Shaping Air and Sea Power for the "Asia Pivot": Military Planning to Support Limited Geopolitical Objectives
Abstract
For roughly two decades, the U.S. Department of Defense has been focused on creating weapons platforms and plans for "effects-based" operations with the assumption that they can be readily mixed and matched to achieve the desired strategic purpose. As Clausewitz famously argued, however, it is risky for military planners to decontextualize the notion of effects-based weaponry from the most likely political goals politicians will be seeking in the threat and use of force when confronting a peer competitor. Ultimately, everything depends on the level of political stakes or, in Clausewitz's terms, the nature of the "political object." In East Asia, a rising China confronts the United States with a classic security dilemma in which new Chinese military capabilities could support both a commonsense and legitimate wish to secure its own interests and a more expansive vision for regional leadership that might harbor an aggressive geopolitical agenda. Thus, a wary United States finds it prudent to maintain an operational military advantage over China's rapidly improving military capability. Yet, how the United States addresses that security dilemma via military procurement and the development of operational concepts could either detract from or enhance crisis stability when Chinese and U.S. interests come into conflict. With this delicate balancing act in mind, we offer a conceptual framework for how the United States should prepare to use military power during peacetime deterrence, protracted crises, and war to resolve conflicting interests with another powerful state, such as China, when both powers also have substantial interconnected interests. We recommend that the United States broadly seek to deny without innately and immediately threatening strategic levels of destruction, and to hit countermilitary or counterforce targets in incremental, piece-by-piece ways during crisis bargaining without simultaneously hitting or seriously threatening countervalue targets.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2013
- Accession Number
- ADA594149
Entities
People
- Leon J. Perkowski
- Michael R. Kraig
Organizations
- Air University