The New China Marines

摘要

As the Marine Corps sprints to counter the pacing threat from China in the Indo-Pacific, it risks abandoning its core cultural touchstone and long-standing institutional comparative advantage: the unity of purpose it achieves by orienting on decisive closure in combat. The emergence of the mature precision strike regime demands that the United States develop the ability to contest naval space-especially via forward-positioned groundbased strike capabilities of our own. Marine planners are eagerly promoting the Marine Corps as the right Service for this important job. They appear to have gained traction in the new tri-service strategy document, Advantage at Sea: Prevailing with Integrated All-Domain Naval Power, which-at least on the "most contested battlefields"-orients the Marine Corps on "us [ing] maneuver, cover, and concealment to employ lethal long-range precision fires."