Horns of a Dilemma: Statecraft and the Great Power Challenge, TNSR Vol 1 Issue 3

In the third issue of the Texas National Security Review, Michael Mazarr of RAND and Michael Kofman of CNA warn decision-makers in Washington against doubling down on U.S. military and geopolitical predominance lest they transform the global stage into something far more confrontational and zero-sum than it needs to be. Despite the often odious behavior of those ruling Russia and China, Mazarr and Kofman point to the prospective benefits of “a new U.S. approach to international affairs” that would treat these two powers “with a degree of political respect and legitimacy, rather than as miscreants opposed to the true and right vision of the future.” As they write in their essay: “This does not mean that the United States should abandon its efforts to hold them to some standard. Quite the contrary. It is only by reining in its absolutism and behaving in a more multilateral and flexible fashion that the United States is likely to gain the global support it needs to sustain the most essential rules of the post-war order.”