Notes to the New Administration Week

By Brian Kerg

The People’s Republic of China is vastly outpacing the United States in terms of shipbuilding and deployed and afloat naval power. Ship-for-ship, munition-for-munition, China has gained dominance in this area and is set to increase the gap between China and the U.S. This will grant China the increased ability to apply military pressure throughout the seas adjacent to it, adversely impacting U.S. interests, and the interests of allies and partners. If China remains unchecked, the U.S. will be seen as an increasingly unreliable security partner, assurance of allies and partners will erode, and the U.S. will be regionally boxed out as China reshapes the international order in its favor.

While the U.S. must seek to close this gap in conventional naval power such as surface combatants and other ships, doing so is a systemic challenge that will take years and likely decades to achieve, even with the political will and economic resourcing to do so.

The U.S. cannot afford to wait decades to conventionally offset the military advantage of China at sea and protect its interests. Instead, the U.S. can quickly regain advantage asymmetrically by putting the right fit of combat credible military power at key maritime terrain now. While it may take the U.S. years to build a single ship, it can raise, man, and equip ground forces optimized for operations on key maritime terrain at the speed of relevance, raising minimally required forces in under a year. Such forces, once raised, can achieve asymmetric and decisive strategic deterrent effects through permanent deployment to decisive points within the territory of U.S. allies such as Japan and the Philippines, and partners such as Taiwan.

Whether permanently based forward (a cheaper, more sustainable option) or with forces persistently deployed on a rotational basis (a more expensive, but often more diplomatically palatable solution), the U.S. must increase its footprint of ground-based, stand-in forces and keep them in position where they can project fires and effects into the littorals and secure their positions. This will enable them to present a credible check on Chinese naval power and military pressure. Doing so requires the growth of the authorized end strength of those ground forces in question, and diplomatic arrangements with allies and partners to make such basing acceptable.

Critically, the authorized end strength of such forces within the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army must be raised to account for the forces in question. Current end strength remains assigned or otherwise fenced off for current U.S. security commitments, and is arguably overstretched already. Simply redeploying elements of the current force will stretch the force too thin, creating a brittle, hollow force rather than the resilient, credible force intended. To meet the need, these additionally raised formations must be littoral in mission and capability, such as those in the Marine Littoral Regiments and the Multi-Domain Task Forces.

In addition, diplomatic arrangements must account for their permanent deployment. Simply housing additional forces in the continental United States offers no check against China, especially when lines of communication are contested in conflict. Regarding Japan, the Defense Posture Review Initiative must be re-assessed with the government of Japan. Rather than moving U.S. forces out of Japan, they should be re-introduced and increased. With the Philippines, permanent U.S. basing arrangements must be reestablished, as they were prior to 1992. Finally, and while most diplomatically difficult it will prove most militarily critical, a U.S. ground force must be placed in Taiwan, whether in the manner of the former U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group-Taiwan, or the U.S. Taiwan Defense Command. Political escalation could be avoided by doing so as a defense service vice an overt military organization.

China’s naval dominance has arrived and will only grow. The U.S. must seek to regain naval dominance over the long term, but this goal is likely out of reach for decades. To regain U.S. security advantage vis-à-vis China now, the U.S. must raise and permanently deploy the right ground formations to key maritime terrain as soon as possible.

Brian Kerg is an operational planner and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also a 2025 Non-Resident Fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a 501(c)3 partnered with Princeton’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent the positions or opinions of the US Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, or any part of the US government.

Featured Image: U.S. Marines with 3d Littoral Combat Team, 3d Marine Littoral Regiment, 3d Marine Division, U.S. Soldiers with 25th Infantry Division, and Philippine Marines, with Battalion Landing Team 10, secure a landing zone during a joint, bilateral, littoral campaign as part of Balikatan 23 on Basco, Philippines, April 23, 2023. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Patrick King)