The U.S. Marine Corps: Now An Access-Denial Force to Fight China?

This week Yomiuri Shimbun reported that the U.S. Marine Corps intends to found a Marine Littoral Regiment capable of island-hopping along Japan’s Ryukyus chain, which arcs from the southernmost home island of Kyushu, through Okinawa at the chain’s midpoint, almost to within sight of northern Taiwan. The new regiment will include small sensor- and missile-equipped détachments that can be used to monitor hostile air and naval forces, and to pummel them when they come near.

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Part of the Marine Littoral Regiment is Force Design 2030, Commandant David Berger’s concept partially reconfiguring the Marine Corps to be an access-denial force. Marines will be deployed to the southwestern islands as part of the U.S. military and air forces. The regiment will draw its expeditionary units. “stand in,” defying China’s anti-access arsenal, rather than stand off for the sake of force protection.

Give up geographic space China By default. The Marine Corps, along with its allies, will not yield.

The regiment’s twin goals: to deny China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) access to the southwestern islands, safeguarding sovereign Japanese territory, and to deny Chinese naval and mercantile shipping the ability to transit the waters between the islands. You can defend the islands and barring the straits, which will make the island chain an offshore. Great Wall in reverse—a fortified geographic barrier guarded by American and Japanese sentinels.

In turn you imprison the PLA Navy and Air Force within the China seas, depriving them of maneuver space that’s essential to bluewater operations.

It’s a truism in military strategy, as in sports, that the home team This gives it an advantage over any other team. Its bases, forces and manpower, as well as probable battlegrounds, are close by. It is more familiar with the terrain than any visitor. Etc. China has leveraged its home-field advantage vis-à-vis U.S. and allied forces, strewing cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles and missile-armed aircraft along its coastal zones. Operating in conjunction with the PLA Navy’s fleet of submarines and surface patrol craft, these shore-based implements of sea power can make things tough even on a stronger visiting team.

But what if? Two What happens when the home teams clash? Both the Japanese and Chinese armed forces will be playing on the same field. This gives them similar advantages. Since the seventh century, these Asian heavyweights have been fighting back and forth. Japan has won the Sino-Japanese contests since the 1890sChina wants to win the championship back. The logic of home-field advantage is being tapped by China. Japan and the United States are late to the party, putting strategic geography and alliance diplomacy to work for them.

In other words, allies are using their own advantages. It is hoped that China will not attempt to breach their Great Wall by using its nautical Great Wall. If this is the case, we won’t ever know who wins when the home team meets the home team on battle field.

You will never know.

Now, as U.S. Marines and their comrades chart strategy and operatiOns in the Ryukyus, they should take heed of Carl von Clausewitz’s sage counsel on “cordon warfare.” An offshore Great Wall is nothing other than a distended defensive perimeter that includes immovable guard towers and the islands themselves. Clausewitz has little faith in defensive lines. “The obstacle they offer the attacker,” He maintains that is “worthless without powerful fire to support it. Otherwise it is good for nothing.”

Clausewitz thought mainly about armies that tried to defend extended lines during warfare on the continent in the nineteenth century. It was his experience. His warnings were sound even in twenty first-century Asia. Consider perimeter defense in algebraic terms. A line is simply a series that contains infinitely many points. However, the contender that can produce superior force will be the longest. At any point In combat, the attacker tends to win. At infinityly many points, no defense can be more powerful than its opponent. The advantage goes to the attacker. The attacker simply combines combat power at a point along the line and overwhelms the defenders before punching through.

Clausewitz’s remedy is to keep defense perimeters short while using artillery to offset the mismatch between ground forces at a particular place and time. Marines and their Japanese allies can’t shorten the defensive line along the Ryukyus—the islands are where they are—but at the same time the islands are fixed and immovable on the map. This gives you a lot of flexibility. A Chinese merchantman, or a PLA Navy warship of war, cannot drive through an island. Island-chain defense is essentially about preventing PLA amphibious force from landing along Ryukyus while barricading straits.

This is a solid defense line.

Straits can be described as narrow seas. Think of the Ryukyu defensive lines as a series interlocking cordons that are overshadowed and sunk by missiles from shore, sea, and aloft. That’s a workable operational design. Even though he has reservations about cordon warfare, the Prussian master could smile if he saw Force Design 2030 in action.

Let’s hope so.

A 19FortyFive Contributing editor, Dr. James Holmes J. C. Wylie Chair for Maritime Strategy at Naval War College, and a Nonresident Fellow in the Brute Krulak Centre for Innovation and Future Warfare Marine Corps University. These views are solely his.

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