Air-Sea Battle and Offshore-Control are not Mutually-Exclusive: The Conclusion

For previous installments, see Parts I, II, and III

Political Objectives and Contingency Circumstances Must Dominate Strategic Concept Design

The main takeaway from this week's discussion should be that the form of a notional Sino-American war in East Asia would be dictated by its specific circumstances and the respective sides’ political objectives. Accordingly, as it is the revisionist power, China would likely establish most of the initial precedents for the conflict’s violence. If Chinese leaders’ valued their political objectives highly enough, any method for attempting to force them to restore the status quo ante would inherently carry horizontal and vertical escalation risks. This would be true for a U.S. embargo against Chinese trade that was complete enough to impose a high dose of pain, a highly successful U.S. limited war effort isolated to the contested zone, or a broader conventional conflict that included direct U.S. attacks against PLA targets on Chinese soil. The only differences between these methods would be the amount of time it might take for Chinese leaders to face a major escalation decision, and the sources and types of pressure pushing them to escalate.

This also means there is no guarantee Chinese leaders would follow their historical pattern of backing down or settling for symbolic gains once the PLA had inflicted ‘enough damage and pain’ for them to claim ‘China had taught its adversaries a lesson.’ Indeed, their willingness to do so in a given contingency would be relative to their political objectives, the circumstances that drove them to war in the first place, and their personal wisdom. Today’s China is not Mao’s China or Deng’s China—its current leaders enjoy a far more powerful country than did their predecessors, and neither they nor we know how they would actually act within the circumstance-unique fog, friction, and political pressures of a contemporary East Asian conflict. A strategic concept that is not structured to take these considerations into account is simply not practicable for either warfighting or deterrence.

U.S. political leaders must be sober in defining the nation’s interests in East Asia, deliberate in characterizing and valuing their political objectives, and resolute in developing, resourcing, and implementing their grand strategy for averting such a conflict. It follows that this strategy’s military component must address the entire spectrum of potential combat, as well as provide U.S. political leaders with a wide set of response options, if it is to stand a chance at preventing Chinese leaders from achieving their political objectives. Without doubt, this would be best accomplished by deterring a war altogether. The integration and evolution of relevant aspects of Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control within a single strategic concept will be a first step towards accomplishing this crucial task.