, Columnist
Win or Lose, U.S. War Against China or Russia Won’t Be Short
The U.S. may be able to repulse an assault on Taiwan or the Baltics. But what comes next?
Military men.
Photographer: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
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“For every thousand pages published on the causes of wars,” wrote the scholar Geoffrey Blainey half a century ago, “there is less than one page on the causes of peace.” A modified version of Blainey’s lament might usefully guide U.S. military planning today.
The Pentagon is getting serious about prevailing in the opening stages of a war with China or Russia. But wars between great powers rarely end after the opening salvo. The U.S. needs to be preparing for big, grinding conflicts that could drag on for months or years — and thinking as much about how those wars will end as how they might begin.