The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict

by Elbridge A. Colby

Denying China hegemony over Asia is therefore the cardinal objective of US grand strategy.

coalition is unlikely to form against China without America doing so and the much better prospects that such coalitions will form and sustain themselves in other key regions with a more modest American contribution.

What matters most, however, is not American credibility in some general sense—that is, upholding every pledge or promise the United States has ever made, however imprudent—but US differentiated credibility in Asia: the degree to which important actors in the region believe that the United States will defend them effectively against China.

America’s best military strategy is a denial defense, or a strategy that seeks to deny China’s ability to use military force to achieve its political objectives.

The top priority for the US defense establishment should be ensuring that China cannot subordinate a US ally or quasi-ally in Asia, with the first priority being developing and maintaining the ability to conduct a denial defense of Taiwan.

maintain the nation’s territorial integrity and, within that territory, security from foreign attack; sustain a free, autonomous, and vigorous democratic-republican political order; and enable economic flourishing and growth. In simpler terms, our basic national objectives are to provide Americans with physical security, freedom, and prosperity.

Physical force, especially the ability to kill, is the ultimate form of coercive leverage.

Because of Asia’s size and military-economic potential, ensuring that it is not subjected to such hegemony is of primary importance for the

once it had secured such hegemonic power, a state could consolidate and leverage it to project violent force elsewhere, including into North America, and perhaps even occupy or subordinate the United States.

every aspiring hegemon in history has sought or planned to establish an economic system favoring itself, in order to enrich itself, sustain its predominance, and exclude or disfavor potential competitors.

the fundamental and primary objective of US strategy must be sustainably avoiding another state’s hegemony over one of the key regions of the world.

Rather, it would be won by the side that, within such constraints, had the will and way to employ its military forces to meet its objective.

deny another state’s bid for regional hegemony. Thus the United States might be more powerful than China in global terms, but if China were better able to project its power in Asia, or willing to fight harder and risk more to attain its goal than Washington was willing to commit to deny it, it could establish predominance over the region. This is why the regional balance of power is so critical.

The goal of an anti-hegemonic coalition, then, is to prevent an aspiring hegemon like China from dominating a region like Asia by convincing important states that it would prevail in a systemic regional war. The aspirant’s goal is positive: establishing predominance. The coalition’s goal, by contrast, is negative: denial.

balancing for a state involved are that it fortifies the coalition, increasing its chances of checking the aspirant’s bid for hegemony and wrapping the state in the coalition’s broader defensive power.

bandwagoning or accommodating an aspirant like China, by contrast, is that it avoids such risks. By joining with the aspirant or merely not contesting it, the bandwagoning state removes itself from the aspirant’s sights.

This means that the coalition’s center of gravity is the confidence of its potential member states that the benefit of joining or staying in the coalition will exceed the benefit of remaining outside or withdrawing.

credibility—and especially a state’s credibility with respect to something as fundamental as its alliance relationships and willingness to go to war—is a precious

In short, interests are not fixed,

the United States is most credible to its regional allies—and to China itself—if it upholds its compacts in Asia, particularly against Beijing. In simpler terms, to sustain the credibility of alliances designed to help deny China hegemony in Asia, the United States should first and foremost ensure that it upholds its commitments to those alliances.

defensibility means that no ally’s effective defense should so deplete the guarantor’s power or resolve that it becomes unable or unwilling to uphold its commitments and responsibilities to the anti-hegemonic coalition, let alone vitiate its ability to defend its primary interests.

War limitation is thus itself a product of negotiation, a matter, in Thomas Schelling’s famous formulation, of violent bargaining.

the war must remain limited in both means and ends; (2) the United States must be able to achieve its political ends by operating within those limitations; and (3) Beijing must agree to de-escalate or end the conflict on terms acceptable to the United States.

The more painful and more likely a combatant anticipates these costs will be, the more likely it will judge the risk of triggering them too great to continue fighting or escalating.

Accordingly, a state’s willingness to suffer and risk in pursuit of an objective depends heavily on how a war evolves.

best strategies by two factors.

gains that outweigh the costs.

advance China toward its goal of regional hegemony.

China’s best military strategies are those that, consistent with the focused and sequential strategy, defeat the anti-hegemonic coalition or prevent it from forming, consolidating, or holding together.

An important flaw in this viewpoint is its tendency to exaggerate the significance of surprise.

surprise generally cannot make up for a bad military strategy.

Thus, surprise is ultimately not the problem: being gravely damaged or conquered is.

China’s best exploitation of the gray zone so far has been of unoccupied territory, chiefly geographic features that were not territory at all until China created them.

The most damaging strategy an adversary can pursue, in other words, is not likely to be its most gainful one—indeed, in most cases, pursuing it is likely to be foolhardy in the extreme, if not simply insane. And insanity is vanishingly rare in state decision-making. Trying to obtain a perfect defense is therefore not only unwise but unnecessary. And since the United States cannot afford to be profligate in competition with a state of the potency and wealth of China, what is unnecessary is ill-advised.

Rather, the United States must identify and plan against China’s best strategies for achieving regional hegemony in Asia.

actually a state’s best strategy does not ultimately depend on what the state’s leaders think it is. It is, rather, an objective reality that is a product of how such a state might optimally achieve its strategic aims. But that state does not have a monopoly on judging which strategy would work most effectively, since the efficacy of military strategies is a product not only of a particular state’s actions but of the interplay of multiple factors, including how the opposing side acts, third-party reactions, and nonhuman factors such as geography and weather. A state’s hidden capabilities may give it an edge in executing a strategy, but that advantage will be availing only if the strategy itself can lead to a successful outcome.

China thus requires a strategy that discourages other nations from joining or remaining in the anti-hegemonic coalition.

crucially, China is very unlikely to succeed in attaining regional hegemony if the penalties do not include a core military component, given the unique coercive efficacy of force and the exceedingly high stakes for states seeking to avoid forfeiting their autonomy to Beijing.

The United States’ own record of economic coercion against much weaker states counsels us to be skeptical that Beijing could use such coercion alone to compel states to forfeit their most dearly held goods.

if Beijing precipitated a war that engaged the coalition’s fuller exertions, China would very likely lose. Beijing must therefore execute the focused and sequential strategy in such a fashion that the coalition elects not to employ its greater strength to counter China’s moves.

The most logical way for Beijing to deal with this quandary is to fracture or sufficiently weaken the coalition by sequentially isolating and subjugating enough vulnerable members while convincing the rest to let them go.

The most logical way for Beijing to try to fracture the coalition is by exploiting the differences in members’ willingness to tolerate the costs and risks required to adequately defend the member states Beijing targets.

Using this isolating approach, China could then pick off coalition members in sequence, systematically weakening the coalition until it collapsed.

If Beijing could compel either Japan or India to disaffiliate from such a rump anti-hegemonic coalition, the effort to deny China predominance over Asia would have failed.

punishment approach. Under this approach, Beijing would use limited violence to impose costs on the vulnerable state until it capitulates of its own accord. In doing so, Beijing would likely seek to avoid provoking the target’s allies and partners to the greatest degree possible, thereby minimizing their incentives to intervene.

conquest approach. Under this approach, Beijing would use what Thomas Schelling termed “brute force” to impose its will on the target state—especially by seizing control of that state’s territory—and thus present the target’s allies and partners with new facts on the ground that, Beijing would reckon, they would consider some combination of too difficult, costly, and risky to reverse.19 Although this approach would try to reduce the incentives for coalition intervention, it would primarily deter effective coalition intervention by raising the difficulty, costs, and risks such engagement would face.

punishment (or cost imposition) approach works by inducing a vulnerable state to capitulate by imposing costs: pain and loss. It succeeds when the attacker is able to impose more costs than the target is able or willing to bear in order to protect whatever the attacker is demanding. Crucially, the target’s ability to defy the attacker includes not only its indigenous capacity for resistance, important as that is, but its ability to secure relief from third parties. When the target is subject to intolerable costs and lacks foreign support—or believes that any such support will prove insufficient—it is more likely to accede to the attacker’s demands.

Nonmilitary forms of cost imposition might include travel bans, asset freezes, restrictions on capital, withholding of essential supplies, or other sanctions designed to harm, sap wealth from, and diminish the freedom of a targeted state.

Military forms of punishment range from cyber or electronic attacks to blockade or bombardment. Given the especially coercive power of lethal force, I focus here on military forms of cost imposition.

Brute force, in other words, makes the defender’s will essentially irrelevant, thus eliminating a crucial variable that is otherwise beyond the attacker’s control and greatly simplifying the problem confronting the attacker.