If America goes to war with China, rocketry may be the U.S. Army’s most important contribution. A conflict across the vast Pacific would be waged primarily by air and sea forces, backed by small contingents of ground troops.
But while the Army may not storm Shanghai in a ground assault, it certainly has the ability to strike Chinese territory. The Army has an arsenal of long-range munitions in service or under development, including the shorter-range Precision Strike Missile, the Typhon Strategic Mid-Range Fires system and the Dark Eagle Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon. These missiles can hit targets 1,000 to almost 3,000 kilometers away.
A likely target would be Chinese ports that would be key to supporting the Chinese fleet, staging an amphibious invasion of Taiwan and sustaining Chinese exports and imports.
But damaging Chinese ports or seizing Chinese economic facilities is a bad idea, warns an Army National Guard officer. In fact, “the Army should preserve Chinese maritime shipping infrastructure during conflict so that it is usable postwar,” wrote Capt. Micah Neidorfler in a recent essay for Military Review.
This sounds counterintuitive; compelling the enemy to capitulate by destroying his strategic infrastructure has been a plank of U.S. policy since the B-17 bombers of the 1930s. But despite U.S. efforts to decouple its economy from China’s, America still depends on China for everything from iPhones and rare earths to providing an export market for American farmers. Much of the global economy — especially manufacturing — relies on Chinese industry.
Yet, “U.S. joint doctrine specifically identifies ports as targets, and predictions for a U.S.-China war perceive Chinese ports as likely targets for U.S. strikes,” Neidorfler noted. “Therefore, in any U.S.-China conflict, Chinese maritime infrastructure will be exposed to the devastation of twenty-first-century warfare.”
If devastating China’s ports cripples the global or U.S. economy, any victory could prove pyrrhic. Since an unconditional Chinese surrender is unlikely, there will inevitably be a negotiated peace and a need to restore postwar trade, Neidorfler argued.
“Suggesting that the Army should preserve enemy strategic infrastructure might make many balk, but the reasoning is sound,” wrote Neidorfler. “U.S. domestic prosperity significantly depends upon international trade and the global economy, which in turn are deeply intertwined with China.”
But Neidorfler sees a way out of this dilemma. Ports are complex entities with numerous — and vulnerable — components for loading and unloading cargo, storing it and transporting goods to and from the site. Thus, ports are vulnerable to disruption at many points, including cranes, piers, rail yards and oil storage tanks. It is possible to hit specific targets that render a port temporarily inoperable, but without inflicting long-term damage.
“Applying this tactic to Chinese ports would fulfill a strategic aim of preventing or degrading their utility during wartime while remaining relatively easy to repair post-conflict, allowing China to return to maritime trade quickly,” argued Neidorfler. In addition, because “destroying subcomponents does not threaten ports’ long-term functionality, this dramatically reduces the escalatory nature of targeting them.”
All of this ties into the larger question of the Army’s role as a major player in a Pacific war.
Defense tank analyses of a possible U.S.-China war have ignored Army contributions or focused on the service’s niche capabilities, Neidorfler noted. But in reality, “over the last decade, the Army has focused on five main themes,” he wrote, including command and control for the joint force, sustaining the joint force and also protecting it via air defense, ground-based long-range fires and traditional maneuver forces.
Whether the U.S would actually attack Chinese ports is open to debate. Given that China has the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal and ICBMs that can reach the continental United States, the decision to fire missiles at Chinese cities may be more of a political than a military decision.
However, Neidorfler offers an alternative: using the Army to seize Chinese-owned ports in other nations, to use as bargaining chips or to prevent their use as military and intelligence bases. China’s investment in foreign ports is massive: 129 projects in which Chinese companies own equity or are involved in port operations, according to a 2024 estimate. He argues the majority of the Army’s force structure would be available for such a strategy, as a U.S.-China conflict would not require a vast number of maneuver units in the Pacific.
The Army would enjoy a variety of means to capture Chinese-owned overseas infrastructure that would be lightly defended at best, he argued. These include special operations forces, and for a more diplomatic approach, Army foreign area officers and National Guard bilateral affairs officers who could work with the host nations.
But even here, there are political complications, Neidorfler cautioned. Seizing Chinese property “raises sovereignty issues for the nations housing Chinese ports, and the United States could not pursue this unilaterally,” wrote Neidorfler. Since many countries — especially in the Global South — are unlikely to welcome American military intervention, “third-party states’ own militaries seizing assets would be more realistic.”
U.S. experts on China have misgivings on these ideas. Authorization to attack Chinese ports is not a given, Lonnie Henley, a researcher at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told Defense News.
“Who knows what some future president in some unspecified global circumstances would decide,” Henley said.
As for Army long-range missiles, “you need a place to stand to launch those weapons, and you have to get the forces there, and sustain them, and defend them from counterattack,” said Henley, a former Army lieutenant colonel with long experience as an intelligence expert on East Asia.
In addition, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy already have plenty of missiles.
“More weapons on target is always good, but how many more can the Army provide, compared to another dozen B-52 sorties?” Henley asked.
The U.S. and its allies could probably cut off most Chinese maritime trade.
“So what’s the added benefit of seizing ports in third countries?” Henley said. “None that I can see.”
Even Neidorfler admits that his ideas are “not an intuitive strategy,” as culturally, the Army is “focused on achieving decisive victory in the shortest time possible.”
Yet short of global nuclear war, a Sino-American war would inevitably end in some kind of peace agreement.
“If the U.S. Army is truly preparing for a conventional war, it must recognize that any settlement must be mutually acceptable for it to last,” Neidorfler concluded.
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