Defense expert says U.S. must adopt new ways of war or face defeat from China and Russia

The United States must rethink its ways of fighting wars or face the prospect of defeat, Chris Dougherty, senior fellow and military analyst at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), wrote in an opinion piece.

“The possibility of war and U.S. defeat are real and growing,” Dougherty said in an op-ed on the CNAS website.

Unlike American opponents of the past such as Iraq with limited resources and lack of sophisticated armies, China and Russia boast modern armed forces, Doughterty wrote. The two countries have been studying the American military for two decades and have been devising new strategies and concepts to defeat the U.S. in a war should it come, the analyst wrote.

“The goal of these strategies and concepts is to create a plausible theory of victory whereby China or Russia avoid a ‘fair fight’ and could therefore defeat the United States and its allies in a regional war,” he said.

Part of the strategy of Russia and China is to undermine allied partnerships the U.S. has with its traditional friends and make them doubt U.S. guarantees of security, a sort of divide and conquer scheme, the analyst wrote.

Dougherty added that American military dominance seen during the Cold War of the 1950’s against the Soviet bloc is over. Yet, Department of Defense (DOD) planners have failed to adjust to a changing environment.

“The root of the problem is the DOD’s unwillingness thus far to fully come to grips with the reality that its principal competitors are no longer regional threats such as the Iraqs and Yugoslavias of the world, but rather great powers with advanced military forces and the ability to match U.S. escalation,” Dougherty noted.

The nightmare scenario would see Russia or China or both seek to set up conditions for conflict in a step-by-step approach and suddenly seize key objectives before the U.S. and its allies could respond, Doughtery said. They would then offer to negotiate while threatening escalation of conflict, designed to offset American power and harm U.S. interests.

Such a situation happened before in the 1930’s, Dougherty recounted. The U.S. failed to respond to aggression by Japan and failed set up an appropriate defense posture in the Pacific. This led to the attack on Pearl Harbor and left the U.S. scrambling to respond.

“What’s needed now is for the DOD to define the next layer of military strategy and operational concepts, a new way of war,” Dougherty wrote.