University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation

The concept of long-term peacetime competition between great powers isdeeply rooted in history. This brief offers a framework for thinking about afamily of peacetime competitive strategies. It begins by describing the conceptand provides four approaches to competitive strategy: denial, cost imposition,attacking a competitor’s strategy, and attacking a competitor’s political system.It then explores the criteria that strategists and policymakers should consider informulation of a competitive strategy. It concludes with some thoughts on how toevaluate the success of such a strategy and how the United States measures up.