STRATEGIC

Summary
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deal with because of its nuclear capabilities. In the long term, Putin’s
Russia may well be in decline, due to demographic weakness, overdependence
on oil exports, a corrupt and inefficient oligarchical system,
and a brain drain. However, declining powers can sometimes be the
most dangerous.
China has been modernizing its military for two decades. The
growth in its defense spending has almost always outpaced even the
spectacular growth of its economy. It has improved its air and missile
capabilities, modernized and expanded its navy, and adopted more
aggressive postures, particularly in the South China Sea. China is
improving its anti-access/area denial capabilities to counter the U.S.
ability to project military power throughout East Asia, making it less
certain that the United States would win a decisive victory in case of
war. As part of the buildup, China is constructing thousands of longrange
missiles that could strike targets throughout the region, including
major cities such as Tokyo, and even U.S. forces at Andersen Air
Force Base in Guam. China has invested in a modern nuclear weapons
arsenal that provides it with an increasingly secure strategic deterrent,
one that appears to provide Beijing with a key capability that it has
long sought and that it was lacking as recently as the mid-1990s: a survivable
and thus assured retaliatory capability. While disconcerting,
this capability is not automatically bad for the United States because to
the extent that it reassures Beijing, it reduces any incentive for a Chinese
first strike.
The only unalloyed U.S. adversaries are North Korea and violent
jihadist movements, as expressed by ISIS, al Qaeda, and related groups.
Threats to U.S. national security may now emanate from strong or
authoritarian states that flout international norms, such as Russia or
China; brittle states that possess nuclear weapons or the means to
develop them, such as North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran; and failing
or misgoverned states that cannot or will not enforce the rule of law
on their territories, such as Somalia, Syria, or Libya. Threats that once
came from “somewhere” can now come from “anywhere,” contributing
to the meme of a world that is falling apart. Despite the popular
perception, a respected index of state fragility found that in aggregate,
states became more stable between 1995 and 2013. (The Middle East