How the United States Would Fight China: The Risks of Pursuing a Rapid Victory by Franz-Stefan Gady sits at the center of the most profound debate of the 21st century, i.e., the US-China strategic competition and the risks of military escalation in one of the most conflictual theaters: the Taiwan Strait. The author has served as an advisor to European and US militaries on structural reforms and the future of heavy combat operations. Based on his expertise, Gady attempts to uncover how a direct military confrontation between the US and China might unfold, as well as the strategies and risks that would come attached with it. In his view, the US is most likely to adopt a strategy that offers rapid, decisive outcomes but notes that it would inevitably involve several methodological, operational, and normative risks.

How the United States Would Fight China draws on a much-asked question in military and political circles: how does the US envision the future of high-intensity warfare in this age of cyber and space? And more importantly, how would the US prevent a military confrontation with China from escalating into a nuclear conflict? In a war over Taiwan, one of the major challenges to the US would be preventing China from resorting to its ultimate deterrent to secure its war objectives and deter the US.

The author highlights that despite factors like geographical non-proximity, high resource and human cost, and an equally capable adversary, the US military is still preparing for a direct war with China. This, then, urges the policymakers to deliberate on the strategy that the US should adopt in order to secure a victory.

The author paints a picture of a direct military war between the US and China. Each side resorts to information dominance in order to out-think and out-act the adversary in a real-time, multidomain combat environment. Each side attempts to be the first to defeat the other in space, cyberspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum. It raises the risks of a hot war between adversaries. If China loses information dominance, the war escalates both horizontally and vertically. To force the US into de-escalation, China resorts to tactical nuclear weapons or non-strategic nuclear use, which........

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