The Aftermath of a Great Power War

The U.S. Department of Defense has been increasingly focused on competition with Russia and China and, in the extreme, the possibility of great power war. To inform thinking about what might follow such a war, RAND researchers generated four hypothetical near-term great power war scenarios and assessed how the postwar strategic environment would change in each scenario. These scenarios offer planners and decisionmakers plausible narratives about future great power wars with different features to help them examine assumptions and think about how wartime choices could affect postwar U.S. objectives.