Outpacing: A Grand Strategy for Avoiding the Carthaginian Error

The historic struggle between Rome and Carthage represents a classic strategic rivalry. A strategic rivalry is essentially a pattern of perception and behavior in which the participants see each other not just as threats capable of inflicting harm but as inveterate adversaries vying to displace each other.[1] The rivalry between Rome and Carthage played out over 118 years and three wars, the last of which left the Phoenician city-state in ruins.[2] Influential Roman politicians such as Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Elder) saw the struggle as a zero-sum game, while the Carthaginians mistakenly believed the rivalry had ended and they could co-exist with their Mediterranean counterparts.[3] That error proved tragic for Carthage. Currently, the United States and its partners face several inveterate foes, strategic rivals, and the West’s leaders require a strategy for dealing with them. This article describes how a grand strategy of Outpacing—gaining and keeping a commanding lead over one’s rivals—can help the Western powers confront their strategic rivals and avoid the Carthaginian error.

Strategic Rivalry vs Strategic Competition

Strategic rivalry is a particular species of strategic competition in the same way nuclear arms are a specific species of weaponry: both involve extreme outcomes. The object of strategic rivalry is not just to pursue one’s interests, as in day-to-day interstate competition, but to pursue a specific interest, namely, weakening one’s rival in any way possible.[4] Rivals also tend to weaponize bargaining, if it occurs at all, not only to obtain the best deal for themselves but also to ensure the agreement diminishes their rivals in some way.

While some scholars consider strategic competition and war to be distinct activities, this view is untenable, especially for strategic rivals.[5] If war is merely the continuation of policy by other means and a state’s policy is to engage in strategic competition, then it follows that war can be an instrument of that policy. Recent examples of war serving such policies include Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury, the joint US-Israeli operations aimed at eliminating Iran’s nuclear program and reducing its military and economic power, its capacity to compete.[6] Moreover, rivals have a broad array of conflict tools at their disposal: conventional and unconventional, regular and irregular, gray zone and hybrid, covert and clandestine, as well as economic blockades and political isolation.[7] As the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once wrote: “war is thus an act of force (Gewalt) to compel our opponent to do our will.”[8] Nothing in his definition says force must satisfy the traditional notion of war in the sense of shots being fired and blood being spilled. In any case, force and violence are interchangeable terms in English dictionaries.

Furthermore, wars among rivals should not be seen as discrete events: they are serial in nature—interconnected and recidivistic—meaning each incidence of armed conflict between rivals makes another armed conflict more likely.[9] Historical data show rivalries have caused or been responsible for 80 percent of wars globally; simply put, when rivals go to war, “they tend to go to war with each other.”[10] Historical data also reveal consequential patterns in rival perceptions and behavior. For instance, rivalries develop most frequently over (a) spatial motives, the desire to acquire territory; and (b) positional motives, the desire to establish hegemony or to enhance regional or global status.[11] Ideological incompatibilities constitute a distant third motive, as ideology often becomes intertwined with the desire to acquire territory or status; motives based on ethnic differences, political dissidence, the acquisition of resources, and the drive to gain market access rank fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh, respectively.[12]

Not all rivalries are existential in nature. But they tend to evolve (or devolve) in that direction unless the rival parties can de-escalate before the clashes become too recidivistic and the hostile feelings too deeply seated. Rivals will typically battle each other until (a) both become exhausted and agree to de-escalate or both find off-ramps before that point; or (b) because a third party emerges that poses a serious threat to the other two; or (c) one party loses its capacity to compete whether due to a decisive military action or to a political or economic collapse following a prolonged struggle; or (d) one party decides to forfeit the competition, and thus “bends the knee” or acknowledges the superiority of the other.[13]

Currently, some 42 strategic rivalries remain unresolved in today’s dynamic global environment (see map).[14] Interestingly, the smallest US geographic combatant command, Central Command, currently contains the largest number of unresolved rivalries (15) as well as some of the most recidivistic ones. Israel and Iran have four strategic rivals each (including each other); three of Israel’s rivals—Egypt, Iraq, and Syria—have had adversarial relationships with it since Israel became a state in 1948.[15] The United States currently has three strategic rivals: China since 1996, Russia since 2007, and Iran since 1979. North Korea has been an adversary of the United States since 1950, and its conventional forces and nuclear weapons make it a serious threat. But it lacks the capacity to compete politically and economically with the United States; typically, rivals must be in the same competitive league. However, Iran has been a rival of the United States for almost 50 years, longer than either China or Russia, even though Tehran is not in the same competitive league as Washington economically or militarily. Tehran has indirect political, economic, and military leverage in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz (especially through proxies) that qualify it as a strategic rival of the United States. Tehran has used that leverage to undermine US interests in the Gulf, to disrupt the political and economic stability of US partners in the region, and to kill or wound thousands of Americans. It is, therefore, unquestionably a rival. Nonetheless, a state can implement a strategy that prioritizes its rivals without ignoring its threats.

The serial nature of hostilities between strategic rivals means strategies of decapitation or of “mowing the grass” rarely achieve more than temporary results. Such strategies may, in fact, worsen the situation by arousing further enmity and by motivating the rival to become more resilient. The stricken rival simply reconstitutes, installs new leaders, acquires new capabilities, and develops more countermeasures to reduce its vulnerabilities, thereby making the next strike potentially more difficult and more costly. Admittedly, not all states have the political will or the physical wherewithal to execute much more than temporary solutions. But recidivism means states will face recurring cycles of hostility and violence unless they can find ways to develop “alternative military and diplomatic approaches.”[16] A grand strategy such as Outpacing, described below, would provide just such an alternative military and diplomatic approach.

Outpacing as a Grand Strategy

Today, America and its partners need a grand strategy that can address all three of their strategic rivals simultaneously, not sequentially, and obviously not at the expense of other threats. Put differently, they need a grand strategy capable of accomplishing the goals of Containment, as inspired by the American diplomat George F. Kennan, as well as the anticipatory measures of a strategy one might call preclusion.[17] Together, these elements amount to a grand strategy of Outpacing. Outpacing avoids the backward-looking connotations of Containment and explicitly emphasizes the idea of gaining and keeping a commanding lead over one’s rivals; whereas Containment did so in a manner that was secondary to, and supportive of, containing the spread of Soviet Communism. If China is America’s “pacing challenge,” which has been the case across several US administrations, then Outpacing accepts that challenge without overlooking the need to surpass other rivals such as Russia and Iran.[18] In practical terms, Outpacing means maintaining conventional and nuclear deterrence, building antihegemonic coalitions not just across the Pacific region, as Elbridge Colby’s Strategy of Denial recommends, but also in eastern Europe (via NATO) and within the Middle East; crucially, it also entails surpassing America’s strategic rivals in the generation of all forms of national—and by extension—coalition power.[19]

Conventional and nuclear deterrence continue to hold in Asia and Europe: China has not invaded Taiwan, and Russia has not invaded a NATO country. (The failure of the Transatlantic alliance to deter Russia’s invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 is another matter.[20]) Nor has a nuclear clash occurred, though nuclear proliferation has accelerated; Beijing is building land-based ICBM missile silos at a pace of approximately 30-50 per year and is expected to have 1000 operational sites by 2030.[21] Deterrence and antihegemonic coalitions work hand-in-hand: the latter serve as counterweights to regional threats and thus help to strengthen the former. Under Outpacing, the United States would continue to strengthen its commitments to its Pacific partners vis-à-vis its alliances with the Republic of Korea, with AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States), the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, United States), and its security agreements with Japan and the Philippines, as well as other Asia-Pacific states.[22] With respect to Europe, NATO’s European members may yet take the proposed path of “strategic autonomy,” but that path would likely need to include deterring Russia from further expansion into eastern Europe and along the Arctic Circle, as well as from gaining greater influence over the Bosporus Straits.[23] Even though Ukraine is not a member of the Transatlantic alliance, it currently forms the heart of NATO’s denial effort, since it drains Russian attention and resources; it thereby warrants Western support for as long as Kyiv wishes to resist Moscow. In addition, the United States should continue to support its Middle East partners—Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel—by helping them to build antihegemonic coalitions against Iranian dominance of the Persian Gulf, including the Strait of Hormuz.[24] Clearly, denying Iran a nuclear weapon remains of vital importance. But a security arrangement that is too weak to prevent Iran from dominating the Strait of Hormuz would permit Tehran to hold much of the global economy hostage, possibly making a nuclear Iran more likely over time. The issue is not just that 20-25 percent of the world’s oil, liquified natural gas, and fertilizer chemicals pass through the Strait; it is also the second- and third-order effects that closing the Strait would have on global stock markets that are of concern.[25]

Despite (or because of) the fact that conventional and nuclear deterrence has largely held, armed conflict has migrated into the so-called gray zone. Over the last decade, Beijing has used “nearly 80 different gray zone tactics across all instruments of national power against Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines.”[26] By “synchronizing the armed CCG [China Coast Guard], PLA Navy warships, vast fishing fleets serving as maritime militia, maritime survey vessels, and an expanding fleet of UAVs, China has transformed the traditional gray zone into a darker, more volatile spectrum that precariously borders on armed conflict.”[27] Moscow, too, has upped the ante with its gray-zone violence, employing such tactics as sabotage, drone overflights, assassination attempts, cyberattacks, among other activities, to test and perhaps intimidate NATO.[28] Iran’s gray-zone activities have declined due to recurring Israeli and US strikes against the IRGC and its chief proxies, namely, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. Unfortunately, these proxies will reconstitute, and Tehran will continue to exploit the space below the threshold of armed conflict to coerce its Gulf neighbors, to disrupt peace talks, and to interdict commercial traffic in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Strait of Hormuz.[29] Hence, Outpacing would seek additional countermeasures for hybrid tactics.

China, Russia, and Iran collectively possess almost 12 times the economic power (defined as gross domestic product) as the Soviet Union possessed at its peak.[30] Of the West’s three strategic rivals, China obviously poses the most serious challenge—it may even serve as something of an economic center of gravity for the other two. The PRC has a rapidly growing economy that now has more global trading partners and, according to some polls, it has gained more soft power than the United States.[31] China evidently has enough economic might to sustain Russia in its war with Ukraine, despite Western sanctions.[32] The PRC’s influence has already spread to the Global South, to Africa, and to South America. While Beijing’s strategies for competing vary across regions, it owes much of its success to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).[33] The BRI has not achieved everything Beijing wanted; however, it has vastly expanded the number of China’s trading partners and extended its political and economic reach. As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd aptly stated: “countries either will join with other powers (e.g. the U.S.) to help balance against China’s growing influence, or countries will ‘bandwagon’ with China given its rising power in the region and globally.”[34] The decisive factor, he later explained, is that the West should provide alternative economic opportunities for Asia-Pacific states.[35] Outpacing would thus need to provide such opportunities, and it could do so through economic partnership programs designed to offer benefits greater than those available through BRI.

However, the deterrence and defensive measures will not help America and its strategic partners outpace their rivals in the generation of national power, an essential component of strategic competition. To surpass their rivals, they will need to think more in terms of preclusion, of getting “there” first—where there can mean a physical location or taking a qualitative or quantitative lead. Preclusion entails taking anticipatory measures and these can assume any number of forms: preempting a rival’s military actions; preventing the weaponization of geographic and economic chokepoints by gaining control of them first; guaranteeing access to vital resources including critical minerals and rare earths through legal agreements; rendering a rival’s military power obsolete or noncompetitive through leap-ahead or offset technologies (as in the fields of artificial intelligence, cyber power, space capabilities, ballistic and cruise missiles, attack drones, aerial defense interceptors, labor-saving robotics, and nuclear arms).[36] Preclusion thus adds a proactive element to Outpacing, one that complements containment and denial.

Admittedly, preclusion may have political and ethical baggage. Like strategic preemption, it can be abused by governments that use it as an excuse to circumvent laws and norms to gain a first-mover advantage. Nonetheless, as shown above, preclusion has any number of nonmilitary applications and can and should be done legally and ethically. Doing so would contribute to the West’s soft power and augment its collective legitimacy within the established rules-based order.[37] Obviously, the West should ensure it outpaces its rivals in the realms of ethics and soft power.[38]

Hurdles in the Near Term

Unfortunately, in some of the fields mentioned above, the United States and its partners have considerable work to do to establish a commanding lead over their rivals. In the field of AI, for instance, determining whether the United States or China has the lead depends on what is being measured.[39] As Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index Annual Report indicates, the United States hosts some 5,427 AI data centers, 10x more than any other country, and the US private sector has invested $285.9 billion in AI, more than 23x that of China’s private sector, America’s closest competitor.[40] Yet the 2026 Report also states China has effectively closed the “US-China AI performance model gap,” meaning the difference in quality between the best US and best PRC AI models is now negligible.[41] The danger is that buyers of AI technology may opt for the cheaper but good-enough Chinese model, leaving US companies with a smaller market share and thus in second place in the AI race in one important metric.[42] The point is that the metrics one uses to measure progress matter.[43]

Another shortfall lies in rare-earth refining capacities, which Beijing effectively weaponized in 2025.[44] According to the International Energy Agency, China accounted for roughly 70 percent of global rare-earth mining in 2025 and still controls about 90-93 percent of refinement and magnet production.[45] (For context, one F-35 fighter requires 50 pounds of samarium magnets.[46]) To break Beijing’s chokehold on rare earth refinement facilities, Washington must find ways to exceed China’s mining and refinement capacities by rapidly building its own (which will require cutting through red tape) and by entering into agreements with friendly parties.

In addition, the value of inexpensive military hardware, such as attack drones and low-cost interceptors, has been the topic of debate literally for decades. Whether such weapons will truly revolutionize warfare was never the right debate. The right debate, as the wars in Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated, concerns the types and quantities of such weapons modern militaries need, and what can be done more effectively and more efficiently with them. Had the United States moved more quickly as drones began to dominate the battlespace in the Russia-Ukraine war, US leaders surely would have had more defensive options available during the 2026 Iran conflict.[47] In truth, America and its strategic partners need cheaper, good-enough systems to outpace their rivals—not in lieu of the sophisticated weapons they already have but as a complement to them.[48] Otherwise, Western leaders may self-deter rather than engage in future confrontations because their sophisticated systems are at a disadvantage in high-volume, low-cost situations.

Questions of affordability inevitably arise with any grand strategy. America’s Cold War Containment strategy consumed approximately 5-10 percent of US GDP annually, including notable spikes for the Korean Conflict (1950-53) and the Vietnam War (1965-74).[49] When those spikes are subtracted, the annual cost of the Cold War (1946-1991) drops to 4.5-6 percent of GDP.[50] The post-Cold War peace dividend dropped defense spending to 3 percent of GDP, while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan pushed it back to 4 percent.[51] The bottom line is the wars a state fights (some of which are discretionary) have a greater impact on defense spending than the type of grand strategy a state follows. One of the benefits of employing a strategic-rivalry framework, moreover, is that it helps avoid overspending by prioritizing the allocation of resources against America’s rivals rather than against every potential threat. It is in Europe’s interest to shoulder most of the burden of containing Russia (which is its rival, too) while the United States and its allies collaborate on containing China and Iran. Again, the United States should not attempt to do it all—but it should have enough skin in the game to assist in leading any efforts that have a bearing on its security.

Furthermore, by establishing commanding leads in the competitive fields mentioned above, Washington will revitalize the US economy through infusions of government spending, greater private sector investment, new employment opportunities, and an expansion of the workforce. A useful analogy is the economic revitalization America experienced at the beginning of the Second World War. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and other social programs gave a much-needed boost to the US economy during the Great Depression. But the country’s full recovery did not truly begin until it mobilized its industries for war after the attack on Pearl Harbor.[52] By the same token, engaging in Outpacing will generate positive momentum for Western economies. Conversely, opting for a strategic pause under a Consolidation strategy, or “taking a knee” in military parlance, is risky and gains little for America and its partners.[53] Instead, doing so merely affords America’s strategic rivals time to strengthen their own positions. America must carry out its economic revitalization in stride, that is, as part of—or indeed because of—its Outpacing strategy. Thus, while Outpacing demands swift and energetic action in the near term to close gaps in the generation of power before they become unbridgeable, it should not be seen as a drain on Western economies but rather an opportunity to generate gains while engaging in competition.

Finally, America’s allies and partners have always been indispensable to the success of its grand strategies. They have begun to move in the direction of increased burden sharing, if not strategic autonomy. But America needs to keep enough “skin in the game” to be able to exert meaningful leadership when crises occur. Washington cannot assume the interests of its partners will align wholly with its own. Some overlap will occur, to be sure, but the proverbial rub lies in the disparities, which always seem to widen when the costs mount. Nor is it safe to assume that what happens in one region will stay in that region; today’s security environment is a global village not a Las Vegas.

Conclusion

Strategic competition never truly stops; nor can strategic rivalry be wished away or ignored. Attempting to do so risks committing the Carthaginian error. Avoiding that error means understanding the difference between adversaries and rivals. The latter wage serial wars, whether hot or cold or something in between. Carthage’s leaders misjudged how insecure and uncompromising their Roman rivals were and paid dearly for their error.[54] America and its partners may not face annihilation on a scale analogous to that of Carthage (though a catastrophic nuclear exchange with either Russia or China is certainly possible). Nevertheless, the West can lose the struggle against its strategic rivals if they cause its competitive power to erode, its global influence to decline, its political and social institutions to lose credibility, and its standards of living to fall relative to their own. Thus, defeat is conceivable.

Outpacing succeeds if the United States and its partners can establish advantages so great that their rivals exhaust themselves attempting to close the gaps. Outpacing can put the Western powers in a better position to achieve victory, should war come. It can also put them in a position to be magnanimous, should war prove unnecessary. Outpacing can also facilitate deterrence by creating situations in which war is an unattractive option for rivals, which in turn may reduce the incidence of wars. However, creating situations in which war is unattractive will require deftly managing “red lines” and reassurances to avoid provoking a rival into taking preemptive action. Outpacing is not a risk-free strategy.

It is also possible that Outpacing will unfold in a series of “fits and starts,” a form of punctuated equilibrium, rather than with one party gaining an insurmountable lead; one party may gain a lead due to some sort of technological breakthrough or through intense investments but its rivals eventually close the gap, either by stealing secrets or by some other means.[55] Indeed, one of the ironies of contemporary technological progress—especially in cyber power or AI—is that it facilitates the appropriation of another party’s technological progress. Accordingly, the West should avoid the tempting assumption that strategic competition is linear and that a particular technological lead is sustainable by simply doing more of the same. Progress has linear and nonlinear elements. Thus, the Western powers must hedge themselves against their rivals’ inevitable progress through the anticipatory development of asymmetric countermeasures.

Should it prove impossible for Western economies to achieve a commanding lead, Outpacing will prevent them from falling too far behind. The West’s culture of innovation and adaptation should enable it to put serious pressure on its rivals’ economic and political systems and to close the most important gaps. Outpacing is a strategy of patience but not of complacency. It offers guidelines for the long haul, but not at the expense of the short term. However, its chief value may lie in its ability to keep Western leaders’ heads in the game, as it were, and thereby to prevent them from assuming, as the Carthaginians did, that their rivals have turned a new leaf or that the struggle has ended.