Wargames are useful to assess possible outcomes and develop strategies, but this particular outcome is optimistic at best and is underpinned by flawed assumptions.
Uncomfortable facts often get in the way of what we want to be true. Such is the case of the United States’ capacity to defeat China in a prolonged conflict. Recent wargame findings assert that the United States could fight an invasion of Taiwan to a stalemate. Wargames are useful to assess possible outcomes and develop strategies, but this particular outcome is optimistic at best and is underpinned by flawed assumptions. In reality, any conflict over Taiwan will almost certainly be a prolonged war that favors China.
As the United States and the West push back against Chinese violations of international law and its economic coercion, U.S.-China trade conflict has grown exponentially with both the U.S. and Chinese governments becoming increasingly confrontational. U.S. actions to deny China access to sophisticated microchip technology amplify Chinese claims over Taiwan, the world’s biggest microchip manufacturer. China’s declared intent to reunify with Taiwan by force if necessary fuels further confrontation. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only added more incentive for the United States and Taiwan to bolster the latter’s self-defense capacity. Predictably, this evokes Chinese anger and increases the prospect that China might attack Taiwan. The most likely scenarios indicate China’s doing so would very likely precipitate a world war that would not end quickly.
Both the United States and China have compelling reasons to avoid open conflict. Economically, the United States, as is true for most Western nations, depends on Chinese manufacturing and goods. The Chinese economy depends on its manufacturing and global trade. A world war would severely damage the world’s two biggest economies, not to mention all others. Politically, a Chinese Communist Party focused on retaining its power domestically as well as on ascending to great power status may rationalize it must act forcefully to achieve its goals. Any resulting high intensity war of attrition over Taiwan, short of a nuclear exchange, will undoubtedly favor China. Why? The U.S. military strategy to combat China cannot be sustained. Wargames indicate the United States will lose significant combat power quickly. U.S. military forces are too small, their supply lines are too vulnerable, and America’s defense industrial capacity is far too eroded to keep up with the materiel demands of a high-intensity conflict. Another critical factor undermining U.S. capacity to sustain a war is that Americans lack the resilience to fight a sustained, brutal conflict. A war with China would require far greater numbers of Americans to serve in the military or to support it directly in some manner — something they are increasingly unwilling to do. Current recruiting challenges emphasize this growing national security problem.
Scholars and pundits alike have been quick to characterize Sino-American geopolitical and economic confrontation as a new cold war. This evokes comparisons to the West’s confrontation with the Soviet Union, but these situations have very little in common. The West was able to isolate the Soviet Union economically and technically, successfully blunting its strategic aspirations. This is not possible with China.
China is now what the United States used to be, in terms of economic power and industrial capacity. Unlike the Soviet Union, the United States and most Western nations are economically reliant on China. China has built a capacity to sustain a protracted war of any type. More directly, China is well-postured to sustain a protracted high intensity war of attrition. The United States is not currently capable of doing so.
While the United States still lacked a peer competitor, it focused far too long on counterterrorism and allowed its defense industrial capacityand military end-strength to erode to a dangerous state. As a result, the United States increasingly underpins its security with technological superiority and a coalition of partners and allies. This is a deeply flawed approach to conflict, given the narrow technological advantages the United States might expect to retain against China, considering America’s deep dependence on Chinese manufacturing.
The reality is that China has now developed a “full-spectrum peer” capability to rival the United States with China’s industrial and manufacturing capacity, as well as with its rapid technological advancement. This was achieved through a combination of intense domestic research and development, and the outright theft of Western technology and intellectual property. In a relatively short time, the Chinese successfully mobilized a nation, transformed its industrial base, and built the military capabilities to compete directly with the United States.
These strengths, coupled with the sheer size of China’s military, are compelling enough, but China also possesses other key advantages. For example, Chinese research and development has rapidly become the best in the world. In fact, Chinese research is now of higher quality and more often cited than U.S. research is. Key U.S. technological advantages are narrowing quickly and the United States may soon fall behind China in advanced computing and other key, emerging technologies.
Meanwhile, U.S. security posture remains largely underpinned by an outdated notion that its defense industrial base and manufacturing capacity could be ramped up sufficiently to meet national needs during a war. The challenges the United States has experienced in providing weapons and ammunition to Ukraine provide insight into a current lack of such capacity. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has treated conflict like a “pick-up” game, for which it ramps up defense manufacturing as required. This will no longer work. Since the opening of China in the early 1970s, U.S. capacity to ‘play’ has shrunk in proportion to China’s growth.
The current political divide in the U.S. also impedes addressing the most basic of national security issues.
In fact, the United States lacks the capacity to support the replacement demands of any military force capable of defeating China, in the compressed timeframe it should expect to have to do so. For example, the United States used to be the world’s export leader in steel production. Today, it is the largest steel importer in the world, dependent on others for one of the fundamental building blocks of military hardware. Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturing is now nearly double that of U.S. production. China has also sought to control much of the rare earths minerals market that is vitally important to the U.S. ability to build and sustain military systems, information technology, and all manner of other essential products.
The current political divide in the U.S. also impedes addressing the most basic of national security issues. Despite the promises of the recent American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, an earnest attempt to reverse and restore American industrial and manufacturing capacity is likely a decades-long proposition.
There is a strategic intent to China’s actions, and the United States should expect China to attempt to deny and disrupt U.S. access to critical materials vital to the manufacture of critical defense technologies. America should assume China understands its history and the implications of allowing the United States the space and time to react. A thinking and resolute China almost certainly will focus on preventing it from doing so.
Technology and manufacturing are not America’s only compelling challenges. Americans in general are unprepared for, unwilling, or incapable to perform military service. Short of reinstituting a draft, U.S. military services cannot attract or retain enough manpower quickly enough to sustain a fight with China. Alarmingly, Department of Defense (DOD) statistical analyses indicate that less than 2% of Americans now serve in the armed forces, and that 71% of Americans between 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service. Worse yet, a recent DOD poll indicates that the propensity of young Americans to serve in the miliary has fallen steadily over the past 40 years from about 25% in 1984 to about 9% in 2021. The reasons for this eroded willingness to serve are varied but surveys reveal disturbing realities about U.S. nationalism and views on national service. Young Americans increasingly view other countries as better than the United States and in fact are accepting of, or ambiguous about, the idea that other countries might become more powerful than the United States militarily. Such naive notions are particularly dangerous when an authoritarian Chinese state with hegemonic aspirations is working diligently to do just that.
We can debate the underlying reasons an increasingly unfit and nationally ambivalent generation of Americans does not worry about the threat of war; however, it is evident that many Americans take their security for granted and do not likely consider that the horrors of war could be visited upon them directly. The facts are young Americans are not serving in the military, a majority do not want to serve, and most are not capable.
The United States is at one of its most vulnerable positions in history. Americans seem confident their military capacity and their economic, technological, and social advantages will endure. As is too often a harsh and painful lesson in U.S. history, a pattern of ignoring growing peril again threatens our republic.
The United States is responding far too slowly to change or avoid this predicament. There is merit in pursuing an alternative approach to current foreign policy and a narrative that pushes America towards conflict. A key element of President Joseph Biden’s policy toward China that is increasing tension is the notion that “we cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So, we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system.” This approach has arguably done more to provoke China than to advance cooperation. A more diplomatic economic approach that buys the United States time to onshore industrial capacity and to secure supply lines makes better sense than increasing risk of a conflict whose potential scope and impact are difficult to predict. History shows Americans can be reluctant to act until war forces them to. With respect to China’s threat, that may then be too late to protect the U.S. Homeland or the Western liberal international order. These stubborn facts are indicators that Americans may just have to acclimate themselves to citizenship within a fading power, which many now characterize the United States to be.
Dr. John Mauk is a retired Army Colonel and former faculty at the U.S. Army War College whose research is focused on US national security issues with focus on National Security policy decision-making.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.
Photo Description: Chinese People’s Liberation Army Cpl. Xing Wang leaves camp to go hunting during the survival phase of Exercise Kowari, being held in the Daly River region of the Northern Territory, on 5 September 2016. Kowari is an Australian army-hosted survival skills exercise designed to increase defense cooperation between forces from the U.S., Australia and China.
Photo Credit: Australian Defence Force photo by Cpl. Jake Sims
