By Dmitry Filipoff

This past week CIMSEC featured writing submitted in response to our Call for Articles on readiness for Pacific war in 2027.

Authors covered a wide variety of topics, including force design, operational concepts, and strategic deterrence. Each of these efforts offers some possibility for improving advantage in the near-term. But with 2027 being only a few years away, it remains unclear whether defense institutions will act with the appropriate sense of urgency and clarity of purpose.

Below are the articles and authors that featured during the topic week. We thank them for their excellent contributions.

“Weaponized Containers: A Warship-in-a-Box for Warfighting Advantage,” by Steve Wills

“Any conflict with a peer opponent would be global, and historically navies find that they never have enough ships to cover all tasks that surface in the course of a major conflict. Using the shipping container, the building block of the maritime world, represents a relatively quick and easy method of creating additional naval capacity to improve warfighting advantage.”

“Considering Global War: A Strategy for Countering Revisionist Powers,” by Justin Cobb

“A denial strategy focused exclusively on Taiwan is not a true strategy but rather a subsidiary campaign objective. Zoom out and assess the broader implications of countering destructive revisionist powers. Western aligned nations must begin expanding military power and cooperation immediately and address the dilemmas that define effective force design and deterrence posturing globally.”

“The Maritime Convoys of 2027: Supporting Taiwan in Contested Seas,” by Nathan Sicheri

“Unknown factors of American public support, Taiwanese political will, and Taiwan’s ability to sustain resistance may mean that decisive sea control may come too late to supply and support Taiwan within the shrinking window of opportunity. The U.S. must carefully consider how to provide logistical support to a besieged island deep within an adversary’s weapon engagement zone and with little enabling sea control.”

“The Four-Block Littoral Force Revisited: Force Design and Marine Littoral Regiment Boarding Teams,” by Clay Robinson

“Force Design should be modified to embrace this mission by adding Maritime Interception Operations (MIO) to the core mission sets of MLRs. The MIO mission is currently assigned only to Marine Expeditionary Units, but the MLR’s low signature, platoon-sized maneuver elements with organic operational mobility, combined with a “mothership” such as an Expeditionary Mobile Base (ESB) and Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), could make the MLR ideally suited for large-scale MIO.”

“To Prepare for Pacific War by 2027, the United States Must Harden its Southern Flank,” by Henry Ziemer

“While it remains improbable that China would seek to contest the Western Hemisphere theater with the United States by 2027, the combination of these hybrid tactics could severely undermine the United States’ position in the very region most critical for U.S. physical security.”

“Deterrence 2027: Keeping the Threat at Bay,” by James Wirtz

“If there is little enthusiasm today about engaging in a naval showdown in the Taiwan Strait, why not concentrate on altering Beijing’s perception of the military and political setting so that the prospect of hostilities appears unattractive? Why do we not do everything in our power to bolster our maritime deterrent to spare the world a potentially catastrophic conflict in the western Pacific?”

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content. Contact him at [email protected].

Featured Image: PLA Navy Type-055 guided-missile destroyer Xianyang (Hull 108) attached to a naval destroyer flotilla under the Chinese PLA Southern Theater Command steams to a designated sea area during a multi-subject maritime drill on October 20, 2024. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Zhou Tianyu)

By James Wirtz

The year 2027 has been designated as a “year of maximum danger,” especially for the inhabitants of the island of Taiwan. This is not the first time, however, that a critical benchmark has emerged for American strategists and planners. Amid the shocks of the early Cold War, National Security Council Report-68 (NSC-68), drafted in April 1950 by a committee led by Paul H. Nitze, also identified a year of maximum danger, 1954.¹ Nitze, who was the Director of Dean Acheson’s State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, estimated that this was the year that the Soviet Union would possess the capability to launch a disarming nuclear strike against U.S. forces, tempting the Kremlin “to strike swiftly and with stealth.” “In time,” noted Nitze, “the atomic capability of the U.S.S.R. can be expected to grow to a point where, given surprise and no more effective opposition than we have now programmed, the possibility of a decisive initial attack cannot be excluded.”² History does not repeat itself, but the reader might be forgiven for thinking that it does seem to rhyme.

Nitze’s time horizon was a bit longer than ours today and the nuclear threat he foresaw was more extreme than the circumstances generally associated with a People’s Liberation Army assault on Taiwan. His response to the looming threat of the 1950s, however, also was significantly different than today’s call to better prepare to engage in hostilities about three years hence. Nitze suggested that the United States should not focus on prevailing in a coming war; instead, he called for preventing the outbreak of war in the first place by making a significant effort to bolster the West’s deterrent posture.³ This raises two relevant questions. If there is little enthusiasm today about engaging in a naval showdown in the Taiwan Strait, why not concentrate on altering Beijing’s perception of the military and political setting so that the prospect of hostilities appears unattractive? Why do we not do everything in our power to bolster our maritime deterrent to spare the world a potentially catastrophic conflict in the western Pacific?

Wanted: A Maritime Deterrent Strategy

Several ideas come to mind when explaining why talk of “warfighting” and prevailing in a possible conflict has crowded out planning for deterring, thereby preventing, the outbreak of a clash over Taiwan. One is that the Biden administration’s ambitious quest to “integrate deterrence,” creating a whole-of-government, whole-of-alliance, program to synchronize deterrent activities among multiple warfare domains and across the conflict spectrum remains largely aspirational.⁴ Another is that an overstretched U.S. Navy has yet to devise a maritime deterrent strategy for the western Pacific, although commentators have identified the need and even the outlines of what such a strategy might look like.⁵ As a result, it is hard for naval officers to suggest logistical, tactical, and operational ways to strengthen deterrence, without at least a rough, agreed upon outline, of what the Navy is trying to deter and the type of deterrence strategy (deterrence by denial, deterrence by punishment/coercion, deterrence by retaliation, the role of pre-emption) that will be adopted to deter war. Implementing a deterrent strategy in the western Pacific requires changes in daily maritime operations and a fundamental shift in the mindset of operators and planners.

From a deterrence perspective, the outbreak of war in the Pacific highlighted by the notion of a “year of maximum danger” constitutes a catastrophic strategic failure produced by the inability of the joint and maritime force to prevent conflict. Planning for war implies that we are already back on our heels, so to speak: the Chinese have shifted the onus of escalation onto us, leaving the Navy to engage in an attritional battle (against the People’s Republic, no less) to restore the pre-war status quo. If war breaks out, and the fleet manages to dodge the opponent’s opening salvo, it remains unclear how the Navy and the rest of the joint force would turn back the clock and “free” Taiwan.

Now some observers might object to this line of reasoning about the Navy’s failure to take deterrence seriously. Navy policy proclamations at least pay lip service to “deterrence” and reference the Navy’s contribution to deterring the outbreak of war. It also would be wrong not to acknowledge the decades of human and material resources the Navy has devoted to maintaining nuclear powered submarines armed with ballistic missiles as a leg of the U.S. nuclear triad.⁶ By supplying this secure second-strike capability, the Navy is the centerpiece of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. It is the service that supplies America’s ultima ratio regum. The Navy is no stranger to deterrence; the idea is a classic tenet of naval strategy.

Since the end of the Cold War, however, the Navy has been preoccupied not with deterring war, but with fighting major wars and other engagements at the lower end of the conflict spectrum. Humanitarian operations, freedom of navigation operations, anti-piracy patrols, counter-proliferation intercepts, escort duties, policing “no-fly zones,” executing small precision strikes, mounting missile defenses, and delivering massive air and missile assaults, have been a fixture of the Navy’s day-to-day activities. It might not be an exaggeration to say that most of the Navy is not involved in deterring anything but is instead fully and continuously engaged in actual hostilities, e.g., ongoing operations in the Red Sea. As a result, deterrence is a concept that does not seem to correspond to maritime realities for officers today. To them, deterrence is an idea that appears if not incredible, then somewhat farfetched – a figment of academic imagination.

Deterrence is not just an alien concept to today’s officers; however, it also appears disturbing or ill advised. Although the Navy has been continuously engaged in warfighting for decades, its operations usually appear to be circumspect, measured, and precise. Efforts are made to minimize collateral damage, to avoid harm to third parties, to not place personnel or assets in harm’s way unnecessarily, and to minimize the risks of escalation by friend and foe alike.⁷ By contrast, deterrence is all about risk, or as Thomas Schelling put it, deterrence is a competition in risk taking.⁸ Deterring an attack on Taiwan is not just about engaging an amphibious assault before it can establish some beachhead. It also is about undertaking operations that create a perceptible risk of a wider regional, global, and even nuclear war. Indeed, it would be prudent to treat a high-intensity conventional battle between two nuclear-armed competitors as a nuclear war, even though few Americans think much about the potential nuclear dimensions involved in the defense of Taiwan and no one has suggested that nuclear weapons should be introduced in the tactical or operational defense of the Island. 

Get Serious about Deterrence – Today

The Prussian theoretician and historian of war Carl Von Clausewitz offers a bit of advice for those contemplating 2027 as a year of maximum danger: “the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish… the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.”⁹ Following Clausewitz’s writ is no small matter; nevertheless, maritime strategy is what supplies us with a description of future war, how to deter it, and how to prevail in the event of deterrence failure. It remains unclear, however, how a Navy that still appears captured by capabilities-based planning and the dreary routines of budget preparation will devise this maritime strategy. 

The starting point for this new strategy is establish its initial objective: to deter an “all domain” amphibious assault on Taiwan that could well escalate into a pan-Asia war. Additional objectives should be added as the strategy is fined tuned. The Navy’s nascent “hellscape” initiative could provide a sea denial capability that would form the basis of a deterrence by denial strategy in the waters around Taiwan, while the Navy’s sea control forces could undertake assurance of allies, prevent the isolation of friends and allies in the event of hostilities, and prepare to engage in deterrence by punishment/coercion in the event of deterrence failure.

This bi-modal maritime deterrent strategy is in keeping with the general thrust of the Navy’s ongoing force development efforts and would provide a way for the Navy to synchronize modernization efforts that are already underway.¹⁰ What is especially attractive about adapting a bi-modal maritime deterrent strategy is that it can have an immediate impact on the strategic situation in the western Pacific. If Beijing is paying attention, actions taken now can quickly bolster deterrence. Ship movements, exercises, especially with friends and allies, force deployments, war games, and experiments could send opponents back to the drawing board for weeks, months, or maybe even years. A bi-modal maritime deterrent strategy will not be perfect at the outset; effectiveness depends on continuous change and evolving capabilities. By contrast, procurement programs require at least a decade to field a new capability – if war breaks out in 2027 it really will be a “come as you are” affair.

Conclusion

It remains unclear how the Navy might shift its corporate attention toward devising a maritime deterrent and how such a strategy might be promulgated across the service. Today, ideas that depart from routine are sometimes acknowledged and pushed aside, not out of malice but out of an inability to direct them to “the right office.” Without a senior advocate to sponsor change, it is difficult to discern a pathway forward to gain broad acceptance for a new emphasis on deterrence, or the acceptance of a bi-modal maritime deterrent strategy. Nevertheless, we need to put capabilities and operations in place so that Beijing decides that the game is not worth the candle. Maybe the greatest advantage offered by a bi-modal maritime deterrent is that we can begin to put it into practice quickly, before Beijing’s 2027 countdown to a showdown.

James J. Wirtz is a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA.

Endnotes

¹ Samuel F. Wells Jr., “Sounding the Tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat,” International Security Vol. 4, No.2, (Fall 1979) pp. 116-158.

² A Report to the National Security Council on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security (NSC68), April 15, 1950, p. 37. https://info.publicintelligence.net/US-NSC-68.pdf 

³ NSC-68 was intended to influence positively the Truman administration’s decision to develop thermonuclear weapons to bolster quickly the U.S. deterrent posture.

⁴ James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen, “Wanted: A Strategy to Integrate Deterrence,” Defense and Security Analysis, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14751798.2024.2352943

⁵ James J. Wirtz, “A Maritime Deterrence Strategy: The Key to an Overarching Navy Warfighting Concept,” CIMSEC, 2 October 2024. https://cimsec.org/a-maritime-deterrence-strategy-the-key-to-an-overarching-navy-warfighting-concept/

⁶ “Big Navy” has always maintained a rather nuanced relationship with its nuclear deterrence mission see James J. Wirtz, “The SSBN and US Nuclear Strategy: The Future of the Maritime Deterrent,” in Rory Medcalf, Katherine Mansted, Stephen Fruhling and James Goldrick (eds.) The Future of the Undersea Deterrent: A Global Survey (Acton: The Australian National University, 2020), pp. 16-18.

⁷ Alan Cummings, “Reinvigorate Risk: The United States need to focus on manipulating adversary risk,” USNI Proceedings Vol. 148/3/1, 429, March 2022. https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2022/march/reinvigorate-risk

⁸ Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 92-125.

⁹ Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 88.

¹⁰ “A Maritime Deterrence Strategy.”

Featured Image: A J-10 fighter jet attached to an aviation brigade with the PLA air force under the Chinese PLA Southern Theater Command taxis on the flightline during a flight exercise on October 31, 2024. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Wang Guoyun)