Battle over a Third Party

The Battle over a Third Party focuses on the role of military power in a possible conflict over a third party, and this game’s scope is the most limited of the three described because it is confined to a third party territory or region. In this game, there is a threat of one major power using force either in an active defense of a third party or in an attack against the other major power to maintain the third party’s independence. Military forces have a direct impact here, and both pow­ers have a fairly well defined role in the ongoing military competitions. There are many possible stratagems available to both sides, but the most severe threat is seizing physical control of the third party. Lesser threats include large-scale stra­tegic attacks, blockades, and other higher-end compellence mechanisms.

The stakes are the most interesting aspect of this competition. The game can have highly asymmetric stakes, with one power viewing control of the third party as much more central to its national interests than does the other power. This asymmetry creates interesting conflict dynamics but, fortunately, little chance of escalation because the degree of importance both sides place on the conflict is below the threshold required for either to escalate into a much more costly general war.3 By choosing this game, both sides implicitly declare they have limited interests that do not extend to general war. And while military power in the confines of the third party game is the main focus, the third party situation is not the driving force for both sides’ overall military strategy and choices—though it may be the central focus for the side with the higher stakes.

Because of its non-zero-sum nature, military improvements or political posturing by either side may not require a countermove, though changes that improve the capabilities of one side in the third party battle may cause the other side to respond directly if interest levels are high enough. In other words, each power will escalate or deescalate within the game as interests demand. Addi­tionally, this game may be played alone or as part of the Game of Influence. Importantly, if a Battle over a Third Party is played within the Great Power Game, the nature of the game is fundamentally altered as the third party com­petition now plays a role in a broader, higher-stakes game.

Rationale/explanation for the game. Military power is used here in a more traditional sense than in the Game of Influence, though the use of that power is limited in scope. Both sides, for any number of reasons, have decided that they have interests in a third party nation that are important enough to engage mili­tary force to achieve. Neither side views the Battle over a Third Party as part of a larger, more comprehensive game. Military capabilities are generally highly tailored to the contours of a particular conflict, and the evaluation of forces is viewed through this conflict’s lens. Other interactions and games between the two powers will undoubtedly occur, but those interactions are largely divorced from this military context and are reflective of interests that exist outside this limited contest.

This asymmetry is particularly important to the game’s outcome as the military capabilities of the two parties begin to approach parity in the area of interest. The differences in stakes will alter the relative attractiveness of vari­ous defense strategies.4 Essentially, the gains associated with some strategies will no longer be worth the risks for the side with lesser stakes in the game. And, of course, the changes in the two sides’ relative military capabilities impact the potential game outcome by altering how well either side can accomplish particu­lar missions or thwart the other power’s ability to accomplish its own missions.

What would it look like if the United States and China engaged in this game? The Battle over a Third Party has been the main competition between the United States and China during the last 60 years. This competition has manifested itself both in Taiwan and Korea, where control was seen as by both parties as important but was not seen as a means of defining regional influence or a greater direct competition between the United States and China. Instead, for the United States, these were elements of the broader Cold War competi­tion with the Soviet Union and were seen as part of a perceived Communist threat that existed throughout the world. Both of these conflicts seem to have been about narrow interests and not about serving as a stepping-stone to a larger competition.5

In this game, the biggest unknown when the forces begin to approach local parity in capabilities is how each side defines operational success or fail­ure. Taiwan is an illuminating example because of the asymmetric levels of interests and the very different potential standards for success or failure on each side. China regards Taiwan as one of its core interests, but the United States does not elevate its interests in Taiwan to a comparable level.6 In the mil­itary dimension, these differing levels of interests might manifest themselves through planners on the two sides defining success or failure in different ways. For instance, a Chinese planner might want to possess a military option to land a significant ground force on Taiwan that could be used in extreme cases and that would use Chinese air and missile forces as tools for accomplishing the mission. On the other side, an American planner might be satisfied with pre­venting the Chinese from effectively exploiting a landing and would therefore be more willing to accept higher levels of damage from Chinese air and mis­sile forces. Because the bars of success or failure are different for both sides, improvements in one dimension such as airpower might not increase military capabilities enough to deny a fairly modest military objective and therefore might not be enough to alter the “balance.”

The forces necessary for each side to succeed in these competitions may be far from symmetrical, and the ways in which the forces are trained could likewise be very different. For instance, a U. S. force optimized for conflicts near China might look very different from typical U. S. force configurations, unless the infrastructure (bases, country access, level of competence of military part­ners) for U. S. forces proved to be far more robust and extensive than in any other part of the world. Much of the U. S. force structure was inherited from the Cold

War, and even the modest changes from Cold War threat assumptions have tended to adapt the force to operate under more benign instead of more hostile conditions.7 These changes included reliance on unfettered access to large bases and entry areas for effective employment of air and ground forces, judging that the threat to those bases that existed during the Cold War was gone.8