I argued for a bigger role for the Army in Military Review in INDOPACOM planning. The more likely Army role would be around the periphery of China in support of Asian armed forces. But we can't rule out actions on the mainland of China under certain conditions.
Such conditions might be a Chinese civil war, collapse of central authority, or when China's ground forces are too occupied to prevent a large-scale Army "Thunder Run" raid or a temporary enclave on the mainland to establish air bases to allow air operations deeper into China.
Short of such events, America would need full mobilization at World War II levels to raise scores of ground divisions to invade China, of course.
Not that a major land operation in INDOPACOM is necessarily a good idea. But failure to have that option simplifies China's military problems. What, I have asked, is the point of our Navy penetrating Chinese anti-access/area denial weapons (A2/AD)? To sail around off the coast of China waiting for China to offer terms of surrender?
I have been reading Donald Kagan's On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace, and the conclusion about the Peloponnesian War of 431 to 404 B.C. stated:
When Pericles's moderate policy failed to deter Corinth, however, deterrence of Sparta was no longer possible. The Athenians simply did not have enough manpower to offer a credible offensive threat. Talk of seaborne raids and fortified bases on the Peloponnesus would not work. Most Spartans did not have the imagination to understand the threat the skillful use of such devices could pose to them and their alliances. Only the challenge of a superior army could have held them back, and the Athenians had no way to produce that. Their policy, therefore, was not consistent with their strategic capacity. Had they understood that better they might have refrained from the Megarian Decree and taken a more conciliatory approach, since their capacity for deterrence was inadequate and since no strategy was available to them that guaranteed victory in war. Pericles and the majority of Athenians, however, had great confidence in the promise of the new, untried, strategy that their navy, walls, and empire allowed them alone to pursue. They counted on it to deter their enemies from fighting and, when that failed, to bring victory. So the war came. [emphasis added]
This has direct applications to American strategy for a war with China. Especially when the appeal of blockading China far from China's land-based A2/AD anti-ship arsenal is seductive but dangerous for America:
Remember, if we cease attempts to make sure we can penetrate China's anti-access forces to operate near China, a reliance on exploiting the Malacca Dilemma means that we must immediately escalate to the total war measure of blockade should China seize some territory in the East China or South China Seas, perhaps Taiwan itself--or do nothing.
Is that what we want to do? Have a pre-war 1914 German strategy that assumes total two-front war with the initial offensive aimed at France even if France is not involved in the war-threatening crisis?
If we want to keep our alliances among nations close to China outside of our Malacca defense line, those nations close to China will notice they are on the wrong side of another multi-dashed line[.]
I don't want to rely on air and naval power to take on China if it--God forbid--comes to confronting China. Will the Chinese think anything short of a ground option is a real threat to Chinese Communist Party control of China? China will have a tremendous advantage knowing that they are immune to American ground power.
We have that knowledge regarding Chinese threats to American territory. Let's keep that edge and make China worried about what we might do to them on the land.
So the war won't come.
