The Army should pose a threat to China even in that naval/air-dominant theater.
Reading a book about inter-war planning for war with Japan I ran across this (Miller, War Plan Orange, 166):
Although they shunned an invasion, the planners observed that massing troops on islands near Japan would suggest such an operation, imposing on the enemy unbearable expense to guard all the beaches and thus prodding him toward the peace table. World War II leaders who favored invasion and postwar apologists for the decision later declared similarly that the ability and apparent intention to invade expedited Japan's surrender as surely as the other incentives of August 1945.
Okay fine, point taken. Two nukes had a far greater impact on Japan than the threat of a ground invasion. Although where do you put the USSR's invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria on that issue?
But absent the nukes, the invasion threat could have prompted similar discussions in Japan that might have pushed Japan to end the war even if nearly unconditional surrender would not have been on the table. Blockade they may have thought they could endure. But invasion? Perhaps not.
I only mention this because I think Army participation in the Indo-Pacific region should be more than long-range fires and air defense.
I wrote in Military Review that a larger potential role for the Army in INDOPACOM based on its core mission of large-scale combat operations could stretch Chinese resources to the benefit of our air and naval forces:
In many ways, given the hard-earned experience gained in Iraq since 1991 and Afghanistan since 2001, American ground forces have a greater relative advantage over China’s ground forces than American naval and air power have over their opposite numbers. Just maintaining a ground war option against China will cause China to divert resources from air and naval capabilities, giving American air and naval assets a greater chance of defeating Chinese A2/AD to enter and remain in the western Pacific.
And tying down PLA Army troops on the coast will prevent them from being sent against allies and neutrals. Giving those countries reason to help us fight China.
War with China would be awful. And difficult. Why set aside a good part of our arsenal and simplify China's strategic problems?
