An increasing number of highly respected analysts note the tighter coordination among Russia (America’s acute challenge), China (America’s pacing challenge), North Korea, and Iran. These countries share an aversion to the international system organized and maintained by the United States and her allies. They also share a determination to achieve national goals that do not comply with expected international norms about the use of force in international politics to change boundaries and respect for sovereignty. These nations are increasingly sharing natural resources, military equipment, and training; together, they present the prospect of being the most formidable adversary America has faced at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union (the reason some are proclaiming a “new Cold War”) and perhaps since World War II (the reasons others are comparing today to 1938 and arguing that a third world war is imminent).
Today, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has resulted in the most consequential war in Europe in generations and taught many lessons about the changing character of war. China’s provocations in the Indo-Pacific region threaten US allies in the region and put at risk the regional security balance that has held for decades. While the threats posed individually by Iran and its proxies or North Korea do not rise to the same level as those of Russia or China, they nonetheless can produce significant negative impacts for the United States and our Western allies and increase instability around the world. The threats that are posed by the potential cooperation by several or all of these adversaries are especially dangerous, and as noted below, there are clear indications that to some extent this is already happening. The resources required to manage multiple conflicts, especially protracted wars—and the coordination challenges involved in doing so—could overextend the capabilities of the United States and its allies.
The danger posed by the collaboration of our adversaries is easy to see and needs to be addressed to prioritize resources and design effective counterstrategies. At the same time, we need to also recognize the cost of even one major protracted conflict could seriously diminish our resources for national security. As we are seeing today both in Ukraine and in ongoing US commitments in the Middle East, the cost of even supporting protracted efforts is quite significant. The cost of engaging in and winning a protracted war would be massively higher.
The Threat Perspective
Appreciating the risks of a protracted conflict first requires an understanding of the perspective of threat actors. Insofar as China is considered our pacing challenge, its outlook is particularly instructive. It is commonly held that China’s leaders today respect American military and technological capabilities. They do not appear to be confident of victory in any scenario, but these anxieties should not reassure us. They appear to take US alliance and defense buildup plans quite seriously. From their point of view, the American-led enemy mobilization has already begun.
From Beijing’s perspective, there might be several reasons to seriously consider taking what seem to be necessary actions sooner rather than later. China may not fear that such actions will cause a geopolitical break with the United States and the West, for example, because Beijing perceives this break to have already occurred. Chinese leaders see America already energetically organizing, with some effect, a global coalition to impose containment and strategic decoupling through technology and trade controls. They believe that for now, in this wartime environment, European governments are deferring to the Americans, though many Chinese leaders disagree.
Chinese leaders and strategists might also see that Americans and Europeans feel economically and financially fragile, fearful of initiating a conflict that will immediately trigger a potentially apocalyptic global economic and financial crisis. And if there is such a storm, Chinese leaders may believe they are better able to weather it. They have already been helping to establish a parallel global trading system to accommodate Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other targets of American sanctions.
And, of course, they cannot help but note that the Ukraine crisis has shocked America into trying much harder to ramp up its defense industrial base. This is a worrying development for China. Beijing is concerned that America might significantly enhance its capacity to produce weapons and other materiel, including long- or mid-range standoff precision munitions. But it will take some time for the Americans to do this, and even an extra year or two may make a difference. US rapid development and fielding initiatives are another source of concern to China as an important component of strategic competition—or even the initial stages of a conflict. Major investments in AI-related endeavors, programs like the Replicator initiative, and other innovations may well be seen as threats from a Chinese perspective.
Further, Japan is rearming and developing capabilities to operate beyond its own territory, which could have huge consequences in the Indo-Pacific, but this too will take time. To Chinese leaders, the Japanese turn may seem particularly ominous. Japan has also overcome historical grievances that have blocked close military and intelligence cooperation with South Korea. The recent activation of a new US three-star headquarters in Japan is likely to be regarded as a significant step toward increased capability for America and its regional allies and partners.
China has also watched as its American rivals now have a huge backlog of approved arms sales to Taiwan, but much of this has not been delivered. Chinese leaders will prefer that none of it ever is. The Americans have successfully negotiated for base access in the Philippines, but they are not yet ready to use these bases. And the Americans are orchestrating new military construction as well as multinational efforts and exercises with individual allies like Japan and South Korea and through multilateral mechanisms like the AUKUS partnership and the Quad. The concerted efforts of the United States to work more closely with nations across the region is also regarded as inimical to Chinese interests.
Optimizing to Deter—or Win—a Protracted War
The most serious concern is that some form of collusion between Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran in which several or all four states, simultaneously or in close sequence, challenge the United States and her allies would overstretch US and allied capabilities to defeat them. Indeed, some suggest that this is currently happening. In the comparatively new domains of space and cyber it is difficult to even understand what the character of conflict might be like and what the consequences would be to combatant nations or even the entire world.
All of these factors together make for a very complex and challenging strategic landscape, notwithstanding the additional uncertainties associated with understanding other nations. If, by looking at these and many other factors, we believe there is some prospect of a major prolonged war in the coming years, what should we do? What would provide us the greatest resilience and offer us the best chance to prevail? Of even greater importance, what can we do to deter such a conflagration?
All of these questions are well recognized by senior leaders and scholars in the United States as well as allied and partner nations; there are a number of ongoing efforts to understand, catalog, and prioritize challenges and opportunities to mitigate or deter military threats. In the broadest sense we believe that the road to deterrence and victory (if deterrence fails) has three general axes of advance: strategy, acquisition and logistics, and human capital. While all of these areas are huge topics unto themselves, examining them through the lens of preparing for and hopefully deterring a protracted war offers the opportunity to focus on prioritizing our efforts with our limited resources.
There are countless facets and considerations under the rubric of strategy, but aligning resources to optimize their use is at the core of any strategic calculus, as is balancing current readiness against future requirements—including those that are difficult to foresee. The challenge the United States currently faces is that we have very expansive ends but insufficient resources—in personnel, force structure, and equipment—to meet all of our requirements to deter, much less to prevail in, the large-scale combat operations for which the Department of Defense has instructed the military departments to prepare.
The most dramatic change required to prepare for protracted conventional war against one or more of America’s likely adversaries is in personnel and force structure. The American military is not currently sized to fight two large-scale combat operations simultaneously; indeed, our aircraft carriers are already overstretched while deterring China and confronting Iran in support of Israel. Observers including one of this paper’s authors are beginning to question whether the all-volunteer force that has defended American interests and values for the past fifty years will be able to provide sufficient personnel for the expanded force that would be required to fight and win.
Regarding acquisition and logistics, even a cursory consideration of all that would be required to support a protracted war would be far too ambitious for this piece. That said, many of the most elemental and longest lead-time requirements fall under this heading—and are challenged to compete for resources for a number of reasons. Two areas of particular concern are modernization of the industrial base and mobilization capabilities. The Department of Defense is working to identify key issues and develop strategies to improve the ability of the commercial sector to meet our emerging and evolving requirements. Clearly we have a long way to go and we cannot succeed through efforts on a transactional basis; while Congress has been supporting increases in these areas, the need remains great.
Finally, every aspect of mobilization requires a comprehensive review, even to the point of rethinking the meaning of the term itself, and a clear understanding of its constituent parts and how they must work together is imperative. Some key policy documents and organizational structures have not changed substantially in several decades. In many cases, it is likely that essential requirements to succeed in potential conflicts would not be in place for a number of months after conflict erupts. The United States must prepare now to fight a protracted war to make it less likely that that war will happen. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began the mobilization of the United States for World War II in 1938, three years before Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war. It may be time for a similar national-level effort to increase readiness for sustained large-scale combat operations—protracted war.
One of the most important and difficult tasks for strategic leaders is to assess the utility of a capability against what economists and logisticians refer to as the total cost of ownership. This includes not just the complete acquisition cost, including training, logistics support, and facilities but also the cost and probability of being able to deploy a capability to where and when you will need it. In a protracted war against some combination of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, the United States would likely face attacks on its supply lines into theatres of war that it has not faced since World War II. Contested logistics further increases the challenge of preparing for protracted war, including the requirement for additional force structure to defend lines of communications across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Our intent is not to be alarmist or suggest that we are not capable of defending our nation and our interests as well as those of our allies and partners. We do, however, believe that it is important to synchronize the efforts of the many leaders, analysts, scholars, and staffs that are working on these issues to develop a coordinated strategy and plans to address the challenges before us. We also believe that this is an important subject for treatment at joint professional military education institutions, especially but not limited to senior service colleges.
We face the most challenging international environment at least since the end of the Cold War, when we were spending some 6 percent of our gross domestic product on national defense; we are currently at slightly more than half that level. It is likely time to dramatically increase our investment in national security, as so many of our allies have recently decided to do. While these investments will be expensive and require sacrifices from the American people, deterrence is cheaper than war in lives and treasure.
John Nagl is professor of warfighting studies at the US Army War College.
George Topic is deputy director of the Center for Strategic Logistics at the National Defense University.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, United States Army War College, National Defense University, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Bill Mesta, US Navy