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Planning for Protraction: A Historically Informed Approach to Great-power War and Sino-US Competition
As Sino-US relations have deteriorated, concerns have grown in Washington over its ability to defeat China in a major conflict. A conflict between such peer competitors would likely become a protracted war of attrition drawing on all dimensions of national power, but this reality has yet to receive a sufficient degree of analytical attention.
In this Adelphi book, Iskander Rehman provides a historically informed and empirically grounded study of protracted great-power war, its core drivers and characteristics, and an examination of the elements that have most often determined a competitor’s long-term strategic performance. Final victory in a protracted conflict, this book argues, rests on a combination of three core a state’s military effectiveness and adaptability, its socio-economic power and resiliency, and the soundness of its alliance management and grand strategy. A detailed analysis of the contemporary Sino-US rivalry assesses how both parties might fare in the event of a protracted war, while highlighting some of its key differentiating aspects – most notably its nuclear and cyber dimensions.
In this Adelphi book, Iskander Rehman provides a historically informed and empirically grounded study of protracted great-power war, its core drivers and characteristics, and an examination of the elements that have most often determined a competitor’s long-term strategic performance. Final victory in a protracted conflict, this book argues, rests on a combination of three core a state’s military effectiveness and adaptability, its socio-economic power and resiliency, and the soundness of its alliance management and grand strategy. A detailed analysis of the contemporary Sino-US rivalry assesses how both parties might fare in the event of a protracted war, while highlighting some of its key differentiating aspects – most notably its nuclear and cyber dimensions.
199 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 9, 2023
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August 3, 2024
Brilliant. This is applied history at its best. I can’t believe there aren’t more conversations about planning for a protracted US-China war but hope this book opens up the gateways for it. A highly overlooked yet critical subject. Rehman writes with beautiful and nuanced sentence structure and vocabulary. He doesn’t feel the need to pander with short sentence structure and simplified words like many others do for public traction. An example from the book: “What happens, though, when two such battle networks’ interlocking fields of fire are arrayed against each other, like two nervously twitching duelists facing off in an ice-rimed field in a Tolstoy novel?” He also peppers in some art to enrich the context. A must read.
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