We Must Return to and Maintain the Two Theater Defense Planning Construct

It has become fashionable lately in some quarters to assert that the deterrence of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and, indeed, the island’s defense if deterrence fails, is the United States’ principal national security priority virtually to the exclusion of all other U.S. alliance obligations or partnerships.  Proponents of this theory also assert that the United States is so bereft of the economic sinews of power and military capability that we must abandon our European allies, as well as long-time Middle Eastern security partners, and concentrate America’s military power solely on deterring a cross-strait invasion and defending Taiwan.  From the standpoints of U.S. grand strategy and military analysis both assertions, however, are without merit.  Supporting the security guarantees provided to American allies and partners is essential as long as U.S. political leaders and the public understand how these ties provide major defense and economic benefits to the United States.

The National Defense Strategies of both the Trump and Biden Administrations have been predicated on a force sizing construct that calls for prevailing in one theater while relying on our nuclear deterrent to prevent opportunistic aggression in other theaters.  That approach is no longer sufficient in the two nuclear peer world in which we now find ourselves.  The U.S. military must be prepared to deter and defend conventionally as well as with nuclear forces in multiple places.  Any campaign against either Russia or China will be global from the beginning.  Those analysts who describe the Russian threat solely in European terms overlook its Pacific fleet and air forces, both of which pose a threat to our own Pacific forces as well as to our Asian allies.  Russian aggression will inevitably include attacks in space and cyberspace as well, while Russia’s nuclear capabilities have a global reach.  While China’s conventional forces lack the global reach of Moscow’s, Beijing’s military campaigns too will feature offensive operations in space and cyberspace, while their nuclear and conventional forces will threaten not only Taiwan but also Japan, South Korea, Australia and perhaps others.   As a result, any discussion about confining a conflict with either Moscow or Beijing to a particular geographic theater is illusory.

Because the wars would be different, the U.S. can defend simultaneously against both Russia and China

Any suggestion that the U.S. military is too weak to engage in two theaters simultaneously – and therefore to deter in two theaters simultaneously – fundamentally misunderstands the nature of potential wars in NATO and in the Pacific.        

To the degree that Vladimir Putin is able to reconstitute the hollow shell which once was the Red Army, any war in Europe will be the result of Russia moving to seize territory from NATO.  The recently completed NATO Summit in Vilnius has codified a new Alliance planning construct to defeat such a threat.  U.S. ground forces will play a major role in such a defense, augmented by considerable allied forces.  Where those allied forces are under-strength and under-resourced, it will be necessary to return them to full capability – and we should make this point forcefully.  Ukraine’s stout defense against the Russian invaders demonstrates however that defeating a ground threat should be well within NATO’s capability given sufficient political will to increase the necessary investments in defense.  Russian naval forces, particularly their submarines, would still pose a significant wartime threat; that said, NATO navies are highly proficient at anti-submarine warfare, and the addition of Sweden and Finland to the Alliance will further complicate Russian naval operations and increase Russian naval vulnerabilities.  The same applies to defeating the Russian air force, whose pilots are skilled at breaking international norms but not at intense air-to-air combat.  Although an ongoing U.S. role in NATO will continue to be essential the edge in Europe again goes to the Alliance forces.  U.S. naval and air forces in the Pacific should be more than capable of dealing with Russian conventional forces in that theater. 

A campaign against Chinese aggression, whether it involves the defense of Taiwan or Japan, should not require major American ground forces (although there may well be a useful role for the U.S. Army to play in providing air defense for vulnerable U.S. bases and long-range fires).  The Pacific war would be primarily a maritime and air war.  China’s growing capabilities in both domains are certainly worrisome and long-term trends are currently not in our favor.  In the short to medium run, U.S. naval and air forces in the Pacific, augmented by highly capable Japanese naval forces, should be able to establish air and naval superiority, key to a successful defense of Taiwan, early in any campaign against China’s largely untested force if we urgently remedy several crucial deficiencies which the Biden Administration has, heretofore, either insufficiently addressed or discounted.

To be sure, the U.S. faces serious challenges in the Indo-Pacific.  Years of budget cuts during the Obama years and the frequent resort by Congress to funding the Department of Defense through continuing resolutions and inertia in the military services have allowed the PRC to construct formidable capabilities for denying U.S. forces access to the Western Pacific.  The buildup of Chinese nuclear forces, both its theater and strategic nuclear capabilities provide, a powerful tool for the PRC to contest any U.S. counter-intervention to defend Taiwan. And Chinese investments in space, cyber capabilities as well as the difficult logistics of sustaining U.S. forces that must contend with the tyranny of distance and a contested environment to reach the theater are symptomatic of adverse trends which the U.S. must take steps to mitigate. 

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command currently lacks sufficient long-range strike (to destroy Chinese anti-access area-defense [A2AD] forces) and sufficient airlift and air tankers to flow U.S. air force assets to the region. Although a joint Army-Navy program has produced a long-range hypersonic missile system, both services are planning to deploy it at an extremely leisurely pace – and certainly one inconsistent with the projected threat of Chinese attacks in the latter part of this decade.  Neither service’s leadership seems to have a sense of urgency, leading to a serious “rhetoric-action gap.”   The Air Force, for its part, has settled on a limited stop-gap approach to tankers by procuring a small number of the still troubled KC-46A, although the limited quantity and slow pace of deployment is similarly inconsistent with the possibility of a serious threat to deterrence late in this decade.  Deferring consideration of augmenting the tanker force to a future competition which might produce a “stealth tanker” sometime well into the next decade similarly reveals a rhetoric-action gap which is inconsistent with the intelligence concerns of Xi conducting aggression possibly as soon as 2027.

In light of China’s and Russia’s significant deployment of short-and-medium range nuclear forces, the U.S. needs to augment its regional nuclear deterrent capabilities.  A nuclear sea-launched cruise missile, supported by many in Congress but spurned by the Administration, would be an important addition to our ability to prevent escalation.

Finally, in both theaters, the U.S. must improve its capability to deter and defend against Russian and Chinese gray zone operations.  This involves coordinating activities between the various branches of the U.S. government in a manner akin to what we used to do in the Cold War but have allowed to lapse since the collapse of the USSR.  Allies, too, have considerable anti-gray zone capabilities (indeed, all this occurs in their backyards so to speak) which we should encourage and draw upon to augment American efforts.

The peacetime deployment of NATO forces to the Pacific region sends a powerful signal of political solidarity both to our Asian allies and to our potential enemies.  In the event Chinese aggression was not accompanied by supporting Russian military activity, the addition of NATO units to the U.S.-led Asian coalition would be beneficial.  In the event of simultaneous aggression involving both Russia and China, or a situation in which Russian supporting activities against NATO Europe could reasonably be anticipated in the case of Chinese aggression, a prudent approach would be to keep NATO units in their home waters where they have long experience protecting against Russian forces.  This would free the U.S. to swing additional naval units to the Pacific to join in the fight against Beijing.

U.S. ability to defend its vital interests in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific is a matter of political will and leadership capable of overcoming the divisive partisan bickering that has now reached a level that jeopardizes national security.  Addressing the short falls and meeting the challenge of China’s increased conventional and nuclear capabilities will undoubtedly require additional resources for national defense but also will require spending those resources on new capabilities that offset the PRC’s current and looming advantages.  That said, very few things can injure our ability to deter two acknowledged hostile powers more than a flawed political and military analysis that produces defeatist policies.  We are today still capable of deterring and defending in both NATO and the Pacific . . . and it is essential that we continue to do so.  The flaws in our posture are correctable but that requires political and military leaders, notably the Chiefs of our armed services, who are willing to commit energy and resources to rectifying our known weaknesses with an appropriate level of urgency.  Time is of the essence.

Eric S. Edelman is counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and is a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Finland, and undersecretary of defense for policy.

Franklin C. Miller served for three decades as a senior nuclear policy and arms control official in the Pentagon and on the National Security Council staff. He is a principal at the Scowcroft Group.