Breaking the Double Bind: U.S. Defense Strategy and Multi-Theater Deterrence

Abstract: For years, the United States has tried to put China front and center, from the rebalance to more recent calls for prioritization. Yet it has never truly reconciled the limits of a one-major-war force with the reality of a multi-theater, multi-rival world—let alone a world in which U.S. rivals across different regions have growing incentives to support one another. In Breaking the Double Bind: U.S. Defense Strategy and Multi-Theater Deterrence, CSBA’s Vice President for Research and Studies, Evan Montgomery, argues that the Pentagon should downgrade its emphasis on denial of a Taiwan invasion, along with its implicit reliance on rapid decisive battle against China as the key to addressing the risks posed by other adversaries. Not only is rapid decisive battle becoming more difficult to achieve, but heavy losses in a denial campaign would decrement Washington’s ability to carry out a long fight and keep enough capability in reserve to manage the dangers of opportunism. Instead, U.S. strategy toward China should embrace minimum essential denial and protracted punishment. This would entail raising the costs of a Chinese assault on Taiwan without elevating the defense of the island over the defeat of China, preparing to inflict a variety of costs on China over the course of a military campaign that might be longer and more geographically expansive than many anticipate, and preserving sufficient military capability that could be used to impose costs on other adversaries should they engage in opportunistic aggression.

Over nearly two decades at CSBA, Dr. Montgomery has written dozens of monographs, reports, articles, and chapters on a wide range of defense policy issues. In 2016-2017, while on leave from CSBA, he served as Special Advisor to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he focused on defense innovation and nuclear modernization. He also teaches a graduate course on military effectiveness in the security studies program at Georgetown University. Dr. Montgomery is the author of numerous CSBA reports, most recently Relook Playbook: Defense Budgeting Insights from a CSBA Rebalancing Exercise (with Travis Sharp and Casey Nicastro) and Speeding Toward Instability? Hypersonic Weapons and the Risks of Nuclear Use (with Toshi Yoshihara). His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, International Security, Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, Survival, and War on the Rocks, among other academic and policy outlets. His book, In the Hegemon’s Shadow: Leading States and the Rise of Regional Powers, was published by Cornell University Press.