eyed appraisal of the ormation of howthreats we face, acknowledgement of the changing character of warfare, and a transformation of how the Department conducts business. egic competition byThe central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by clear that Chinawhat the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers. It is increasingly clear that China g veto authorityand Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model—gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions. nomics to coerceChina is leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce ina continues itsneighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage. As China continues its m strategy, it willeconomic and military ascendance, asserting power through an all-of-nation long-term strategy, it will nal hegemony incontinue to pursue a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in n the future. Thethe near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future. The between our twomost far-reaching objective of this defense strategy is to set the military relationship between our two countries on a path of transparency and non-aggression. ir governmental,Concurrently, Russia seeks veto authority over nations on its periphery in terms of their governmental, tion and changeeconomic, and diplomatic decisions, to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change use of emergingEuropean and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor. The use of emerging eastern Ukrainetechnologies to discredit and subvert democratic processes in Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine lear arsenal theis concern enough, but when coupled with its expanding and modernizing nuclear arsenal the challenge is clear. rnational order. InAnother change to the strategic environment is a resilient, but weakening, post-WWII international order. In es and partnersthe decades after fascism’s defeat in World War II, the United States and its allies and partners nd people fromconstructed a free and open international order to better safeguard their liberty and people from War, our networkaggression and coercion. Although this system has evolved since the end of the Cold War, our network Russia are nowof alliances and partnerships remain the backbone of global security. China and Russia are now benefits whileundermining the international order from within the system by exploiting its benefits while simultaneously undercutting its principles and “rules of the road.” ursuit of nuclearRogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran are destabilizing regions through their pursuit of nuclear al and increasedweapons or sponsorship of terrorism. North Korea seeks to guarantee regime survival and increased unconventionalleverage by seeking a mixture of nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional, and unconventional th Korea, Japan,weapons and a growing ballistic missile capability to gain coercive influence over South Korea, Japan, serting an arc ofand the United States. In the Middle East, Iran is competing with its neighbors, asserting an arc of rrorist activities,influence and instability while vying for regional hegemony, using state-sponsored terrorist activities, a growing network of proxies, and its missile program to achieve its objectives. ower. They haveBoth revisionist powers and rogue regimes are competing across all dimensions of power. They have ing principles ofincreased efforts short of armed conflict by expanding coercion to new fronts, violating principles of d military goals. sovereignty, exploiting ambiguity, and deliberately blurring the lines between civil and military goals. 2 2