What is Strategic Rivalry? Why Should We Care?

U.S. national security documents dangerously conflate "strategic competition" with the far more perilous state of "strategic rivalry." While competition involves managing adversaries pursuing incompatible interests, a rivalry is a more severe relationship where states actively seek to undermine each other's very capacity to compete, often through recurring conflicts. The United States currently faces three such rivals—China, Russia, and Iran—who are engaged in a cycle of disputes aimed at weakening American power. Historically, rivalries are responsible for the vast majority of wars and rarely end peacefully, demanding a more robust U.S. strategy focused on reducing a rival's ability to remain in the game.