It’s a truism that the Pacific is an amphibian theater. Just look at your map and behold! the oceanic region’s majestic vacantness. That being the case, it takes amphibian forces to seize, hold, and defend terrain, chiefly though not exclusively along Asia’s first offshore island chain. Warfare in the Pacific promises to be an all-service, all-domain, and allied endeavor. Waging it will demand the utmost not just from naval forces but from fellow services that operate from dry earth.
No Pacific war will be a strictly naval war.
In fact, armies and air forces are sea services as surely as navies and marines are. So it was during World War II, when legendary U.S. Army general Douglas MacArthur commanded one of the twin offensives island-hopping toward the Philippines and imperial Japan. So it is again. Residents of the Pacific enjoyed a few quiescent decades after the Cold War. Now, though, a domineering China and its crummy little toadies Russia and North Korea have stormed back onto the Asian geopolitical scene. Their power and ambition mark a return to the region’s martial past—including at sea.
That’s where we find ourselves. What to do? Well, holding land features in the Western Pacific is an intrinsic good in itself. The first island chain is made up entirely of U.S. allies, notably Japan and the Philippines, and of quasi-allies such as Taiwan. Holding territory upholds friends’ sovereignty.
Island-chain defense is of the essence on those terms alone.
Beyond that, though, islands make excellent firing platforms. Holding ground opens up offensive vistas for allied forces. Think about it. Bodies of missile-armed troops on Asian islands could work with aircraft roaming overhead, and with surface and subsurface craft prowling adjoining waters, to make waters and skies along the island chain into a no-go zone. Close the straits that separate the islands comprising the island chain and you bar access to the Western Pacific for China’s air force, navy, and merchant fleet.
Having corralled China’s military, friendly ground, air, and sea forces could loft ordnance westward against targets within the China seas. China would have a bad day owing in large part to soldiers treading dry land.
U.S. and allied militaries confront two challenges in Pacific competition: wartime and peacetime. In wartime, of course, the challenge is to field forces able to defeat........