Question: What is the most likely outcome if a conventional war breaks out between China and the United States?

1. A conventional war will not escalate into nuclear war; it will be a very short war with a decisive victor, and there will be relatively little damage to the broader global economy.
2. A conventional war will not escalate into nuclear war, but it will be a very long war, likely with no clear winner. There will be significant damage to the Chinese and US economies as well as to the broader global economy.
3. Any such conventional war will rapidly escalate into a nuclear war with catastrophic consequences.

As we end part 4 of our detective story, it may be useful to once again stop and briefly assess where we are in our investigation before attempting to answer our lead question above—yes, we all hope against hope that answer no. 1 is the correct one.

On the intentions question, we have determined that China is seeking to expand its territory and maritime rights in the East and South China Seas based on a series of historical claims that date back at least to its century of humiliation. It is equally clear that these revanchist activities are bringing China into increasing conflict with neighbors like Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, and, to a lesser extent, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.

We have also seen that China is pushing hard against the envelope of both freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight. This push (and occasional shove) is similarly bringing China into increasing conflict with American military forces in Asia.

Finally, against the volatile backdrop of rising Indian nationalism, there is mounting evidence that China has territorial designs on Indian's state of Arunachal Pradesh—what China claims as “Southern Tibet.” Nor has an increasingly angry India ever relinquished its own claim to the now Chinese-held Aksai Chin.

The reality of these myriad disputes is not in question—the evidence does not lie. There is, however, a very deep perceptual divide over whether China's expansionism constitutes the offensive behavior of an aspiring regional hegemon or simply the legitimate defensive actions of a country seeking to defend its trade routes and guard its homeland.

From China's perspective, its actions are fully consistent with its doctrine of “active defense.” Through this prism, China sees control of the East and South China Seas (as well as perhaps Arunachal Pradesh) as a means to both help solve its natural resource needs and resolve its “Malacca Dilemma.” Chinese control of the East and South China Seas—and by implication, the driving out of the American military from the region—would also greatly enhance China's ability to defend its coastline and homeland.

From the perspective of those state actors now at the tip of China's coercive spear, however, China's behavior doesn't look like “defense” at all—“active” or otherwise. Rather, China's multivectored advance looks (and feels) like offensive behavior in every sense of the word. Senior Advisor Bonnie Glaser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has almost perfectly captured this deep perceptual disconnect with this frank psychological profile:

China does not put itself in the shoes of other countries and understand how other nations view China and its actions; and this is the problem that I think China has. That's why I often call China the autistic power. It just does not seem capable of understanding how its behavior really scares the rest of the region.1

The broader point to be gleaned from this reprise of our facts and clues and conclusions is simply that conflict is becoming increasingly possible. As for what we have learned from our brief survey of the potential battlefield in this part of our story, we have determined at least two salient facts.

First, American forward bases and naval forces are highly vulnerable to a Chinese attack, and they will continue to be so until the United States implements an appropriate “hardening, dispersing, and restructuring” strategy. America's vulnerability, in turn, makes the probability of a Chinese attack higher because the prospect of victory is commensurately higher as well.

Second, neither Air-Sea Battle nor Offshore Control as possible American responses to a Chinese attack provide the United States and its allies with any magic bullet to deter China. Both strategies involve nasty complications, and neither provides any true guarantee of success.

Given this battlefield and chessboard, it behooves us now to come back to the lead question of this chapter and seek to determine what “victory” might look like in the event that a conventional war breaks out in Asia.

Of the three likely options—short war, long war, or nuclear holocaust—clearly the first option is the most preferable (although it raises the question of what the world would look like if China won). The problem, of course, is that a short war with a clear victor that does little damage to the global economy is the least probable of our three options. Just why might this be so?

The basic reality here is that we have two very large continental powers with vast resources to wage war. If a war were to remain below the nuclear threshold—a big if—both sides could pummel the other with conventional weapons for a very, very long time, likely without either achieving a definitive victory.

It follows from this observation that no one should get sucked into dreaming, as President George W. Bush once did, of unfurling a banner that can legitimately claim “mission accomplished” shortly after the bullets begin to fly. Indeed, if a large nation like the United States can get bogged down in much smaller wars in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam for a decade or more, it is unlikely the United States would be able to quickly subdue a country as powerful as China—nor would China likely quickly vanquish the United States.

This fantasy of a short war notwithstanding, it must nonetheless be said that it is a very dangerous dream for either side to entertain. This is because if either side believes a short, winnable war is possible, the probability of that side starting a war rises dramatically.

Unfortunately, this short-war fantasy is exactly the kind of dream underpinning the doctrine of Air-Sea Battle. In this fantasy, China attacks the United States first. Then, through the miracle of technology, the United States uses its arsenal of weapons to simultaneously knock out China's command and control systems, destroy its missile launch sites, shoot down any incoming missiles, and thereby very quickly bring China and its Communist Party leaders to their knees.

It is equally unfortunate that certain segments within the Chinese power structure may have this same short-war fantasy. Indeed, there are increasing signs in everything from China's strategic military literature to government press releases of the belief that China's growing military juggernaut may soon be able to knock out rivals like Japan or the United States quickly and decisively.

Here, Professor T. X. Hammes of America's National Defense University uses an important chapter in history to reflect on the possible dangers of such hubris, particularly within the ranks of a Chinese military that now has a lot of shiny new weapons at its disposal but has not fought a major war in more than three decades and may have forgotten what one's own spilled blood tastes like. Says Hammes:

I think it is very important that military officers are honest and say these are going to be long wars. There is no such thing as a short war. If you look at World War I, the Germans faced a strategic problem they thought was getting worse; and the military said: “Yes, we can clean this up. Give us a couple of months; and we'll get that. Bam!” If they had just come in and said: “Yeah, four years, a million dead, shatter your economy, we'll be there, probably the [German] leadership would have said “No thanks!” That's the danger with the Chinese leadership: They may be convinced that they can get a quick win.2

On this point, US Naval War College professor Toshi Yoshihara wishes to underscore how important it is for the United States to strongly signal to the Chinese that “they will not be able to get away with a quick decisive victory.”³ To Yoshihara, convincing the Chinese of the bleak and uncertain prospects of a long war would go a very long way to bolstering deterrence and thereby avoiding war to begin with.

Given that a short war is likely not in the cards, the second-best option should war break out may simply be a long and economically crippling conflict with no clear victor—or perhaps an inconclusive Korean War redux followed by a new Cold War age.4 However, such a depressingly grim option is “best” only because option 3, a rapid escalation of a conventional war into a nuclear holocaust, is clearly unthinkable.

As to why this “unthinkable” option could become reality, one major problem is the obvious schism between the people of China and their own authoritarian government. It has been said many times by many different China experts and already revealed in this investigation that the goal of the Chinese government first and foremost is not to advance the welfare of the Chinese people but rather to maintain the tight grip of the Chinese Communist Party on power.⁵

It follows that if, during a conventional war, China begins to find itself on the losing end and Communist Party leaders believe their regime may soon be on death's ground, it is no short leap for these leaders to opt for nuclear war—and hope, then, to ride things out in China's many bomb shelters that crisscross the country.

For this reason—and because a short war is improbable and a long and highly damaging conventional war is similarly unthinkable—we must, dear detectives, in the final two parts of our story, methodically work our way through the various possible pathways to peace.