Command and General Staff College Foundation News Spring 2021 - 15

The Return of
Great Power Competition
by Col. Brian A. Payne
Director of the School for Advanced Military Studies
is inevitable; but progress depends on

what we do with that change. "

- Charles Wheelan

Nearly every senior leader addressing the Command and
General Staff College and School of Advanced Military
Studies (SAMS) students has emphasized the return of an
era of great power competition. After nearly two decades
of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, our nation
emerges to find a world that has continued to evolve with
a number of aspiring global and regional powers. To meet
the demands of the changing operational environment, the
Army is modernizing at an unprecedented level in materiel,
processes, leader development, and doctrinal development.
The new era of competition requires a renewed interest in
establishing and building collaborative relationships with
allies in order to counter the efforts of competitors and
adversaries at a level below conflict. In preparation for
the challenges that lie ahead, SAMS has developed and
implemented a new " Great Power Perspectives Course "
enabling operational planners to expand their thinking in
developing operational approaches within the competition
continuum.
The Great Power Perspectives Course is brand new
to SAMS, developed out of whole cloth for this year's
curriculum. The SAMS team sought to achieve multiple
objectives in pursuing this effort. The first, was to enable
students with a transferable pattern of inquiry for exploring
select countries and regions of interest. Secondly, we
wanted to immerse students in alternative perspectives, so
the courses relied heavily on regional and focus country
information sources. A tertiary purpose was to better
familiarize students to the National Defense Strategy and
focused on countries and regions based on their role as
challenger, ally, or off-shore balancer in future competition
and conflict scenarios. Finally, the course synthesizes
earlier theoretical material and provides a foundation for
following instruction and practical military exercises.
This multi-level approach not only provided a contextual
understanding of a specific country, but also a readily
transferable, or universally applicable approach to further
explore other countries or regions as needed.
Choosing an inquiry-based methodology enables
students to build knowledge of any given country or region
quickly. Rather than following the traditional Diplomatic,
Information, Military and Economic (DIME) and Political,
Economic, Military, Social, Infrastructure and Information
(PMESII) binning approaches, the course centered on

PHOTOS COURTESY ARMYU PUBLIC AFFAIRS

" Change

Col. Brian Payne
Director, SAMS

On Oct. 28, 2020, Col. Gaetan Bedard and students
from the School of Advanced Military Studies, Seminar
6, attended a presentation and panel discussion on
" Geopolitics and Great Power Competition in the
Arctic, " organized by the Cultural and Area Studies
Office of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff
College.
The event was presented jointly with U.S. Army Alaska,
U.S. European Command (EUCOM) J5/8 - Strategy
Division Arctic Branch & Coast Guard, and the Center
for Naval Warfare Studies - the Naval War College.
It was conducted in front of a limited live audience
and CGSC's Facebook page, allowing enhanced
participation despite the limitations warranted by the
COVID-19 induced cautionary measures.
The presentations and discussions were useful and
timely for Advanced Military Studies Program students,
as they participated in the Great Power Perspectives
Course at the time. The GPP course included seminar
studies on Russia and China, two countries with high
stakes and interest in the Arctic region.

a series of cross-cutting meta-synthesis questions. The
questions were designed to elicit inquiry that would lead
to holistic answers drawing from a number of educational
disciplines simultaneously. Questions like " What is the
cognitive map of country X? " enable planners to look beyond
physical borders and measurable attributes that denote a
nation state. It frees the planner to explore the historical,
social, cultural, and economic relationships that comprise
the nation's perceived sphere of influence, challenges and
aspirations. In better understanding an ally or adversary's
motivations and perspectives, planners are better attuned to
generate viable options for commanders in competition and
- continued on page 16
develop approaches

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Command and General Staff College Foundation News Spring 2021

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