Böcker av Mark Cozad

This report examines whether the assumption that jointness is inherently valuable to the U.S. military is correct, and if so, in what ways. Understanding how and why jointness is most valuable can help the U.S. military compete more effectively.

The U.S. and Chinese militaries have been shaped by a distinct set of direct and indirect experiences. The U.S. military has focused its energy and resources on combating terrorism and performing counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even in 2023, U.S. emphasis on major power competition contends with other national security priorities, including current crises and continued deployments around the globe. The People's Liberation Army (PLA), on the other hand, has largely focused its military modernization and restructuring to prepare for a regional conflict that would likely involve U.S. military intervention. Despite having no combat experience since the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, the PLA has conducted an in-depth study of all aspects of the U.S. military's technological and operational capabilities-including its organization, command and control, logistics, joint operations, and concepts of operation-since the 1990s. The dichotomy presented by the experiences of both militaries raises several questions about how they are preparing for the possibility of a major power conflict. Since 2001, the U.S. military has gained significant direct combat experience, but has done so against technologically inferior, nonpeer adversaries. In contrast, the PLA had no direct combat experience. Even though its concepts of operation are designed to fight a major power, these concepts are largely derived from indirect observations and lessons from U.S. operations since 1991. The ways that each side gains and processes experience and incorporates it into training will heavily affect readiness for and performance in a future war.

The People's Republic of China's (PRC's) and the People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) understanding of the military balance is fundamentally based on systems warfare concepts. Systems concepts drive China's perceptions of the successes of its three-decade-old modernization and its identification of enduring or emerging weaknesses. China's leaders recognize the qualitative and quantitative improvements in PLA weapons and technology; however, in key areas essential to conducting systems confrontation and systems destruction warfare, there remain significant gaps that have received the attention of Xi Jinping himself. During Xi's tenure, the PLA has been forced to confront a range of problems that go well beyond technological modernization, force structure, and organizational relationships. Still, both the United States and the PRC, through different evaluation processes, have concluded that war with the other has the potential to be extremely risky from an escalation standpoint, protracted and costly, and fatally harmful to long-term credibility and/or strategic goals. This analysis is one of the first to detail how the PLA understands and assesses military balance. The PLA sees itself as the weaker side in the overall military balance, largely because it has made only limited progress in those key areas that will define future warfare, most importantly informatization and system-of-systems-based operations. Necessary improvements have not materialized quickly and will likely take time because of the PLA's organizational culture and the improvements' systemic complexity. A refined understanding of Beijing's view of the PLA also has significant implications for U.S. policymakers, military commanders, and planners.