As ample wargaming and analysis have shown, any war with China would be economically and strategically costly, as well as fraught with the risk of escalation to nuclear war. In addition, any U.S.-China military conflict could very likely last longer than envisioned by traditional force planning scenarios, which often are designed around relatively limited objectives and call for U.S. forces and capabilities that could bring a war to a quick, decisive conclusion.

This report describes a set of scenarios of such protracted conflicts and provides what could be a foundation for more-detailed planning or analysis. To allow free creative scope for the scenario development process, the authors did not place a priori constraints on the meaning of “protracted,” and therefore, the resulting scenarios feature a variety of circumstances in which the United States and China could be required to sustain military operations on much longer time frames.