For millennia, war was the ultimate dispute resolution mechanism. The ability to vanquish an adversary on the battlefield determined the outcome. As such, the capacity for violence was the fulcrum of power, or the ability to achieve desired strategic ends and influence the behavior of others. From primitive tribes to modern states, rivals competed over ever more effective and lethal means of harming one another as a way to increase their relative standing within the system.[1]
Perceptions of security have long been linked to this systemic pecking order. Leading schools of international relations generally presume the more power an actor cultivates (the higher it ascends in the pecking order), the more secure it finds itself. As Professor John Mearsheimer, a leading exponent of realism, puts it: the best way to stay safe is to be the “biggest, baddest dude on the block” – the one with the most raw power.[2]
The traditional equation of security with classic, force-based conceptions of power continues to drive intense competition over relative military strength. In 2024, the US, China and Russia poured a combined 1.46$ trillion into beefing up existing defense capabilities and developing new ones in an intensifying high-tech arms race;[3] Europe is ramping up for a massive arms buildup with the European Union’s March 2025 “ReArm Europe” initiative, committing €800 billion to modernizing European militaries and growing the defense industrial base;[4] and threshold states are weighing the acquisition of nuclear weapons.[5]
Yet, all the while, a foundational development is unfolding – power is becoming less a function of military might and more the product of accumulated advantages across a broad spectrum of competitive domains (in which military force capacity is just one realm). For instance, China’s rise to the ranks of a global superpower and “peer competitor” of the US has followed more from its cultivation of leadership in renewable energies, supply chains, cutting-edge technologies, and overseas financing than from investments in sheer military tonnage.[6]
What does this shift in the underlying sources of power imply for security strategy? If the nature of power is changing, must security strategy adjust accordingly? This analysis focuses on this pivotal question.
Shifting Sources of Power
Military force once yielded tidy victories. To a clear victor went the spoils: Alexander the Great’s victory at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 B.C.E. induced the fall of the Persian Empire; the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 marked the end of the Byzantine Empire; the Allied Powers’ success in World War II brought about the conclusive defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the mid-Twentieth Century. During these periods, military might dictated the outcome. The capacity of an actor’s armed forces was the ultimate source of power, as war was the ultimate arbiter.
However, the times are changing’. An all-out war among major powers today is a recipe for omnicide, not dispute resolution. Lower-level and proxy conflicts are by and large indecisive (the war in Ukraine will not resolve the rivalry between the US and Russia; rather, adversarial jockeying will likely persist). Mutual deterrence has thus far discouraged intentional escalation but, in doing so, just protracts instead of resolving conflicts, ensuring neither side definitively wins. Moreover, Washington’s Cold War strategy of out-arms racing its principal competitors appears doomed to fail, at least for the foreseeable future, given growing economic parity.
In a world where decisive military victory is a mirage, advantages in non-military domains, such as key supply chains, data governance, industrial standard-setting, and public goods provision, buy concrete leverage. For instance, China’s grip on rare earths refining lets it set prices, timelines and eligibility for inputs that every electric vehicle, wind turbine, missile, and smartphone needs, generating sway over other states’ industries and policies. Such edges translate into material power in the form of asymmetric dependencies and gatekeeping influence that can entice or coerce others without threatening to fire a shot.
Underlying this form of power is the control of chokepoints that enables price setting, rule writing, supply chain manipulation, and impactful contributions to the commons. Each lever allows an actor to shape outcomes in its favor and influence the behavior of others – governments change policies to retain market access, firms re-tool to meet stipulated standards and trade flows, investments, and allegiances ultimately flow to the standard-setter.
Implications for Security Strategy
The shift in sources of power has immediate implications for security strategy:
1) Reframe security as portfolio management, not platform expansion
Where war is impractical, national security strategists should shift focus from winning battles to shaping choices – those of allies, adversaries and market participants. This means maintaining a minimum credible deterrent (enough to make military aggression irrational) while reallocating marginal funding to domains that compound cumulative relative gains: standards bodies, critical supply chains, dual-use technologies, financial systems, and visible public goods. In practice, this portfolio security approach treats carriers and brigades as necessary insurance, but not as the default sink for finite resources; the aim being to change others’ payoffs across many arenas at once.
2) Prioritize lock-ininvestments that generate deterrence by dependence
Lock-in investments exhibit network effects and high switching costs – once one actor leads, the international community reorganizes around that actor’s rules. Investing early in these nodes, such as advanced lithography and packaging, rare earth and battery refining, cross-border payments and clearing, artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence safety benchmarks, and maritime logistics and subsea cables, yields durable advantages that rivals struggle to offset quickly or cheaply. For example, lithography is the gatekeeper to cutting-edge chips, while battery refining is significant in setting the cost curve and tempo of the energy transition. Leadership in these domains confer security benefits through manipulable coercive leverage (tighten or relax access without crossing military thresholds), coalition cohesion (partners stick because exit is costly) and crisis resilience (control of inputs and standards dampens shocks). Every dollar invested here often moves multiple dials, from economic strength to diplomatic alignment, making it a superior use of limited state resources.
3) Avoid symmetricarms races that deliver low returns and high opportunity costs
When both sides pour resources into the same military categories, relative advantages flatten – each increment is matched, yielding low strategic gains but high opportunity costs. The very domains that could produce compounding advantages are starved in favor of over-feeding an under-producing realm. Symmetric arms buildups elevate escalation risk (both advertent and inadvertent) and can alienate rather than win over potential partners. Third parties may fear a large-scale military buildup but welcome stabilizing public goods, market access or crisis backstops. Put bluntly, another destroyer may be less convincing to swing states than favorable loans or efficacious vaccines.
Insights for the Gulf Region
For the Gulf, operationalizing a shift from platform-centric defense to portfolio security could include setting a credible deterrent floor and then redirecting resources to domains that cultivate lock-in leverage. More concretely, cap spending on kinetic firepower at what is needed for deterrence (punitive cost imposition capacity, air defense, defense intelligence) and then channel a measured slice of defense-adjacent spending into:
- energy system lock-ins (green hydrogen/ammonia value chains, battery and critical minerals refining, grid interconnects) so regional buyers come to depend on Gulf standards, logistics, and certification;
- digital and data hubs (sovereign cloud regions, trusted cross-border data regimes, subsea cable resilience, regional security operation centers) to make the Gulf the default compute and connectivity platform between Africa, South Asia;
- industrial standards and payments rails (cross-border payments systems and digital-identity stacks) so partners integrate to access finance and ports; and
- visible public goods (prepositioned disaster relief, health and water-security programs, climate adaptation finance) that promote alignment.
Sovereign wealth funds could co-invest in these key lock-ins with standards clauses (procurement and market access tied to Gulf specifications). Gulf cooperation could knit ports and zones (Jebel Ali, Khalifa, Duqm, King Abdullah Port) into a common logistics operating system that lowers costs for partners. These steps would undergird a security posture that deters without military escalation, encourages without hard coercion, and locks neighbors into Gulf-centered ecosystems, allowing Gulf states to hedge between great powers while accruing durable influence.
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in the INSIGHTS publication series are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Rabdan Security & Defense Institute, its affiliated organizations, or any government entity. The content published is intended for informational purposes and reflects the personal perspectives of the authors on various security and defence-related topics.
[1] Swan, R. (2022, February 12). Does Great Power Military Might Still Make Right? The National Interest. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/does-great-power-military-might-still-make-right-200491
[2] All-In Summit. (2024, September 28). John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs. https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/opinions/john-mearsheimer-and-jeffrey-sachs-all-in-summit-2024-transcript/
[3] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (2025). Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2024. https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2025-04/2504_fs_milex_2024.pdf
[4] Koteskey, T. (2025, April 26). The EU’s Overdue Defense Buildup: How ReArm Europe Can Succeed. Georgetown Security Studies Review. https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2025/04/26/the-eus-overdue-defense-buildup-how-rearm-europe-can-succeed/
[5] Anderson, R. (2025, July 8). The Nuclear Club Might Soon Double. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/08/nuclear-proliferation-arms-race/683251/; Reich, J. (2024, December 18). The Nuclear Kingdom: Assessing Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Behavior. Georgetown Security Studies Review. https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2024/12/18/the-nuclear-kingdom-accessing-saudi-arabias-nuclear-behavior/
[6] Lind, J. (2024). Back to Bipolarity: How China’s Rise Transformed the Balance of Power. International Security 49(2): 7-55. https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/49/2/7/125214/Back-to-Bipolarity-How-China-s-Rise-Transformed
