The USAWC has an established history of implementing various pedagogical approaches across its core curriculum and elective courses.
In 2023, the U.S. Joint Staff directed the war colleges to increase the portion of their curricula devoted to understanding China, to include its “national interests, strategic objectives, and domestic constraints, and grand strategy.” The purpose of this deeper understanding of the Department of Defense’s pacing challenge is to enable students “to develop policies, strategies, forces, and military plans that counter PRC aggression against the United States, its allies, partners, and interests.” The implications of this guidance were clear, the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) had to not just raise general awareness but provide practical—preferably experiential—knowledge that will allow graduates to act in the real world.
The School of Strategic Landpower chose to implement this in phases, beginning with the resident course in the 2023-2024 academic year. The main vehicle for this was a new 10-lesson China Integrated Course (CIC). This year we tested an alternative experiential learning option. Next year, the distance education course will deliver its version of the course. All of these are just the most recent examples of how the USAWC centers warfighting with innovative pedagogies and leveraging academic and practitioner expertise.
Innovative Pedagogies
The USAWC has an established history of implementing various pedagogical approaches across its core curriculum and elective courses. As an integrated course, the CIC leverages several of these approaches to ensure that students are not only building foundational knowledge about China, but are also able to apply what they have learned. Half of the lessons in the course begin with a plenary lecture delivered by a subject matter expert, followed by a question-and-answer session. The class then breaks into their seminars of typically sixteen students for in-depth discussions, in which students can delve deeper into the readings and plenary presentation, test their assumptions, and apply what they have learned to a relevant strategic issue.
For example, in one lesson the students learn about China’s fragmented policy making and implementation process and its effects on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Having learned these aspects of China’s foreign policy through the readings and plenary lecture, students then explore in seminar discussions how strategic leaders can develop and implement strategies of engagement, cooption, or competition vis-a-vis the BRI and the implications of any of those courses of actions. This encourages students to critically assess real-world policy challenges and apply theoretical frameworks to dynamic geopolitical contexts, deepening their strategic thinking skills.
The other lesson type uses experiential learning pedagogies, including class exercises and wargames. Having learned, and engaged in discussions about the history of China and the Chinese Communist Party, its political and strategic culture, and the force structure and modernization process of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the students conduct the Pacific Posture 2032 wargame. In this exercise, the seminar splits into two teams: Blue (the United States) and Red (China), that compete using the military, diplomatic, informational, and economic instruments of national power. The objective is to influence other countries in the region, gain strategic access, deny access to opponents, and secure geopolitical advantage. The game unfolds over four turns, each representing two years. During each turn, teams invest resources in select countries to “set the theater,” guided by their strategic objectives and future force posture needs. Students must also allocate defense management resources to modernization, readiness, and force structure. Faculty adjudicate outcomes, determining which team gains technological and geographic advantages as the situation progresses toward armed conflict between China and the United States and its allies. With strategic conditions set, the course then shifts to how China conceptualizes and conducts warfighting.
Following a lesson on Chinese Warfighting that introduces students to PLA strategic and doctrinal concepts, the students apply their understanding to a three-day wargame called Pacific Overmatch. In this exercise, the same two teams that competed in Pacific Posture develop a campaign approach that advances and achieves US or Chinese national security interests and objectives within the construct of the scenario. They are tasked to apply relevant aspects of operational art, operational design, and the joint planning process to understand American and Chinese strategic and operational environments, frame military objectives, and communicate the sequence of actions and activities required to execute an armed conflict campaign. They apply American or Chinese warfighting concepts across all domains in the development, communication, and execution of an armed conflict campaign in the Western Pacific.
The game simulates U.S.–China competition, crisis, and conflict, prompting students to apply foundational knowledge from the core curriculum and the initial lessons if the CIC.
This year’s pilot offered lessons that will help improve subsequent iterations of the CIC and the broader curriculum as well. Five seminars tested Pacific Strategy, a matrix game developed by the USAWC wargaming experts in the Center for Strategic Leadership. The game simulates U.S.–China competition, crisis, and conflict, prompting students to apply foundational knowledge from the core curriculum and the initial lessons if the CIC. This fosters their ability to use a wider range of national power instruments across all three phases of the competition continuum. Pacific Strategy will be revised next year, incorporating student and faculty feedback and academic expertise ahead of its broader implementation across the remaining CIC seminars.
Academic and Practitioner Expertise
Developing and implementing the CIC requires a broad pool of expertise. The course is purposefully designed to draw on the talents of the civilian and military academics and practitioners from all three resident-course departments: the Department of Command Leadership and Management (DCLM), which educates senior leaders in leading organizational change and managing the enterprise aspects of national defense; the Department of National Security and Strategy (DNSS), which prepares leaders to understand and navigate strategic competition, conflict, national policy, and global dynamics; and the Department of Military Strategy Planning and Operations (DMSPO), which focuses on planning and executing military operations and leading joint forces. The CIC also leverages the expertise of the China Landpower Studies Center in the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) for plenary lectures.
Lessons in Warfighting
The CIC is designed to produce strategic leaders who know how to deter China, and, if deterrence fails, lead military operations. At its core, the course emphasizes the development and application of warfighting skills grounded in strategic thought and operational planning. Students learn how to generate landpower options within a joint and combined context, apply strategic thinking to assess evolving threats, and design coherent approaches across the competition continuum. The CIC also trains students to integrate military and non-military instruments of national power to pursue US interests and respond decisively to national security challenges. Critically, the course prepares students to anticipate and shape future operational environments by identifying emerging military requirements and force design implications. It also reinforces the principles of strategic leadership necessary to build, lead, and sustain combat-ready units capable of fighting and winning in a high-end conflict.
Conclusion
The CIC equips USAWC graduates with the strategic insight, operational acumen, and warfighting proficiency needed to address the pacing challenge posed by the PRC. By combining foundational knowledge, experiential learning, and interdisciplinary expertise, the course ensures students can think critically, lead strategically, and operate effectively in competition, crisis, and conflict. As the global security environment evolves, the Army War College will continue to refine the CIC guided by Joint Staff directives, Army priorities, and student feedback to ensure its graduates are ready to deter aggression, defend US interests, and, if necessary, fight and win in a contested theater.
Zenel Garcia is an Associate Professor of National Security Studies in the Department of National Security and Strategy and co-director of the Resident Course China Integrated Course at the U.S. Army War College. His research focuses on the intersection of international relations theory, security, and geopolitics. Specifically, how interpretations of security and the geopolitical environment shape the discursive and empirical processes of regional formation and transformation in the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia.
John Nagl is Professor of Warfighting Studies and co-director of the Resident Course China Integrated Course at the U.S. Army War College. He is the author of Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam.
The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense.
Photo Credit: Digi-Shot via flickr Creative Commons 2.0