CLSC Dialogues

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CLSC Dialogues tackles complex and pressing questions about China’s emergence as a global power and its implications for the US military. The podcast uses Strategic Landpower as the focal point of discussion—providing unique and important insights that cut across the aperture of the levers of power. The forum provides senior leaders and practitioners with a better understanding of the strategies, capabilities, and the integration of the PLA into the CCP’s campaign to turn the rules-based international order to its advantage. Further, the podcast shares insights and recommendations for developing better deterrence strategies and campaigns for the United States and our allies. Questions or feedback? E-mail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil

  1. CLSC Dialogues – Ep 28 – COL Kyle Marcrum and Dr. Jessica Liao – Taiwan’s Special Defense Budget and KMT Trip to Beijing, Part 2

    5D AGO

    CLSC Dialogues – Ep 28 – COL Kyle Marcrum and Dr. Jessica Liao – Taiwan’s Special Defense Budget and KMT Trip to Beijing, Part 2

    In part two of this two-part episode, COL Kyle Marcrum and Dr. Jessica Liao discuss Taiwan President Lai’s special defense budget and the Kuomingdang Chair, Cheng Li-wun, visit to Beijing. Keywords: Taiwan, defense, budget COL Kyle Marcrum   Welcome back to the CLSC Dialogues, a production of the China Landpower Studies Center at the United States Army War College. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers, and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, United States Army War College, or the US government. I'm Colonel Kyle Marcrum, director of the China Landpower Studies Center, and I'm again joined by Doctor Jessica Liao. We are picking up part two of our conversation on President Lai’s special defense budget. Last time we ended with Jessica raising Cheng's visit to China. And I'm glad you raised Cheng’s visit to Beijing, Cheng Li-wun, the chair of the KMT, just traveled against this whole backdrop. And I want to emphasize that this is an ever-increasing complexity where we have Legislative Yuan, the president's trying to pass this special defense budget. The Legislative Yuan is split on it. Dr. Jessica Liao Yeah. Marcrum President Trump and General Secretary Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet. It was postponed. And then in the meantime, the KMT chair travels to Beijing and meets with Xi Jinping. What do you think was the objective of that visit?      Liao      Yeah. There are several unique things, and also the objective that you talk about that is tied into this visit. Let’s start was like Cheng Li-wun herself. She's a very unique individual and like, you know, come from a very complex like political background. She actually started as the pro-independence movement player, like, you know, a part of the whole, like they call it Tangwai, the outside party alluding to KMT party, the movement, you know, before the Taiwan democracies. And so being the member of the DPP and then in 2005, she shifted from DPP to KMT. And in the recent years, she started to move into a very more of the pro-Beijing kind of stance within the whole KMT, like, you know, political candidates that was trying to jockeying for the new chairmanship. And really, she's coming from nowhere. It's just like, you know, a couple months ago, like she suddenly like, you know, rise to the center. And the reason that she was able to rise up so quickly, a lot of people, you know, speculated that Beijing had helped, but we don't have direct evidence on that. But she does have a lot of support from especially those like pro-Beijing stance veterans who still want to see a unified China and have a more stronger ideational like, you know, convergence with Beijing. And it's kind of like, you know, pan-Chinese, kind of like, yeah, identities. So those like, voters within KMTs are really like, you know, diehard supporters for Cheng Li-wun’s rise. And so she kind of like, just like, you know, shock everybody and then become the rising figures of this KMT chairman elections. So she went there. And it's very different from all the previous like KMT leaders to visit to Beijing. So the last time that KMT leaders like, met with the Beijing leadership was like a decade ago, that was Ma Ying-jeou, who was already there, and long standing KMT leadership. So she is really brand new, doesn't really have that kind of like foundation, like what all her predecessors are when they were meeting with Beijing. So in that sense, Beijing is also taking a gamble on her, right? Because she does not have that kind of like, you know, solid foundations within her party, that she just took the leadership. And on the other hand, because of this kind of like, complicated political background. I think the polls has showing that people, the public are not very, you know, trusting her political credential, like seeing her more as a, you know, a chameleon. So, you know, and, but she want to make a point about William Lai’s approach is wrong. And instead, this kind of peaceful approach and a more pro-Beijing kind of stance is a way to go and to be able to seek a peaceful coexistence with Beijing. Marcrum          Which is interesting because I don't know if you saw the AI video that's making its rounds on social media, where, Cheng is at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial and he comes to life and he's like, “All right, China's united?” And she's like, “No.” And so then Chiang Kai-shek goes and beats President Lai with his cane. So it kind of it kind of goes behind this idea that, you know, a united China or she's part of this united China idea. But I also wanted to point out that, you know, she's like you said, she's new to the movement, or to the KMT, fairly new. But she met with Xi Jinping. I believe it was the—and this is where I'm going to show my ignorance of anything that's outside of China and Taiwan—it was I believe it was the United Kingdom. Their prime minister went to China and Xi Jinping, did not meet with him. Was it was it the UK? I'll have to look that up. It was a European leader. It was UK or may have been. . . somebody went to China and did a tour of China, but Xi Jinping did not meet with them.           Liao      I think. Yeah, you are right. There is a European leader recently I believe is the yeah.        Marcrum          Believe it was UK.          Liao      Right, yeah. Marcrum          But it's the idea that Xi Jinping, a, you know, a country that is like China that is very focused on protocol and a national leader comes and does not meet with Xi Jinping. Then at the same time, we have KMT, who is a political party in what China believes to be a breakaway province, travels, and Xi Jinping does meet with her. So what idea was Xi Jinping trying to show? It becomes another question. One of the things I was also really curious about because Chen Li-wun, when she was in China, she mentioned the 92 Consensus multiple times. Liao That's right. Marcrum But when I was in Taiwan, it seemed like the, you know, the 92 non—what was it?—the non-consensus consensus, like people were saying. So for people not familiar the 92 Consensus was that there was one China but kind of ambiguous on who runs it. Right? But then, so, but that became was becoming less popular, particularly with the youth in Taiwan who identify themselves as Taiwans or Taiwanese versus Chinese-Taiwan or Taiwan. So she, but she mentioned it multiple times. Was her, I mean, I guess it goes back to this unified China idea. Is she trying to identify more with that? Does she think that she can rally a KMT behind that, or what do you think she's trying to do with that?              Liao      Right. So yeah, the KMT, the Nationalist Party and also CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, they went way back to like early 20th Century. So this party, like this two party have like a very long standing relationship that they, you know, coalesce throughout, you know, the before, before 1949 when the PRC was born. And they and they still tried to carry that kind of like tradition on to say like we are still in many ways, you know, all started from like Sun Yat-sen, who was the founder of the Nationalist Party, but also a big advocate to say, let's accommodate the Communist Party inside the party movement, because after all, we are all nationalists and we all want to see a unified China in front of the whole, you know, colonial pressures and so on. So I think there is a long tradition ever since 2005, when the KMT chairman, then Lien Chan, you know, visited Beijing, they had that kind of historical connections in or imagination, if you will, to really try to revitalize that kind of like, you know, linkage, like nationalist linkage. And I think Cheng Li-wun’s trip was trying to like, carry that kind of like historical memory in order to like, you know, enhance her legitimacy. That she is the one that, you know, like, received the torch from her, you know, predecessors. And part of this kind of like, you know, tradition continuing is to reassert her support for the 92 Consensus. And the 92 Consensus, of course, it started from 1992. That was basically the both sides have this like first official statement after the Cold War talking about, you know, we are all China, but whether you want to interpret it as the PRC China, People's Republic of China in Beijing or the ROC China, Republic of China in Taipei, that is a respected interpretation that both sides can do their own justification, and we are not going to pick on those. So it's sort of like an unwritten political fudge that you, you know, you're giving the wiggling room for both sides to make it. So it's in many ways like very politically, you know, genius kind of arrangement. However, after Xi came into power as the CCP leadership, he is no longer a, you know, tolerating so much wiggling room. He's increasingly insisting on taking away the second part of the 92 Consensus. There is no respected interpretation of 92. China is one China, and that is the PRC China, and Taiwan is part of it. So a lot of people believe that, you know, Cheng Li-wun during her trip, she also reiterated her insistence to go back to the 92 Consensus as the baseline for the both sides to start a dialog. But what is being dinged on by a lot of Taiwanese is that she is also staying away from reiterating the respected interpretation, like all the previous KMT officials do. So a lot of people believe that she is siding with, you know, Beijing on the different interpretation, kind of, is increasingly become the PRC-dominated interpretation. Nonetheless, on the event of her visit to Sun Yat-sen’s memorial, she did spill out ROC Republic of China. But she say it in the way as like, you know, this is the history where the ROC was bor...

    28 min
  2. CLSC Dialogues – Ep 27 – COL Kyle Marcrum and Dr. Jessica Liao – Taiwan’s Special Defense Budget and KMT Trip to Beijing, Part 1

    6D AGO

    CLSC Dialogues – Ep 27 – COL Kyle Marcrum and Dr. Jessica Liao – Taiwan’s Special Defense Budget and KMT Trip to Beijing, Part 1

    In part one of this two-part episode, COL Kyle Marcrum and Dr. Jessica Liao discuss Taiwan President Lai’s special defense budget and why it is stalled in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan. Keywords: Taiwan, defense, budget COL Kyle B. Marcrum             Welcome to the CLSC Dialogues, a production of the China Landpower Studies Center at the US Army War College. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or the US government. I'm Colonel Kyle Marcrum, Director of the China Land power Studies Center. I'm joined today by Doctor Jessica Liao, associate professor of Asian studies at the US Army War College. She was also a Wilson China Fellow of 2020, and in 2022, she was the Economic Development Specialist in the US Embassy, Beijing, which was a little after my time. I was there ’14 to ’17. So thank you for commuting all the way from where—you came today from, instead of—I normally was going to say, I'd planned to say “thank you for commuting all the way from your office two stories above”, but I guess you're today you've actually drove up from Virginia? Jessica Liao Yeah. That's right.       Marcrum Thank you for joining us.   Liao      Well, thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm delighted to be here talking about very important, timely topic. Marcrum          Yes. And what Jessica and I are today we're going to talk about is Taiwan, specifically some of the recent undertakings in Taiwan politics. I think that there's a lot to be covered, a lot of complex background that needs to be talked about that is difficult to understand if you haven't been watching this for a long time. And so Jessica and I will start there. Jessica, one of the main things I wanted to talk about was Taiwan's defense budget. And one of the things I wanted to point out was this morning I was reading an article that called it Taiwan's Defense budget. In fact, it was in an article talking about multiple members of the Senate, US Senate, had traveled to Taiwan and wrote a letter to Taiwan to say, you need to pass a defense budget. I didn't read the actual letter from the senators, but the article made it sound like they were trying to pass a defense budget at all. But from what I, what were one of the things I wanted to talk about is this is actually a special budget. It's outside of their normal budget, but it's getting caught up in their unicameral legislative body called the Legislative Yuan. And I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about the three main political parties inside the Legislative Yuan. Liao      Okay, great. That's a good starting point to get our listeners about the Taiwan politics and its background. So the landscape is basically three major parties, well, actually two major parties and then one half party. So it's sort of like United States it’s a bipartisan kind of system. And William Lai, that was the president of Taiwan now, his party is Democratic Progressive Party. And people also nicknamed it as the Pan-Green Coalition platform that is traditionally focusing on strengthening Taiwan's indigenous identity and maintaining the status quo in cross-strait relations and promoting Taiwan as a sovereign nation independent of the PRC. Although they never de jure, you know, like they make that kind of like independence as a de jure status. It's more like a de facto status. So that is the one that is controlling the executive branch of the Taiwan government. However, in the parliament, in the Taiwan parliament, that is sort of like a, you know, control, semi-controlled by the KMT, that is Kuomintang party, also known as the Pan-Blue Coalition. And KMT is the longest party standing in Taiwan. That was also the party led by Chiang Kai-shek when he fled to the island in 1949, so traditionally holding a more conservative and pro-business stance, and advocates for a closer dialog and economic exchange and ties with the mainland to reduce tensions and, you know, keeping a more, like, I would say pro-Beijing kind of position. And this kind of bipartisanship has been long standing in the Taiwan political history until 2019, when more and more voters start to get unsatisfied of this kind of like polarizing dynamic between the two parties, and then started with this leader called Ko Wen-je. He was the founder of Taiwan People's Party TPP in ’19, in 2019, and their position is more pragmatic and tried to stand in the middle ground between the two parties on their like cross-strait approach. So they are more focusing on domestic issues such as like social and housing and administrative efficiencies, while attracting young voters and also dissatisfied voters from the both sides. So, following the January 2024 presidential election and the inauguration of William Lai, William Lai, Taiwan's political landscape is characterized as a divided government where the ruling party holds the presidency, but no single party commands an absolute majority in the 113 seat of the Legislative Yuan. Still, KMT have the upper hand, so within this 113 seats, KMT preside 52 seats, while DPP have 51, which was dramatically declined from the previous, the peak of the 2000—between 2016 and 2020. And then TPP, the third party, host—was basically the swing vote seats—host 8 seats. And there are also 2 independent sees that traditionally tend to vote with KMT. Marcrum          If I can, for just a second. I think this is a really important part here where we talk about the Legislative Yuan, or the LY as it's called, when the LY is trying to pass or, you know, President Lai is trying to pass something like this defense budget, he's automatically, you know, he can rally his party, the DPP. Liao Right. Marcrum And he's got 51 votes there, but he needs the majority, just a simple majority. He can't get that alone. So automatically that, you know, the TPP has 8 seats, but they really become the kingmaker in this situation because the KMT needs them, because they don't have a majority on their own, and the DPP needs them because they don't have a majority on their own. And so I think it's a really interesting point where you have this, it almost becomes a coalition government in a way, because you need to put together these pieces to form the least viable party to get across that line. And I think that's where when we're talking about the defense budget, where that's really going to come in. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you on that.      Liao      Yes. You're absolutely right that the current status of LY is basically a coalition base in terms of budget passing and particularly on the defense budget. And you can see that there are a lot of dissatisfactions and also critiques on President Lai’s proposal, which a lot of people believe that is very unjustifiable in terms of its skill and also in terms of the details of the information, you know, provided to the public as well as the legislator.    Marcrum          When you talked about the scale, do you have the number for the defense budget? Liao      Sure. So there are two parts. Yeah. Going back to that letter that you were talking about and the senators, maybe we can just go into the detail of that. So, the basic budget, the regular budget, that is the annually, you know, you know, annually past budget, that is about 2.5% of Taiwan's GDP. But last, no, in 2026, they actually changed the accounting system to make it more aligned with the NATO's count. That includes the Coast Guard as well as the Veterans Affairs into the whole defense budget. So that may get into 3.3%. And that is in line with what President Lai wants. But you can see that in late last year, in 2025, President Lai actually wrote an op-ed on Washington Post, basically pledge to Washington that they are, you know, they vowed to meet this kind of budget to like 5% of the GDP by 2030. And you can see there is a gap between 2.5% of the defense budget versus 5% of the GDP. Therefore, you need a special defense budget to fill that gap. And that is what the most contesting point is about. How much of that defense budget is justified and can be, you know, passed by the LY? Marcrum          And that's really interesting because when we talk about these percentages of GDP, Taiwan's economy is growing incredibly fast. I believe the last figure I saw was it grew by 8.5% last year. So when you look at—particularly in this time when China is having economic issues, the United States is kind of having economic issues as well—what we're seeing is Taiwan's huge growth. So when we're talking about a defense budget that's growing as a percentage of GDP and an economy that's growing, that's a rapidly expanding defense budget, and it becomes kind of, where do you start stuffing all this money at a certain point? Liao That's right. Marcrum With a, you know, Taiwan has a declining birthrate. They're having a hard time filling even their conscripts roles because they have such, you know, there’s the shrinking age of young people. And so it really becomes a problem. And it became quite a problem with US foreign military sales because of the time gap between purchase, or, signing the contract for a component and then receiving it, it really becomes kind of an issue that the Legislative Yuan brings up occasionally is, why would I throw more money at the United States when they're not delivering things like the F-16s that are that are late right now? They just I believe they just had to get a special extension from the United States for another product because it was having trouble getting through the Legislative Yuan. Yeah. So very interesting points on that.        Liao      I do wa...

    33 min
  3. CLSC Dialogues – Ep 26 – COL Mike Long and LTG Joel B. Vowell – On the Pacific, USARPAC, and China

    APR 28

    CLSC Dialogues – Ep 26 – COL Mike Long and LTG Joel B. Vowell – On the Pacific, USARPAC, and China

    In this episode, COL Mike Long and LTG Joel B. Vowell discuss the US Army Pacific and the role of USARPAC. COL Mike Long             Welcome to CLSC Dialogues, a production of the China Landpower Studies Center at the Army War College. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or the US government. I'm Colonel Mike Long from the Strategic Studies Institute, and today I'm lucky enough to be joined by the USARPAC Deputy Commanding General, Lieutenant General Vowell. Sir, thank you very much for joining us. We really appreciate having you.            LTG Joel B. Vowell     Thanks, Mike. Good to be here. COL Long         Absolutely, sir. And we'll just jump right into it. I'd love to hear you talk about what US Army Pacific, USARPAC's role is in the Pacific. LTG Vowell      Great question. I think it needs to be preceded by a little theater framing about how complex, how challenging, and how just diverse the theater is. We work for INDOPACOM, as the Joint Force commander we’re the Army Service Component Command to that. But that theater of operations, the area of responsibility for INDOPACOM, we kind of say in a funny vein, from polar bears to penguins to Pikes Peak, Colorado, and all the way to the Himalayas in India. That's the vastness of the theater. So if you were to take Southeast Asia in the South China Seas, put them together, that is all of Western and Eastern Europe, 2000 by 2000 kilometers. That's just a minor portion of the entire theater. It's two Atlantic oceans, from San Diego to Manila. It's two and a half Atlantic Oceans from the Aleutians to New Zealand. And then we have to go through the Straits of Malacca, Malaysia, and Indonesia, to get to the Indian Ocean region portion of our theater. So a lot of blue air, a lot of blue sea, but there's a lot of green land, and archipelagic environment Theater is much more challenging because it's noncontiguous land space, and we, part of the land power network, are used to large open fields and countries connected together. This archipelagic nature—Indonesia, 15,000 islands, Philippines, 7,500 islands, Japan, over 5,000 islands, and I could continue—makes it a little challenging for movement and maneuver as we go forward. The theater is interesting and complex, just from geography, from threats to development, governance and natural disasters. Humanitarian assistance, consequence management is something we're also into all the time: floods, landslides, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, you name it, we're involved in those all the time. So, it's not just as we'll talk later, I’m sure, the Russia, North Korea, China problems of the aggregated threats in the region, it’s the region itself is challenging. So back to your question. You know, framing it that way, the theater that we're responsible for providing some level of deterrence and security with our partners and allies. Our role is the Army Service component command under General Clark to Admiral Paparo, the Joint Force Commander or Combatant Commander at INDOPACOM. We are the landpower contribution to the Joint Force. I would argue we're probably the backbone of the Joint Force, because if you look at Army support to other services, sustainment, intelligence and some others, we uphold the backbone of the theater. The theater gateway for all the communications we have is going through Army capabilities, in theater. The intelligence from the land, terrestrial, extraterrestrial intelligence, a lot of that comes from Army capabilities. Sustainment, we have that responsibility with the Theater Sustainment Command and other capabilities in theater to support the Joint Force. And then, of course, you've got a lot of several divisions, five, ten brigades in theater, to include an airborne brigade and to include the Korea Rotational Force in South Korea. A lot of movement and maneuver options that we can provide to deter or do flexible response, or respond in crisis or in some of our contingency planning. So General Clark's got a robust command and control architecture, the most number of Soldiers assigned to any Army service component command across the globe. Because the theater is vast, we have a lot of aggregated threats, and the Army has a huge contribution to the Joint Force to prevent conflict or to prevail as needed. COL Long         Thank you, sir. I came here from Eighth Army out of South Korea, where I was working for you down there, sir, as one of our higher headquarters. And South Korea is one of those partners that we talked about. We really kind of hit on three threats. But, would you mind talking a little bit more about the allies and partners in the region and how you work with them? LTG Vowell      Sure. Europe has NATO, a construct of an alliance mechanism with multiple countries, dozens, since 1940s. And we know the history there. Nothing like that exists in our theater. We do, however, have five treaty allies. South Korea is one of them. Japan, Philippines, Australia, and Thailand are the five treaty allies we have. Now, really, those first four all have Mutual Defense Treaty connotations and responsibilities where there could be a declaration of a hostile event in Japan, they would activate Mutual Defense Treaty requirements, and we would try to respond and assist those. It’s the same with South Korea. A little different we’ve had an armistice there since 1953. We have obligations as the primary component of the Joint Force there. USFK, CFC, UNC in Korea to help provide trained ready forces to respond to a Korean invasion and defend South Korea in that case. So the ally construct is interesting because we don't have that mechanism. ASEAN's not an ally construct mechanism. It's more an economic forum, a stability forum. And that's the Southeast Asian nations alone. But it doesn't have a huge security alliance mechanism of any, you know, threaded importance that can respond to security threats with each other or from outside. The interesting thing about all that I just said is every country is treated bilaterally. Everything we do with South Korea is pretty much different than how we work with Japan, how we work with Australia, Philippines, all of which are treaty allies. Different than Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam. Just complicated working—If you're talking access, basing overflights or presence and influence or the exercise rubrics as we try to get deterrence and interoperability—every country is different. Korea as an anchoring ally on the Asian continent is unique because we have this frozen armistice. We're still at war with North Korea. By all technical, you know, definitions. And we have to be trained and ready. General Brunson wearing those three hats USFK, UNC, CFC. Eighth Army, the Army's component to that Forces Korea Command has the responsibility help the South Korean army to defend that country. Number 9 or 10 GDP across the globe. Japan number 3 or 4, China 1 or 2, US number 1 or 2. These are all very important things that tie the future of the rules-based international order, or just the 21st century stability in the region together. COL Long         You talked a lot about some of the subordinate commands you had in Korea. Japan is one that I know you have a special relationship to as a former US Army Japan commander. And I would ask, what are your thoughts on how the transition is going with USARJ, with US Army Forces Korea has sort of transition to a Joint Headquarters command, what that relationship looks like and any thoughts you have that you'd like to share on that. LTG Vowell      Absolutely. So when I was there in 2021 to 23, as the USARJ commander, and it's interesting, I had two hats. I was the commander of US Army Japan and I Corps Forward, and that's pretty interesting. I Corps does not have a headquarters in Japan, but it was kind of the vestige of what we were planning to do in the early aughts, and that was to bring a robust command post, and capabilities from I Corps into Japan. My staff at the time, and to this day at USARJ has a lot of O6 colonels on it because its origin was IX Corps, which went away in the early 90s when the Army decided to downsize some of their capabilities. Forward didn't need that much and focus on Korea. There wasn't a case to be made to have an operational corps in Japan. So that's where we are right now is this interesting structure of a command that has operational requirements for reception, staging, onward movement, integration in Japan and support to South Korea with some of the rear area operations, NEO operations, sustainment operations, force flow as part of that connected defense between Korea and what we would do to help them. So that's what that headquarters does now. It is necessary but insufficient. Insufficient in that there's a lot of capability it could become. And so that's, to answer your question, USARJ will become an operationalized headquarters again as a multi-domain command Japan. We’ll have three of these commands in theater. We already have one: 7th Infantry Division with the Multi-Domain Task Force. First MDTF are combining right now at JBLM to become kind of this integrated all-domain multiple-domain command and control headquarters, that is essentially the deep operations fighter for a JTF. Some of that use battlefield framework deep close rear as a striker / light infantry division, kind of a hybrid there, is going to be expansive. The ability to have mid-range, long-range precision fires inside the organization means that with Tomahawks, SM-6 and other capabilities, that division now has to see much, much, much further. See, sense, makes sense, track, target in the deep fight much, much farther out into doe...

    1h 1m
  4. CLSC Dialogues – Ep 25 – Rick Gunnell and COL Michael Long – Discussion on the New National Security Strategy and its Relevance to the Pacific

    JAN 27

    CLSC Dialogues – Ep 25 – Rick Gunnell and COL Michael Long – Discussion on the New National Security Strategy and its Relevance to the Pacific

    Rick Gunnell and Colonel Michael Long discuss the latest National Security Strategy and its implications for the US posture toward the Indo-Pacific. Mr. Rick Gunnell Welcome to CLSC Dialogues. Production of the China Landpower Studies Center at the Army War College. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and not necessarily those of the Department of Army, US Army War College, or the US government. I'm Rick Gunnell, research professor of China military studies here at the China Landpower Studies Center. And today, I'm talking to the director of the Army's China Center, Colonel Mike Long, about America's newly published National Security Strategy.   COL Mike Long Thank you so much, Rick, for hosting this. And for those who aren't as familiar. The China Landpower Studies Center, as CLSC as we like to call it. I just wanted to first off, kind of make sure everybody knew who you were as one of the subject matter experts, chief researcher and experts on China, especially the PLA and its leadership. Rick is a Chinese speaker and an expert in the region, so we're very lucky to have him here hosting today's podcast. So, we're not just going to talk about the National Security Strategy. We're going to talk about its implications to the region as well as China specifically. So let me go to answer your question. And your question was on a little bit of background. So first let's kind of think about what the National Security Strategy is. And it is that it's America's grand strategy. It's our highest-level strategy. It's mandated for the White House to produce this. So in 1986, a Congressional mandate called the Goldwater-Nichols Act came out. Most of the Goldwater-Nichols Act is focused on what the US military needs to do, but there are some portions for what the executive branch has to do, and one of them is publishing a National Security Strategy.   Gunnell What is the goal of the National Security Strategy and who is the audience?   Long The goal is to ensure that the executive branch is aligned around a singular strategy in all of its policies, and then what Congress is looking for is a rationale behind the budget. And so Congress controls the purse. And what they want to understand is what is the strategy that needs to be funded by Congress. When you talk about the audience, which I thought was a great question, the audience is, of course, the rest of the executive branch to ensure that all of the service secretaries and those who work for them are aligned in policy and strategy. But it's also, like we said, Congress to say what the budget needs to be. It's also the American people. You know, you can see when you read this document that a lot of this document is talking directly to the American people. In addition to that, it's our allies and our partners around the world as well as our adversaries. I think this has a wide audience after the National Security Strategy.   Gunnell Are there other documents that will follow that will help kind of support or play out what is in the security strategy?   Long The term we like to use is they nest. So from this document, the National Security Strategy, from the military's perspective, we have a series of other strategies now. This document, the National Security Strategy tends to be the most political. This one is no exception. It’s a very political document as you read into it. But when you look at these subordinate documents that the military produces, first is by the Secretary of War will develop a National Defense Strategy, then the chairman, the Joint Chiefs of Staff will develop a National Military Strategy. From that, each one of the service secretaries will develop their own service strategies, and you'll see the combat commands make theater or more functional strategies for their areas as well. And so this is the overall document from which all that is aligned diving into the 2025 National Security Strategy, the NSS.   Gunnell What would you say is the focus of the new NSS?   Long I think when you look at it, I kind of like to look at it in a few pieces. One is to talk about how different it is than previous strategies. So the first is it's much shorter. It's about half the length of the previous strategies. We see this strategy, a lot is cut out because of its length. And one of those things that is cut out is a current state or an overall breakdown of the environment. Because of that, there are elements that are different in this strategy than others. Additionally, this strategy tends to be much less antagonistic towards large scale powers like China and Russia than we've seen in the past. But you asked what the focus was, and I would say the focus is a few things. Right? So really when you look at it, it comes from an overall, it's a mostly a realist perspective. If we're looking at international relations theory or political science, it really values hard power, military power, as well as economic power. It doesn't focus on great power competition in the way that we've seen in the past. And then I think the biggest aspect, and this is what we're going to talk about a lot, is this multipolar world view.   Gunnell Why don't you think the US calls China or Russia threats? This is about accepting a new multipolar world order. Is it about trying to be as neutral as possible while also stating where our red lines are? How would you analyze that?   Long I think it's a couple things. One is we don't have this sort of background of the environment that sort of lays out where everything is that you would see in the past, right. So you don't have this what we strategist call a current state of the environment articulated. So I think that's one reason why we don't see that. Another is exactly like you articulated, right, this multipolar world. We've heard Secretary Rubio talk a couple times about describing the world as multipolar. And this is the new position for the United States, at least recently. Right. So following the fall of the Soviet Union, we really went into a pretty unipolar world and most of the national security strategies since then, up until this, when really focused on a unipolar world with the United States as the lead. This one really looks at the world as potentially multipolar. And I would describe that as having spheres of influence. And I know we're going to get into that a little bit when it comes to Western Hemisphere as well as Asia-Pacific.   Gunnell Let's actually just go right into that then, because as I read through it, I think like many, we saw the biggest change as a focus more towards the Western Hemisphere. Over the past decade or so, we've been trying to balance or maybe pivot to Asia. And I think that this puts the Western Hemisphere in a place that it hasn't been before. And why would you think there's such a focus on that? And can we kind of walk and chew gum at the same time, per the NSS, can we both focus on the Western Hemisphere but also counter Chinese influence, adversarial influences in the Asia-Pacific?   Long I think one, that's an astute observation of the document. You know, it clearly articulates the Western Hemisphere as the priority theater. You know, it calls out the Monroe Doctrine, specifically stating that there's a Trump Corollary to this doctrine. I think the belief amongst the administration for this is that, you know, the real value in protecting our own backyard, for lack of a better term, small yard, big fence concept, vice giving up on some other area. Also, if you accept that there is a multipolar world, you have to accept the other powers had some sort of regional hegemonic capabilities in them. I think that's one aspect of it. When you look at the document, what it talks about, the Western Hemisphere, it really articulates three specific threats that we've seen. The first is migration. The second is drugs and crime. Third is foreign power intervention. And I think we've seen all the military used to counter all three of those threats.   Gunnell So, speaking of the Western Hemisphere, we can't ignore the most recent events in Venezuela. Do you see these events as something that is adhering to national security strategy? Is a nested within is it slightly different? How would you interpret the actual actions we've seen over the past week with what we saw in the strategy in December?   Long I think that when you look at what we saw in Venezuela, and to be specific, I would describe that as a raid on the capital of Venezuela when military operation called snatch and grab for the president, his wife, and brought them back for them to face trial. I think you see a couple aspects of that. One part of the Monroe Doctrine, you know, when you look at it, a lot of presidents have viewed the Monroe Doctrine in different ways. But the basic understanding of the Monroe Doctrine, it's that foreign powers don't have control over the Western Hemisphere. Now, there's this kind of famous Roosevelt Corollary to that, the Theodore Roosevelt Corollary to that, where you see Theodore Roosevelt really looking at having much more control inside of the countries of the Western Hemisphere. And this is where we get into the Panama Canal, the transition to Panama, becoming a country, [seceding from] Colombia. I think this Trump Corollary is more similar to a Roosevelt Corollary. So if you look at, you know, each one of those specific threats, you know, one was drugs and crime. The indictment under President Maduro is about drugs and crime. Another concern is about foreign powers. You know, the vast majority of the military equipment inside of Venezuela that was used to protec

    49 min
  5. CLSC Dialogues – Ep 24 – MAJ Brennan Deveraux and COL Michael Long – Meet the New CLSC Director: A Conversation on Korea

    11/24/2025

    CLSC Dialogues – Ep 24 – MAJ Brennan Deveraux and COL Michael Long – Meet the New CLSC Director: A Conversation on Korea

    In this episode of CLSC Dialogues, Major Brennan Deveraux welcomes Colonel Michael Long, the new Director of the China Landpower Studies Center. After discussing COL Long’s thoughts on the new assignment, the conversation shifts to his recent experiences in Korea, offering listeners unique insights from the former Eighth Army G-5 Assistant Chief of Staff for Policy, Planning, and Strategy. Brennan Deveraux Hello. You’re listening to CLSC Dialogues, a China Landpower Studies Center (CLSC) production. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests, and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I’m talking today to the new director of the China Landpower Study Center, Colonel Mike Long. Colonel Long. Welcome.   Michael Long Hey, thank you Brennan. I appreciate you hosting this for the team, and it really means a lot.   Deveraux So, Colonel Long, you’re coming from Korea as the Eighth Army G5. If I could just have you real quick introduce yourself [provide] a little bit about you, and kind of, how you’re coming into CLSC and what that means for the organization.   Long Hey. Perfect. Yeah, I’m coming from the Pacific. Which makes sense why I’m here at CLSC, the China Landpower Studies Center. And, I’m a functional area 59, just like yourself, so [I’m] focused on strategy and policy, planning. I’m coming here from Eighth Army, I was the G5 there. So, assistant chief of staff for policy, planning, strategy, [and] also worked force management. So it’s a great opportunity, and I learned a ton in the job.   Deveraux Great. Well, welcome. I know you’ve already jumped in. So we got you here a couple of months ago. Finally getting you in to talk. Can you talk real quick just to make sure our listeners are caught up? CLSC. What it is and kind of your perspective on what your mission is going forward with the research organization.   Long Yeah, absolutely. So, we’re a team of, there’s a total of six of us. There’s myself as the director. I’m more focused on blue. Blue across the Pacific. Heavy focus on Korea and Japan. We also have three civilians.   Deveraux Just to clarify. When you say blue, you mean friendly forces?   Long I sure do. Yeah. Great. Great point. So that’s really my understanding. My focus here is, you know, when you think of blue and, especially in the landpower perspective, we’re thinking of the Marines out there in mainly Japan and Hawaii. We’re thinking of USARPAC (US Army Pacific Command) and then all the supporting organizations as well as Eighth Army, USFK (US Forces-Korea) it’s portion as well as USFJ (US Forces-Japan) in Japan. But our CLSC team, back to that, is myself as a director. And we have three civilians who are Chinese subject matter experts. So they have a detailed understanding of what I would call the red perspective, the China perspective. Across really at the strategic level, down to the operational and even the tactical level of understanding of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) specifically. And our focus overall is really landpower. We are also lucky enough to have another colonel, Colonel Kyle Markram, who did a podcast with you earlier. He’s a foreign area officer. He served in China. He is also a [Chinese] speaker. And he just got to us from Taiwan. And then we have a visiting professor, also, Doctor Sheena Greitens, and she spends 50% of her time working with us and 50% of her time working for UT (University of Texas), where she does great work out there, has her own podcast, and is quite a prolific publisher.   Deveraux Yeah, thanks. And I think it’s worth noting that while all of those researchers are looking at China, they all kind of have a little bit of a different lens. So I’ve worked with Brian Carlson, who I know looks at that China-Russia relationship, which is important. And then Jake Rinaldi, who recently went off to Rand, he looked a lot at that, China-North Korea relationship and North Korea’s impact in the region as well. So when we say, “China experts,” it really goes beyond just, you know, the line I could draw around the country, it’s a regional problem, or a regional challenge, depending on how you view the world.   Long Yeah, that’s a great point. And you know, our real focus is China and the landpower aspect. But we try to look at the entire INDO-PACOM AOR (US Indo-Pacific Command Area of Responsibility) and we have a focus across the board. But like you’re saying, all of our experts, they’re all you know, we have five Chinese speakers on the team. They really are looking at original source products from China and doing great work for us.   Deveraux One of the things I heard in a brief one time is you can’t look at China without also looking at Korea. I’d be curious, since we have you coming directly from Eighth Army and looking at the Korea problem, if you’d be open to talk a little bit about the Korea problem set, some of the challenges, and just kind of what’s going [on] out there on the peninsula.   Long Absolutely. So I served in Korea, in Eighth Army under two CG (commanding generals). The most recent one was Lieutenant General Chris LaNeve, who, his hats in the ring to take on as the vice chief of staff. So he was a great leader to work with, and he really described Korea as the strategic high ground. And I think that’s a good way to kind of think about where Korea is and what it’s what exist. You know, it sits next to a, it’s really in a dangerous neighborhood. It’s got three authoritarian neighbors, with China, North Korea, and Russia. It also is right next to a key ally, Japan. And then not too far away from Taiwan. So regionally, it’s located in a unique position. And the Army’s very lucky to have that, to be positioned on that strategic key terrain.   Deveraux I think two things are really interesting about that, that a lot of people don’t think about. First, Russia, a lot of us, when we think about Russia, we very much look at Western Europe, Russia and NATO. But to your point, Russia, not only extends all the way out there, but [it] has been very involved in Asian politics, Asian conflict, for a long time, historically. And the second point, you say Japan as the ally and yes, it is, but, Korea and Japan actually have a pretty unique historical relationship that I know kind of creates an interesting challenge when we talk about working with Korea and Japan as kind of a, a trilateral relationship.   Long You’re 100% right. You know, there still are some historic issues from that time. You know, I think it was about 1910 until the end of, until the end of World War II, where Korea was essentially colonized by the Japanese Empire. And there was atrocities committed. Absolutely. And so, there are people who are still alive today who were part of that. And so, for good reason, there’s some concerns there. But since 2014, you know, the dates we, where we see this, large air defense weapon system called the THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense) come in and massive overreaction by China, that was, that really hit South Korea hard. You really see across the South Korean population, the population turn and really, you know, go from a population that has a lot of animosity towards Japan to a lot of animosity towards China. So if you look at it today, you know, it’s something like 80% of the people still have negative feelings about China. And almost all of the young people today are actually very pro Japan. They like anime. They like, all of the Japanese aspects.   Deveraux Everyone likes anime. No, that’s real interesting. So I had a chance to go to Korea a handful years ago. Definitely not as long or as important of a task. I more helped move some cargo. But I was there long enough to get my cool little ribbon. And I couldn’t help but think, I was up fairly north and South Korea, up at Camp Casey, and I couldn’t help but think about the historical aspect of actually fighting on the peninsula and looking at the terrain and the mountains and just imagining what it would be to actually have a big land conflict, on the peninsula [of] Korea. Could you talk a little bit about how you guys think about or how, when you were there, you thought about the terrain and what that really means for a potential conflict in that area?   Long Absolutely. And, you know, in the Korean War, the terrain and the climate was really an adversary. The coldest battle Americans ever fought was their Chosin, you know, their reports that the temperature dropped to -30, -40 degrees. Absolutely brutal. But it’s a very mountainous terrain, both North and South Korea. And when we think mountainous, we got to think Afghanistan, West Virginia, super-duper mountains everywhere. It also has a very cold temperatures. It’s a peninsula. But in reality, at least while the armistice is going on, which is the stalemate from the Korean War that we have now, South Korea really is a lot more like an island. And it has a lot of the same obstacles that an island nation like Japan does. Really. The only way to get in and out of South Korea right now is by airplane or by sea. So SLOCs (Sea Lines of Communication), SPODs (Seaport of Debarkation), APODs (Aerial Port of Debarkation). These are incredibly important when we think about it.   Deveraux Can you, real quick, for the listeners who aren’t as familiar with the language that is the Army, just break down those acronyms real quick you just dropped on us.   Long Yeah. Thanks for catching me on that, I appreciate that. So we talk about SLOCs, Sea Lines o...

    37 min
  6. CLSC Dialogues – Ep 23 – Joshua Arostegui, Brennan Deveraux, and Rick Gunnell – More Than a Numbers Game: Comparing US and Chinese Landpower in the Pacific Requires Context

    09/03/2025

    CLSC Dialogues – Ep 23 – Joshua Arostegui, Brennan Deveraux, and Rick Gunnell – More Than a Numbers Game: Comparing US and Chinese Landpower in the Pacific Requires Context

    [Rick Gunnell] You're listening to CLSC Dialogues, landpower in the Indo-Pacific, a China Landpower Studies Center production. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of Army, US Army, War College, or any other agency of the US government. I'm Rick Gunnel, research professor of China military studies and today we're talking with Josh Arostegui, chair of the China Landpower Studies Center, and Brennan Devereaux, national security researcher at the Strategic Studies Institute. Today, we'll be chatting about the recently published monograph More Than a Numbers Game: Comparing US and Chinese Landpower in the Pacific Requires Context. I'll start with an opening question. How did you become interested in this topic, and how did it evolve over time? [Joshua Arostegui] Well, I'll jump on this one first. So, this was essentially a direct result of a visit from senior leaders from the US Army Pacific. When our center first stood up. It was more of an ask for us to get after, you know, assessing or analyzing, you know, how US Army campaigning in the Indo-Pacific was working? Maybe describe a little bit more in detail and potentially look at measures of effectiveness, you know, against adversaries. I'm a China guy, you know, I like to research China stuff. While I worked for the Army for many years, it was one of those topics that I said, well, I'll give it a shot. And, as I did it, I realized I knew a lot more about China than I knew about the US Army. And so, after I wrote my first couple drafts, I was a little disappointed with how they turned out. And I went to the office next door and talked to Brennan and say, “Hey, Brennan, what do you think?” And he gave me some great ideas about potentially creating a more of a comparative analysis with how the PLA and its army, in the Indo-Pacific, was posturing and modernizing and use that as essentially a foundation to compare both sides. And as I started to write this, I said, wow, this is a really great idea. I also realized I still don't know as much about the US Army as I should. “Hey, Brennan, do you want to help out with this one?” And, honestly, him coming on board the project, you know, me co-opting his assistance made this really, a far better project. Brennan? [Brennan Deveraux] Yeah. So, I took from where Josh chose, and we kind of looked at this big restructure with the comparison between the forces. And one thing that drove that is there's this old Navy PowerPoint slide that both of us had seen - a lot of people who have looked at future war have seen - where it's, it pretty much that the bottom line in it is look how many ships China has. Isn't that terrifying? Which “yes…but” was always kind of the conversation. And as we transition that to landpower, it's really important because these systems, while still very important, are less the foundation of what that power is. So, it's important to know how many tanks someone has. But there's more to how tanks are employed than just how many ships someone has. And so we use that kind of as their foundation to say, don't do that. Don't just compare like items and say, “oh my gosh, we're doomed because they have more people.” Because they do. They have more people. They'll continue to have more people. And if they want, they'll continue to have a bigger army. And what we did is we started with kind of this shorter commentary piece, that really argued more of that, which was, you know, we got to make sure as we're doing these assessments that we don't fall into that trap because it's such an easy trap for analysis. But that really also, similar to the first draft Josh did, it really didn't pan out. Because that foundational knowledge wasn't really there. So, we switched from commentary to actual hard analysis to kind of provide some of that framework that says, you know, there is context between and here are some of the things we need to measure. And as we started getting into those things that we thought we needed to identify, you know, those big picture things, the length really got away from us. And we turned it from, you know, what was initially asked, hey, can you help us with a short commentary piece to a medium commentary piece to medium analysis and what it ended up with is the standalone monograph I think we're happy with. I don't think we could have went shorter and got the analysis in. And if we want too much longer, I think we would have deterred some readers with a little too long, don't read. [Rick Gunnell] Great. So, let's dive into it. Tell me about the five features of landpower you chose to assess. How did you pick them and was anything left out you wish you could have added? [Brennan Deveraux] So, I'll go first on this one. So, we started really big picture. Like what are the defining categories that is landpower? And so, there's a ton of options with this. But our initial like I said, when we were just doing that commentary, we just picked three and we said, what? What does each nation think about when they say landpower? What are the definitions of landpower? Right. We can hopefully find those in a book and pull them out, compare and contrast and find those little differences, because that's the foundation of what we're talking about. The second, really fit into kind of how they each nation understands warfare. When we talk about how landpower is used as a tool to build relationships, and that's very easy in the blue hat. And that's where we expect to find the most differences between red and blue. And then that third one was how are they simulating warfare? Right. How are the nations looking at how landpower is actually going to be used in a conflict? Because that's what that simulation of warfare is. As the product developed, as I said, we really wanted to get deeper into the analysis. We added two more, that, again, were very big picture. They were foundational to what we think landpower is, what we think landpower is going to do and how we want to shape it. Which was the next two underlying warfare concepts, you know, what do they think about, future war will be? And then the corresponding modernization efforts, if future war is going to be X, how do I get my force to be there, you know, when that war comes? [Joshua Arostegui] Yeah. I mean, that's spot on. You know, the first two or the two topics about, you know, campaigning in the Indo-Pacific and relationship building, you know, training, I should say, and relationship building really were kind of easy. Those were big. Those are big primary missions for US Army Pacific. You know, where, you know, the Chinese don't openly discuss a lot of these topics, you know, especially the relationship building. They're very anti-alliances. And, while they work, you know, abroad with partners are bringing partners, you know, into the country to do some training. It's not to the same extent that we do, we being the US, do with our partners and allies. Right. So, it was easy to at least touch on those kinds of topics. But when you get into the landpower thing, that was that was a bit more problematic. Right? And, so when Brennan said, hey, we should really create this kind of defined definition, I should say of, of landpower, you know, it's a lot easier for the US Army because we publish it openly. Right? So, you read Army Doctrine and ADP 3-0, operations, and it talks about what landpower is. Guess what the PLA does not do: publish those types of things openly. So, I had to essentially dig through years of, you know, PLA textbooks and operational art in Chinese to dig out, you know, their concepts and they don't really get after that. It's not a topic that they clearly define. Instead, they like to talk about, you know, domain control. So they'll say, you know, we control this, the land domain. And we'll control the sea domain or the maritime domain and the air domain, which is somewhat roughly equivalent. But instead they also focus on, you know, service strategies like the Army's, you know, responsibilities and their strategies are such and such and such. So what I did was I had to kind of, you know, combine all this into finding a best answer. It was not easy. And I think but I think it did provide a great foundation, you know, for the product. But, you know, getting after the other ones, like modernization. I've written a lot of modernization over the years. It's a it's a big topic that I think people need to understand because when you see the news about Chinese, you know, military modernization, you're oftentimes seeing things like the Renhai cruiser or, you know, the fifth, potential sixth generation aircraft and that kind of stuff that are being out or, fielded to the force. You really don't see much of the news about, you know, the large numbers of air defense or advanced air defense systems that the Army's fielding and light high mobility systems that are, you know, enable power projection. You don't see that in the news as often, despite the fact that they come out just as regularly as other new systems. So, I thought that was a really a fun way to go about that one. But the operational concept one, I'll just touch on this briefly, was a topic that I've been kind of tracking, all domain operations, and we'll probably get in this a little later, most likely. But, you know, it was neat to see the comparison between the two because, you know, the Army was tasked with developing this all-domains operations concept by XI Jinping in 2017, which, miraculously, you know, aligns with when the US Army was tasked with developing multi-domain battle. It's, there's a lot of similarities there. So, it made it a pretty easy, set of reasons wh...

    35 min

  7. 04/14/2025

    CLSC Dialogues – Ep 22 – LTG McFarlane – Commanding General of America's First Corps

    [Colonel Rich Butler] You're listening to CLSC dialogues, Landpower in the Indo-Pacific. A China Land Power Study Center production. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests, and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government. I am Colonel Rich Butler, the Director of CLSC. Today we are talking with Lieutenant General Matthew McFarlane, the commanding general of America's I Corps, headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Having served with distinction at all levels of the Army and Joint Force, he now leads the Army's senior tactical headquarters in the Indo-Pacific. Today we'll be chatting about his views of the operational environment and the hard work the Corps is doing across the Indo-Pacific. Sir, welcome to the podcast. Let's begin by noting you're coming to us not from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, but from South Korea, where you are deployed supporting Exercise Freedom Shield.  [Lieutenant General Matthew McFarlane] Thanks. It's great to be here.  [Colonel Rich Butler] So let's start with one opening question. Can you describe I Corps and its role in the Indo-Pacific to our listeners? And how does I Corps contribute to U.S. deterrence efforts in the Indo-Pacific? [Lieutenant General Matthew McFarlane] All right. That's, those are two big questions. I'll start with the first one here and break it down for you a little bit, and then, and then hit the second one because we certainly, do a lot of the deterrence, as we operate across the Pacific.  First, U.S. Army I Corps consists of three, divisions. We have the 7th Infantry Division. That's it with the corps headquarters at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. It's got two Stryker brigade combat teams. And then we have the 11th Airborne Division located in Alaska between Joint Base Elmendorf, Richardson, and Fort Wainwright, Alaska. 11th Airborne Division has an airborne brigade and an air assault brigade, and then the 25th Infantry Division located at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. It has two infantry brigade combat teams, which are in the process of transforming now and I know we'll talk more about that throughout the podcast here. But they are our army's jungle experts. They operate and train, certify themselves in the jungle environment. And then obviously operate across the Pacific in the jungle environment. The 11th Airborne Division that I mentioned is our army's Arctic experts, operating there in Alaska, where they, they are, the subject matter experts at Arctic warfare for Army and share that with their allies and partners. But they also contribute to our efforts across the Pacific at high altitude in India, cold weather in northern Japan. And then, also in the jungle environment, with many of our other partners south of Japan, and their airborne brigade, gives, gives, the army and the joint force a lot of strategic flexibility, if you will, as they can mass combat power quickly and move it quickly across the Pacific if it's needed for crisis. So a lot of different capabilities across I Corps' maneuver elements, the three divisions. We also have an expeditionary sustainment command that helps ensure, we can, sustain our operations, across the Pacific. Right now, they're in the Philippines, helping prepare for exercises we have, starting this month, going through June; as well as some separate brigades that, provide an enabling capability for the Corps. We have an engineer brigade, a field artillery brigade, medical brigade, military intelligence brigade, communications brigade, and a military police brigade. So a lot of, different capability within US Army I Corps. The separate brigades are located with me in Washington state. And, we apply all of those formation I just mentioned across the Pacific. We organize. So for, exercises or operations, we, we align different parts of, the separate brigades with the divisions or subordinates in the divisions, for whatever's needed for a certain exercise. We generate readiness, at home station. Each of the home stations. Jungle readiness in Hawaii. Arctic readiness in Alaska and in in Washington state with their Stryker brigades will train, like, right now at our Yakima training center in Washington state. Then we'll also generate the readiness, through what we call our combat training centers for the Alaska and Hawaii team. They do that, at in their locations, in their environments, Arctic and jungle to a joint Pacific multinational readiness center, which is, transformation of our combat training centers. But now doing it in those environments. We'll bring in, our observers, coach, and trainers from the National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center up to augment, a unit that we have in Hawaii that helps us certify those formations. And then the Stryker brigades will we'll go to the National Training Center, Joint Readiness Training Center. One of those Stryker brigades will go to the National Training Center here in September. So generating readiness is a key aspect of being ready in the Pacific. And then we'll apply that readiness across the Pacific through what we call Operation Pathways. I Corps organize and execute some 40 plus exercises over the course of the year with 20 some different partner nations. We work closely with them and our work with them drives the deterrence. The question you mentioned before, deterrence against the PRC, deterrence against Russia and other adversaries in the area. And as we do that, we build joint interior lines, which are incredibly important in the Pacific if you look at the long lines of communication. So our ability to sustain ourselves, protect ourselves, test and prove our equipment that can operate in that environment and interoperate with our partners. So that was a long answer to your question. But I wanted to [provide] a fulsome response based on all that U.S. Army I Corps does and the important area that we do it and that's in the Pacific. [Colonel Rich Butler] Sir, I really appreciate you making linear of what is a really complex organization for folks to understand and hopefully, you know, the Army and your website, and other things that have been written about what Corps do in the Army is important. So hopefully our listeners, if they want to do a little bit of deeper dive, can look into that and contact us through the CLSC and we can put them in touch with the right people too. Based on that, and I know you're in touch more on how the Army and the Corps, how you're transforming the Corps and the corps echelon. But we're preparing, you know, for a war fight at the you know, at the end of the day, there's a lot of missions that we do related to things that are less in war. But ultimately, the Corps is a warfighting organization. And obviously, you don't need to be living under a rock to know that we've been working to transition into the Indo-Pacific greater, into greater and greater strength over the last decade plus. So noting that China's rising, can you put things a little bit into the context of how you see is the U.S. Army being prepared for a potential conflict with China? [Lieutenant General Matthew McFarlane] That's what we think about every day. You know, we are prepared, but we've got to be more prepared to dominate. If you think about, the evolving character of war that we're seeing around the world right now. The army's undergoing transformation, this transformation that our Chief of Staff of the Army is driving. So it's in how we operate. It's how we train, to get ready. It's how we organize our forces for large scale combat operations. In any environment, but especially in the Pacific, as we have not operated, in the Pacific, in terms of conflict, you know, since, since Vietnam. And so, we are continually looking at how we can gain technical advantage, and adjust how we operate based on lessons we're learning as we do exercises and lessons we're learning as we watch, conflict in the Ukraine, conflict in Gaza. Lessons that I learned when I was in in charge of Operation Inherent Resolve, in terms of our forces in Iraq and Syria. And so we continue to, to drive foundational readiness, for soldiers, and then adjust how we're organizing, and operating, based on emerging technology. An example that would be we're much more distributed now. And so we know we need to, to drive, our technology to allow us to have multiple command and control nodes, command posts on the battlefield, distributed over long distances. We need our firing positions, from our artillery distributed, operating in smaller nodes, but still being connected, to understand, where we are and more importantly, understand where the enemy is so we can bring, precision effects on them, both lethal and non-lethal. And, we are, continuing to drive this effort along with the rest of the army, to share lessons with what we're calling transformation in contact. We have a brigade, the second Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. That is one of these transformation and contact brigades for the army. There's one in the 101st, one in 10th mountain and the 2nd Cavalry Regiment... and we're starting a second iteration of that. But these brigades are spearheading experimentation with technology and organization to help us see and understand the best way to operate, optimizing the technology that's available to match and dominate against threat capabilities that we are watching very closely. And so we leverage our Operations Pathways to make sure we can not only transform, but when we apply it in the Pacific, we are doing it in a way that we are testing our way of war and our technology to ensure it can work./p...

    28 min

  8. 04/11/2025

    CLSC Dialogues – Ep 21 – Dan Rice – How Chinese Leaders Conceptualize Protracted War

    You're listening to CLSC Dialogues, a China Landpower Studies Center production. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the U.S. Army War College, or any other agency of the U.S. government. I’m Jake Rinaldi, a defense analyst at the China Landpower Studies Center. Jake Rinaldi: In this episode, we’ll be discussing how Chinese leaders conceptualize protracted war. Joining us is Dan Rice, the China political and military subject matter expert at Marine Corps University. He’s also the CEO of the geopolitical analysis firm Foreign Brief and president of Dongfeng LLC, his consulting company. Dan has published on Chinese strategy and the PLA with various think tanks, academic institutions, and U.S. Department of Defense China centers. 00:00:57:18 – 00:01:25:15 Rinaldi: He recently published an article—completely in Chinese—with Taiwan’s National Defense University on countering dual-front threats in the maritime domain. We’ll be talking with Dan about research he presented at the 2024 Carlisle Conference on the PLA. His paper explored how the concept of protracted war—a war lasting months or years, consuming vast quantities of munitions, equipment, and lives—appears in Chinese publications from party, state, and military institutions. 00:01:25:18 – 00:01:30:00 Rinaldi: Dan, welcome, and thank you for being here. Excited to see this paper published. 00:01:30:02 – 00:01:34:17 Dan Rice Jake, thank you very much for having me. It’s always a pleasure talking with you—really looking forward to this. 00:01:34:19 – 00:01:46:28 Rinaldi: Let’s start with a quick overview of the paper you wrote for our conference. What’s your central argument or the most interesting or surprising conclusion you reached? 00:01:47:00 – 00:02:13:26 Rice: Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot to unpack, but I think the big takeaway is that the way China officially discusses protracted war is slightly different from how we’ve been approaching it. At the conference, we tried to define what protracted war is and where it fits in our framework. But the way they approach it—across the institutions you mentioned—looks more like a grand strategic framework than a purely military one. 00:02:13:26 – 00:02:54:29 Rice: So instead of viewing it solely as a military concept, they’re incorporating Mao Zedong’s ideas about protracted war into various aspects of grand strategy. It’s a bit of a conceptual tangle at first, but it offers insight into trends we see in the news or broader CCP strategic behavior. 00:02:55:02 – 00:03:22:14 Rice: This is really a whole-of-government, whole-of-civilization type of fight. That was probably the biggest takeaway. And then, of course, we focus a lot on the PLA—you at CLSC and me at MCU. For the PLA specifically, one of the most interesting ideas came from a PLA-affiliated author who discussed not a protracted battle per se, but a protracted process of war—emphasizing preparation, technology development, and gaining small edges in military-adjacent areas to build power. 00:04:24:15 – 00:04:49:06 Rice: Those were some of the more interesting insights. Personally, I learned a lot from the research and appreciate CLSC for the opportunity to be part of the conference and dig into this topic. 00:04:49:08 – 00:05:12:27 Rinaldi: Absolutely—a really interesting and well-written paper. Your use of the term "military tangential" really highlights a core theme: the idea of protracted war often appears in economic or national policy discussions rather than strictly military ones. 00:05:12:28 – 00:05:38:13 Rinaldi: You did find some PLA Daily articles and other military writings, but why do you think the Chinese shy away from discussing protracted war in a military context? Does it reflect confidence in their ability to win a quick, decisive war—or is it more about political constraints on media and scholarship? 00:05:38:15 – 00:05:42:18 Rinaldi: That seems like a really important question. 00:05:42:21 – 00:06:21:25 Rice: Yeah, and it’s a really interesting one. You kind of have to read the tea leaves, because they don’t say it explicitly. But I’d guess it’s not about confidence in winning a short, sharp war. In fact, in talking with colleagues, we’re still trying to figure out if China has ever used the term “short and sharp war” to describe a conflict with the U.S.—and the answer is probably no. 00:06:21:25 – 00:07:01:14 Rice: Many Chinese sources suggest the opposite: that a war with the U.S. wouldn’t be short. They often avoid the term “protracted,” but the implication is that it would be long. That likely connects to history. Under Xi Jinping, there’s been a significant emphasis on studying party history and strategic thought. The CCP and PLA share very similar strategic roots. 00:07:01:14 – 00:07:27:00 Rice: So it’s partly about using party history—particularly Mao Zedong Thought—to frame modern challenges. There are probably a number of reasons for this approach. 00:07:27:02 – 00:08:06:01 Rice: One possibility is that Xi used protracted war discourse to consolidate ideological leadership before securing his third term. A group of authors from CITIC—China International Trust Investment Corporation—even tried to redefine protracted war in economic terms. 00:08:06:07 – 00:08:49:04 Rice: They published that book in 2016—right around the time the 14th Five-Year Plan was coming into focus. So the concept of protracted war became a sort of thought-leadership tool aligned with Xi’s emphasis on party history and long-term planning. It helped lay the ideological groundwork for that Five-Year Plan, which coincided with Xi’s third term. 00:08:49:07 – 00:09:23:11 Rice: So really, it’s a way of consolidating party strategy and thought under Xi. They’re using these older, not-always-successful models to address modern challenges—and to support Xi’s vision for China’s future. 00:09:23:11 – 00:09:44:27 Rice: That thinking also informs how they approach different domains, including the military—but always as part of a broader, more strategic framework. 00:09:44:29 – 00:10:17:11 Rinaldi: Very interesting. At the conference, there was a lot of discussion about China’s so-called “gray zone” tactics—low-level confrontation strategies. Some participants even argued that we’re already in a protracted competition with China. Do you think that’s a useful analytical lens? Rice: Yeah, fantastic. I think “protracted competition” is actually a pretty apt way to describe it. And I incorporated this into the paper that you guys are publishing. I did the due diligence of buying that CITIC Press book and reading through it—though it’s not from the PLA; it’s more of an economic strategy book. But what I found fascinating was its descriptions of globalization and, in particular, its take on the Thucydides Trap with the U.S., framed under protracted war theory. It emphasized the need to avoid an existential battle with the U.S. And that’s a core idea of protracted war: many small, decisive engagements instead of one large, existential battle. The way to avoid that kind of decisive conflict is through gray zone or coercive activities that fall below the threshold of open war. If the strategy is to gradually accumulate favorable, small-scale victories to shift the balance of power, then these quasi-war operations—what I’d call coercive activities or PLA operations—are key tools. That’s how you start to shift the balance without engaging in a full-scale, existential fight—or what some might call the Thucydides Trap: a large-scale war with the current hegemon. So when we say “protracted competition,” I think that’s a fair description. Their writings reflect that, across different levers of comprehensive national power. They also talk more broadly—not always directly tied to protracted war—about using coercion to gain advantage. And, quick plug: we’re standing up a Journal of PLA Studies at MQ. One of the first articles will be a comprehensive look at operationalizing PLA coercive activities. There’s a broad spectrum across PLA services and fields where they envision applying pressure—whether it’s to deter or compel adversaries—to shape international conditions for China’s rise. So stay tuned for that. Rinaldi: That sounds very, very interesting. Important work. A lot of what we’re discussing is how Mao’s writings are being resurrected—whether for political mobilization or analytical framing of U.S.-China competition, or even just China’s broader regional goals. So I wonder: to what extent does this modern framing signal a shift in how China approaches global competition or national security? And how much of it is really a departure from historical PRC policies and rhetoric in these areas? Rice: Yeah, excellent questions. And I think there are a couple layers to each of them. First, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a shift. Earlier we talked about the political backdrop to this resurgence in discussion of protracted war. I’d say it’s more of a refocus—or maybe a doubling down—on how China has traditionally approached both grand strategy and military conflict. Mao’s On Protracted War came out of the Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War—what we’d call the beginning of WWII. But it was also invoked during the Korean War, though not as successfully. At one point, someone in the CCP even asked Mao to write an update—On Protracted War 2.0, so to speak. So it’s...

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About

CLSC Dialogues tackles complex and pressing questions about China’s emergence as a global power and its implications for the US military. The podcast uses Strategic Landpower as the focal point of discussion—providing unique and important insights that cut across the aperture of the levers of power. The forum provides senior leaders and practitioners with a better understanding of the strategies, capabilities, and the integration of the PLA into the CCP’s campaign to turn the rules-based international order to its advantage. Further, the podcast shares insights and recommendations for developing better deterrence strategies and campaigns for the United States and our allies. Questions or feedback? E-mail usarmy.carlisle.awc.mbx.parameters@army.mil

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    U.S. Army War College Public Affairs
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