Admiral Sandy Winnefeld (ret.), USN, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and now distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, is participating in the Naval Strategic Institute, Inc. SMA Speaker Session to discuss his article "Winter is Coming" on August 5. 

Brief Description

It's never easy to sense history in the making when you're living through it. However, in the competition between China and the United States, the world is experiencing one of the most dramatic relative power shifts in its history. This may be the beginning of the end of the latest in a series of long-wave geopolitical cycles that typically end in catastrophic conflict.

The U.S. military must come to terms with this in the context of balancing ends, ways, means, and a deteriorating security environment. When one or more of these variables changes, the others must adjust if balance is to be restored. The military's first instinct, when a change in environment occurs due to severe erosion in its ability to prevail in a major conflict using an existing strategic concept, is to ask for more means to produce better capability, more capacity, and higher readiness. However, when even that is no longer enough, it's time to turn to either reduced ends or more clever ways. This is extremely difficult to not only realize this need but to also confront it. But if it is not addressed, then we could find ourselves on the wrong side of the end of this geopolitical cycle.

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ADM Winnefeld’s briefing materials will be posted at https://nsiteam.com/winter-is-coming/ on Tuesday 4 August 2020. HisProceedings article by the same name as this brief can be found at https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/july/winter-coming.