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A2/AD is most commonly discussed in relation to China’s efforts to deny America the ability to intervene in any regional conflict or make it so costly that Washington is deterred from doing so. Some observers, including James Holmes, Toshi Yoshihara and Andrew Krepinevich, have argued that the United States and its Asian allies should this strategy around on China. Instead of seeking to maintain command of the sea and air as America has traditionally done, these scholars suggest Washington and its allies could simply seek to deny China the ability to achieve its goals. As Beckley puts it, “Under this strategy, the United States would abandon efforts to command maritime East Asia and, instead, focus on helping China’s neighbors deny China sea and air control in the region.

Buying smaller, relatively cheap new frigates and extending the life of current ships offers the best path to a larger fleet, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and former special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations.

“If Russia or China or North Korea want to start a fight, putting a defenseless ship like an old Perry-class in there certainly won’t deter them,” Clark said. Having the latest vessels on the front lines with global rivals isn’t just a matter of defense, Clark added, it also deters them.

Liberal advocates of a multilateralist, rules-based, post-sovereign foreign policy have recently been having their noses ground in the grim fact of great power rivalry. Robert Kagan first called attention to renascent great-power politics a decade ago in "End of Dreams, Return of History," with its blunt opening line, "The world has become normal again." In the last few years, the realists - including Henry Kissinger in his 2014 book, "World Order," Hal Brands, and Foreign Policy's own Stephen M. Walt - have had a field day at the expense of idealists who, they said, had persuaded themselves that the end of history had arrived.

2013 projections, from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, show that given historical trends of cost growth in personnel spending and O&M, those two items will consume 86 percent of the allowed DoD budget by 2021.

Would an 80-mile missile be useful? Absolutely, said Bryan Clark, a retired Navy commander now with the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. “The 80 (nautical mile) minimum range could be relevant in scenarios in the Persian Gulf, Mediterranean, and possibly the South China Sea,” all relatively narrow waterways, he said. “That would be enough to threaten ships beyond realistic ranges for enemy helicopters and assault craft to attack the EAB (in retaliation).”

“Grand strategy” is not a term that appears in the United Kingdom’s foreign policy lexicon often. The last Labour government and both Conservative-led administrations have preferred instead to outline “national security strategies.” In some quarters, grand strategy is seen as “hubristic” and “associated with empire.” It certainly does not have to be so and the latter claim rests, to some extent, on a misreading of history. All states conduct grand strategy – whether they choose to acknowledge it or not – and to varying degrees of success. Channelling Trotsky, Hal Brands wryly observed, “You may not be interested in grand strategy but grand strategy is interested in you.”