Planning for Protraction: A Historically Informed Approach to Great-power War and Sino-US Competition (Adelphi series) - Softcover

Rehman, Iskander

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1032734779 ISBN 13: 9781032734774

Publisher: Routledge, 2023

Synopsis

As Sino-US relations have deteriorated, concerns have grown in Washington over its ability to defeat China in a major conflict. A conflict between such peer competitors would likely become a protracted war of attrition drawing on all dimensions of national power, but this reality has yet to receive a sufficient degree of analytical attention.

In this Adelphi book, Iskander Rehman provides a historically informed and empirically grounded study of protracted great-power war, its core drivers and characteristics, and an examination of the elements that have most often determined a competitor’s long-term strategic performance. Final victory in a protracted conflict, this book argues, rests on a combination of three core factors: a state’s military effectiveness and adaptability, its socio-economic power and resiliency, and the soundness of its alliance management and grand strategy. A detailed analysis of the contemporary Sino-US rivalry assesses how both parties might fare in the event of a protracted war, while highlighting some of its key differentiating aspects – most notably its nuclear and cyber dimensions.

About this title

About the Author

Iskander Rehman is the Senior Fellow for Strategic Studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, and an Ax:son Johnson Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs. He holds a PhD, with distinction, from the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po), in Paris, and can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/IskanderRehman.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1032734779
• ISBN 13: 9781032734774
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200