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| http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/ |
Several truisms can be derived from the preceding arguments. Regarding Air-Sea Battle, it would be illogical and ahistorical to assert that any kind of U.S. coercive strike campaign against Chinese economic or civil infrastructure could successfully defend embattled allies at an acceptable level of risk. It would also be illogical and ahistorical to assert that U.S. forces’ abilities to conduct wartime operations in the East Asian maritime would inherently depend upon them executing preemptive conventional strikes against PLA infrastructure and forces located in mainland China, or that ‘high-end’ operations in general would be appropriate for all conceivable scenarios. That said, it ought to be observed that no authoritative DoD source or credible Air-Sea Battle advocate has ever publicly made such assertions.
Turning to Offshore Control, it would be unsound to assert that a notional U.S. campaign to defend an ally (or restore freedom of maneuver within East Asian waters) could succeed under all conceivable scenarios without ever having the need to conduct any form of strikes against the PLA inside China’s borders. It would also be quite deterministic to assert that an economic blockade would assuredly induce China to restore the status quo ante within a politically acceptable amount of time without hazarding Chinese escalation.
Once we discard these problematic assertions, it becomes quite obvious that much of Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control actually overlap to a remarkable degree.
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