The Great Power Competition throughout history

Vincent Hodge

502nd Air Base Wing Historian

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas

In early 2024, the Department of the Air Force unveiled its sweeping plans for reshaping, refocusing, and reoptimizing the Air Force and Space Force to ensure continued supremacy in their respective domains while better posturing the services to deter and, if necessary, prevail in an era of Great Power Competition. 

The term Great Power Competition is not a 21^st-century ideology, although the history of "great power competition" stretches back thousands of years, with the earliest examples being seen in ancient civilizations like Egypt and Mesopotamia, where powerful states competed for dominance over key regions and resources.

Throughout history, this competition has manifested through military expansion, economic influence, and political maneuvering between major nations, with notable periods including the rivalry between European powers like France and Britain, the pre-World War I era of competing empires, and the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Today, the term is often used to describe the current geopolitical landscape with rising powers like China challenging established global players like the U.S., with competition focused on technology, economic influence, and strategic alliances. 

In this new era, Russia and China have been competitors to the United States and both nations are looking to overturn the current rules-based international order.

Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Atlantic Council’s Commanders’ Series that China and Russia are striving “to establish pre-eminence, if not control, in their respective geographic areas and both trying to assert greater influence on the world stage.”

From the military’s perspective, China and Russia are doing what they can to challenge the U.S. and are targeting American capabilities.

“This means the two nations are working to subvert America’s network of allies and partners and are seeking to negate the American military’s ability to project forces, when and where they are needed and sustain them.

“China and Russia also both recognizing the strength of our allies and partners, they recognize from careful study of the U.S. ability to project power in 1991 to 2003, they recognize the competitive advantage we have had historically and what they are seeking to do is undermine the credibility of our alliance structure in Europe and the Pacific,” the general added.

“They have been on a specific path of capability development to make it much more difficult and contest our ability to access any area to meet our alliance commitments,” Brown said. “In Europe, this means subverting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  In the Pacific, this means working to undermine U.S. treaties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. 

Russia is sinking significant sums of money into their military capabilities.  The nation is rebuilding systems that atrophied through the 20th century and early part of the 21^st century. The Russian nuclear enterprise has been modernized, and Russia has modernized its Navy and has added top-line aircraft. They have also used cyberwarfare to try and influence America’s 2016 elections and have used cyber capabilities to influence public opinion in Europe.

China is also investing tremendous amounts in their militaries, building aircraft carriers and accompanying ships, modernizing land forces, building fifth-generation fighters that look like the American F-22 Raptor and revamping the command-and-control structure to build unified commands making the military more compliant to the Chinese Communist Party.

Military buildups are only part of the picture, however, all aspects of international relations economic, diplomatic, political and even cultural, come into play in great power competitions, although the U.S. maintains its lead because of the fusion of these elements. 

For military capabilities, the fusion between economic and military spheres and the spirit of innovation that is encouraged in the United States gives America a great advantage. 

The new Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. David Allvin, has made Great Power Competition one of his primary missions.

“Over the last three decades, our Air Force has incrementally become more fragmented across the four focus areas of our reoptimization effort, developing capabilities, developing people, generating readiness and projecting power,” Allvin said. “This gradual diffusion was the result of decisions made in the context of a different strategic environment. After some deep introspection, we know we cannot let this continue. Reoptimization will align our force to best compete, deter and if required, win in today’s volatile strategic landscape.”

In 2024 the Air Force’s recently announced deoptimization initiative which is designed to attack fragmentation and better align the force.