Introduction
Some argue that great power war is inevitable. Russian tanks roll across the heart of Europe. China dramatically increases capability across all domains. Great powers are back with a vengeance. Analogies drawn from the Cold War and World War II return. Multipolarity challenges the United States’ hegemonic position. Deterrence makes its way back into strategic thought. Great nations with big armies renew conversations about power balancing. Theorists are proud to make realism great again. Like an elastic band snapping into place, Army culture returns to familiar conversations about relative combat power, fires, and maneuver.
The military is expert at retroactively creating narratives. However, just because a narrative resonates does not mean it is true or complete. As the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is reviewed, it is critical that the lessons learned and the narratives that are derived from those lessons, are thoroughly examined for bias. For example, in what ways does the Ukraine war resemble our definition of Large Scale Combat Operations? While there is more armor artillery in action than in our collective memory recalls, is quantity truly a quality all its own? Or, from a strategic standpoint, is it more important to examine this conflict as the outcome of unmanaged nuclear non-proliferation, insufficient security guarantees, the failure of understanding autocratic thinking, but the value of security assistance? While certainly dangerous, are Large Scale Combat Operations inevitable amongst great powers, or only possible when a minor power is in play?
While geopolitical dynamics may resemble historical conditions that lead in the past to direct great power wars, today states are more interdependent than ever, are restricted by the nuclear weapons revolution in military affairs, and are constrained by the costs of conventional war. The proper lesson for us to draw from history is that conflict abhors a vacuum, and threats will take advantage of whatever domain is available. Certainly an argument should be made for increasing traditional lethality in the force, but must that come at the expense of other required capabilities? If we believe that wars are prevented in competition and that adversaries will use all available ways and means in conflict, then the Army must consider diverse solutions to deter and win in both Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) and non-LSCO Multi-Domain Operations.
What is so great about these powers anyway?
What makes a great power great? Although definitions vary, the common thread is that great powers can exert themselves beyond their near abroad to achieve goals. Today, to be a great power, actors extend their capabilities at a global scale through their level of capability, geographic reach, but also recognition as such by other nations.[1] For example France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan, United States, Russia/USSR, and China were each considered great powers.
Great powers may interact within the world cooperatively or competitively. When competition between two powers leads to direct military clashes, conflict occurs. Where cooperation occurs both states benefit from the transaction, while in competition or conflict, one or both powers suffer. The dynamics of these interactions create a hierarchy of states, first formally recognized in the 1814 Concert of Europe.
Realists argue that states vie to be the most powerful while limiting other states’ ability to overtake them. The resulting phenomenon of states allying with the leading nation through bandwagoning or against the leading power through balancing is known as balance of power theory.[2] When one power is on the rise, another declines – which puts them on a crash course for a zero-sum conflict.[3] The current dominant narrative puts China on the rise, Russia trying to rise, and the United States in relative decline.[4] Realists would point to this as a recipe for a coming conflict.
But is great power war inevitable? Since the Concert of Europe, great powers fought each other from the Hundred Days War to World War II. However, during the same period, there were as many small and/or proxy wars as great power wars. After World War II, the dynamic towards hybrid confrontation continued towards distributing conflict in such a way, that it reduced the likelihood of existential defeat. “The resultant Cold War was an approximately 40 year-long political, military and economic confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union and their respective allies… [that] never escalated into direct military confrontation between the superpowers, but involved an unprecedented arms race with both nuclear and conventional weapons as well as plethora of proxy conflicts.”[5] Korea, Vietnam, and Russian-Afghanistan wars were the closest that Great Powers came to direct conflict, but they remained proxy wars. What can we attribute to this nearly 80-year lack of Great Power Conflict?
(Not) Going Nuclear
In the pre-WW II examples, Great Powers could gain from conflict. Zero-sum outcomes incentivized the use of force and created conditions for increasingly lethal battlefield capabilities. Increased capability extended the scale of vertical escalation possible. This trend continued until the Cold War. The parallel expansion of nuclear arsenals created a new dynamic. As Bull points out, “it is only in the context of nuclear weapons and other recent military technology that it becomes pertinent to ask whether war could not now be both ‘absolute in the results’ and take the form of a single instantaneous blow’ in Clausewitz’ understanding of those terms.”[6] In other words, nuclear weapons capped the escalation race, especially once stockpiles ensured Mutually Assured Destruction. At that point, winner-takes-all possibilities shifted to a likely lose-lose situation.
If vertical escalation is capped, what are other choices? Investments in hypersonics, long-range precision fires, future vertical lift, space, and cyber capabilities extend geographic range, all support horizontal escalation options. Alternatively, great powers could avoid military confrontation with each other, instead choosing to escalate both vertically and horizontally in the diplomatic, informational, and economic elements of national power. In the Cold War, that led to the exclusive use of proxies. Today, adversaries reverse complex interdependence to employ “hostile acts outside the realm of armed conflict to weaken a rival country, entity, or alliance” known as gray-zone aggression, which leads to a sort of diagonal escalation. [7]
If Large-Scale Combat Operations do occur, the likelihood of fighting through a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear environments are high. Yet, no new major Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear capabilities are currently being introduced at this time in the U.S. Army. So how serious is the Army about large, scale combat operations in their most likely forms?
The idea of purely conventional or unconventional wars is a fiction — all conflicts are both. Colin Grey calls this false dichotomy a strategic “categorical confusion”. Hybrid wars are fought at varying intensities and scales, depending on the means available, the creativity of ways imagined, and the ends desired by the adversary. As the resources required to employ and the potential destruction of lethal means increases, the more likely conflict will press ways horizontally into multiple domains and dimensions. While conflict in multiple domains is likely, large-scale multi-domain operations remain less likely between two great powers due to the conventional material costs and the slippery slope toward nuclear weapon use. If Large-Scale Combat Operations do occur, the likelihood of fighting through a Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear environments are high. Yet, no new major Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear capabilities are currently being introduced at this time in the U.S. Army. So how serious is the Army about large, scale combat operations in their most likely forms?
Panic at the LSCO
Yet in the U.S. Army today, what is old is new again. Large-Scale Combat Operations harkens back to the Army’s historical victories and provides a clearer purpose than small wars or counterinsurgency, making it particularly palatable to Army culture. However, the Army’s operational concept is Multi-Domain Operations (MDO), not Large-Scale Combat Operations. While multi-domain operations acknowledge the very real possibility of Large-Scale Combat Operations, it does not forecast their inevitability over other forms of conflict, competition, or even cooperation. So while all Large-Scale Combat Operations are Multi-Domain Operations, not all Multi-Domain Operations are Large-Scale Combat Operations. When great powers prepare only for “great” (LSCO) wars, they prevent the single striking blow, but leave themselves vulnerable to death-by-a-thousand cuts, all while holding a metaphorical tourniquet of capabilities. Instead, the Army’s approach to the future must include the full-spectrum of operations.
