Tyler Hacker
From the rout of Union forces at Bull Run to two decades of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, history tells us that our assumptions about future war are often incorrect. Looking to today, consider this view of a potential US-China conflict:
Any confrontation between the United States and China would be short and intense, decisively determining the war’s outcome in a matter of days or weeks.
How often has this assumption informed past discussions in the Pentagon and Washington’s think tanks? Three years of attritional war in Ukraine and stubbornly persistent security challenges in the Red Sea call this sentiment into question, causing defense commentators to reexamine the possibility that despite both nations being nuclear armed, a US-China war may not end in days or weeks, but could protract for months or even years. This raises the question: How many other assumptions about great power war are due for reexamination?
At the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, we have conducted dozens of exercises on the strategic choices facing political and military leaders regarding the revitalization of the US military for great power war. These exercises often highlight how fighting a prolonged war calls for a different approach than shorter campaigns, such as choosing to expand defense production over relying on existing stockpiles. Regardless of the participant, some form of industrial mobilization is frequently considered the key for unlocking greater production in long wars.
Admittedly, no one can know the exact character of a future war between the United States and China, but recent CSBA research on US mobilization planning during the interwar period gives reason to question some oft repeated assumptions. Comparing current planning assumptions to those of the interwar period reveals several instances where our expectations may fall short of the realities of war, protraction, and mobilization. Today’s security environment, economic circumstances, and military forces may be a world apart from those of the 1930s, but planning to wage war in the American system is fundamentally the same in many ways. For this reason, the US experience in World War II should inform our thinking regarding a future US-China conflict. Five frequently recurring and often implicit assumptions about protracted war stand out, and the American historical experience suggests they may be due for reconsideration.
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