The Biden administration’s newly released National Security Strategy sketched a dark vision of the 2020s as a decade when “[t]he terms of geopolitical competition between the major powers will be set.”

The release of the strategy document was delayed due to the Ukraine invasion. It incorporates many takeaways from the crisis, notably that the U.S. sees the conflict with Russia as less momentous than the challenge presented by China. The document formally announces that no region of the world can escape becoming a background to this conflict. It also puts a ticking clock on it: