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Antecedere Ceteros – To Surpass All Others

 

The mission of the USAWC Strategic Competition Center is to assist the US Joint Force in understanding what strategic competition is, what its nature and core elements are, and what its implications are for US military strategy and defense policy. To realize those aims, the Strategic Competition Center will host military and civilian experts as guest speakers, feature a monthly podcast series, and publish multiple studies and reports to include a quarterly column in Parameters, the US Army’s sole strategy journal. The Center’s motto is antecedere ceteros, an ancient Latin phrase meaning “to surpass all others.” The motto can be found in Julius Caesar’s account of the Roman conquest of Gaul. It captures the spirit of strategic competition as the Joint Force should view it.

Recent Publications

  • Slide for Closing the Gap Between Threat and Rival by Antulio J. Echevarria II
    Closing the Gap Between Threat and Rival

    This essay explores the advantages and risks associated with leveraging interstate rivalry frameworks for strategy development and planning. Advantages include reducing strategic uncertainty and gaining efficiencies in some aspects of force planning. Risks include trusting the data and accepting the methodical pace of research. While US security documents typically describe adversaries as threats or competitors, they rarely acknowledge that the behavior patterns among America’s three current interstate rivals—China, Russia, and Iran—differ fundamentally from those of mere threats or competitors. This analysis will benefit defense professionals responsible for developing regional or global strategies and for directing war-gaming efforts.

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  • Slide for the external article What is Strategic Rivalry? Why Should We Care?
    What is Strategic Rivalry? Why Should We Care?
    By: Antulio J. Echevarria II

    The states most likely to draw America into its next major crisis or war are not unknowns. They are the usual suspects: The same handful of states that have threatened the United States repeatedly across decades. Interstate rivals have caused roughly 80 percent of history’s wars and the odds of any given rivalry ending peacefully are little better than a coin toss. Yet America’s key strategy documents since the 2017 National Security Strategy have used phrases like great power competition, interstate strategic competition, and strategic competition without acknowledging the essential difference between a competition and a rivalry...

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  • A slide of Unresolved Strategic Rivalries by US Combatant Command. Each command has a list of unresolved conflicts within that region and their start date. USCENTCOM has 15 unresolved conflicts, USAFRICOM has 10, USPACOM has 7, USEUCOM and USSOUTHOCM have 5, and USNORTHCOM has 0
    Unresolved Strategic Rivalries by US Combatant Command

    Image created by research assistant Rich Rehberg.

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  • Slide for the article Strategic Rivalries: How Are They Won?
    Strategic Rivalries: How Are They Won?

    This article argues strategic rivalries—distinct from general strategic competition—are best understood as contests in which states prioritize weakening a specific opponent’s capacity to compete. It departs from existing work by critiquing the Joint Concept for Competing’s narrow definition and by emphasizing rivalry termination as a central but understudied dimension. Drawing on decades of international relations scholarship and historical datasets of interstate rivalries since 1815, the article analyzes how rivalries end and identifies strategic preclusion as a proactive approach for winning them. Its insights offer policy and military practitioners guidance for shaping competitive strategies short of war.

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Podcasts

  • Decisive Point episode: Standing Up the Strategic Competition Corner
    Standing Up the Strategic Competition Center

    In this episode, Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II and Major Brennan Deveraux discuss the Strategic Competition Center, its mission and anticipated activities, and Echevarria's inaugural Strategic Competition Corner article.

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  • Slide for Conversations on Strategy Podcast Ep 61: Antulio J. Echevarria II, Weaponizing Risk: Recalibrating Western Deterrence
    Weaponizing Risk: Recalibrating Western Deterrence

    In this episode, Antulio J. Echevarria II discusses how NATO might better leverage risk to strengthen the alliance’s extended deterrence. Can NATO increase the risks and costs of war for an adversary without unduly raising the alliance’s own? Can the alliance strengthen the credibility of NATO’s extended deterrence through a proxy strategy of “waging war without going to war”?

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