A Conventional Flexible Response Strategy for the Western Pacific

Abstract

Because of profound uncertainties about the extent of China s rise and the nature of its future relationship with the United States, the United States needs a grand strategy that simultaneously hedges against the spectrum of plausible alternative futures while making the more worrisome futures less probable. Moreover, the conflict over competing national interests in the Western Pacific is currently being waged in the prewar phases of conflict known in military parlance as shaping and deterrence. However, whereas China is focused on winning the conflict in these phases, the US military strategy is more singularly focused on deterring a shooting war and preparing to fight and win one should deterrence fail. As a consequence, the US military hedge may be overemphasized while a shaping strategy is lacking. A conventional flexible response strategy might provide comparable deterrent value at the high end of the spectrum of conflict and be better able to manage confrontations at the low end, while nudging China toward integration into the current global order rather than revisionism.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 15, 2015
Accession Number
ADA620196

Entities

People

  • Brendan Cooley
  • James Scouras

Organizations

  • Johns Hopkins University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Cold War
  • Command And Control
  • Command And Control Systems
  • Conventional Warfare
  • Deterrence
  • Foreign Policy
  • International Relations
  • International Security
  • Military Strategy
  • National Security
  • Navies (Foreign)
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Physics Laboratories
  • United States
  • Unmanned Underwater Vehicles
  • Warfare
  • Warning Systems

Readers

  • Asian Economic Studies
  • Strategic Security Studies