The Return of Great Power Naval Rivalry

The 2018 National Defense Strategy identifies the “reemergence of long-term, strategic competition” with China and Russia as the primary challenge to U.S. national security. As both symbols and instruments of national power, navies appear certain to assume a central role in this re-emerging great power rivalry much as they did during the early twentieth century. Competition from strategic rivals’ naval forces in the Western Pacific, North Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea presents profound challenges to the United States’ longstanding global naval supremacy.

Two leading area specialists with deep naval expertise will assess the challenges that Beijing and Moscow increasingly present.

Dr. Toshi Yoshihara is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He previously held the John A. van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies at the U.S. Naval War College where he taught for over a decade. His latest book, with James R. Holmes, is the second edition of Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy.

Dr. Dmitry Gorenburg is a senior research scientist at CNA, where has worked since 2000. Dr. Gorenburg is the editor of the journals Problems of Post-Communism and Russian Politics and Law and an associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He has previously taught in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as Executive Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS).

The Center’s Executive Director Paul J. Saunders will moderate the meeting, which is made possible by support from Fincantieri Marinette Marine, a subsidiary of the Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri.

A summary of this event in The National Interest can be read here.