Insurgency, not War, Is China’s Most Likely Course of Action
John Vrolyk
December 19, 2019
It felt suspiciously like the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and not just because of the smell of baking fuel under the relentless sun at Twentynine Palms. At the Marine Corps’ battalion-level integrated training exercise this past summer, I spent two weeks preparing for a mechanized desert war. When I participated in the same exercise in 2015, sure we spent time assaulting Soviet doctrinal positions — but also days in a mock village with role players, working through the unique challenges of counter-insurgency. This year, though, training was single-mindedly dedicated to conventional maneuver and combined arms — on a desert battlefield utterly devoid of simulated (or even notional) civilians. Mechanized warfare is back in — and low-intensity conflict, from grey-zone warfare to counter-insurgency, is going unmentioned and untrained.
Driven by the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the Pentagon has seemingly shifted to single-mindedly preparing for a traditional, conventional great-power conflict it is unlikely to ever fight — while drastically decreasing training for the proxy wars, civil conflicts, and insurgencies it will inevitably be called upon to help win. It feels like some leaders in the Department of Defense see China’s rise as heralding an end to fighting messy little wars in far-flung corners of the world. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s actually time to re-open and engage with the Counterinsurgency Field Manual to prepare for a future characterized by sophisticated, well-funded, and strategically targeted insurgency campaigns against the United States, its allies, and security partners.
https://warontherocks.com/2019/12/insurgency-not-war-is-chinas-most-likely-course-of-action/
