“On January 19, 2018, Secretary of Defense Mattis released the unclassified summary of the Department of Defense (DOD)’s first congressionally mandated National Defense Strategy (NDS).” In it, Secretary Mattis notes that the United States is facing “increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order” and that “[i]nterstate strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.” This pivot away from international terrorism and towards the prospect of “great power conflict” is a significant departure from U.S. foreign policy goals over the last seventeen years, in place since the tragic terror attacks in New York, Washington D.C., and the skies over Pennsylvania of September 11, 2001. The 2018 NDS places special emphasis on both China and Russia as potential adversaries of the United States. Indeed recently, relations between Russia and China have reached “a new age of diplomacy between the two countries” in response to their perceived common international rival, the United States. Both nations are apparently exploring “the viability of an alternate world order, one which is separate to and stands up to America.” The 2018 NDS lists China as a “strategic competitor” who is “leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage” with the end goal of establishing a “regional hegemony in the near term and displacement of the United States” at the top of the world order in the long. “Three decades of unprecedented economic growth have provided China with the wealth to transform its armed forces, and given its leaders the sense that their moment has come.” With regard to Russia, the 2018 NDS Summary paints a picture of a spoiler nation who has a history of violating the borders and sovereignty of its neighbors, leveraging “emerging technologies to discredit and subvert democratic processes,” all the while seeking to undermine the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor.” Russia is a nation in decline, with a smaller population than the United States, a weaker military, and an economy that “doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms.” Thus, it may feel pressure to assert itself into world affairs now, while it still can and “[i]ts leaders have spent heavily to restore Russia’s hard power” and asymmetric capabilities, specifically in the cyber-realm to ensure that they can maintain their own sovereignty (and very likely the role of Vladimir Putin at the head of government) and continue to exert regional, if not international influence. The 2018 NDS continues on by identifying “a resilient, but weakening, post-WWII international order” as a contributor, motivator, and exploitable environment for China’s and Russia’s posture of rivalry toward the United States. The NDS’ position that “China and Russia are now undermining the international order from within the system by exploiting its benefits while simultaneously undercutting its principles” rings a bit hollow, however, considering the United States’ own contributions to undermining the international order that it worked so very hard to create from the ashes of the last great power conflict. This paper will examine America’s steady withdrawal from international fora and regimes, and how a rising China and a declining Russia have taken advantage of both a divided America and the oft-conscious absence of American international in a manner that increasingly threatens the United States and raises the potential for future great power conflict. Further, both China and Russia are proficiently employing gray zone tactics to achieve their strategic goals, but are doing so in slightly different fashions because of their relative positions in the existing world order. The views represented in this paper are those of the author and do not reflect those of the Coast Guard or the Department.