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The post-Cold War international system is coming to an end, and with it easy assumptions about the character of U.S. strategy toward the world’s great powers. 

Last month it appeared that the Chinese were again on the move in the South China Sea.

The provincial administrator of Beijing’s land claims in the region told Chinese state media that work would soon begin on  an ‘environmental monitoring station’ on Scarborough Shoal, a large reef system  just 140 nautical miles west of Subic Bay, well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

A fleet architecture plan from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which McGrath worked on, decreases the number of large surface combatants from 88 to 71 and increases the number of small surface combatants, allowing the Navy to be in more places at once.

Since Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) in last year’s referendum, London has spent many months crafting its approach to Brexit. Now that the British government has triggered Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, formally signaling Britain’s intention to depart the EU, it can turn its attention to the negotiations with Brussels on a host of topics.

“The debacle of the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans failing to repeal Obamacare showed that it will be very hard for the Trump administration to hold together the hardline and more establishment factions in the House,” said Katherine Blakeley, a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). Secondly, it also showed that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are still in no mood to compromise. “And I’ve seen no legislative strategy coming from the White House to overcome those obstacles and move their agenda.”

“The Type 002 is likely the carrier Admiral Wu Shengli talked about before he retired that will incorporate a catapult and arresting gear to enable it to deploy larger aircraft and do so more quickly,” the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Studies’ Bryan Clark, one of the foremost naval thinkers in Washington, told The National Interest. “It will also likely be larger than the Type 001 or the Liaoning, enabling it to carry more aircraft. The PLAN also wants to expand the range of their carrier-based aircraft, and more importantly, they need to be able to launch early warning and electronic warfare aircraft as well as larger fighter-bombers that can carry more weapons. They need catapults and arresting gear to deploy these kinds of aircraft.” For China, the new carrier is important as it expands its power projection capabilities. “Strategically, China wants to be able to use their aircraft carriers to expand the reach of their mainland-based strike, ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and EW [electronic warfare] systems, so a larger carrier will be helpful to that goal,” Clark said. “Secondarily, this will give them a carrier able to operate more independently of land-based aircraft, since it will be able to carry larger (and slower) logistics and early warning aircraft. That will be helpful in protecting sea lanes farther from China, such as in the Indian Ocean.”