The Atlantic Council: Win fast or lose big against China

[Celerity]

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/win-fast-or-lose-big-against-china/



It seems that “protraction” as a way of war is having a moment, especially through the lens of a future war against China. The Army is holding wargames and conferences addressing it. Even fresh scholarship is skeptical of short wars. All of which is somewhat bewildering because history is replete with long wars, and the record of long wars is one of much blood and great cost. Tinkering with notions of protracted war allows military decision-makers to be distracted and to make a poor bargain, like the trade made by the legendary Doctor Faust that comes with extraordinary cost.

Clearly, the cost of long wars is extraordinarily high. In every respect, long wars should be an unwelcome result, not an outcome to be acquiesced. The Army especially cannot afford to mischaracterize the inevitability of long war. Acceptance of protraction as an inevitability is to surrender the United States’ best way to win militarily against China, which is to fight and win the first battle of any war. Appearing to accept that the United States will not win the first battle in a US-China war could also fatally undermine deterrence by signaling a lack of confidence in US capabilities. Winning in a future contest and strengthening deterrence means making decisions now: real choices must be made regarding forward posture, organizational structure, training, and modernization to create a battlefield system that leverages US advantages.

Of course, wars become long when they aren’t concluded promptly. That seemingly tautological outcome is often due to a failure to identify war objectives and to align warfighting means properly. Or maybe, as game theory suggests, long wars are caused by information asymmetries. Whatever the reason, long wars are a recurring feature of the international state system, and not one to encourage. There isn’t space in this short essay to fully parse “long” war from “total” war, but it is a fair assumption in an era of all-domain contests that the longer a war protracts, the more total it will become, and the more awful the butcher’s bill. In every respect, the longer the war the more it becomes a widening conflagration and a losing hand for the United States. The present dalliance with protraction can only lead to expenses the United States cannot afford, and strategic ends it cannot determine. Because the United States doesn’t have many good ways to escape long wars once they become, well, long, the best approach is to plan and resource its armed forces to win at the onset of conflict.

Today neither the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) nor the United States is seeking the elimination of the other party. Hence, today’s immediate war-waging problem is not one of preparing for an existential fight between the United States and China. Whether the flashpoint is the South China Sea, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, or Taiwan, the military problem to solve is not how to eliminate China as a great power but to defeat its armed forces. In other words, the challenge is how to fight and win a regional, limited war against a nuclear-armed great power—that is, a short war. In the Pacific, such a war with China is the kind the United States is most likely to confront, and one that it can win.

snip

[underpants]

1. Good read. Thanks