Part 1 of 3 To Fight Future Wars, the U.S. Needs More Capacity—and Seriousness
The United States appears to be losing its ability to manage the activities necessary to both make war and prevent it in the first place. War requires the sum total of what a civilization is capable of, from education to invention and production to organization. This makes war unbelievably complex, almost to the point of incomprehensibility. Hidden in the raw numbers of troops, ships and missiles on a chart are the economic, scientific, political and societal activities needed to develop, procure and field them. U.S. decision-makers seem paralyzed by an inability to motivate and harness these forces for effective national defense.
While the United States remains the foremost military power in the world, it is no longer a near-hegemonic one as it appeared to be at the end of the Cold War. History hasn’t ended; rather, it has reasserted itself, and a multipolar world of near-peer and powerful regional rivals is now a reality. History suggests this was inevitable.
It is likely just a matter of time, if not inevitable, before a state of war exists between great powers. The taboo is gone. Fighting between the United States and some combination of its allies against an enemy combination involving Russia and/or China and their allies appears increasingly plausible.
The U.S.-led (for now) West appears to hold most of the advantages of economy, technology and demonstrable military power. However, as Discourse’s David Masci recently pointed out, the actions and inaction of U.S. political and military leaders are not only squandering any existent advantages over potential enemies, but they also strike decidedly nonserious attitudes about what is needed to reassert those advantages.
Masci ascribes America’s failings to “fecklessness,” and if this seems harsh it is also understandable, given the scale of what awaits us in a superpower conflict. Understandable, too, is the desire to avoid the buzzsaw of modern combat with some combination of unconventional strategies and advanced technologies. However, both of these appeals to American ingenuity will waste our resources, time and talent unless the country is able to face its potential enemies with dominant numbers of equipment and trained personnel.
Taiwan by the Tail
There is no shortage of experts, many with substantial experience and pedigrees, who warn of a potential future war with China over Taiwan or with Russia, spinning out of Western military support for Ukraine. Given China’s growing economic and military capabilities, the former is the premier threat to the U.S. position as the dominant world power.
Though no one is yet banging a drum or starting a countdown, warnings about a potential war with China are everywhere in the media, white papers from think tanks and reports from Congress. The key issue hangs on the autonomy of Taiwan, which China’s President Xi Jinping has made his personal mission to abolish, through either peaceful or forceful means. At the same time, a cross-strait invasion of Taiwan by Chinese forces is unlikely to succeed if Taiwan resists and receives U.S. and allied support.
Most would agree that this is the state of affairs. Yet it must be said that if China did mount an invasion and the U.S. intervened, both sides would suffer shattering losses of life, ships and aircraft in the first days and weeks of the conflict. Wargames run by the Center for Strategic and International Studies project that the U.S. would succeed but experience death and destruction on a World War II scale (the losses of dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft and thousands of servicemembers) and compressed in time, mostly due to the clouds of guided missiles used in the fray.
It should not be surprising that some U.S. leaders are balking at this. Members of Congress, Department of Defense officials and the national security think tank community are looking for ways to counter a cross-strait invasion without having to expend ships, planes and lives. One avenue counsels the U.S. and its allies to forgo a forward defense of Taiwan in favor of a blockade of China on the high seas. Another envisions turning the strait into a “hellscape” with swarms of aerial and naval drones to overwhelm a Chinese invasion force.
Neither of these alternatives is a substitute for forward defense of Taiwan by directly resisting an invasion, and neither will deter China unless backed by the threat of a forward defense. Samuel Byers, senior national security adviser at the Center for Maritime Strategy, warns that there won’t be any silver bullets in a war against China and that policymakers need to guard against the tendency to look for them.
“I worry that people in think tank land and some people in government try to come up with these ideas that if war started, we can blockade China as a shortcut because we control the high seas,” Byers said. “Or we don’t need to buy 10,000 anti-ship missiles tomorrow to fight within the first island chain, or worry about the U.S. Navy’s surface fleet because we’ll have Hellscape.”
By “first island chain,” Byers refers to the archipelago encompassing Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and islands touching the South China Sea, which defines the front line of any likely U.S. conflict with China. Without linking “silver bullet” thinking to any particular individuals, he nevertheless is concerned that ideas can take hold and put U.S. strategy and defense policy on the wrong track.
“You have to be careful about the mindset that people in D.C. and the foreign policy establishment have, even the unwritten or the unspoken assumptions, because these tangibly drive the budget that Congress passes and the decisions that senior leaders make,” he said. “There is a sort of silver bullet mindset. ‘Oh, this will do it.’ And that’s a tough habit to break, it seems.”