Great Power

Deputy Secretary of Defense Speech

As Delivered by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, RAND Corporation, Arlington, VA, Monday, June 22, 2015

Now let's face it, in my view, we are at an extremely pivotal moment in the post-Cold War world.  The last 25 years has represented a remarkable period in our nation's history, if not the entire Westphalian era.  Throughout, the United States reigned unchallenged as the world's only world great power, and the sole military superpower. 

That was a singularly unique, beautiful moment, which as you now know, is coming to an end.  While the United States will maintain enormous absolute power as far into the future as we can see, unquestionably, our relative power will decline as we enter a more multi-colored world, and a world in which our leadership will be increasingly challenged.

Now, the most significant challenge to U.S. global leadership, and the one in my view that promises to be the most difficult to manage, primarily because we have forgotten about how to do it, is the possible reemergence of great power competitions.  Now, there are many interpretations of the term "great power," but as a national security executive, I subscribe to John Mearsheimer's 

definition, which is a state having sufficient military assets to put up a serious fight in a conventional war against the most powerful state in the world and which possesses a nuclear deterrent that can survive a nuclear strike against it.

By that narrow definition, if Russia and China are not great powers now, they certainly have the potential to be.