Recent Publications - Tag War on the Rocks

Tag: War on the Rocks

What is Strategic Rivalry? Why Should We Care?
April 9, 2026 — The states most likely to draw America into its next major crisis or war are not unknowns. They are the usual suspects: The same handful of states that have threatened the United States repeatedly across decades. Interstate rivals have caused roughly 80 percent of history’s wars and the odds of any given rivalry ending peacefully are little better than a coin toss. Yet America’s key strategy documents since the 2017 National Security Strategy have used phrases like great power competition, interstate strategic competition, and strategic competition without acknowledging the essential difference between a competition and a rivalry... MORE

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Can the 15th Five-Year Plan Fix the People’s Liberation Army’s Procurement Bottlenecks?
January 14, 2026 — China’s newly released 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) proposal, unveiled after the Fourth Party Plenum in October 2025, not only marks Beijing’s quest to achieve the People’s Liberation Army’s goal of building a so-called world-class military by 2049. As the last major planning cycle before the 2035 benchmark for “basically achieving full modernization,” the plan also reaffirms General Secretary Xi Jinping’s core priorities: operational efficiency, technological self-reliance, and the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute command... MORE

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