Primarily, the challenge is how to address the onset of great power competition and how to deter great power conflict with revisionist and increasingly aggressive states like China and Russia. But it’s not only deterrence, in practical value it’s what kind of deterrence. In the ‘90s our understanding of deterrence was essentially deterrence by compellence – if you invade this country then we will come in, and after three or four months of assembling our forces, we will go in and kick you out of that country. Given the anti-access/area denial networks developed by the Chinese, Russians, and Iranians, for example, which threaten our ability to project power globally and come to the defense of our allies, that approach may not effectively deter such powers from aggression. In a globalized era, that approach could prove prohibitively costly as well. Political and economic interests are intertwined and the world so interconnected, so even if we’re the victor, the economic and political effects of any kind of conflict would range from problematic to catastrophic. How then do you reshape how you do deterrence? One of the things that we argue for in “Restoring American Seapower” is a “deny-and-punish” approach. Instead of a delayed, but massive response to aggression, what I’m going to do is position more offensively equipped, more networked, and more globally arrayed and regionally savvy naval forces in areas of likely aggression to deny the threat’s goals and as well as punish the aggressor there and around the rest of the world. Those are the kinds of primary challenges that we’re looking at, from both an operational and strategic angle.