Outlook 2025: The Sun Will Rise
Balancing Coercion, Warfighting, Attrition, Maneuver, the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical
In 2025, the US military is facing a fundamental mismatch between the requirement to deter, the military means available, strategic ends, operational methods, and tactical unit readiness. This mismatch is leading to parity anxiety - a feeling across the force that a fight with the PLA would lead to consequences too high to bear.
To Deter, and if Necessary, Fight and Win
The above sentence is often used by the US military to tie together the strategic, operational, and tactical layers. What does it mean?
Washington seeks to make threats against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decision makers which are believable enough that the CCP decides on its own not to invade Taiwan. This is a form of coercion called deterrence (making an enemy NOT do something). While all tools of national power are employed in making threats, since the 1950s both Republican and Democrat leaders have heavily emphasized military threats (successfully) to intimidate/deter the CCP.
If the CCP is not deterred and initiates a war of choice, the US must then fight this war and win. Fighting such a war requires a US military that looks much different than today’s military. To win means that the US must achieve specific operational goals that lead to a strategic end which is simply described as “win.”
Deter = intimidate the CPP into not attacking.
Fight = if intimidation fails, string together successful engagements against the PLA which when collectivized become successful battles.
Win = string together successful battles to achieve a strategic end.
In this article, we will dissect this formula and analyze how the US military is living up to its own philosophy.
To What Strategic End? Folly 2025
Strategy is the work of a very small group of decision makers executed by wider society. In the American system, that small group of decision makers are the President supported by the Cabinet and the National Security Council.
Strategy is the process of harnessing and channeling a nation’s means (population, taxes, natural resources, etc) into differentiated ways (military, diplomatic, economic, etc) in order to achieve specific ends (goals set by strategic decisionmakers; FDR’s “unconditional surrender,” George H. W. Bush’s “reversal of Iraqi aggression and stability in the Persian Gulf”).
According to a draft National Defense Strategy (NDS), the current administration is contemplating breaking with 80 years of foreign policy wisdom by focusing the newly minted Department of War (DOW) on the Western Hemisphere as priority number one.
Turning the US military inward will 1) damage the credibility of Washington’s coercive strategy against the CCP and Russia, 2) once again transform the US military into a counter-insurgency focused organization, degrading the capability of combat units to wage conventional warfare, 3) effectively make the US military unprepared to respond to a single major overseas war while still spending $1 trillion on the Department of War, and 4) create an opportunity for Beijing to distract American focus of effort.
Large bureaucratic organizations are terrible at balancing multiple priorities and the DOW is no exception. If the draft NDS is to be signed, then resources will follow NDS priorities.
Focusing on drug trafficking organizations and perhaps Venezuela is not a realistic assessment of the global moment. The Venezuelan military budget is roughly $800 million, equivalent to the cost of two recently cancelled human resources software programs for the US Navy and US Air Force. This is a Department stuck in the Global War on Terror and roaming for a comfortable nail that fits a much reduced hammer.
The US does not need hypersonic weapons, sophisticated conventional missile arsenals, transoceanic surface warfare ships, 6th generation fighters / bombers, nuclear submarines, expeditionary cross-domain maneuver brigades, or an expanded nuclear arsenal to deal with any threat emanating from the Western Hemisphere.
However, the US will sorely need these capabilities to prevent any European or Asian war through deterrence. Obviously, these capabilities would also be required in an actual fight - just not in Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada, or Greenland.
Not only are key modernization capabilities at risk, the US will once again climb aboard the counterinsurgency train. US military units will have to train against cartels, drug traffickers, and insurgents. This will be helpful for the retired GWOT veteran community to cash in but potentially disastrous for the nation.
Ground units will train to fight in permissive environments, conducting small raids and patrols. Air units will focus on extremely short range close air support, also in a permissive environment with no jamming, enemy radars, electronic warfare, ground-based air defense, or enemy air threat.
US military capability will continue to atrophy, applying tools worth millions and billions against informal networks using cell phones and cars to run drugs. Western Hemisphere operations will wear down equipment and manpower, reducing readiness and increasing cost. Remember that cost per effect is never in the language of the counterinsurgent.
Putting all of these worries aside, perhaps the most concerning point is that by investing military capability in the western hemisphere, Washington is drawing away capability from other theaters. The Department of War (DOW) is structured to deal with a single major war, not two. By assigning more forces to SOUTHCOM, US military commitments in Europe and Asia are weakened, fraying deterrence against far more capable adversaries.
At best, this strategy quadruples down on continuing to force the Department to focus on counter-insurgency. At worst, the strategy risks the US holding the bag for years in regime change and stability operations in Cuba, Venezuela, and/or Nicaragua.
While there are national issues of consequence for the US in the Western Hemisphere, to pretend they should be the number one priority is strategic malpractice. The Mexican border, security of the Panama Canal Zone, and limiting fentanyl trafficking are valuable operational goals that do not significantly alter the strategic picture or can be accomplished utilizing non-military capability.
From Beijing and Moscow’s perspective, few things could be better than the Americans pulling away military resources from Asia and Europe to play in the Caribbean. Both adversaries will interpret this strategy as the US communicating its desire to not be involved in Eastern Europe or the First Island Chain. Washington must be extremely careful in communicating this strategy lest it create serious credibility problems with allies and adversaries.
Such a strategy would be a major reversal of the trendline, and one that Russia and China will seek to amplify. If US forces begin broader operations in SOUTHCOM, expect Russia and China to pivot and create more trouble in Latin America to keep the US bogged down in a strategic backwater.
If the forthcoming global posture review doubles down on this strategic direction and pulls forces from Europe and Asia, it will send the worst signals to Moscow and Beijing.
Strategic Stormy Seas
To compound the above turbulence, Washington’s approach to Taiwan since 1979 has been “strategic ambiguity.” Unusually, the basis for this approach was laid by Congress in the wake of the cancelled US-Taiwan mutual defense treaty in a law known as the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).
While a system of checks and balances is healthy, this strategic approach was not formulated by America’s traditional strategic decision makers (who have access to far more pertinent foreign affairs information than Congress) and was likely taken by Congress as a stopgap. To review the relevant portions of the TRA:
BREAK
(b) It is the policy of the United States—
(1) to preserve and promote extensive, close, and friendly
commercial, cultural, and other relations between the people of
the United States and the people on Taiwan, as well as the people
on the China mainland and all other peoples of the Western
Pacific area;
(2) to declare that peace and stability in the area are in the
political, security, and economic interests of the United States,
and are matters of international concern;
BREAK
SEC. 3. (a) In furtherance of the policy set forth in section 2 of this U.S. defense Act, the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.
(b) The President and the Congress shall determine the nature and quantity of such defense articles and services based solely upon their judgment of the needs of Taiwan, in accordance with procedures established by law. Such determination of Taiwan's defense needs shall include review by United States military authorities in connection with recommendations to the President and the Congress.
(c) The President is directed to inform the Congress promptly of any security threat to the security or the social or economic system of the people on Taiwan and any danger to the interests of the United States arising therefrom. The President and the Congress shall determine, in accordance with constitutional processes, appropriate action by the United States in response to any such danger.
The TRA does not specify solid red lines, tie the US and/or Taiwan into a framework, establish a security guarantee, or discuss how US forces would be based on Taiwan. Supporters of the TRA and strategic ambiguity will defend their position by claiming this policy has worked for over 75 years to keep peace across the Taiwan Strait.
This is again a misunderstanding of how coercion works. From 1949 to 2020, the CCP lacked a credible capability to conduct an amphibious landing on Taiwan in the face of US military power. In 1950 and 1996, Washington simply needed to steam aircraft carriers into the region to completely foil Beijing's plans.
By 2020, US aircraft carriers were not deterrents but targets for the PLA Rocket Force. In terms of amphibious lift, airborne lift, tactical fighter quantity, and naval power, the PLA did not have the equipment, capacity, or training to realistically initiate a landing campaign before 2020.
From Vermilion’s perspective, the TRA and policy of strategic ambiguity has only been truly tested for 5 shaky and crisis-prone years - and it has been found to be lacking.
Obviously, the public-facing policy remains strategic ambiguity. POTUS and DOD/DOW retain their own plans which are generally not communicated - leading to a credibility gap which we will discuss in other portions of this article.
Meanwhile, at the Operational Level…
The coming turbulence from the National Defense Strategy combined with the existing policy of strategic ambiguity has serious effects on military planning at the operational level.
Operations take the ways (from strategy) and make them into a concrete and coherent plan to achieve strategic ends. Military operations are the specified ways battles are formed into a campaign to achieve a military goal or strategic end. Examples include General McArthur and Admiral Nimitz’ Pacific island-hopping campaign of WWII and General Ulysses S. Grant’s total war campaign in the Civil War.
Today, four-star US Combatant Commands create operational plans (OPLANS) to achieve POTUS’ strategic ends. The standard planning process for most high level US military functions unfortunately excludes the political dimension. This severs the head from the body.
As discussed, in the US political system the vast majority of the time it is only POTUS that can issue strategic objectives. This is not the role of the Joint Chiefs or Combatant Commanders. In the absence of political guidance, military planners struggle to understand the dimensions of a potential conflict.
In a war over Taiwan, what would be the strategic guidance? Simply reversing PLA aggression like George H. W. Bush in the Persian Gulf? Imposing direct and lateral costs against the CCP to achieve war termination like Biden and Trump in the Ukraine War? Regime change like George W. Bush against Iraq? Damaging the PLA so that the organization is no longer able to conduct offensive campaigns like Lincoln against the Confederacy? Unconditional surrender like FDR and Truman against the Axis powers? This is too often left unclear, leaving the military to plan in a vague and constrained vacuum.
In this vacuum, US military leaders do not seek to test a range of political assumptions that would change the operational envelope. Add to this the fact that US political and military leaders have a poor understanding of coercion, and we are often left with incomplete operational plans that focus far too much on tactical minutiae.
Operational Methods
Unfortunately, the lack of clarity continues deep into the operational. Commanders and staffs are failing to understand and incorporate maneuver warfare philosophy. As the nation contemplates a large conventional war, old muscle memories of attrition animate much of the discussion surrounding the coming conflict.
In the operational realm, maneuver warfare is the combination of movement and firepower against an enemy’s vulnerability from a position of advantage intended to achieve a psychological defeat.
Moving faster than the enemy into positions of advantage and making decisions more rapidly demoralizes the enemy into submission. Good examples include the culmination of the Ulm phase of Napoleon's Ulm-Austerlitz campaigns in 1805, and General Gerd von Rundstedt’s invasion of France in 1940.
This approach is different from attrition warfare, which seeks to wear down the enemy through losses of personnel and material. Examples include the early phase of the Soviet campaign against Nazi Germany in WWII, American strategy for most of the American phase of the Vietnam War, and Chinese strategy during the Chinese phase of the Vietnam War, 1979-1991. While unimaginative and expensive, attrition does have a place in military operations.
Unimaginative US and PLA military leaders are beginning to converge in their operational thinking post-Ukraine. There is a large faction on both sides that believe protraction and attrition benefits them.
Many in the PLA believe the PRC defense industrial base will simply outproduce the US military regardless of red losses or a blue blockade. Many in the US military believe the PLA will get stuck on Taiwan much like Russia in Ukraine, initiating a constant drain on PLA manpower. Neither of these are campaign approaches that lead to success.
The US cannot rely on attriting PLA amphibious lift to defeat a landing campaign. The US Navy cannot sustain a campaign against the PLA Rocket Force without significant attrition. The same can be said for an air war fought from distant air bases and a ground force attempting to fight the campaign while not actually being on Taiwan. The US military is willingly putting itself into a position of disadvantage.
At the same time, the PLA cannot indefinitely sustain losses without leading to serious social stability problems within the PRC. It is also not at all clear how PRC industry would function under conditions of a far blockade orchestrated by the US.
To defeat the PLA, the US must put the enemy into a position of disadvantage so quickly that it disorients CCP and PLA leaders, forcing them to submit early.
The WWII experience also offers lessons. The US was able to produce copious amounts of equipment, but preferred to arm Russian and Chinese allies to tie down Germany and Japan in massive campaigns of attrition. In the modern situation, the US has no obvious allies able to bear such a burden and therefore the ability of the US to apply attrition warfare is immensely reduced.
At the Tactical Level
The tactical level focuses on warfighting - killing men and breaking things in multiple discreet engagements in order to win a single battle which is itself part of a logical operational campaign designed to achieve a military goal or strategic end.
The lack of unity and consistency at the strategic and operational levels leaves tactical military units focusing on the politically expedient flavor of the year and not woven into a larger picture.
The Army must balance commitments in Europe and Asia without clear and consistent guidance. The Marine Corps has transformed their entire force to focus on the PLA threat, only to learn that the PLA may not be the Department’s top priority. The Air Force is left fighting an air war without the requisite air bases. The Navy cannot build the right ships to save the service’s life. The National Guard is torn between border defense, protecting the homeland, and serving as the Department’s backbone for actually conducting large scale conventional warfare overseas.
Units shift between training against the PLA, the Russian Armed Forces, Iran, or North Korea, while Western Hemisphere missions tax the force.
US strategic, operational, and tactical layers are badly misaligned. This creates numerous problems when the US attempts coercive or warfighting approaches. Coercion (which includes deterrence) can be understood as credibly communicating your capability to the adversary.
Credibility
If Beijing is to be deterred, it must believe that the US has both the capability (discussed below) and the will to carry out threats. The US currently suffers from numerous credibility problems including:
The botched Afghan withdrawal
The force planning guidance that shrunk the DOD/DOW from being able to handle two near-simultaneous major wars to being only capable of dealing with a single war.
The failure of US deterrence against Russia at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
The failure of US deterrence against Hamas/Iran.
The failure of US deterrence against the Houthis.
If the US does not have the capability and will to stop tribesmen in Yemen from firing missiles at a US ally and international shipping, why would Beijing expect Washington to have the capability and will to prevent the second largest power in the international system from achieving its goals?
There is a linkage between international security commitments that informs American adversaries of where Washington stands. Sticking with the basics works well in the credibility department. Historically, the US has been most credible when it does the following:
Extend consistent military commitments to allies, including significant forward-based military capability.
Extend nuclear deterrence to allies.
Focus on the superiority of the American system over competitors - combining a constitutional republic with a free market.
Extend economic assistance to friendly countries in need, providing a stabilizing factor.
Extend the principles of the free market through mutually beneficial bilateral and multilateral trade agreements.
Maintain the US technological edge.
Our readers will recognize that the US currently has major credibility gaps in each of the above six dimensions, especially on the Taiwan issue.
Clearly Communicating
Presidents immediately run into problems clearly communicating over the Taiwan issue. The policy of strategic ambiguity intentionally muddies the waters. This policy was created to give the US and PRC the negotiating space to construct an engagement founded on confronting the Soviet Union and building a mutually beneficial economic relationship. Neither of those mutual goals exist today, meaning there is little reason to maintain strategic ambiguity.
Imagine if during the Cold War, American presidents would not publicly commit US forces to the defense of West Germany from Soviet attack. Such a situation can lead to mixed messages which the adversary may interpret as a green light for aggression.
As discussed, this strategic ambiguity puts military operational planning into a straightjacket, which then produces a chaotic tactical level unit training plan.
Capability - the Trillion Dollar Military
The US has a litany of problems forging an American military capability able to deter and fight. As of summer 2025, the US military is sliding rapidly into a situation where the current and planned capability is at risk of not being credible to decisionmakers in Beijing.
We need not delve into each and every problem, but to list the most commonly discussed:
Tyranny of distance and lack of basing options.
The slow pace of military modernization, especially the ship building plan.
The lack of forward deployed forces on Taiwan.
Anemic defense budgets that buy too many bureaucrats and not enough force structure.
The force planning guidance that shrunk the DOD from being able to handle two near-simultaneous major wars to being only capable of dealing with a single war.
Number two is particularly galling. Military modernization is closely linked to maintaining the technological advantage, which is a major part of credibility. While the US maintains a technological advantage in key systems like aircraft and submarines, that advantage has been eroding for many years. In terms of capacity the situation is much worse:
The US Navy was only able to add 13 net warships to the battle-force in twenty years, while the PLAN added a net 180. The US maintains the advantage in tonnage, but particularly in naval wars, capacity is king. The American people simply cannot afford to continue on the current trajectory, since this path means the CCP will be able to coerce the US in the future.
Brittle Capability
There are many excellent US warfighting capabilities. These include platforms like the F-35 and Virginia-Class attack submarines as well as units like the 75th Ranger Regiment. While these capabilities are extremely powerful in their domains, they remain niche. True conventional warfighting capacity lies in mass produced platforms and formations often manned by lower quality draftees, conscripts, or new personnel.
A good example is the once frugal Marine Corps, which has been on an equipment purchasing spree. Modern USMC capabilities include the F-35B/C, MV-22 Osprey, MRC, and new MLRs. These capabilities are world-class and produce powerful battlefield effects but virtually always suffer from extended maintenance, longer crew training time, lower operational availability, and smaller production lines.
For just one comparison, today’s MV-22 costs around $80 million, while the bird it replaced, the CH-46 costs roughly $17 million in inflation-adjusted dollars. A standard Marine rotary squadron has about 12 aircraft, which means for the cost of a single MV-22 squadron, the Corps could field four CH-46 squadrons with $100 million left over to pay for more pilots.
This is not to say that the CH-46 is better. The MV-22 has significantly more endurance and speed, radically altering the operational envelope of a Marine rotor squadron. However, a better approach would be to mix the two capabilities, delivering a more flexible high and low solution to the same problem set.
The Defense Department long ago ushered out a high/low military equipment fielding strategy, preferring instead to focus on the most advanced platforms delivering the greatest technological offset.
Even when “low” platforms have been fielded, they are often immediately cancelled or delayed: see the Constellation-class Frigate and the M10 Booker. Sometimes, low platforms are so poorly thought out, they become instantly obsolete: see the Littoral Combat Ship.
Relying on high-end platforms exclusively runs major risks, making the force more brittle, unaffordable, and less available to actually fight wars - degrading American military capability.
The Weight of our Current situation - Measuring Historic Adversaries
These imbalances in the American approach have to be weighed against the potential threat. The PRC is a more powerful adversary than any the US has faced since becoming a country.
The PRC currently has a larger navy than the US growing at a much faster pace. Not a single historic adversary of the US has had such a naval headstart, including Imperial Japan. Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia were never able to seriously contest the US at sea.
Economically, the PRC is already bigger than the US measured in some dimensions. There was no point during the Cold War where the Soviet Union enjoyed such an advantage.
Never before was the US as economically reliant on an adversary as now. All of these factors make US coercion and warfighting problems more acute.
Conclusion
The majority of these imbalances are not structural or material. They can be solved by clearer thinking on the part of US elected and military leaders. Once American leaders have a coherent strategy and operational approach, the tactical and material problems can then be solved.