Resourcing Great Power Competition

Thank you to the Global Special Operations Foundation and to our Belgian hosts for inviting me here today — I’m delighted to be with you.

I saw in the news that yesterday was the birthday of China’s communist party. 70 years of continuous rule.That’s remarkable, isn’t it? U.S. political culture is measured right now in meantime between tweets, so I can only imagine what continuity is like.

Of course, China has gone through a great deal of change in that time, and especially in the last couple of decades.They’ve certainly come a long way as a military force, which was on display yesterday. They’re racing the United States and NATO toward the next generation fighter aircraft, hypersonic missiles, advanced amphibious vehicles, artificial intelligence capabilities, electromagnetic spectrum dominance, and more.

It’s all fast progress toward a war that nobody wants to fight and everyone will lose.

That’s why I wanted to talk to you today about Phase Zero and shaping the competitive space.

There’s still a fair distance between here and World War III. This is the time we have to shape the strategic landscape — or be shaped. We can either prevent that high end conflict, or make sure we have the advantage if it comes to that. And we’re not doing enough, in my opinion. More to the point, the competitive space we’re all operating in is not just about big platforms or even shiny, new capabilities. It’s also a contest for influence — for investment, and trade...for friends, and allies. And for resources.

And we can do better.

Let me show you what I mean. I have some forthcoming research I want to share — we haven’t even published it yet.

But first — I know this is a Phase Zero kind of crowd, but just a quick refresher: Phase Zero as a term of art was coined in the Pentagon just over a decade ago. It relates to the linear planning concept, where Phase I is deterrence, Phase 2 is force flow, Phase 3 is combat, Phase 4 is post-conflict reconstruction, and Phase 5 is civil order.

That phasing construct is somewhat out of favor in the United States now, and as a linear concept, it does have its limits, of course. War doesn’t seem to stay in that tidy continuum. Certainly, in two decades of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. and NATO forces have been engaging in most of those phases simultaneously.

But that concept of Phase Zero, the time before a conflict starts, when there’s still a chance to shape the situation — that seems even more relevant to me now, both because the stakes of a shooting war are so high, and also because China is not just focusing on weapons development.

I know there’s a great deal of discussion today about cyber and SOF — and maybe we’re already in Phase III there. Maybe that needs it own continuum. But rather than focusing on the Internet of Things, I want to talk to you about the things of the Internet —all of the resources that are powering the Digital Age — both civilian and military technology. Because that is also the competitive space, the landscape that’s being shaped, too, so to speak.

I’m going to show you some graphics from a forthcoming report — it will be out later this month.

First, my colleagues looked at thousands of data points for scores of resources — everything from staple crops to energy to commodity metals. What we found is that the United States and China have different advantages and disadvantages — the United States is a major exporter of agriculture and increasingly self-sufficient in energy, for example, while China is a critical minerals giant. But more to the point, these two competitors rely on some of the same countries for key resources. That’s what you’re looking at here. This purple map shows where the overlap is in dependencies.

So, they cross-referenced those resource scores with other means of exercising national power — military cooperation and engagement, investment and infrastructure, diplomacy and cultural power. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but the United States is especially focused on its regional cohort — Canada and Mexico, across the board. China’s regional play is for Russia, and that relationship is broad and deep. But more to the point, it’s Australia and Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia that are in play — and China is making extensive investments, largely in non-military areas, while the United States focuses on military.

China is cultivating its strengths and compensating for its weaknesses.

China is cultivating its strengths and compensating for its weaknesses. Rare Earth Elements is a very strong comparative advantage for them — and here’s why that matters so much, on this chart — because these materials are important for digital age economies and militaries. For magnets, batteries, MRIs, but also guidance systems and night vision.

In natural terms, China and the United States are strikingly similar — mid-latitudes of the Earth, relatively mild climates, about the same amount of land under cultivation. Of course, China has to feed 1.4 billion people with rising standards of living, on less water and lower quality land. And they’re not taking chances. This chart shows, for example, where they’ve directly invested in land.

So, this is already a competitive space, whether we know it or not.

I just want to finish with a couple of comments about why this may well get even more competitive. Not so much because China and the United States are moving along a continuum of armed conflict, though they may well be, but because Mother Nature is already in Phase II.

Mother Nature is already in Phase II.

This is a map from NASA of temperature in 2100 — it shows a combination of historical temperature records and projections. It’s getting hotter, and that’s going to affect land, agriculture, water — even critical minerals, as the world transitions from fossil energy to renewable energy.

At the same time, we’re seeing record levels of extinctions, as you can see in this chart from the United Nations.

There will be different winners and losers going forward — and China is positioning for this.

I just want to throw up that first slide again to finish up.

I’m not trying to tell you that climate change is a SOF mission, or that you should throw away your guns and save the whales. What I am trying to tell you is that this is going to shape your mission and the competitive space. Nothing will get people in the streets faster that food shortages, or even higher food prices. People move when there isn’t enough water to drink, or when there’s a devastating cyclone. That adds up to future instability. China, the United States, Europe — these mid-latitude countries with relatively mild climates will not be immune.

And really, there’s nothing new about having to reckon with the force of nature in the execution of force. I don’t know if you recognize the picture, but it’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Bible. War, conquest, famine, and disease ride together —and for most of human history, they’ve always ridden together, even on the battlefield. Up until WWII, more soldiers died from disease and illness than from combat. Storms swept away whole fleets, and it was Old Man Winter that drove Napoleon out of Moscow, as much as it was the Russians. War caused famine, famine caused war — a vicious cycle, for most of human history.

Technology has given us a respite in the last 70 years: vaccines, antibiotics, satellite weather forecasts, mobility, all have allowed us to forget sometimes the force of nature. But I believe we’re entering a time now when not only will competition over resources be a shaping factor, but nature will once again be a force in the strategic landscape.

...we’re entering a time now when not only will competition over resources be a shaping factor, but nature will once again be a force in the strategic landscape.

And again, one geopolitical competitor clearly gets that.

Finally, I firmly believe my own country needs to take a more expansive view of the competitive space and develop better tools for Phase Zero. We should be making a far more significant investment in diplomacy, development, trade, and unconventional, non-kinetic — or differently kinetic — defense. That may be a matter of preventing a war no one wants to fight, it may even mean prevailing without a fight, and it may mean being ready for the biggest fight of all, when Mother Nature hits Phase III.