"In the wake of the Cold War, America enjoyed a mostly unchallenged command of the commons, airspace, sea, space, and cyberspace. But the era of uncontested US dominance is over," he stated, TASS reported.
"Today, we face serious threats in China, Russia, and other nations determined to beat us in every single domain - from spectrum to low Earth orbit, to our supply chains, and even our communication infrastructure," Vance maintained.
"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, our policymakers assumed that American primacy on the world stage was guaranteed. For a brief time, we were a superpower without any peer, nor did we believe any foreign nation could possibly rise to compete with the United States of America," the senior US official stated. However, he said, American leaders "traded hard power for soft power.".