https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/where-the-wargames-werent-assessing-10-years-of-u-s-chinese-military-assessments/

1. Two major schools of prescriptive thought have evolved on how to respond in case of Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific.

   a. “Direct approach”: A strategy of intervention, forcible entry operations, and the destruction or at least suppression of anti-access/area denial systems. This echoes the Pentagon’s own doctrine, Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC).

   b. “Indirect approach”: Acquiring and deploying anti-access/area denial capabilities of your own, and attacking Chinese sea lines of communication paired with severe economic sanctions.

2. Topics such as proactive conflict termination and alliance dynamics remain understudied.

   a. De-escalation and termination of conflict: While the research literature offered many recommendations to bolster deterrence, few consider the conditions under which a conflict might be de-escalated. Future analyses should incorporate Chinese concepts on managing escalation and conflict termination while exploring opportunities to exploit risks that might bring them to the negotiating table.

   b. Allies and partners: Political agreements with these states, the military capacity and effectiveness of their forces, and their interoperability with U.S. forces may all prove key issues. The U.S. defense community should test and develop concepts for how the United States, allies, and partners will wage a multinational campaign.

3. Failure of imagination is dangerous. “The analytical community should take a more expansive view.”

   a. Although Taiwan is the most likely scenario, other roads to war, perhaps through the Spratley, Paracel, or Senkaku islands or Scarborough Shoal, merit attention as well. “When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.”

   b. Many of those who are sanguine about the potential for avoiding nuclear escalation cling to the comforting notion that decisions are made by unitary rational actors operating with clear and complete information. But this isn’t always the case, and there is more than one road to nuclear war. The most valuable analyses of U.S.-Chinese military dynamics will be those that explore nuclear incentives and decision points during high-intensity conflict.

Submission statement:

I find it a bit disingenuous for the author to suggest “failure of imagination” when he deliberately limited the scope of his project to reports “focused on military competition, rather than great power competition in general”.

On the other hand, the author’s point still stands. There is few, if any, research out there that grasps the vast expanse of a potential US-China War, from the unconventional viewpoints of nuclear strategy, space warfare, cyber warfare, to the conventional viewpoints of naval and air strategy, to the non-warfare viewpoints of international law, politics, diplomacy, and most importantly global economy.

A US-China War can be the most devastating crisis in human society since the World War II. The worst case scenario is of course thermonuclear war.

The second-worst case scenario, where the whole East Asia is embroiled in a long war, is not much better. Without East Asia’s contribution to global industrial output, many industries will be crippled, from the Tech Giants to agriculture. (Do you know China is one of the leading exporter of fertilizers?) The global rich will see their wealth evaporate. The global poor will starve.

Given the large scope, large complexity, and the horribly large stake of the issue, public research on a potential US-China war is actually very lacking in quality and quantity. The policy-makers need to know. The public also need to know.