Chasing Multinational Interoperability: Benefits, Objectives, and Strategies

Abstract

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New Directions for Projecting Land Power in the Indo-Pacific: Contexts, Constraints, and Concepts

“…• defining discrete operational problems to be solved by our concepts 2 We did not explore existing Chinese literature for how Beijing may think about and respond to our new operational concepts because (1) they are new and thus we do not expect much Chinese thinking to be publicly available until the ideas gain greater attention in the public domain, and (2) further exploration of Chinese thinking on existing related ideas was outside the scope of this project. However, we did incorporate RAND expert insights on potential Chinese responses to our operational concepts as we developed them, to ensure that they were robust against immediate Chinese responses.…”

“…Our analysis of global and regional trends relied on two main sources: existing RAND work on the region and broader global trends and unclassified U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) analyses of the changing operational environment. 1 There are four types of trends relevant to an understanding of the core operational problems to be addressed by land power: trends related to Chinese actions, the transition to a more multipolar world, the global or regional context, and U.S. actions.…”

“…The promotion of Chinese-led regional trade rules, embodied in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and infrastructure investment, symbolized by Beijing's establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, complement the Belt and Road Initiative and embody the country's regional economic aspirations. 1 But China's regional ambitions extend beyond the economic domain. As new security threats face the nations of East Asia, Chinese officials argue that the traditional Americanled alliance system will be unable to meet these novel challenges, and a new security architecture will be needed.…”

“…We developed three core concepts by inviting RAND subject-matter experts to nominate, critique, and iterate on conceptual proposals to address each of these vignettes. 1 More than 30 RAND experts participated in the four-hour workshops, many in two or three of the sessions. In each case, the teams that had developed the concept pitched it to the larger group, and we played out the scenario, in the spirit of a tabletop exercise, and discussed the ideas in the concept and broader questions of ground force roles and power projection.…”

“…• coercive belligerence against a U.S. ally or partner state in the region (with the Philippines as the example) • maritime invasion against a major regional state (with Taiwan as the example) • a distant land contingency involving modest, far-flung U.S. support to a country threatened with Chinese land intervention (using India as the example). 1 Our research highlights four baseline requirements for Army operations in the theater. We term these prerequisites because they constitute the essential foundations on which the three more discrete Army concepts could be developed.…”