Prospects for Great Power Cooperation in an Era of Competition

Irkutsk, region, RUSSIA

U.S. military personnel march along Red Square during a military parade dress rehearsal in Moscow May 6, 2010. Military personnel from the Allied nations of United States, Poland, Britain and France later took part in a military parade on May 9, 2010 in Moscow to commemorate their victory over Nazi Germany during World War Two.

Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

As the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) makes clear, the primary national security concern facing the United States now is "strategic competition" with Russia and China, rather than terrorism. What does this mean fo the prospect that meaningful cooperation could still occur between the United States and these two countries? RAND researchers investigated the potential for such cooperation across a number of national security issues across the world and found that while not entirely absent, the prospects are slim.

Prospects for cooperation are summarized and examined in an overview volume. Additional volumes examine prospects for great power cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, in Europe and the Middle East, and on eight global commons issues.

Prospects for Great Power Cooperation Series