Does the United States need to redefine "worst-case" scenarios for fighting Russia or China? I don't think the author fully understands the concept of "worst-case."
DoD should increase the priority of scenarios that center on information and decision-making, such as protracted blockades or quarantines of allied territory or islands; sustained gray-zone campaigns against allied or partner governments; or air and sea denial operations in international waters or airspace. Instead of quickly turning into canonical invasions, these scenarios could episodically intensify and deescalate over an extended period as the combatants attempt to resolve the confrontation. For example, the ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine may be more relevant than Russian tanks rolling across Latvia in 2 days.
Any enemy operation that takes a long time to unfold and have an effect is not a worst-case scenario.
The ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine has not had a decisive effect on Ukraine even after close to seven years. The two-day Latvia operation would have a decisive effect on Latvia and all of NATO.
Aerial or sea blockades are acts of war and conventional military power could absolutely be decisive in meeting them. And if those air or sea denial operations have to shoot down or sink civilian assets, you are darned right conventional military power could be decisive in ending them, even if just with escorts.
And don't tell me that big-war American units couldn't have a decisive effect against an eastern Ukraine Donbas situation or even the Crimea operation. We'd quickly scatter the special forces, mercenaries, and irregulars. We'd smash their tanks and artillery with precision strikes. And then the "separatists" would become the target of police, special forces, paramilitary, and intelligence operations. Ukraine was crippled in reacting in 2014 because of the revolution that left the already weakened military confused about lawful civilian leadership.
And pray tell, how would "smaller, disaggregated units that include more autonomous systems" eject China from the islands they built in the South China Sea? Or even slow them down?
The real problem with those "information and decision-making" operations is that we go along with the enemy fiction:
Good Lord people, Russian "hybrid warfare" is just Russian aggression that we pretend isn't happening.
Oh, and have we moved on from the "hybrid war" craze terminology already?
Pakistan denied responsibility for occupying Indian territory. India didn't go along with the fiction and waged the 1999 Kargil War . If the Russians tried that against NATO we'd have to retake the territory just as if a conventional enemy force openly captured the territory.
I don't know why "visionary" proposals for defense reform often seem to be based on gutting military power with impressive sounding BS. Nothing prevents targets of what I call "subliminal war" from reacting at that low level to block the enemy operation even without crippling conventional forces.
Or force at whatever level is needed. India did that. The West did that in the TankerWar overt and covert intervention. Remember, China maintained the fiction that "volunteers" in the hundreds of thousands crossed into Korea to fight United Nations forces in the Korean War. We responded by killing lots of them in conventional combat. We didn't tie ourselves in knots denying the obvious.
"Worst-case" scenarios are scenarios that can lead to rapid defeat and the loss of an important objective. Yes, our military should be focused on that. And we can deal with the lesser threats.
