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During the Cold War, the United States and its allies sought to understand virtually every aspect of the Soviet military — including how it defined and assessed the correlations of forces and means (COFM). COFM is defined as the military balance between two opponents at the global, regional, and local levels. The international environment and new security threats that emerged following the collapse of the Soviet Union shifted the United States' focus away from the large-scale military problems prevalent during the Cold War to different concerns, such as terrorism, regional ethnic conflict, and nuclear proliferation. As U.S. security concerns evolved, in-depth analysis of COFM and other issues related to understanding military balance and competition between major powers received relatively little attention from military planners and analysts. To bridge the gap in knowledge that emerged after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the authors of this report examine COFM's evolution in Russian military thinking and explore current definitions and applications in Russia's operational and military planning in response to changes in modern warfare. They also briefly describe other Russian comparisons of state power that historically were a part of Soviet strategic assessments of COFM.

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For more than 30 years, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has placed substantial emphasis on jointness. Whether in bolstering the relative influence of such joint organizations as combatant commands, requiring joint service for senior-level promotions, or achieving cross-service interoperability between operational units, jointness is valued conceptually from the strategic to the tactical levels. However, in practice, the value of jointness remains unmeasured and ill-defined, particularly as it relates to strategic competition. Many questions remain about the true utility of jointness to DoD goals, potential negative ramifications of jointness as it was implemented following the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act (GNA), and how the pursuit of jointness affects DoD's ability to innovate and adapt to future challenges. Moreover, it is not currently understood how jointness affects competitive advantage relative to the United States' primary adversaries. This study seeks to examine whether the assumption that jointness is inherently valuable is correct, and if so, in what ways. Understanding what aspects of jointness are most valuable and why can help DoD compete more effectively against its adversaries and maximize the United States' competitive military advantages.

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The U.S. and Chinese militaries have been shaped by a distinct set of direct and indirect experiences. The U.S. military has focused its energy and resources on combating terrorism and performing counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even in 2023, U.S. emphasis on major power competition contends with other national security priorities, including current crises and continued deployments around the globe. The People's Liberation Army (PLA), on the other hand, has largely focused its military modernization and restructuring to prepare for a regional conflict that would likely involve U.S. military intervention. Despite having no combat experience since the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, the PLA has conducted an in-depth study of all aspects of the U.S. military's technological and operational capabilities — including its organization, command and control, logistics, joint operations, and concepts of operation — since the 1990s. The dichotomy presented by the experiences of both militaries raises several questions about how they are preparing for the possibility of a major power conflict. Since 2001, the U.S. military has gained significant direct combat experience, but has done so against technologically inferior, nonpeer adversaries. In contrast, the PLA had no direct combat experience. Even though its concepts of operation are designed to fight a major power, these concepts are largely derived from indirect observations and lessons from U.S. operations since 1991. The ways that each side gains and processes experience and incorporates it into training will heavily affect readiness for and performance in a future war.

Geopolitics --- Great powers. --- Géopolitique --- Grandes puissances. --- Forecasting. --- Prévision. --- China --- United States --- Chine --- États-Unis --- Foreign relations --- Military policy. --- Relations extérieures

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The People's Republic of China's (PRC's) and the People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) understanding of the military balance is fundamentally based on systems warfare concepts. Systems concepts drive China's perceptions of the successes of its three-decade-old modernization and its identification of enduring or emerging weaknesses. China's leaders recognize the qualitative and quantitative improvements in PLA weapons and technology; however, in key areas essential to conducting systems confrontation and systems destruction warfare, there remain significant gaps that have received the attention of Xi Jinping himself. During Xi's tenure, the PLA has been forced to confront a range of problems that go well beyond technological modernization, force structure, and organizational relationships. Still, both the United States and the PRC, through different evaluation processes, have concluded that war with the other has the potential to be extremely risky from an escalation standpoint, protracted and costly, and fatally harmful to long-term credibility and/or strategic goals. This analysis is one of the first to detail how the PLA understands and assesses military balance. The PLA sees itself as the weaker side in the overall military balance, largely because it has made only limited progress in those key areas that will define future warfare, most importantly informatization and system-of-systems–based operations. Necessary improvements have not materialized quickly and will likely take time because of the PLA's organizational culture and the improvements' systemic complexity. A refined understanding of Beijing's view of the PLA also has significant implications for U.S. policymakers, military commanders, and planners.