全球智库信息集成服务系统

• Restrainers have a variety of views about when to use force in the Asia-Pacific.
• For many restrainers, the primary driver of U.S. posture in the region would be the defense of Japan.
• Defending Japan against a major Chinese attack would likely require maintaining some forward-deployed U.S. naval forces and pre-positioned materiel in the Asia-Pacific.
• Restrainers would need to prioritize strategic airlift and sealift to deploy air and naval forces quickly and in large numbers from the United States.
• Restrainers' limited objectives in the Asia-Pacific would be consistent with reductions in forward-deployed ground forces and, possibly, land-based air forces.
• Given China's ability to target bases and ports, the United States would still need access to a large number of wartime operating locations in partner countries to increase the survivability of its forces involved in the defense of Japan.
• To have the capability to impose a distant blockade on China, the United States would need to maintain a large navy and have wartime access to ports in the region.
• Like current policymakers, restrainers would face trade-offs between maximizing U.S. preparedness for conflict and incentivizing burden-sharing by other states.

In recent years, there has been growing interest among policymakers and foreign policy analysts in rethinking U.S. grand strategy, or the U.S. approach to the world. One of the most prominent alternatives to current U.S. grand strategy is a grand strategy of restraint, an approach that would define U.S. interests more narrowly, place a greater emphasis on diplomacy, reduce the size of the military and U.S. forward military presence, renegotiate or end U.S. security commitments, and raise the bar for the use of force.

Advocates of restraint have broadly outlined their views, but there is a lack of detail about what a strategy of restraint would mean in practice for U.S. security policy. In this report, RAND researchers describe when the United States might use force in the Asia-Pacific region under a grand strategy of restraint, propose possible warfighting scenarios involving the defense of Japan that could guide U.S. Department of Defense planning, and describe how U.S. military posture in the region would change under such a strategy.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Operationalizing Restraint in the Asia-Pacific

• Chapter Three

  China Attacks Japan's Armed Forces and Economy

• Chapter Four

  After Occupying Taiwan, China Seizes the Southern Ryukyu Islands

• Chapter Five

  The United States Imposes a Distant Blockade on China During a War Between China and Japan

• Chapter Six

  Conclusion