Troops take part in a military parade celebrating the seventieth founding anniversary of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing on October 1, 2019. (Photo by Zhang Hongxiang/Xinhua via Getty)

War with China would likely pose the decisive military test of our time, writes Hudson Senior Fellow Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr.

In Foreign Affairs, he lays out why a United States–led coalition needs to have a strategy not only for denying Beijing a quick victory but also for sustaining its own defenses in a long war. Read how and why below.

Key Insights

1. It is far from clear that conflict would lead to nuclear escalation.

As was the case with the Soviet Union and the United States in the late twentieth century, both China and the United States possess the ability to destroy the other as a functioning society in a matter of hours. But they can do so only by running a high risk of incurring their own destruction by provoking a nuclear counterattack, or second strike. . . . In more than seven decades of conflicts since World War II, including many involving at least one nuclear power, nuclear weapons have been notable chiefly for their absence. During the Cold War, for example, the two nuclear superpowers engaged in proxy wars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that remained conventional—despite incurring high human and military costs on both sides.

2. Washington and its potential partners have the means and, at least for now, the time to improve their readiness.

The United States should give priority to negotiating agreements to position more US forces and war stocks along the first island chain, while allies and partners along the chain enhance their defenses. In the interim, US capabilities that can be employed quickly, such as space-based systems, long-range bombers, and cyber weapons, can help fill the gap. But US strategists will also need to plan for what happens next, since preventing a Chinese fait accompli may serve only as the entry fee to a far more protracted great-power war. And unlike the initial aggression, that confrontation could broaden across a wide area and spill over into many other spheres, including the global economy, space, and cyberspace. Although there is no model for how such a war might play out, Cold War strategic thinking shows that it is possible to address the general question of a great-power conflict that extends horizontally and involves a variety of warfighting domains.

3. A protracted war would likely incur high costs in global trade, transportation and energy infrastructure, and communications networks, and put extraordinary strain on human populations.

Even if the two sides avoided nuclear catastrophe, and even if the homelands of the United States and its major coalition partners were left partially untouched, the scale and scope of destruction would likely far exceed anything the American people and those of its allies have experienced. Moreover, the Chinese might hold significant advantages in this respect: with China’s very large population, authoritarian leadership, and historic tolerance for enduring hardship and suffering enormous casualties—the capacity to “eat bitterness,” as they call it—its population might be better equipped to persevere through a long war. Under these circumstances, the coalition’s ability to sustain popular support for the war effort, along with a willingness to sacrifice, would be crucial to its success. Leaders in Washington and allied capitals will need to convince their publics of the need to augment their defenses and to sustain them in peace and war until China abandons its hegemonic agenda.

Quotes may be edited for clarity and length. 

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