America First in the Indo-Pacific?

To maintain deterrence vis-à-vis China, American defense policy must undergo a fundamental shift in the years ahead. Legacy US investments—fighter aircraft, aircraft carriers, stealth bombers, surface ships, and attack submarines—will be vital to stabilize the military balance in East Asia. But alongside these traditional capabilities, the United States will have to field a new set of systems with which it has much less experience. Long-range missiles, combat-capable autonomous aircraft, and uncrewed undersea vehicles will have to be developed and fielded in large numbers if the United States is to counter China’s rapid military modernization. The mix of these large and expensive legacy platforms with cheaper and more expendable systems will be vital to stabilizing the military balance in the region.

Unfortunately, the United States has thus far avoided many of the hard decisions this would require. Trade-offs between readiness, modernization, and force structure are unavoidable unless the United States significantly increases defense budgets. Since US defense spending has remained stagnant when adjusted for inflation, this has not been sufficient to fund both the existing force structure and the development of these new capabilities. The result has been decreases in readiness and delays in modernization while the US force has shrunk. During this period, China has built the world’s largest navy and deployed an increasingly advanced set of air and naval capabilities.¹ In short, Beijing has modernized while Washington has muddled through. If deterrence in the western Pacific is to hold, this atrophy cannot continue.

The Hard Realities of the Iron Triangle

The iron triangle of defense choices—force size, modernization, and readiness—dictates that investments in modernization require either additional funding or substantial cuts to force size or readiness. The number of platforms deployed by the US Navy and Air Force has indeed shrunk in recent years, and the readiness of the US military has generally deteriorated.² Yet force modernization has progressed only slowly. In short, Washington has adopted a strategy that is the worst of all worlds. It has allowed its legacy forces to shrink and undercut their readiness but has not deployed new forces with the degree of urgency required.

Ten or 20 years ago, the United States might have had the opportunity to make these modernization investments without the threat of an imminent challenge from a near-peer competitor. But today, Russia is fighting the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, and China is posturing the People’s Liberation Army to credibly threaten the use of military force against Taiwan within this decade.³ As a result, the United States cannot afford a decrement in the readiness of its forces. One leg of the iron triangle must therefore be locked in place.

Nor can the United States shrink its force structure dramatically, since it will take time to deploy any newly developed systems. A shift from large, heavy, and expensive units to more nimble ground, naval, and air forces might be in the offing, but until this change happens, legacy forces will remain vital for both deterrence of adversaries and assurance of allies and partners.⁴ The US Marine Corps has made rapid changes to its force structure to adapt to this new reality, but as this experience has demonstrated, shifting the mix of forces in a military service usually requires investments in new systems that can be costly to produce.⁵

Some, myself included, have argued that a greater focus on China would necessitate a shift not across the iron triangle but among the US military’s services and combatant commands. The needs of the Navy and Air Force might be prioritized in accordance with the more maritime-oriented requirements of the Indo-Pacific Command. But without increased funding, this would mandate major cuts to ground forces, particularly the Army, as well as a number of geographic combatant commands, likely including both European Command and Central Command.

Despite the Army’s efforts to demonstrate its value in a China contingency, it is more likely to be a supporting service than a supported service. The US will not contemplate a land invasion of China, given the People’s Republic of China’s huge population and geographic advantages. Army units may be critical for logistics and some cross-domain capabilities, but these are less central in a US-China conflict than they would be in a ground war.⁶ Yet cutting Army force structure while Iran, North Korea, and Russia are cooperating more closely than ever will be a hard sell in Washington.

If US forces are less capable of prevailing over Iran in the Middle East, North Korea on the peninsula, or Russia in Eastern Europe, then US allies and partners will have to pick up more of the burden themselves, and quickly. This is basic math—the United States has few forces in Southern Command and Africa Command, so unless it stops doing certain missions currently addressed by European Command, Central Command, and perhaps even US Forces Korea, it will not be able to make major cuts across its geographic combatant commands. Although there is some discussion today of prioritization, few missions have thus far been jettisoned. Hard choices have not been made, but they remain unavoidable.

Embracing Technological Change

Today, most experts acknowledge that there are two major military shifts occurring simultaneously—one regional and another global. The regional shift (discussed in greater detail below) is that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has rapidly caught up to the militaries of the United States and its allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific. Although differences of opinion remain on whether Beijing is yet capable of defeating US forces in an actual conflict, the margin between the two sides has shrunk dramatically.

At the same time, a global shift has occurred that has called into question the cost-effectiveness of existing US power projection platforms. As the world has witnessed in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, it is now possible for countries and even nonstate actors to field expendable unmanned systems that can hold at risk surface ships and forward bases. Many observers have noted that the combination of these two trends means that China is catching up to the United States just as America’s legacy forces are more vulnerable and less cost-effective than they have been in decades.

There is, however, a more optimistic take. It is true that China’s military modernization creates challenges for the United States and that legacy American forces are more at risk today than they have been for decades. But two factors could work in Washington’s favor—if US leaders can recognize and embrace them. First, China is now investing in the same type of power projection platforms—aircraft carriers, forward bases, and so on—that are increasingly vulnerable to cheaper and more expendable systems. Second, the United States is a status quo power, while China’s military aims would require it to eject American forces from the region through the use of force or coercion. If China and the United States are both unable to project power effectively and the result is a no-man’s-land, then Beijing will not be able to alter the territorial or maritime status quo. These two factors are too often overlooked in Washington’s debate about China’s rise.

The changes in military technology occurring today have been poorly understood in part because experts have often equated advances in missiles, drones, and other uncrewed systems with advances in technologies that enable offense. If this were correct, then anti-access systems would give revisionist powers an edge and undermine the interests of the United States and other status quo countries. But this is wrong. Advances in autonomy, robotics, and miniaturization do not make it easier to take and hold territory. Rather, they make it easier to deny an opponent the ability to exert control over land or maritime zones. Therefore, the fact that expendable systems are cheaper and more effective today advantages neither offensive nor defensive strategies but rather denial strategies over control strategies.

Consider the lessons from Ukraine. Russia has been able to conduct attacks deep into Ukrainian territory using long-range missiles. This has done tremendous damage. But it has not enabled Russia to rapidly take and hold territory without great risk to its manned forces, which are necessary to sustain a military presence. Moscow’s advances in recent years have come at tremendous cost, in part due to the effectiveness of Ukraine’s own unmanned systems in denying Russia the ability to generate mass without creating major vulnerabilities. The same was true of US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although US forces had a tremendous edge in many domains, nonstate groups were still able to make it highly costly for American units attempting to control territory. In both cases, denying forces the ability to cheaply occupy territory has become easier due to recent technological advances.

There has long been a debate about whether military technologies advantage the offense or defense. This has typically been framed as the ratio of funding or forces required for the offense to prevail over the defense and has become known as the offense-defense balance. But what has been overlooked is the control-denial balance. This is the ratio of funding or forces required to exert control over territory and maritime zones as compared to those required to deny that control. Recent technological advantages have shifted this control-denial balance by helping the latter at the cost of the former.

In short, one might consider four types of capabilities based on these two balances: offensive control, defensive control, defensive denial, and offensive denial. Offensive control requires sustainable mobility—effectively power projection forces such as aircraft carriers and mobile ground units. Defensive control is most cost-effective with sustainable but immobile systems that can conduct garrison fortification—examples include large, fixed bases and related infrastructure. Defensive denial, on the other hand, can be done through immobile and expendable systems, such as land and sea mines or short-range missiles or drones. Finally, offensive denial necessitates expendable yet mobile systems—longer-range missiles, more advanced drones, and uncrewed naval systems typically associated with anti-access capabilities. Because offensive control through traditional power projection has become more costly, many have assumed that defense has become easier. But the reality is that both offensive and defensive denial are cheaper today than ever before. In other words, technology is advantaging denial, not offense or defense.

This is critical because the United States needs not take new territory. For China to take Taiwan, it must be able to project and sustain power at least 100 miles from its coast. Denial capabilities may be useful for this mission, but they are not sufficient unless Taiwanese leaders capitulate under coercive pressure. If the Communist Party is to take Taiwan by force, it cannot fight to a draw in the Taiwan Strait; it must be able to exert control both on and around the island. Yet the same technological forces that made the People’s Liberation Army’s anti-access capabilities so fearsome in recent years also allow the United States and its allies and partners to flip the script on Beijing. By embracing smaller, cheaper, and more expendable systems, it might be possible to put China on the wrong side of a cost-imposition strategy and use technological change to America’s advantage.

China’s Military Modernization

The reason the United States finds itself having to consider a new strategy is that China has moved quickly in recent years, while America has been distracted elsewhere. Since 2008, China has moved decisively toward investments in power projection platforms while still fielding additional anti-access systems.⁷ The result is an overlapping mix of capabilities designed to hold at risk US forces in the western Pacific while increasingly exercising control within the first island chain, which runs from Japan to Indonesia. In other words, Beijing has constructed a large anti-access and area-denial bubble stretching from the Chinese mainland over Japan, Guam, and much of Southeast Asia. Inside this area is a smaller bubble in which China will be able to more confidently project power, unless the United States moves expeditiously to hold these forces at risk.

The anti-access bubble was first imagined in the 1990s, after China watched the United States dramatically defeat the Iraqi military in the first Gulf War and then deploy two carrier strike groups to the waters around Taiwan in the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis.⁸ In response, the People’s Liberation Army developed a range of new capabilities, headlined by long-range conventional missiles, designed to neutralize US bases in Japan, the Philippines, and Guam before US forces are able to use them as jumping-off points.⁹ Maritime strike versions of these ballistic and cruise missiles were also fielded in large numbers to push US aircraft carriers and surface combatants farther from Chinese so-called “near seas” in a conflict’s opening days and weeks.¹⁰ If successful, these systems might force the United States to keep many of its most effective air and maritime strike systems far away from the locus of conflict at the outset of combat.

Fighting back through these layered Chinese defenses would be no easy task, but it is made significantly more difficult by the fact that the People’s Liberation Army is also fielding new forces designed to project power within this larger bubble. Just a decade ago, the People’s Liberation Army Navy would have had difficulty keeping ships on station far from China’s shores. Now it is surging forces far from China’s coast, with more regular patrols by Chinese aircraft and ships. Perhaps most notable has been Beijing’s acquisition of three aircraft carriers, with more on the way, including a more advanced, nuclear-powered version. Meanwhile, China has demonstrated a series of new aircraft, many of which appear to be modeled on existing US aircraft. Combined, these platforms could start to create a power projection bubble inside the western Pacific, particularly if they were operating within China’s larger anti-access and area-denial zone.

Finally, the United States increasingly finds itself encountering a Chinese military presence far from China itself. Recent Pentagon reports have suggested that alongside Chinese military basing in Djibouti, there is the prospect of the People’s Liberation Army having access to foreign facilities in Cambodia, Pakistan, Peru, Sri Lanka, and the Solomon Islands, to name a few locations. If this comes to pass, then the United States will find itself needing to monitor the Chinese military presence across much of the globe. Washington might still have an edge for several decades globally, given its deep network of alliances and partnerships, but Beijing’s ability to field more platforms and offer substantial economic incentives for cooperation could pose a real challenge in the long term.

Thus far, China’s growing capabilities and capacity have not been matched by a similar set of American investments. Instead, the United States has actually shrunk key elements of its force in size, as well as decreasing readiness and modernization funds. These trends are not sustainable if the United States is to maintain the military balance in the region and around the world. A new American approach will be necessary.

America’s Response Options

The United States has a straightforward, but hard to solve, challenge in the western Pacific: how to offset China’s strategic depth and ability to rely on hundreds of regional bases when the United States has only a handful of major bases and a limited network of other access points. There are three potential answers. First, the United States could expand access by persuading current hosts to allow access to new facilities and convincing new countries to open new locations to US forces. Second, the United States could field more systems, such as mobile missile launchers, that can operate from austere locations without long runways or large ports. Third, the United States could try to become less reliant on forward bases by relying more on long-range power projection systems such as aircraft carriers.

Recent US administrations have focused primarily on the first option. Going back to the Obama administration, policymakers in Washington have worked closely with Australia to create new operating locations for some ground, air, and naval forces.¹¹ US marines now deploy rotationally through Darwin, in northern Australia, while US Navy vessels will operate from Perth, in Western Australia, and US Air Force assets will routinely visit bare bases across the region. In the Trump and Biden administrations, there was progress in deepening discussions with Pacific Islands countries about deploying US forces to some new locations in the Pacific. Most notably, the governments of the Republic of Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia have all agreed to new compacts of free association with the United States.¹² The United States has entered into arrangements to periodically deploy US forces into some of Japan’s southwest islands that have not previously had a US presence. These features—Yonaguni, Ishigaki, Miyako, and others—could provide critical alternatives to bases in Okinawa and other major US facilities in Japan’s main islands.¹³

The Biden administration has also made some progress in efforts to field new systems and adopt new operational concepts that are less reliant on large forward bases. Most notably, the US Marine Corps has reoriented itself around Force Design 2030, which will use Marine Littoral Regiments to operate in contested environments via expeditionary advanced base operations.¹⁴ Meanwhile, the US Army is pursuing what it calls the Multi-Domain Battle concept, the US Air Force is implementing the Agile Combat Employment concept, and the US Navy is attempting to implement its Distributed Maritime Operations concept. All four of these concepts are designed to decrease the services’ reliance on fixed forward bases and ensure greater resilience. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense more broadly has started to acquire some capabilities that could be cheaper and more expendable. Most notable in this regard is the Replicator initiative, which promises to field thousands of autonomous systems to add to the capabilities of legacy forces, which will remain the dominant elements of the force for the foreseeable future.¹⁵

The third option, which is to rely more on long-distance power projection systems that are independent of bases, has received less attention. The United States could opt to buy more long-range ships and aircraft (long-range bombers, nuclear-powered attack submarines, or aircraft carriers, for example), but these systems are expensive, and recent administrations have generally opted to keep procurement of these systems as planned, rather than adding to them. The Trump administration could, however, opt to purchase more B-21 bombers and invest in the submarine industrial base through a new Ships Act, which could increase the numbers of long-range platforms that are less reliant on bases near an adversary’s territory.

These options are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the United States will likely have to combine all three options to build the capabilities in the near term that would be needed to maintain a balance during China’s rapid military buildup. New operating locations will have to be brought online to decrease US vulnerability to a first-strike attack. Meanwhile, new systems will have to be developed and fielded to increase the firepower that the United States can wield in the opening hours, days, and weeks of a conflict. And Washington will have to simultaneously invest in legacy forces that can be put into the theater quickly but that are less dependent on large forward bases. Together, this mix could stem the declining military balance in East Asia, if not reverse it altogether.

Spurring Allied Differentiation

One heretofore unexamined implication of these challenges is that the United States will want to ask its allies and partners to differentiate their forces more from those fielded by the US military. Washington does not have the luxury of keeping its forces in one location—it must be able to shift between regions and within regions, since it faces multiple challenges around the globe simultaneously. For this purpose, legacy power projection forces will remain critical. Yet because military bureaucracies often prize large and expensive power projection systems and seek to imitate the most advanced military in the world—that of the United States—US allies often attempt to build forces that look like America’s. This is understandable and was tolerable in the post–Cold War world, when the United States and its allies and partners retained a substantial edge over any potential military challenger. Today, however, US allies and partners need to differentiate their forces and fill in the gaps that Washington cannot address on its own. Power projection may be a mission that the United States must continue to conduct, but that does not mean that allies and partners should also follow this pathway.

Although it is common for Americans to complain about needing allies and partners to step up, the current situation is in no small measure the fault of US policymakers. Allies and partners must be given clear guidance about the roles, missions, and capabilities that US forces will not be able to conduct on their own. This happens all too infrequently. Indeed, there are incentives for US leaders to push allies and partners to acquire American-made systems to ease interoperability challenges and simplify combined operations. At the same time, allies and partners must have substantial confidence in the United States to show up when needed, or else they will try to duplicate existing US capabilities rather than build forces designed to fill in those capability gaps. This has also been a frequent challenge for policymakers in Washington, who all too often appear to shift their thinking and thereby undermine allied confidence in existing security guarantees.

If these challenges could be overcome, then there would be space for key allies and partners to invest rapidly in a range of denial-focused capabilities. Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, in particular, could build out their own anti-access and area-denial capabilities and therefore increase the risk to Chinese forces attempting to operate in and around the first island chain. In other words, while Beijing is busy building capabilities to create a power projection bubble within a larger anti-access bubble in the East Asia littoral, leaders in Washington and friendly capitals could start to divide these roles between the United States and its allies and partners. No military fields only one type of system. Friendly forces will retain some power projection capabilities just as the United States increases its own denial capabilities. But by dividing missions to a greater degree, the United States and its allies and partners would allocate capabilities more efficiently and be better prepared for a variety of challenges.

There is, however, one major and unavoidable downside to this necessary division of labor: Allies and partners will find themselves more reliant on the United States in some gray-zone situations. Since denial capabilities such as anti-ship missiles are usually expended when used, it is difficult to use them for signaling without escalating a crisis or conflict. Beijing has been highly effective in using its newly constructed power projection platforms—particularly navy, coast guard, and maritime militia vessels—to coerce other countries. If US allies and partners have fewer of their own power projection systems, then they will have to rely more on those of the United States. This would require a change of mindset in both Washington and allied capitals. Rather than allowing Beijing to press its advantage in the gray zone against less capable regional states, US leaders would have to demonstrate a willingness to become more involved at lower levels of escalation. This would be a reversal of current practices, in which US forces largely wait until a certain threshold has been crossed to become involved. This is not an insurmountable challenge, but it would require closer cooperation between the United States and its allies and partners to develop combined strategies and operational concepts to deter China’s gray-zone coercion.

Implications for the Next Administration

As is evident from this discussion, there is no silver bullet to America’s worsening strategic situation in East Asia. More resources are needed. Existing funds could be used more efficiently, of course, but simply shifting more forces to East Asia will not solve the operational problems that the United States faces today. Allies and partners will need to step up. But they will not be able to match Beijing’s military modernization without a major shift in approach from Washington. US leaders will have to find ways to rebuild readiness while they increase the size of America’s air and maritime forces and simultaneously modernize key portions of the force to keep up with technological change.

Additional resources must be part of the equation, given that recent efforts at sequestration and prioritization have yielded only limited financial savings. Yet more funding will not solve the problem alone, since part of China’s advantage is that the United States has underinvested in a whole suite of capabilities—long-range, conventionally armed missiles, for example—that are critical today. If the US defense enterprise were allocated more resources, there is a danger this would allow the defense community to avoid hard choices and continue to muddle through—that is no longer an option. Administration leaders will have to direct major changes to how the United States builds, maintains, and operates its military. Washington will also have to have related discussions with allies and partners about aligning their own reform efforts with those of the United States. This will be politically challenging and require deep institutional knowledge from American policymakers. These reforms are possible, but US leaders will have to make a clean break with several decades of distraction and dithering. There is no time to waste.

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