The prospect of 21st-century great might war is terra incognita. The huge majority of officers in the U.S. armed forces and civil servants in the U.S. politics entered service after the descent of the Berlin Wall and the crumble of the Soviet Union. For them, the notion of great power contest is at best a theoretical and historical matter ; it is surely not one of personal have. The bangle of the current site is compounded by the egress of new technologies, concepts of operations, and organizations that presage wars that will look identical different from by conflicts .
It is the professional duty of U.S. military leaders to ensure the U.S. armed forces are organize to fight and win the state ’ mho wars, including developing strategies and supporting joint operational concepts to do so. As Vice Admiral Stansfield Turner noted during his first convocation address at the Naval War College in 1972, the military “ profession can merely retain its life force so long as we ourselves are pushing the frontiers of cognition in our field. ” 1 It is the role of civilian leaders to hold the military accountable for developing approaches to meet the challenges the nation faces, not wish them away. similarly, it is the province of civilian leaders to define the parameters within which strategy and concepts are developed, to include the political constraints and operational assumptions that are necessary to ensure new ways of war are politically utilitarian and strategically relevant .
One of Bradford Lee’s four families of strategy is that of attacking an adversary’s political systems. Here, protestors in Hong Kong rallied against Chinese policies in 2019. Credit: Alamy
Thinking About Strategy
scheme is about how to array limited resources in space and clock time to achieve one ’ sulfur aims against a rival. Its all-important elements are rationality ( the being of political objectives and a plan to achieve them ) and interaction with a rival who seeks, at the very least, to achieve different objectives—if not thwart one ’ sulfur ability to achieve one ’ s aims.2 Strategy is situational : One develops a scheme against a finical adversary. furthermore, a sound net assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of a rival is foundational to any successful strategy.For the foreseeable future, developing a strategy to compete with China should have the highest priority. Any scheme for competing with China in the western Pacific and beyond will, by definition, be a maritime strategy : Actions in, through, and from the seas will play a cardinal character .
scheme is meant to influence an adversary ’ s decision-making tartar. In the encase of China, scheme will succeed or fail to the extent it influences the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party ( Xi Jinping in particular ), so it is critically important to have a theory of victory : an understand of how tactical and operational actions will influence the adversary in such a room as to achieve the hope solution.
Bradford A. Lee describes four families of scheme, each of which embodies a discrete theory of victory.3 First, a strategy of denial seeks to convince an adversary that it is impossible to achieve his objectives. By contrast, a strategy of cost imposition seeks to convince an adversary ’ mho leadership that it would be unprofitable ( though not impossible ) to achieve their desired aims because the costs of doing therefore would be disproportionately high. A third approach is to attack a rival’s strategy by calling into interrogate the assumptions guiding his scheme and forcing him to reassess. Lee ’ s one-fourth and final approach is to exploit and influence factions to attack a competitor’s political systems to achieve a favorable result .
Aims of a Maritime Strategy to Compete with China
A maritime strategy for China should seek to address the four elements of chinese behavior that are of greatest concern to the United States and its allies.4 The beginning involves the CCP ’ s approach to external affairs, which is frequently predaceous and corrosive to U.S. interests. It is axiomatic that any nation ’ south political leaders pay greater attention to domestic matters than to international affairs. That is surely on-key of CCP leaders, who are highly attentive to domestic stability. Nevertheless, in holocene years China has become increasingly active on the international degree. It has exerted its weight not only in its region, but besides in areas far removed from the asian continent, including the persian Gulf and Africa .
The second concern involves China ’ s geopolitical orientation. Whereas the People ’ randomness Liberation Army ( PLA ) long focused on the asian continent, in late decades it has increasingly adopted a nautical orientation, with a finish to negate the traditional U.S. strength of projecting military world power from afar. It is frankincense the buildup of the PLA Navy ( PLAN ) and PLA Air Force ( PLAAF ), equally well as early antiaccess/area-denial ( A2/AD ) ( or, in taiwanese parlance, counterintervention ) capabilities such as missiles and antisatellite weapons, that have stimulated U.S. and allied responses, not chinese military spend in the abstract .
Inside forces would include highly mobile amphibious equipment operating from expeditionary advanced bases—such as these Marine Corps vehicles loaded on board a Navy landing craft air cushion. U.S. Marine Corps (Nick Mannweiler)
A third base concern, related to the previous two, stems from the CCP ’ s increasing dissatisfaction with the external status quo. China ’ s leaders have challenged the status quo rhetorically and, increasingly, through carry through. nothing illustrates this more tangibly than China ’ mho build up and militarizing new land features in the South China Sea as a mean of bolstering its claim of ownership. early chinese actions have besides undermined the rules upheld by the United States since World War II, including launching cyberattacks against critical civilian infrastructure, pressuring extraneous companies to ignore political oppression, stealing intellectual property, and using corruption networks to undermine governments.5
A final concern revolves around China ’ south domestic political system. China ’ randomness authoritarian government and disregard for human rights and personal exemption have caused tension with the United States, its allies, and others in the region and beyond. Whatever U.S. leaders say, the CCP securely believes that the United States wants to overthrow it.6 Under Xi Jinping, the CCP has set about making the world safe for dictatorship and establishing a Sino-centric alternative to the liberal international order. In this model, the hallmark of U.S. ball-shaped leadership—an open system of release trade and cooperative security, buttressed by alliances, institutions, and rules—would succumb to a close system in which transactional dealings with Beijing determine the fates of nations.
If, however, these four features were to change—if China were to focus more internally, emphasize the asian celibate over its maritime periphery, accept the status quo, and become more pluralistic—then the United States and its allies would worry less about China ’ second rise. indeed, under those circumstances China might resemble nowadays ’ mho India, a rising power with growing economic military capability that does not threaten U.S. interests or the external club. The question that strategists must address is : To what extent can U.S. military ability influence these four features ?
Maritime Pressure: A Strategy for the Western Pacific and Beyond7
just as scheme must focus on a particular adversary, it must be attentive to geography. China ’ s chief territorial concerns—Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea—are army for the liberation of rwanda closer to it than to the United States. While the United States has district, allies, and interests in the western Pacific, it must traverse the sweep of the Pacific Ocean to defend them .
A maritime strategy should seek to turn geography to the United States ’ advantage by using the geography of the western Pacific to constrain China ’ sulfur access to the open oceans in crisis or war. Viewed from Beijing, the First Island Chain—the barrier formed by Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and nautical and peninsular Southeast Asia—limits Chinese entry to the greater Pacific and indian Oceans, through just a handful of narrow straits. chinese literature reveals a profoundly felt insecurity about these near seas and an pressing desire to control them. The PLA seeks to dictate military operations within this island chain, an area that holds bass symbolic prize for China ’ sulfur leaders.8
Like the Fulda Gap along the inter-German margin during the Cold War, the First Island Chain today should be considered key terrain the United States must, in concert with allies and friends, defend. indeed, geography and technology make it easier to defend in this century than the Fulda Gap was in the twentieth. The press exerted by compound U.S. and allied land-based, expeditionary, naval, and tune forces, backed by quad and cyber capabilities, would represent a challenge China ’ south leaders would be distressed to ignore. Such a scheme would create uncertainty, complicate chinese operational plan, call into question the assumptions of the PLA ’ s operational concepts, and pull China to expend costs to counter it .
Scope, Scale, Duration
past assessments often portrayed a conflict with China as a “ short, acuate war ” that would be over in days.9 Under some circumstances, this could prove to be chastise. It is, of course, potential that the United States and its allies could achieve a agile, decisive victory over China. conversely, if the Chinese can achieve strategic and operational surprise, they could achieve a quick, critical victory.
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It is, however, increasingly possible that a war with China could be protracted. In detail, the growth and spread of precision-strike systems, to include China ’ s large-scale investment in them, appears to herald an era of prolong war, since these weapons allow states such as China to deny the United States the dramaturgy buildup it needs to achieve a quick victory. furthermore, the hypothesis of nuclear escalation in a Sino-U.S. conflict besides could yield a prolong war, since steps taken to mitigate the hazard of nuclear escalation perversely reduce the bonus for the other party to come to the table without first gaining a decisive conventional advantage.10 In such a site, any overall strategy will need to incorporate not alone elements of denial, but besides cost imposition and efforts to attack the adversary ’ second scheme and—potentially—its political system .
In a drawn-out war, early dimensions of office may be increasingly authoritative, to include the ability to mobilize technical and social resources ; gather and support allies and partners ; and open up new geographic or functional theaters of operations. Such a conflict could easily spread beyond the western Pacific, threatening not only U.S. territory in the region, such as Guam, but besides Hawaii and even the West Coast of the United States. furthermore, in a drawn-out war, the economic dimension comes to the fore, with the economic weight of the belligerents and their access to strategic resources playing an important role. This suggests a identical different sic of planning considerations than those that have governed force structure and operational plan since the end of the Cold War .
Inside Forces
A maritime pressure strategy would consist of two mutually supporting elements : an inwardly power and an outside force.11 U.S. forces postured forward in the western Pacific would provide a combat-credible signal of U.S. commitment and purpose, which should give chinese leaders pause by complicating their decision-making tartar and sabotage confidence in their military plans. These inside forces could besides challenge chinese coercive actions below the grade of armed dispute. In particular, inside forces employing a network of persistent air, maritime, and ground sensors could enhance situational awareness and help expose chinese malefic activities. furthermore, a dogged detector network could besides improve indications and admonitory of chinese aggression, thereby reducing China ’ s time–distance advantage.12
In the consequence of war, inside forces would exploit the region ’ randomness maritime geography to form an initial defensive barrier that could immediately challenge chinese military operations. These forces would contest Chinese air travel superiority, sea control condition, and information authority ; delay and deny the ability of chinese power projection forces to achieve their objectives, such as seizing the district of U.S. allies or partners, while blocking China from projecting power beyond the First Island Chain ; and degrade key taiwanese systems to create gaps in A2/AD networks .
Mobile and dispersed ground and expeditionary forces would form the backbone of these inside forces. The implicit in survivability of mobile, hard-to-find prime forces, augmented with camouflage, concealment, and misrepresentation, would transform the First Island Chain ’ s archipelago into defensive bastions bristling with multidomain capabilities such as sensors, missiles, and electronic war systems. subsurface platforms, both manned and unmanned, could operate within or near the East and South China Seas to augment island bastions as function of the inside forces.
expeditionary forces can force an adversary to contend with geographic and temporal doubt. As a resultant role, the ability to seize and hold district may prove particularly valuable. Marine Corps forces could employ sensors to act as coast watchers and strike systems to operate as coastal artillery. A key subject for future psychoanalysis and experiment will be the relative importance of sensing and striking for expeditionary forces. It will be similarly significant to determine the necessity size, crop, and musical composition of Marine Corps strike assets .
united states army forces are probable to possess greater striking power, but with decreased mobility and greater logistic requirements. As a consequence, it will be significant to determine situations in which Marines can make the greatest contribution to a nautical pressure strategy and those in which Army forces offer the best set up of capabilities .
Attempts to find, fix, target, and strike dispersed, ground-based forces operating in complex terrain will prove challenging for the PLA.13 such forces, once lodged in the First Island Chain, would be unmanageable to root out. evening the possible introduction of such forces into the First Island Chain will produce uncertainty. once such uncertainty has been introduced, it will be difficult to eliminate. even a massive attempt to find and destroy disperse units in the First Island Chain is unlikely to convince leaders in Beijing that the threat posed by such forces has been eliminated. Trying to circumvent dispersed ground forces, as the United States did against Japan during World War II, would besides prove difficult, specially if U.S. ground-based missiles had long range and were backed up by air out and naval forces. Assuming chinese advancements do not negate the survivability of break up U.S. fall upon forces, the resulting competitive dynamic would benefit the United States. Every yuan spend on chinese A2/AD improvements that do not appreciably alter the balance of power is a yuan not spent on might protrusion, nuclear weapons, or other capabilities that more badly threaten U.S. and allied interests .
A second potential response to a nautical coerce scheme would be for Beijing to refocus its attention away from its maritime flanks and toward the asian celibate, accelerating a tendency that is already apparent in the Belt and Road Initiative. Facing greater pushback in the asian littoral, chinese leaders might seek to redouble efforts to build economic, political, and military influence in Central Asia and beyond, a development that would be less threatening to the United States and its allies. It is besides possible that perceive failure on the nautical front man, dispatch with populace criticism of Chinese A2/AD investments, could cause the CCP to worry about regimen stability, premised as it is on nationalism and extraneous policy success. The CCP might then be compelled to devote more resources toward inward-looking activities, including internal security and refer efforts .
Third, because the deployment of U.S. mobile ground-based forces likely poses such a cranky problem, China will devote considerable campaign to preventing it. possibly the best option for China would be a concoction of political and economic pressure and inducements to dissuade allies and partners in the region from cooperating with the United States. Beijing could harness its considerable political war capabilities to slow or stop such a scheme by, for example, portraying U.S. and ally capabilities as nauseating and destabilize. political action would prove attractive to China because, if conducted prudently, it would avoid some of the escalatory risks built-in in responding militarily. China might impose economic or deal sanctions against countries, such as Japan, that joined a U.S. scheme. It might besides pursue a message campaign to portray the United States and its allies as aggressors, hoping to win sympathy in the court of external public impression. The United States must therefore stand cook to compete with China across the wide spectrum of august strategy if it chooses to implement a strategy of nautical pressure .
Outside Forces
chiefly consisting of air and naval surface forces, outdoor forces would provide a elastic and agile component to support the inside forces along the First Island Chain. The overpowering mass of U.S. battle power would reside in these outside forces. Air and naval forces would be free to exploit one of their greatest strategic attributes—mobility—to challenge chinese forces at times and places of their choose to maximize their effectiveness. During peacetime, outside forces could augment at heart forces with extra presence in the western Pacific. In the event of conflict, tune and naval forces would bring the sustain firepower needed to reinforce inwardly forces. They would besides possess the ability to threaten China from multiple axes. They would, for exercise, back up the defensive barrier established by the inside forces and provide defense-in-depth in the Second Island Chain. If necessary, outside forces could surge forward to plug any gaps in the inside forces ’ defensive barrier. Inside forces would probable canalize PLA operations, causing them to unfold in predictable directions and create vulnerabilities that outside forces could exploit for counteroffensive operations .
outside forces, employing draw or penetrating capabilities, could exploit gaps in chinese A2/AD created by at heart forces to augment defensive operations with extra mass and behavior dysphemistic operations, including strikes against targets on the chinese mainland. outside forces could besides exploit their greater exemption of maneuver to conduct other precedence missions, such as holding taiwanese overseas assets at risk, interdicting maritime commerce, or safeguarding U.S. and allied sea lines of communication .
Effective Deterrence
together, inside and outside forces should allow the U.S. military, in junction with allies and partners, to create the virtues of mass without the vulnerabilities of concentration. That is, arraying forces across the geographic breadth and depth of the field in a room that balances deadliness and survivability, and knitting them in concert into an effective battle network, would allow the United States to build combat office within the First Island Chain without having to physically concentrate on large, close-in bases that are highly vulnerable to China ’ s precision-strike regimen .
Because disincentive succeeds or fails inside leaders ’ minds, a successful scheme must target beliefs held by chinese leaders. specifically, a nautical pressure strategy would attempt to deny taiwanese leaders the conditions they view as all-important to military victory, including ocean restraint, publicize superiority, and information dominance.14 It would besides attack China ’ sulfur strategy by reducing Beijing ’ s assurance in its ability to control the path and result of a conflict, frankincense bolstering disincentive. It would deny PLA leaders the type of war they have planned for decades, forcing them either to double-down on investing in antiaccess capabilities or to seek another approach, such as circumventing ground-based U.S. forces and weapons, which would take more time, require longer-range platforms, and result in losses along the means. Either means, changing the PLA ’ s doctrine will cost China money and time and give the United States momentum in the ongoing contest with China .
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