Hal Brands, AEI/Bloomberg: Win or lose, US war against China or Russia won’t be short
The U.S. may be able to repulse an assault on Taiwan or the Baltics. But what comes next?
“For every thousand pages published on the causes of wars,” wrote the scholar Geoffrey Blainey half a century ago, “there is less than one page on the causes of peace.” A modified version of Blainey’s lament might usefully guide U.S. military planning today.
The Pentagon is getting serious about prevailing in the opening stages of a war with China or Russia. But wars between great powers rarely end after the opening salvo. The U.S. needs to be preparing for big, grinding conflicts that could drag on for months or years — and thinking as much about how those wars will end as how they might begin.
The scenarios for a war against China or Russia are easily imaginable. Beijing tries to invade Taiwan or make it surrender through bombardment and blockade. Chinese forces strike U.S. allies, such as Japan or the Philippines, in Asia’s inner seas. Russia launches a Baltic blitz against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s most exposed members.
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WNU Editor: A war between Russia and the U.S. will be a short one because nuclear weapons will be used very quickly. A U.S. = China war will be a war of attrition.
