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A diplomatic delegation waits for China's President Xi Jinping to arrive

at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, March 30, 2016, to attend the

Nuclear Security Summit. Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

WAR WITH CHINA: THINKING THROUGH THE UNTHINKABLE

by David C. Gompert, Astrid Cevallos, Cristina L. Garafola.

The RAND Corporation.

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Preface

War between the United States and China could be so ruinous for both countries, for East Asia, and for the world that it might seem unthinkable. Yet it is not: China and the U.S. are at loggerheads over several regional disputes that could lead to military confrontation or even violence between them. Both countries have large concentrations of military forces operating in close proximity. If an incident occurred or a crisis overheated, both have an incentive to strike enemy forces before being struck by them. And if hostilities erupted, both have ample forces, technology, industrial might, and personnel to fight across vast expanses of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. Thus, Sino-U.S. war, perhaps a large and costly one, is not just thinkable; it needs more thought.

In the U.S. - as, evidently, in China - systematic analysis of war has been the province of war planners. This is not good enough, for war planners are concerned mainly with how to gain military advantage, not how to avoid economic and political damage. Yet the consequences of war could go far beyond military success and failure: The world economy could be rocked, and international order, such as it is, could be shattered. Because the scope and effects of a Sino-U.S. war could be much wider than the scope of military planning for such a war, it is crucial to think and plan much more expansively than we have in the past.

At the same time, improvements in Chinese military capabilities mean that a war would not necessarily go the way U.S. war planners plan it. Whereas a clear U.S. victory once seemed probable, it is increasingly likely that a conflict could involve inconclusive fighting with steep losses on both sides. The United States cannot expect to control a conflict it cannot dominate militarily. While planning to win a war with China remains necessary, it is no longer sufficient: The U.S. must also consider how to limit war and its costs.

This study seeks to begin filling the hole in thinking about Sino-U.S. war by examining alternative paths one might take, effects on both countries of each path, preparations the United States should make, and ways to balance U.S. war aims against costs should war occur. It considers not only military factors but also economic, domestic political, and international ones, across the time frame from 2015 to 2025.

Implications for the U.S. Army are highlighted. The authors emphasize that this analysis is indicative, not definitive, and that the findings are preliminary. It is hoped that this study will encourage others, for it is not meant to be the last word.

This research was sponsored by the Office of the Undersecretary of the Army and conducted within the RAND Arroyo Center’s Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program. RAND Arroyo Center, part of the RAND Corporation, is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Army.

The Project Unique Identification Code (PUIC) for the project that produced this document is HQD146848.

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Summary

As its military advantage declines, the United States will be less confident that a war with China will conform to its plans. China’s improved military capabilities, particularly for anti-access and area denial (A2AD), mean that the United States cannot count on gaining operational control, destroying China’s defenses, and achieving decisive victory if a war occurred. With that in mind, this report examines alternative paths that a war between the United States and China might take, losses and other effects on both sides, preparations that the United States should make, and ways to balance U.S. war aims against costs should war occur.

We postulate that a war would be regional and conventional. It would be waged mainly by ships on and beneath the sea, by aircraft and missiles of many sorts, and in space (against satellites) and cyberspace (against computer systems). We assume that fighting would start and remain in East Asia, where potential Sino - U.S. flash points and nearly all Chinese forces are located. Each side’s increasingly far-flung disposition of forces and growing ability to track and attack opposing forces could turn much of the Western Pacific into a “war zone,” with grave economic consequences. It is unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used: Even in an intensely violent conventional conflict, neither side would regard its losses as so serious, its prospects so dire, or the stakes so vital that it would run the risk of devastating nuclear retaliation by using nuclear weapons first. We also assume that China would not attack the U.S. homeland, except via cyberspace, given its minimal capability to do so with conventional weapons. In contrast, U.S. nonnuclear attacks against military targets in China could be extensive. The time frame studied is 2015 to 2025.

The need to think through war with China is made all the more important by developments in military capabilities. Sensors, weapon guidance, digital networking, and other information technologies used to target opposing forces have advanced to the point where both U.S. and Chinese military forces seriously threaten each other. This creates the means as well as the incentive to strike enemy forces before they strike one’s own. In turn, this creates a bias toward sharp, reciprocal strikes from the outset of a war, yet with neither side able to gain control and both having ample capacity to keep fighting, even as military losses and economic costs mount.

A Sino-U.S. conflict is unlikely to involve large land combat. Moreover, the unprecedented ability of U.S. and Chinese forces to target and destroy each other - conventional counterforce - could greatly deplete military capabilities in a matter of months. After that, the sides could replenish and improve their forces in an industrial technological-demographic mobilization contest, the outcome of which depends on too many factors to speculate, except to say that costs would continue to climb.

While the primary audience for this study is the U.S. policy community, we hope that Chinese policymakers will also think through possible courses and consequences of war with the U.S., including potential damage to China’s economic development and threats to China’s equilibrium and cohesion. We find little in the public domain to indicate that the Chinese political leadership has given this matter the attention it deserves.

Four Analytic Cases

The path of war might be defined mainly by two variables: intensity (from mild to severe) and duration (from a few days to a year or more). Thus, we analyze four cases: brief and severe, long and severe, brief and mild, and long and mild. The main determinant of intensity is whether, at the outset, U.S. and Chinese political leaders grant or deny their respective militaries permission to execute their plans to attack opposing forces unhesitatingly. The main determinant of duration, given that both powers have the material wherewithal to fight a long war, is whether and when at least one side loses the will to fight or calculates that continuing to do so would be counterproductive.

We categorize the effects of each case as military, economic, domestic political, and international. Military losses include aircraft, surface ships, submarines, missile launchers and inventories, and C4ISR (command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems, which are increasingly vulnerable to cyber and anti-satellite (ASAT) warfare. Economic costs include the contraction of trade, consumption, and revenue from investments abroad. (The disruption of energy supplies is captured in the effects of trade contraction.) Should cyberwarfare escalate from military to civilian domains and infect critical information infrastructure, economic activity could be further disrupted. Domestic political effects could range from impeding war policy to endangering internal stability. International responses could be supportive, opposed, or destabilizing.

The current rate of advances in military technology, especially in Chinese A2AD and in cyberwar and ASAT capabilities of both sides, implies a potential for major change in the decade to come, which dictates examining 2025 cases distinct from 2015 cases. Economic conditions will also change between now and 2025—with the Chinese economy potentially overtaking the U.S. economy, Chinese investments abroad growing, and both economies relying more than ever on computer networking—though not enough to alter qualitatively the economic impact of a war. Attempting to specify domestic political and international effects of war a decade from now would be even more speculative. Thus, 2025 is analyzed distinctly from 2015 only in the military dimension.

The four cases and indicative findings about losses, costs, and other effects are as follows:

• Brief, severe: If either U.S. or Chinese political leaders authorize their military commanders to carry out plans for sharp strikes on enemy forces, a severely violent war would erupt. As of 2015, U.S. losses of surface naval and air forces, including disabled aircraft carriers and regional air bases, could be significant, but Chinese losses, including to homeland-based A2AD systems, would be much greater. Within days, it would be apparent to both sides that the early gap in losses favoring the United States would widen if fighting continued. By 2025, though, U.S. losses would increase because of enhanced Chinese A2AD. This, in turn, could limit Chinese losses, though these would still be greater than U.S. ones. It could be unclear then whether continued fighting would result in victory for either side. Economically, even a brief, severe war would produce a shock to Chinese global trade, most of which would have to transit the Western Pacific war zone, whereas U.S. economic damage would largely be confined to bilateral trade with China. International and domestic political responses would have little impact.

• Long, severe: As of 2015, the longer a severe war dragged on, the worse the results and prospects would be for China. By 2025, however, inconclusive results in early fighting could motivate both sides to fight on despite heavy losses incurred and still expected. Although prospects for U.S. military victory then would be worse than they are today, this would not necessarily imply Chinese victory. As the fighting persisted, much of the Western Pacific, from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea, could become hazardous for commercial sea and air transport. Sharply reduced trade, including energy supplies, could harm China’s economy disproportionately and badly. The longer and harsher a conflict, the greater would be the likelihood of involving other states, especially U.S. allies in the region—most importantly, Japan.

• Brief, mild: Given the uncertain prospects of swift military victory, the risks of losing control, and the specter of major economic damage, both Chinese and U.S. leaders—for it would take both—might decline to authorize all-out strikes on the other side’s forces. What could follow is tightly restricted, low- grade, sporadic, inconclusive fighting, with minimal military losses. Assuming that leaders of both states were inclined and had enough political latitude to compromise, such a conflict could be ended before it produced major economic damage or domestic and international political tremors.

• Long, mild: With fighting contained and losses tolerable, the sides could try to escape the political costs of compromise by continuing a low-grade conflict. Because neither would gain the upper hand militarily, this could go on for some time. In the meantime, even with fighting limited, economic losses would grow, especially for China. With the passage of time, domestic and international political reactions would intensify, though less consequentially than in the long, severe case.

These cases indicate that the advanced conventional counterforce capabilities of both the U.S. and China could produce major military losses from the outset and throughout unrestrained (though nonnuclear) hostilities. Once either military is authorized to commence strikes, the ability of both to control the conflict would be greatly compromised. Each side could regard preemptive attack on the other’s forces as a way to gain a major early and sustainable edge in losses and thus in capabilities to prevail; this underscores the instability inherent in mutual, conventional counterforce capabilities and warfighting concepts.

By 2025, enhanced Chinese A2AD will have shrunk the gap between Chinese and U.S. military losses: Chinese losses would still be very heavy; U.S. losses, though less than China’s, could be much heavier than in a 2015 war. Even as U.S. military victory became less likely, Chinese victory would remain elusive. Because both sides would be able to continue to inflict severe losses, neither one would likely be willing to accept defeat. History offers no encouragement that destructive but stalemated fighting induces belligerents to agree to stop. A severe, lengthy, militarily inconclusive war would weaken and leave both powers vulnerable to other threats.

The Importance of Nonmilitary Factors

The prospect of a military standoff means that war could eventually be decided by nonmilitary factors. These should favor the U.S. now and in the future. Although war would harm both economies, damage to China’s could be catastrophic and lasting: on the order of a 25–35% reduction in Chinese gross domestic product (GDP) in a yearlong war, compared with a reduction in U.S. GDP on the order of 5–10%. Even a mild conflict, unless ended promptly, could weaken China’s economy. A long and severe war could ravage China’s economy, stall its hard-earned development, and cause widespread hardship and dislocation.

Such economic damage could in turn aggravate political turmoil and embolden separatists in China. Although the regime and its security forces presumably could withstand such challenges, doing so might necessitate increased oppressiveness, tax the capacity, and undermine the legitimacy of the Chinese regime in the midst of a very difficult war. In contrast, U.S. domestic partisan skirmishing could handicap the war effort but not endanger societal stability, much less the survival of the state, no matter how long and harsh the conflict, so long as it remains conventional. Escalating cyberwarfare, while injurious to both sides, could worsen China’s economic problems and impede the government’s ability to control a restive population.

International responses could, on balance, also favor the United States in a long and severe war: The support of U.S. East Asian allies could hurt China’s military chances; responses of Russia, India, and NATO would have less impact; and NATO could neutralize Russian opportunistic threats in Europe. Japan’s entry would be likely if the nation were party to the underlying dispute and almost certain if its territory (where U.S. bases are) were attacked. With Tokyo’s more permissive interpretation of constitutional limits on use of force and programmed improvements in Japanese military capabilities, Japan’s entry could make a difference by 2025 in the course and results of war. Heightened turmoil in the Middle East could be harmful to both Chinese and U.S. interests.

These findings reinforce the widely held view that a Sino-U.S. war would be so harmful that both states should place a very high priority on avoiding one. While expectations of huge costs make premeditated war improbable, they also demand strong crisis management and civilian control of the military by both governments. Given the extreme penalty for allowing one’s forces to be struck before they strike, creating mutual forbearance at the outset of hostilities could be as difficult as it is critical. It requires an ability to cooperate, in effect, even after fighting has begun. Thus, the need for instant and unfiltered leader-toleader communication is as great when hostilities begin as it is during crises that could lead to them.

Because the United States might be unable to control, win, or avoid major losses and costs from a severe conflict, it must guard against automaticity in executing, if not initiating, a sharp and prompt counterforce exchange. This demands fail-safe assurance of definitive presidential approval to carry out military plans, which in turn requires that military commanders provide the president with a range of feasible options.

Notwithstanding its improved A2AD capabilities, China has even more to lose from a severe conflict, yet it has less experience with civilian-military coordination during high-tech, high-speed warfare. China’s leaders would be ill-advised to think that trends in military modernization point to a brief and successful war. More likely is a severe, drawn-out, militarily inconclusive one, with economic, political, and international effects that might favor the United States. China has as much cause as the United States to prevent automatic execution of military plans for a prompt and sharp counterforce exchange, including an unambiguous requirement for political decisionmaking.

Recommended Actions for the U.S. Military

Chinese restraint in attacking U.S. forces when hostilities begin depends on Chinese expectations of U.S. action. The U.S. military should not rely on plans to destroy China’s A2AD capabilities in the first moments of a conflict. Such reliance could undermine crisis stability, predispose the Chinese toward preemptive strikes, and heighten the danger of automaticity and inevitability of fierce fighting from the outset. Furthermore, the U.S. military should not prejudge or limit the president’s options by having only a plan for immediate conventional counterforce attack, nor leave itself unprepared to carry out alternative plans. It would be far better for stability and at least as good for deterrence for the U.S. military to emphasize, in general, planning for a prolonged high-intensity war and to make this emphasis known to China. Signaling a specific predisposition to strike Chinese A2AD capabilities before they could be used against U.S. forces increases the risk that those capabilities would be used before they were themselves struck.

In parallel with measures to prevent crises from becoming violent and violence from becoming severe, the United States should try to reduce the impact of Chinese A2AD by investing in more-survivable weapons platforms and in its own A2AD capabilities: missiles, submarines, drones and drone-launching platforms, cyber, and ASAT. Such capabilities would deny the Chinese confidence of victory and would improve stability in crises, as well as in the critical initial stage of a conflict. But they would not restore U.S. military dominance and control or spare the United States major losses or economic costs in a severe conflict.

While keeping in mind the potentially huge costs of preparing comprehensively for a low-probability war with China, the United States should make certain prudent preparations:

• improve the ability to sustain and survive severely intense military operations

• enhance high-priority military capabilities of, and military interoperability with, allies and partners near China

• conduct contingency planning with Japan and other East Asian allies and partners

• consult with NATO regarding contingencies involving conflict with China, including possible Russian and Iranian reactions

• adopt measures to mitigate the interruption of critical products from China.

• formulate options to deny China access to war-critical imports (e.g., fuels).

The U.S. Army, in its Title X and joint responsibilities, can contribute by

• investing in counter-A2AD capabilities—for example, mobile land-based missiles and integrated air defense to worsen expected Chinese military, naval, and air losses

• strengthening, advising, and enabling East Asian partners to mount strong defense

• assessing high-demand weapons and stocks in the event of a long, severe war.

Because such U.S. measures could be interpreted as hostile by the Chinese, the United States, including the U.S. Army, should also expand and deepen Sino-U.S. military-to-military understanding and measures to reduce risks of misperception and miscalculation.

Conclusion

Although advances in targeting enable conventional counterforce warfare and reduce U.S. warfighting dominance, they do not point to Chinese dominance or victory. War between the two countries could begin with devastating strikes; be hard to control; last months, if not years; have no winner; and inflict huge losses on both sides’ military forces. The longer such a war would rage, the greater the importance of economic, domestic political, and international effects. While such nonmilitary effects would fall hardest on China, they could also greatly harm the U.S. economy and the United States’ ability to meet challenges worldwide. The United States should make sensible preparations to wage a long and fierce war with China. But it should also develop plans to limit the scope, intensity, and duration of a war; tighten up its system of civilian control; and expand communications with China in times of peace, crisis, and war.

Acknowledgments

The authors are most fortunate to have had the steady hand and thoughtful advice of RAND colleague Terrence Kelly in helping conceive, design, and conduct this study. They thank him and the rest of the Arroyo Center team for their strong support. The authors also want to recognize colleagues Howard Shatz and Duncan Long for providing invaluable ideas on method and substance. Toward the end of our work, Jerry Sollinger came in from the bullpen to make this report as readable as we hope it is. Good reports typically mean that they have gone through painstaking quality review. We thank Larry Cavaiola, Keith Crane, and Tim Heath for pressing us hard but constructively to improve our work. Finally, our editor, Rebecca Fowler, deserves the authors’ gratitude for getting our prose up to the standards RAND readers expect. Despite all this help, any mistakes are exclusively the authors’ responsibility.

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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The ambitious should consider above all that [with] an equality of force between belligerent parties, all that princes can expect from the greatest advantages at present is to acquire . . . some territory which will not pay the interest on the expenses of war, and whose population does not even approach the number of citizens who perished in the campaign. 1 — Frederick the Great.

Purpose

For all the studies and opinion pieces about how a war with China might start and should be fought, one finds little serious analysis, at least in the public domain, of what such a war might be like and what its consequences could be. This is a gaping omission, for China is at loggerheads with the United States over several regional disputes that could lead to military confrontation or even violence, and both superpowers have ample forces, industrial might, and people to fight long and hard across a vast expanse of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. This study seeks to start filling this gap by examining the alternative paths that a war between the United States and China might take, effects of each path on both sides, preparations the United States should make, and ways to balance U.S. war aims against costs should war occur. 2 The study considers not only military factors but also economic, domestic political, and international ones, across a time frame from 2015 to 2025. Implications for the U.S. Army are highlighted. While our primary audience consists of American policymakers and planners, we hope that their Chinese counterparts will also think through possible paths and consequences of war, for it could destroy much of what modern China has accomplished. There is no indication that the Chinese have given the potential impact of a war the rigorous attention it warrants.

Rationale

The need to think through war with China is made all the more pressing by developments in military technology and associated doctrine: Sensors, global positioning, weapon guidance, digital networking, and other capabilities used to target opposing forces have advanced to the point where both U.S. and Chinese military forces pose serious threats to each other. This creates the ability and a reason to strike enemy forces before they strike one’s own, which is bound to influence both nations’ war planning.3 Military technology and planning are thus creating a bias toward sharp exchange of strikes from the start, with both sides intent on gaining the upper hand or at least denying it to the other. To quote Chinese strategists: “[I]t has become possible to achieve operational objectives before an enemy can make a response. . . If the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] fights with a high-tech and powerful enemy, we must achieve operational suddenness.” 4 The combination of such confidence and urgency might be misplaced and dangerous—and not just for China.

A hazard inherent in all war planning is that it sets and limits expectations of what will actually occur. Only a militarily dominant belligerent can afford to be so cavalier, and when it comes to China, the United States is no longer dominant, nor can it afford to be cavalier. As its military advantages vis-à-vis China decline, the United States can be less confident that war would conform to its plans. Improved Chinese forces, particularly for anti-access and area denial (A2AD), means that the United States cannot be sanguine about gaining operational control, destroying China’s defenses, and achieving decisive victory if a war occurred.

Because Sino-U.S. war could be extremely costly even for the victor, it is not likely to result from premeditated attack by either side. Yet Sino-U.S. crises could occur and involve incidents or miscalculations that lead to hostilities. China could try to intimidate its neighbors below the threshold of U.S. intervention, yet misjudge where that threshold is. China could underestimate U.S. willingness to back Japan militarily in a crisis over disputed territory in the East China Sea. Moreover, the contradiction between China’s claim of sovereignty over its 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and U.S. insistence that such zones are international waters beyond 12 nautical miles could bring forces into close and hazardous proximity if either side opts to enforce its stance.

1 Frederick the Great quoted by Geoffrey Parker, “The Military Revolution,” in Lawrence Freedman, ed., War, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994, p. 247.

2 Perhaps the two most definitive U.S. official annual documents are the U.S. Department of Defense annual report to Congress, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, and the annual report of the joint Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Neither contains analysis of the range of possibilities and consequences of war with China. See Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2014, Washington, D.C., April 24, 2014; and Congressional-Executive Commission on China, 2014 Annual Report, Washington, D.C., October 9, 2014.

3 Chinese warfighting doctrine is laid out in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) Science of Military Strategy and Science of Campaigns. (See Peng Guangqian and Yao Youzhi, eds., Science of Military Strategy [Zhanlue Xue], Beijing: Military Science Press, 2005; and Zhang Yuliang, ed., Science of Campaigns [Zhanyi Xue], Beijing: National Defense University Press, 2006.) The implication of U.S. reliance on attacking China’s A2AD is found in various public explanations of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force Air-Sea Battle concept, which has been subsumed under the Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver (see, for example, U.S. Naval Institute, “Document: Air Sea Battle Name Change Memo,” January 20, 2015)

4 Zhang, 2006, p. 96. See also Jianxiang Bi, “Joint Operations: Developing a New Paradigm,” in James Mulvenon and David M. Finkelstein, eds., China’s Revolution in Doctrinal Affairs: Emerging Trends in the Operational Art of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Washington, D.C.: CNA Corporation, December 2005, especially pp. 47–49.

A case in point of how conflicting Chinese and U.S. views could lead to war is found in the South China Sea. In support of China’s objective of making virtually the entire South China Sea sovereign territorial waters, China has been building artificial islands, airstrips, and other militarily useful infrastructure—and claiming 200-mile EEZs around them. The United States will not accept this because it runs afoul of several U.S. interests: the principle of peaceful settlement of disputes, the principle of freedom of the seas, the fact that some 40 percent of world trade passes through the South China Sea, and the expectations of the Philippines and other U.S. friends that the United States will not condone Chinese unilateral action. Consequently, the Americans have steamed naval surface combatants through the very waters China is claiming and on which it is building. There seems little doubt that the Chinese will operate forces in these contested waters, in which case Chinese and U.S. forces will be present and actively shadowing or constricting the other side’s forces. If, or as, a crisis occurs, the risk of a spark causing inadvertent conflict would be heightened, perhaps greatly. Moreover, political leaders on both sides may become less flexible, not more, with so much at stake, and military commanders could urge in favor of escalation either to deter or to prepare for conflict. While current odds strongly favor the United States militarily in the South China Sea, making Beijing more likely than Washington to back down, the improvement and extension of Chinese A2AD in that direction could make a crisis harder to defuse. As horrific as a Sino-U.S. war could be, it cannot be considered implausible.

As we will see, the cause of war and the importance each side attaches to it could affect how fiercely and long it will fight, though hostilities can create dynamics and fury that eclipse rational calculation. If both sides have substantial war-making capacity and neither one can gain operational dominance and control, there is a danger of prolonged ferocious fighting at great cost, even though both might plan and expect it to end quickly. Such conditions recall those of Europe in 1914, when a crisis triggered near-automatic execution of military plans to attack before being attacked, when the economies of the two sides were interlocked, and when both foresaw a short war. As fighting raged, casualties soared, and territory was lost and won, the belligerents found themselves fighting over far more than an incident involving Serbian nationalists seeking to end Austria-Hungary’s control of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Now, as then, the result could be huge military losses (then in foot soldiers, now in weapon platforms) and lasting economic damage on both sides.

In sum, the risk that some Sino-U.S. confrontation will lead to hostilities, the declining ability of the United States to gain militaryoperational control, the conventional counterforce capabilities (the capabilities of U.S. and Chinese forces to target and destroy each other) of both militaries, the vulnerability of both economies, and the potential for prolonged fighting with devastating results demand fresh but sober thinking about Sino-U.S. war. Because war with China, seen in this light, is not implausible and could be very dangerous and very demanding, the United States must be prepared for it. Already, military requirements for a Sino-U.S. war figure prominently in U.S. force planning and operating concepts (as they do in China’s). But larger national requirements, depending on the war’s intensity and duration, have not received equivalent attention. Both the United States and China need to be aware of what the costs of war might be. If advances in conventional counterforce capabilities are making war harder to control, leaders need political instruments to keep combat from destroying more than it can gain.

Factors Considered

As U.S. military dominance wanes, U.S. strategists must consider (as this study does) a range of contingencies and corresponding requirements. Recent research on strategic decisionmaking finds that unjustified faith in the ability to plan, control, and limit the duration of fighting is a common mistake in starting wars that end badly. After analyzing numerous historical cases, a RAND study concluded that “confidence that an adversary will comply with one’s script and... that the results of a decision can be controlled is tantamount to assuming away risk. When this leads to failure to prepare for bad results, the consequences can be that much worse.”5

Essential though it is for U.S. armed forces to have plans to fight and win, excessive confidence in such plans could have detrimental effects on U.S. peacetime policy, crisis management, and wartime operations. At worst, inattention to the range of possible paths and consequences of war with China could lead the United States into one for which it is unprepared. Likewise, the Chinese would be profoundly wrong to think that improving their military capabilities would make a war with the U.S. controllable, winnable, and affordable. 6 As we will see, it could be that neither country is able to control, win, or afford a future war.

Paradoxically, as both sides hone their military strategies with the aim of controlling a war, they reduce the possibility of control. Military officers of both countries have spoken and written about how to achieve operational advantage, or at least avoid disadvantage, by striking the other side’s forces at the outset of a conflict. 7 Given the “firstmover” advantage and the corresponding danger that perception of a climbing probability of hostilities would increase the pressure on each side’s trigger finger, the goal of avoiding a war must compete with that of winning one. Likewise, as we will see, the goal of winning a war must be weighed against the goal of containing its costs. Given the potential military, economic, and political costs of a long conflict, each side wants to succeed quickly. Accordingly, the Chinese stress the need to strike intervening U.S. forces early and then to limit the duration and scope of fighting that ensues, especially by preventing attacks on China itself. In turn, U.S. warfighting concepts rest on the logic that gaining operational control, limiting losses, and achieving victory might depend on disabling Chinese A2AD capabilities before they can be used to full effect to disable U.S. forces.

5 David C. Gompert, Hans Binnendijk, and Bonny Lin, Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, RR-768-RC, 2014.

6 The Chinese appear to be aware of how costly war with the United States could be (see David Finkelstein, “Chinese Perceptions of the Costs of a Conflict,” in Andrew Scobell, ed., The Costs of Conflict: The Impact on China of a Future War, Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, 2001, pp. 9–28).

7 See David C. Gompert and Terrence K. Kelly, “Escalation Cause: How the Pentagon’s New Strategy Could Trigger War with China,” Foreign Policy, August 3, 2013, among others articles on Air-Sea Battle.

The strong preference of both states to avoid a long war is only natural, given expected military losses and other costs. Yet the very military strategies that call for each to strike the other’s forces hard and early, perhaps preemptively, could work against a war-ending compromise and lead to the prolongation and expansion of war. Consider the major wars of the 20th century, in which the side that attacked first—Germany twice and Japan once—summoned the other side’s will to fight, persevere, and ultimately prevail.8 Indeed, it is wise to heed the simple verity that striking first does not ensure victory. Moreover, the path of a Sino-U.S. war might be determined not just by military operations but also by economic, political, and international effects and pressures. We will see that the longer war lasts, the more important nonmilitary factors might become.

The assumption that a Sino-U.S. war would be over quickly is not supported by evidence that either side would rapidly exhaust its warmaking capacity. China and the U.S. have considerable military, economic, industrial, and demographic depth. If China is vulnerable to critical shortages in a war with the United States, it could be in losses of frontline military systems—its backup forces being largely obsolescent—or in oil supplies, of which it imports about 60 percent and has a declared strategic reserve of just ten days or so.9

As important as physical wherewithal is the political stamina of the two states. At first, the Chinese government could largely ignore domestic opposition, whereas the U.S. government could not. Yet the legitimacy of the Chinese state rests on its ability to provide for the material needs and improve the living standards of the population, which would be at risk by a costly war. Just as political will could deter mine a war’s duration, the war’s dynamics—military success or failure, casualties, costs, and expectations of what further fighting might bring—could determine will. All else being equal, the more even the military capabilities, the less likely that one side’s will would crack before the other’s.

Finally, willingness to suffer losses and support prolonged fighting could be affected by the perceived stakes of the conflict. Thus, the path to war could affect the path of war, including its severity and duration. Consider several situations that could turn violent:

• Sino-Japanese skirmishing over disputed territory in the East China Sea, where the United States has said its defense treaty with Japan applies

• Chinese harassment to press its territorial claims in (and to) the S. China Sea—against the Philippines or Vietnam, for example—in the face of U.S. insistence on peaceful dispute resolution and freedom of the seas

• uncoordinated military interventions by Chinese, South Korean, or U.S. forces in the event of a collapse of North Korea

• Chinese threat or use of force to intimidate or seize Taiwan

• an incident at sea, such as the downing of an aircraft, owing to forces operating in close proximity, perhaps in EEZ waters claimed as sovereign by China but as commons by the United States.

To illustrate, the United States might be willing to fight resolutely to prevent China from gaining control of the South China Sea, whereas China might seek a peaceful solution in the face of such American resolve. In contrast, the Chinese might be more determined to prevent Taiwan’s independence from China than the United States is to prevent Taiwan’s forcible unification with China. The analysis that follows does not deal with the merits of Sino-American quarrels or the probability that they will lead to war, but it does recognize that asymmetric interests can result in asymmetric resolve in the face of losses.

These factors suggest a need to examine with rigor how a Sino-U.S. war might be fought, how long it might last, and how its mounting costs and shifting outlook could affect the ability and will of each side to keep fighting. One hundred years ago, European leaders and strategists, having formed alliances and adopted mobilization plans that would lead readily, if not automatically, from confrontation to war, erred further by assuming that war would be brief, either because their side would win quickly or because both sides would want to end the war before their armies and interlocking economies were devastated. Yet for four years neither side would compromise to end the stalemated carnage. A Sino-U.S. war would hold similar dangers: an incentive to strike first and a belief that fighting would end quickly and limit costs. Such thinking could turn a crisis into a conflict and leave the United States unprepared if war occurred and turned out to be lengthy.

8 Germany’s initial offensives on both fronts in both world wars and Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor appeared successful, but ultimately both countries were defeated.

9 “China Makes First Announcement on Strategic Oil Reserves,” Reuters, November 20, 2014.

How This Report Is Organized

This study is preliminary and conceptual; its cases are imagined, and its estimates only illustrative. With these qualifications in mind, the chapters to come pursue the following line of inquiry:

• What are the parameters of a Sino-U.S. war?

• How do Chinese and U.S. planners think about how such a war should or would proceed?

• What variables would describe a Sino-U.S. war?

• What different paths do these variables suggest?

• What military consequences and demands are implied by each path?

• What could be the impact on the U.S. and Chinese economies, on Sino-U.S. economic relations, on East Asian economies, and on the world economy?

• What internal political pressures and constraints could arise during a war?

• What international reactions might be expected?

• What are the implications for U.S. policy, requirements, and preparations, including expectations of the U.S. Army?

The report also has two appendixes, which provide additional information about possible military losses and economic effects.

CHAPTER TWO

Analytic Framework

We postulate that a war between the United States and China would be regional, conventional, and high-tech, and it would be waged mainly on and beneath the sea, in the air (with aircraft, drones, and missiles), in space, and in cyberspace. Although ground combat could occur in certain scenarios (e.g., a conflict over Korean unification), we exclude the possibility of a huge land war in Asia. We assume that fighting would start and remain in East Asia, where potential flash points and nearly all Chinese forces are located. Each side’s increasingly far-flung regional disposition of forces and growing ability to track and attack opposing forces could turn much of the Western Pacific into a “war zone,” with grave economic consequences. It is unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used: Even in an intensely violent conventional conflict, neither side would regard its losses as so serious, its prospects so dire, or the stakes so vital that it would run the risk of nuclear retaliation by using nuclear weapons first. We also assume that China would not attack the U.S. homeland, except via cyberspace, given China’s minimal capability to do so with conventional weapons. In contrast, U.S. nonnuclear attacks against military targets in China could be extensive.

Two variables would largely define the path a war might take: intensity (from mild to severe) and duration (from a few days to a year or more); thus, we present four cases. The main determinant of intensity is whether, at the outset, U.S. and Chinese political leaders grant or deny their respective militaries permission to execute their plans to attack opposing forces unhesitatingly, which would precipitate severely intense combat. The main determinant of length, given that both powers have the potential to fight a long war, is whether and when either one loses the will to fight or concludes that continuing to do so would be counterproductive.

We categorize the effects of each case as military, economic, domestic political, and international. Military losses—that is, decline in military capabilities—would mainly consist of destroyed or disabled weapon platforms and systems and C4ISR (command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance). No attempt is made to analyze potential casualties, though very crude estimates could be derived from platform losses.1 Economic costs are defined here as reductions in gross domestic product (GDP) from loss of trade, consumption, and income from investments abroad. The disruption of energy supplies is captured in effects of trade contraction. Costs of assets seized, forces destroyed, and infrastructure damaged, though potentially sizable, are excluded because they would not immediately affect GDP. Domestic political responses could involve support, impatience, opposition, instability, or impairment of the war effort. International responses could favor one side or the other, perhaps to the point of intervention, and could pressure one or both sides to cease fighting.

Our time frame is 2015–2025. The current rate of advances in military technology, especially in Chinese A2AD and in cyberwar and anti-satellite (ASAT) capabilities of both sides, implies a potential for major change in the decade to come, which dictates examining cases in 2025 distinct from cases in 2015. Economic conditions will also change between now and 2025—with China’s economy possibly overtaking the U.S. economy in size, Chinese investments abroad growing, and both economies relying more than ever on computer networking—though not enough to alter qualitatively the economic impact of a war. Attempting to specify domestic political and international effects of war a decade from now would be even more speculative. Thus, 2025 is analyzed distinctly from 2015 only in the military dimension.

1 Broadly stated, on the assumptions of no large land combat, extensive strategic bombing, or use of nuclear weapons, loss of life would be comparatively low and not a good index of the scale of fighting or costs.

U.S. and Chinese Thinking About War

U.S. and Chinese thinking about war suggests that both sides expect a conflict to be sharp, with China planning (and hoping) for a short one, and the United States more confident of victory if fighting persists. As far as the public record shows, neither side has analyzed systematically the effects of a long war or seized on the idea (discussed later) of deliberately and mutually restricting the violence.

Chinese military thought has evolved since the early Maoist notions of “people’s war” and a “war of annihilation” between diametrically opposed ideological systems. Emerging concepts reflect China’s growing ability and inclination to threaten or use force for limited purposes nearby (e.g., blocking Taiwan’s independence or enforcing maritime claims) without finding itself at war with the United States. Yet war with the United States cannot be excluded and could involve strikes on China, staggering losses and costs, and eventual defeat. So China has had to prepare, if it is unable to deter U.S. intervention, to avert defeat. 2

This situation has stoked Chinese interest in A2AD—in essence, conventional counterforce—enabled especially by increasing Chinese prowess in targeting technologies.3 A2AD raises the costs and thus the threshold of U.S. intervention in a conflict involving China. By reducing the U.S. threat to China, A2AD might build a shield behind which China might feel freer to use force. In addition, U.S. military advantages have steered Chinese thinking about warfighting toward taking the initiative, making sudden gains, degrading U.S. strike forces, and then limiting the ensuing conflict’s geographic scope, weapons, targets, and duration. While the Chinese regard U.S. aircraft carriers and regional air bases as prime targets, they also see C4ISR as an American Achilles’ heel, and so have expanded their arsenal and planning to include cyberwar and ASAT.

2 See, for example, Finkelstein, 2001, pp. 9–28.

3 Chinese A2AD might also be motivated geopolitically by the desire to increase the vulnerability and thus reduce the presence of U.S. military strength in the Western Pacific.

However, China’s risk in attempting to achieve a fait accompli is that the United States would strike back (or strike first), expand and extend the conflict, bring its warfighting superiority to bear, visit destruction on China itself, sever Chinese sea links, and impose a harsh peace. The Chinese ought also to worry, if they do not already, that a long war could cause internal instability and encourage separatism. In sum, the Chinese have scripted early strikes on U.S. forces and a quick cessation of hostilities, with little room for error.

In parallel with such Chinese thinking about how to fight, contain, and conclude a war with the United States, Chinese military strategists have taken interest in the idea of “war control.”4 This concept seeks to resolve the problem of how to avoid crushing defeat without giving up the option of using force when it is in China’s interest to do so. Chinese thinking on war control goes like this: Overriding goals of national stability and development apply no less in war than in peace, dictating that China be able to control and limit war should it occur. Military initiative should be used to frame the scale, scope, and course of war, as well as to induce the enemy to end it on China’s terms. It is essential not only to prevent expansion, escalation, and prolongation but also to guide combat toward an advantageous resolution at the lowest price to China. Therefore, forces and operations need to be controlled by political leaders who are mindful of China’s transcendent goals. Throughout hostilities, China needs to assess progress and seize chances to end the war with a stable outcome that protects Chinese sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, institutional security, and economic lifelines.5

4 See Lonnie Henley, “War Control: Chinese Concepts of Escalation Management,” in Andrew Scobell and Larry M. Wortzel, eds., Shaping China’s Security Environment: The Role of the People’s Liberation Army, Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2006.

5 Liu Shenyang, “On War of Control—Mainly from the Military Thinking Perspective,” China Military Science, April 2014. Liu is the deputy commander of the Jinan Military District and a lieutenant general of the PLA.

This is a tall order indeed, especially in a conflict with a stronger power. The Chinese are aware of this challenge, and they frequently discuss their prior success in defeating superior military powers despite inferior capabilities.6 While Chinese emphasis on war control is not new, the Chinese might have growing confidence in its feasibility, owing to enhancement of Chinese A2AD and evidence that the United States is not invincible and is not guaranteed to retain control of a conflict: “No matter how strong a country may be, how mighty its military strength is, it is impossible [for it] to take total control of the entire situation. The United States launched wars in Afghanistan and Iraq [and] is still trapped.”7

Increasing belief in China’s ability to manage crises and war proactively, rather than reacting or having to launch an all-or-nothing opening salvo, could embolden Chinese behavior in peace and crises. It could also affect the path that a Sino-U.S. war could take. While consistent with the concept of early attacks on U.S. strike forces, war control contemplates “conflict in its entirety,” including postwar China, Asia, and the world. It suggests the Chinese are mindful of the need to balance war aims against costs should war occur. More specifically, postulating that controlling the scale, scope, and duration of hostilities could be critical implies Chinese awareness of possibilities other than fierce conventional counterforce exchanges. One such possibility is that Chinese civilian leaders would try to keep hostilities limited, hoping that U.S. war-weariness delivers a settlement favoring China. In any case, President Xi Jinping’s efforts to strengthen political control over the PLA speak to a critical prerequisite of war control.

6 See Zhang, 2006.

7 Liu, 2014.

U.S. thinking about war is also in flux. For some time, the United States was confident that its vastly superior strike power could destroy Chinese forces straightaway. Of course, even with Chinese naval and air forces shattered, the United States knows it would struggle mightily and pay dearly if it engaged in land war on Chinese soil (an idea then–U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously suggested would warrant psychiatric treatment for U.S. leaders 8). As China’s A2AD capabilities improve, the United States has begun to consider striking them before losing its strike forces.9 While there is operational logic to this, the fact that Chinese A2AD systems are mainly homeland-based raises risks of escalation, as well as risks of crisis instability insofar as it could prompt the Chinese to strike preemptively.

In addition to reflecting Chinese and U.S. doctrine, the intensity and duration of a war could depend on the command and control (C2) precepts and practices of the two sides. U.S. C2 increasingly stresses flexibility, subordinate initiative, responsiveness to circumstances, horizontal (“joint”) collaboration, and delegation of authority, albeit under political guidance.10 Notwithstanding the general trend toward increasingly decentralized military C2, U.S. political leaders could be expected to take intense interest in the finest details of Sino-U.S. hostilities, whether or not they would take control of operations.

In contrast to emerging U.S. C2 philosophy, Chinese C2 traditionally emphasizes hierarchy, deference to leaders, reliance on central direction, top-heavy organization, reluctance to delegate authority, and adherence to script.11 Despite Chinese awareness of the need to loosen up C2 for the sake of agility in the face of uncertainties of war, war control reiterates the need for top-down direction.12

8 Thom Shanker, “Warning Against Wars Like Iraq and Afghanistan,” The New York Times, Feb 25, 2011.

9 Norton A. Schwartz and Jonathan W. Greenert, “Air-Sea Battle: Promoting Stability in an Era of Uncertainty,” The American Interest, February 20, 2012.

10 See, for example, the seminal work of David Alberts and Richard E. Hayes, Power to the Edge: Command and Control in the Information Age, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense Command and Control Research Program, 2003. There has also been a reactionary approach to U.S. C2, whereby improved information and communications has given top command the means to exert more, not less, control over operations—the so-called 3,000-mile-long screwdriver micromanagement tendency.

11 Dennis J. Blasko, “The PLA Army/Ground Forces,” in Kevin Pollpeter and Kenneth Allen, eds., The PLA as Organization v2.0, Vienna, Va.: Defense Group Inc., 2015, p. 260.

12 To date, although there has been a significant change to the PLA force structure, there is little evidence to suggest that the command and logistics structures have adapted to address the more likely combat and nontraditional security contingencies that might occur beyond China’s borders and near seas. PLA doctrine foresees many forms of joint campaigns executed beyond the Chinese mainland that will put naval, air force, or missile units in the lead role. Currently, the existing peacetime chain of command would have to shift to an ad hoc wartime war zone command structure to accommodate the operational changes necessary to accomplish these long-distance joint missions. More-efficient command structures have been discussed in the Chinese military media (mostly talk about flattening the command system), but major changes to the command structure (beyond the reduction of the number of military regions in the 1980s) that was created decades ago in a much different threat environment have yet to be implemented.

In tension with the case for tight central control on both sides, military plans and capabilities slant toward a prompt, sharp counterforce exchange, as noted. Both sides are averse to a long war: the Chinese because their prospects decline if and as the United States brings more and more strike-power to bear; the Americans because of their grudging but growing respect for Chinese A2AD capabilities; and both because of the potential military losses and economic costs of prolonged fighting. Yet history shows that war planners tend to claim, and leaders tend to accept, that war will end much sooner than it actually does. 13 As we will see, the more level the battlefield, the longer a Sino-U.S. war could last.

Despite military pressures for a high-intensity conflict, policymakers’ doubts about the outcome and fears about the costs could predispose them to try to restrict hostilities. While political control of military operations is more in the Chinese hierarchical C2 style than the American distributed style, leaders of both states could resist appeals to “use or lose” potent but vulnerable forces. While restricted hostilities could be ended readily by leaders determined to minimize losses and avoid escalation, it is also possible that such hostilities could drag on if losses were tolerable and concessions hard.

13 Underestimating the duration of conflict was a significant factor in most major strategic blunders of modern times, including Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Germany’s decision during World War I to attack neutral shipping, Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, China’s invasion of Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. See Gompert, Binnendijk, and Lin, 2014.

The less vital the conflict’s cause and outcome are to the belligerents, the more inclined and able leaders might be to avoid fierce counterforce exchanges. But war can roil politics, twist psyches, alter stakes, and produce new calculations. Just as the path of war between China and the U.S. is hard to plan, it is also hard to forecast. For this reason, this study eschews prediction and detailed scenarios in favor of analyzing variables, alternative generic cases suggested by those variables, and consequences of those cases.

Variables of War

Again, a Sino-U.S. conflict can be defined largely by its intensity and duration. While the intensity of fighting could fall anywhere along a continuum, from mild to severe, it suffices for our purposes to analyze the two poles.

Mild connotes tightly restricted operations, in forces committed, weapons used, targets struck, geography, and tempo. Mild conflict might take the form of sporadic fighting, occasional losses, and posturing of forces for advantage, probing, or signaling. Because both Chinese and American forces are capable of fierce warfare, if it is mild, it might be because Chinese and American leaders alike choose it to be. In this case, they are intent on minimizing destruction and avoiding escalation, sparing much of the enemy’s targetable forces, even if it means forfeiting a military advantage. Since it would be highly improbable and unstable for one side but not the other to resist counterforce pressure, willingness to do so is presumably communicated, by words or actions, between civilian or military leaders.14 In effect, a mild conflict implies that the sides together try to control a war that neither one, left to itself, can control.

14 We do not consider a case in which one side is committed to a mild conflict while the other seeks an intense one. Since both China and the United States are capable of intense fighting, the side that is biased toward restraint must seek to either end the conflict or intensify its attacks.

Severe intensity connotes fierce, open-ended operations (short of nuclear war) by each side to gain a decisive advantage by destroying the other side’s forces. As already explained, the prospect of such fighting is implied by the fact that both sides have the ability and motivation to conduct conventional counterforce warfare.15 Severe conflict means that the goal of winning trumps that of limiting the costs of a war. It also implies that each side hopes to weaken the other’s will to wage war, which might be less of a consideration if fighting is moderated. All sorts of conventional weapons might be used against whatever military capabilities their sensors can locate and target: moving forces, staging forces, operating bases, logistics flows and infrastructure, air and naval bases, computer networks, satellites, sensors, and military C4ISR. In the future, cyberwarfare against military, dual-purpose, and civilian systems could figure importantly in a severely intense war.

Whether with kinetic or nonkinetic (namely, cyber) weapons, the highest targeting priority for China would be U.S. strike platforms, bases, and force concentrations in the region. For the United States, it would be Chinese A2AD capabilities, mainly located in China. A critical distinction between mild and intense conflict is that the United States would strike targets on Chinese soil in the latter but not the former. Given the improbability that China would sue for peace when attacked on its territory, strikes on the mainland could prolong a severe war.

For analytic purposes, duration could be brief or long, the former meaning days or weeks and the latter a year or so. Longer wars are also possible but not considered here. Several factors could prolong a Sino- U.S. war: the absence of a clear winner, the determination of both sides to persist in light of the stakes, the results of fighting to that point, the expected results of continued fighting, and the inability to settle on terms of a truce. High military losses and economic costs, as expected in a severe conflict, could either strengthen or weaken resolve, depending on psychological and political factors that are hard to predict. Both sides might opt to pace and restrict operations as a way of conserving their ability to fight, but, again, the urge to use targetable forces against targetable forces could be strong.

15 As in strategic nuclear theory, counterforce implies an all-out attempt to destroy the other side’s forces, which otherwise are sure to be used.

While intensity depends on the use and loss of engaged U.S. strike and Chinese A2AD capabilities, the significance of total military potential, including reinforcements and mobilization capacity, could increase the longer the war’s duration. Likewise, economic resilience, political support, and international assistance could affect the ability of one or both sides to continue fighting. Both the United States and China have considerable, if asymmetric, capacity to prolong a conflict that neither one is militarily compelled or politically ready to end.

A critical question is whether one side or the other can achieve such a clear advantage in the early stages of an intense conflict that the other has little choice but to concede. The U.S. ability to achieve such an advantage is declining as China improves its A2AD capabilities. At the same time, China’s increasing ability to prevent a decisive, early U.S. advantage does not necessarily translate into its ability to conclude a war quickly on its terms.

Because a mild conflict would place smaller demands on total war-making capacity than a severe one would, it could have a greater potential than the latter to drag on—even becoming a “frozen conflict.” Conversely, and obviously, a long, severe conflict would involve greater costs on both sides than other cases in military, economic, and political terms. That a long, severe conflict would be the most costly does not mean it is the least likely. The disposition at any moment to keep fighting depends not only on results, losses, and costs to that point but also on expectations of what is to come. As long as neither side expects to lose, hostilities might continue.

The United States presently has more military capacity than China to wage a long, severe war. For one thing, the United States has substantial forces located in or designated for other regions that it could bring to bear on a conflict in the Western Pacific, though security conditions in those regions might make it reluctant to do so. 16 (Over the years, the Pentagon has crept away from its traditional standard of having sufficient total forces to win two major wars simultaneously). Furthermore, U.S. forces today could degrade Chinese A2AD capabilities faster than Chinese A2AD capabilities could degrade U.S. forces. While both might suffer significant losses in early severe hostilities, U.S. prospects currently look better than China’s.

16 Although the United States has global responsibilities and interests that could be jeopardized by diverting capabilities to the Asia-Pacific, we assume that the United States would nevertheless commit such capabilities to the theater in the event of a long, severe war with China. Even if another contingency involving U.S. interests developed simultaneously in another region, U.S. forces already in the region could still degrade Chinese A2AD capabilities faster than Chinese A2AD capabilities could degrade U.S. forces.

Future conditions could differ, owing to the potential for greater losses of U.S. forces from Chinese A2AD and, in turn, reduced Chinese losses from those U.S. forces. Moreover, as U.S. military-operational advantages wane, China’s position as the “home team” could become less of a liability and more of an asset, owing to internal lines of communication and movement. A corollary of these shifting military odds is that the expected duration of war, however intense, could increase as Chinese capabilities improve, for the simple reason that China will retain more warfighting capability and face less pressure to yield. More generally stated, the less lopsided a war is likely to be, the less likely it is to end quickly in victory by the stronger side. Since Chinese and U.S. capabilities, operating concepts, incentives, and expectations all point to severe hostilities, this could mean that a war could last longer and be costlier than has been assumed or, paradoxically, than either side would want.

The hypothesis of a long, severe, and costly war is depicted in Figure 2.1 as notional graphs of expected cumulative declines, or attrition, in military capability over time in 2015 and 2025, a period during which Chinese A2AD capability is expected to improve relative to U.S. strike capability. The dotted lines in Figure 2.1 represent a hypothetical moment (T1), within days of the start (T0), when the sides take stock and decide whether to continue fighting. For our purposes, the figure separates a short conflict from a long one. T2 is posited as one year; although fighting could continue beyond that, the pattern of losses would remain more or less the same. The first graph (2015) shows that China and the United States both suffer significant but unequal losses in the brief early stage and can expect increasingly divergent losses as war goes on, favoring the United States. The second (2025) shows the effects of improved Chinese A2AD in years to come: China suffers reduced, though still sizable, short-term losses; the United States suffers increased short-term losses; and the gap in expected long-term losses closes.

Figure 2.1

Notional Cumulative Decline in Military Capabilities in a Severe Conflict over Time, 2015 and 2025

NOTES: T0 = the start of the conflict; T1 = a hypothetical moment, within days of T0,

when the sides decide whether to continue fighting; T2 = one year.

RAND RR1140-2.1

The intensity and duration of war are largely decided at T0 and T1, respectively. The moment hostilities begin, Chinese and U.S. leaders choose whether or not to authorize execution of military plans, which are mainly to attack the forces of the other before those forces can attack. The alternative is to decide, mutually, that fighting must be tightly controlled and sharply restricted—in other words, mild.

Thus, the T0 decision might determine the war’s intensity, which in these graphs is assumed to be severe from T0 to T2. At T1, after several days of severe force-on-force violence, the leaders take stock of losses, remaining capabilities, and expected further losses and decide whether to keep fighting—in effect, they choose between a short and a long war. Again, a decision by only one side to end fighting amounts to capitulation. Note that China’s enhanced A2AD in 2025 will reduce the gap between its losses and U.S. losses at T1. Because it could be less clear which side is losing at T1, a severe war might be more likely to be prolonged in 2025 than in 2015, despite mounting costs.

These considerations highlight the fallacy of assuming that particularly violent hostilities would not last long (as European leaders did in 1914!). Again, the Chinese have favored and planned for a brief, intense war because they think it is the only way not to lose. However, this perspective ignores that the United States is looking at a mirror image: After brief and intense fighting, U.S. prospective losses will be less than those of China. Yet if the United States has until now thought that an intense war would be short because Chinese losses would exceed U.S. losses by a growing margin as fighting persists, it should think again.

Going forward, both China and the U.S. need to contemplate the possibility of a severe, lengthy, uncontrollable, and devastating, yet indecisive, conflict. If war somehow broke out and both sides faced such prospects, they would not necessarily be motivated to stop fighting by agreement. History offers little encouragement that opponents locked in a bloody but inconclusive war will agree to foreshorten it, rational as that might be.17 Therefore, the potential automaticity and instability inherent in conventional counterforce places an onus on political leaders to review, question, approve, and reexamine warfighting plans.

Depending on choices made by political leaders among options offered by military commanders, either a short war or a lengthy one could be intense or mild; we examine all four cases. At the same time, it seems more likely that a long but mild conflict would result more from initially mild fighting than from initially intense fighting and, conversely, that intense fighting will remain intense as long as the war lasts. After all, both world wars started with ferocity, which persisted and even intensified more or less for their durations. Of course, it cannot be ruled out that a war could begin fiercely but then settle into a low-grade one, as both sides conclude they cannot win, refuse to concede, and try to moderate their losses.

17 By 1917, the combination of staggering losses and diminished confidence of victory led voices in Germany, Great Britain, and France to suggest the need to negotiate, but both sides opted to fight on (until the U.S. entry into the war decided the outcome).

One of the most vexing trade-offs leaders face in determining how intensely and how long to fight is between the cost of fighting and the cost of losing. The former will tend to motivate restricting the conflict even if it means forfeiting advantage; the latter will tend to motivate doing what it takes to win, including intensifying, expanding, and prolonging the conflict. To illustrate, the United States might feel reasonably confident that it could win in an intense war with China yet face such severe costs that it might rather keep the war limited and accept an outcome short of victory, though presumably consistent with U.S. interests. Conversely, China might regard the price of losing a war with the United States over, say, Taiwan as so high that it would endure the costs of an intense, and perhaps lengthy, conflict. Broadly speaking, as prospects of either side clearly winning decline, as might be the case in coming years, both sides ought to place greater weight on the costs of fighting—a key reason why both must rigorously think through what consequences a war could have.

The costs of a conflict are mainly a function of intensity and duration.  18 Least costly, obviously, is a brief, mild war; most costly, a long, severe one. The kinds of costs vary over time: Initially, military losses will dominate; in time, economic costs will grow, and military losses might decline as counterforce capabilities do. Domestic political constraints and pressures might be in play from the outset, but these, too, could gain strength and even sway leaders’ choices as military losses and economic costs mount. Likewise, international reactions and uncertainties—alarm, condemnation, opposition, political support, physical support, and realignments—might grow over time and with severity.

18 The costs of war also vary as a function of the vulnerability of the combatants. In the case of a Sino-U.S. war, forces in the theater are increasingly vulnerable, and dependence on global (including each other’s) resources, products, and markets makes both economies vulnerable. However, China would be far more exposed to homeland attack and economic isolation.

Using duration and intensity as the main variables in describing the path of war suggests a matrix of four cases: brief, mild; long, mild; brief, severe; and long, severe. (Other possibilities are not examined but could be interpolated.) The assumptions for each case are shown in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1

Matrix of the Four Cases

Note once again that the main factor in determining whether a war is restrained or severe from the outset is whether political leaders give their militaries the green light for counterforce attacks. One can speculate on both institutional and rational-choice grounds whether restraint would be exercised. U.S. civilian control of the military is firm in principle and practice. Though the current Chinese president has felt a need to tighten control over the PLA, little information is available to assess how current Chinese civilian and military leaders would handle command authority during wartime. Even with adequate institutional safeguards on both sides, the logic of striking without delay is potent. Because hesitation could result in operational losses and disadvantages too great to overcome, the “safe” course might be to strike enemy forces promptly, if not first.

Note also that lower stakes and inadvertent violence are less likely to precipitate severe hostilities than higher stakes and a considered choice of war are. Furthermore, a long conflict will likely conform to the level of intensity established at its outset. In the severe case, though costs are great on both sides, neither one is likely to have clearly better prospects. Also, if the stakes are important, high losses can work against rather than for accommodation and cessation. Even if fighting is restricted and sporadic, its continuation might appear less costly, at least politically, than conceding the matter at hand.

Upper and Lower Limits

Before estimating the possible losses, costs, and other effects of these four cases, it is worth considering the lower and upper limits of a war’s severity.

One can easily imagine a conflict between China and the U.S. below the threshold of what has been described here as “mild.” Just as Russia has used nonviolent means, along with some violent ones (e.g., so-called little green men) to intervene in and carve out chunks of Ukraine, China has and uses an array of military and nonmilitary means to advance its interests at the expense of its neighbors and of the U.S.  Indeed, China is pursuing such a strategy (sans little green men) to press its sweeping territorial claims in the East China and South China Seas: interfering with other states’ vessels, placing oil rigs and artificial islands in disputed waters, and menacingly reminding neighbors that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”19 Clearly, the Chinese seek to isolate and pressure neighbors without triggering U.S. intervention. Just as clearly, the United States and its allies, including Japan, can and will engage in reciprocal actions.20 To the extent both China and the U.S. are involved, one can see a sort of conflict that is short of violent use of force. U.S. strategy to thwart such a Chinese campaign is important but not germane to this study. Although the costs and consequences of such “gray area” conflict would be even lower than those of a mild armed conflict, as defined earlier, there is some possibility that regional commerce could suffer as a result.

At the other extreme, the long, severe case is not necessarily the upper limit of what war could entail and cost. The United States and China are the world’s strongest nations, with the largest economies, two of the three biggest populations, vast human and natural resources, and unsurpassed war-making capacity. While the two countries have important convergent peacetime interests, there is also considerable “strategic distrust” between them.21 Should they go to war, distrust could turn to deep antagonism, and the logic of conflict could make possible levels of violence, duration, and cost that might appear unjustifiable in times of peace. In modern history, wars involving great and more or less evenly matched powers have sucked in numerous third parties (not just prewar allies), lasted years, metastasized to other regions, and forced belligerents to shift their economies to a war footing and their societies to a war psyche. Whole populations suspend normal life; large fractions of them are prepared or forced to throw their weight behind their nation’s fight. Not just states but opposing ideologies, worldviews, and political systems might be pitted against each other. Whatever their initial causes, such wars’ outcomes might determine which great powers and their blocs survive as such. Prewar international systems collapse or are transformed to serve the victors’ interests. Thus, the costs of failing outweigh those of fighting.

19 Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi’s quoted in John Pomfret, “U.S. Takes a Tougher Tone with China,” The Washington Post, July 30, 2010.

20 In their bilateral security consultations, the Japanese and Americans have identified Chinese “gray area” aggression as contingencies that require heightened attention and joint planning.

21 The apt term strategic distrust was coined in Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi, Addressing U.S.-Chinese Strategic Distrust, Washington, D.C.: John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution, 2012.

Consider how the Napoleonic wars engulfed all of Europe, how World War I destroyed several empires and enlarged others, and how allied goals in World War II became the complete destruction of German fascism and Japanese militarism, rather than merely stopping their aggression. In such cases, war aims and acts of destruction might exceed belligerents’ early intentions by a wide margin. Regimes of the losing side usually vanish. The threshold of tolerable costs might rise as fighting persists and the penalty for losing increases. There have been exceptions: Prussia’s victories in the three wars of German unification and the American victory over Spain come to mind. But these were one-sided affairs between mismatched powers ending quickly and decisively, without spreading or drawing in other powers.

Would a war between China and the United States resemble the great-power wars of modern history—expansive, systemic, desperate? Would hostilities erase all residue of mutual interest in an international order that has served both countries well? Would the escalating costs of conflict seem tolerable compared with those of losing? Would the enemy be demonized? Would populations become targets?

The only honest answer to such questions is that no one knows. As we will see, the increasing probability of inconclusive hostilities between China and the United States might suggest a bias toward a long, severe, bitter war. Moreover, it cannot be excluded that such a Sino-U.S. war could develop characteristics of the two great-power wars that became “world wars”: drawing in others, engulfing and spilling beyond the region, locking the two political systems and populations into a fight to finish, ending in unconditional surrender, dictated peace, occupation, regime extinction, and domination.

At the same time, the expansion and immense destructiveness of modern great-power wars have resulted mainly from large and ferocious land campaigns and strategic bombing, aimed at conquest. Although one cannot rule it out, such war aims and fighting seem unlikely in even a major Sino-U.S. war unless it stemmed from miscalculations during a conflict on the Korean peninsula. Moreover, the United States would restrain, if not avoid, strategic bombing of China lest it precipitate nuclear war. Having said this, it could be that the long, severe case offered here for analytic purposes might not set the upper limit of a possible war between China and the United States.

The possibility of a long and severe war, in which willingness to accept hardship and to inflict harm grows as fighting lasts, returns us to the question of whether such a war might result in the use of nuclear weapons. We assess the probability of that to be very low and so do not include the effects of nuclear warfare in our analysis of losses and costs. 22 The general reason for this is that mutual deterrence prevails in the Sino-U.S. strategic-nuclear relationship.  23

Nonetheless, it is worth examining the circumstances in which the risk of nuclear war, however low, could be at its highest. In a prolonged and severe conflict, it is conceivable that Chinese military leaders would propose and Chinese political leaders would consider using nuclear weapons in the following circumstances:

• Chinese forces are at risk of being totally destroyed.

• The Chinese homeland has been rendered defenseless against U.S. conventional attacks; such attacks are extensive and go beyond military targets, perhaps to include political leadership.

• Domestic economic and political conditions are growing so dire that the state itself could collapse.

• U.S. conventional strikes include or are perceived to include capabilities that are critical to China’s strategic deterrent—notably intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs), ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), strategic C2—which the Chinese interpret as preparation for a U.S. first strike or intended to leave China vulnerable to U.S. nuclear coercion.

22 Obviously, losses and costs to both countries in the event of nuclear war could be at least an order of magnitude greater than the worst of the conventional-war cases examined here.

23 The stability of the Sino-U.S. nuclear relationship is explained in Chapter Four of David C. Gompert and Phillip C. Saunders, The Paradox of Power: Sino-American Strategic Restraint in an Age of Vulnerability, Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, National Defense University, 2011.

Thus, it cannot be entirely excluded that the Chinese leadership would decide that only the use of nuclear weapons would prevent total defeat and the state’s destruction. However, even under such desperate conditions, the resort to nuclear weapons would not be China’s only option: It could instead accept defeat. Indeed, because U.S. nuclear retaliation would make the destruction of the state and collapse of the country all the more certain, accepting defeat would be a better option (depending on the severity of U.S. terms) than nuclear escalation. This logic, along with China’s ingrained no-first-use policy, suggests that Chinese first use is most improbable. 24

At the same time, if Chinese leaders faced such a dire situation and also had reason to think that the United States was preparing to launch a first strike to disable China’s deterrent, they might consider the first use of nuclear weapons (even though, objectively, it might not be rational). But this also seems like an extremely remote possibility for the simple reason that the United States would have no reason to resort to nuclear weapons if it were already on the verge of conventional victory over China.

24 As a corollary, if China were to use nuclear weapons first, it could be a “warning shot”—a relatively harmless detonation in a remote area—as opposed to nuclear attack on U.S. forces, territory, or allies.

Even so, it is important for the United States to be aware of potentially dangerous ambiguities involved in attacks on targets that the Chinese could regard as strategic: attacks on missile launchers, even if intended only to degrade China’s theater-range missile capabilities; attacks on high-level military C2, even if intended only to degrade China’s conventional-operational capabilities; cyberwarfare attacks on strategic systems; attacks on Beijing (whatever the reason); and heightened U.S. ballistic missile defense operations that could be seen as intended to degrade Chinese strategic retaliation. Keep in mind, as well, that the Chinese might perceive U.S. conventional capabilities (e.g., global strike, cyberwarfare, ASAT) as potentially aimed at disabling China’s strategic deterrent.

As low as the probability of Chinese first use is, even in the most desperate circumstances of a prolonged and severe war, the United States could make it lower still by exercising great care with regard to the extensiveness of homeland attacks and by avoiding altogether targets that the Chinese could interpret as critical to their deterrent.

As for U.S. initiation of nuclear war with China, this seems even more far-fetched. Unlike circumstances in which the Soviet Union could not be stopped from defeating NATO and dominating all of Europe unless the United States resorted to battlefield nuclear weapons, the stakes of a Sino-U.S. war would not justify the incalculable harm to the United States from Chinese retaliation. More bluntly put, the Soviet threat to NATO was deemed existential, whereas as the Chinese threat to U.S. allies and interests in East Asia is not. In line with this, current U.S. declaratory policy concerning use of nuclear weapons makes no allowance for first-use in the event of war with China, even were it going badly. 25

In sum, it seems unlikely that war between China and the United States would “go global,” or “go nuclear.” In either case, the losses, costs, and other consequences for both and the world would dwarf those estimated for a severe and prolonged conventional conflict in the Western Pacific. Still, the possibility of a true cataclysm is all the more reason to think through carefully the paths and risks of war.

25 U.S. policy reserves the option of nuclear first use mainly in retaliation for a biological attack.

(Continued).

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