PILLAR III: PRESERVE PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH Since the 1990s, the United States displayed a great In addition, after being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned. China and Russia began to reassert our military superiority was guaranteed and that their influence regionally and globally. Today, they a democratic peace was inevitable. We believed are fielding military capabilities designed to deny that liberal-democratic enlargement and incluAmerica access in times of crision would fundamentally alter sis and to contest our ability to the nature of international relaoperate freely in critical comtions and that competition would mercial zones during peacetime. give way to peaceful cooperation. The United States will seek In short, they are contesting our areas of cooperation with Instead of bu i ld ing m i ligeopolitical advantages and trytary capacity, as threats to our competitors from a position ing to change the international nationa l securit y increased, order i n t hei r favor. of strength, foremost by the United States dramatically ensuring our military Moreover, deter rence today cut the size of our military to i s s i g n i f ic a nt ly m or e c ompower is second to none the lowest levels since 1940. plex to achieve than during the Instead of developing importand fully integrated with Cold Wa r. Adversa ries studant capabilities, the Joint Force our allies and all of our ied the American way of war entered a nearly decade long instruments of power. and began investing in capabil“procurement holiday” during ities that targeted our strengths which the acquisition of new and sought to exploit perceived weapon systems was severely weaknesses. The spread of acculimited. The breakdown of the rate a nd i nex pen sive weap Nation’s annual Federal budgeting process, exemons and the use of cyber tools have allowed state plified by sequestration and repeated continuand non-state competitors to harm the United ing resolutions, further contributed to the eroStates across various domains. Such capabilision of America’s military dominance during a ties contest what was until recently U.S. domitime of increasing threats. nance across the land, air, maritime, space, and Despite decades of efforts to reform the way that cyberspace domains. They also enable adversarthe United States develops and procures new weapies to attempt strategic att acks against the United ons, our acquisition system remained sclerotic. States—without resorting to nuclear weapons—in The Joint Force did not keep pace with emergways that could cripple our economy and our abiling threats or technologies. We got less for our ity to deploy our military forces. Deterrence must defense dollars, shortchanging American taxbe extended across all of these domains and must payers and warfighters. address all possible strategic attacks. degree of strategic complacency. We assumed that In addition, adversaries and competitors became adept at operating below the threshold of open military conf lict and at the edges of international law. Repressive, closed states and organizations, although brittle in many ways, are often more agile and faster at integrating economic, military, and especially informational We also incorrectly believed that technology could compensate for our reduced capacity—for the ability to field enough forces to prevail militarily, consolidate our gains, and achieve our desired political ends. We convinced ourselves that all wars would be fought and won quickly, from stand-off distances and with minimal casualties. 27