To-Be-Read Pile: RAND's Take on a Protracted War Between China & US
Something that has crossed my desk and might be of interest to you
In preparation for more “China Threat” videos, I have been scouring the Web (and elsewhere) for sources to explore a potential conflict with China. Back in February 2025, the RAND Corporation published “Thinking Through Protracted War with China.”
Here are some summarized scenarios (pulled verbatim from the report’s overview page) concerning a potential long-term/protracted conflict between China and the US:
The United States and China fight indirectly through proxies, expending materiel, capital, and other (e.g., political) resources to support their surrogates.
The United States and China fight each other directly but on third-party territories, thereby minimizing the existential risks to their respective homelands.
The United States and China engage in direct conflict, but limited objectives or external factors constrain the rate of progress toward goals.
The United States and China engage in direct warfighting, but both sides implicitly or explicitly negotiate constraints on escalation.
While we always need to be cautious when approaching any source like this, it does give me some ideas for potential educational content concerning a conflict between the US and China. It has influenced, somewhat, my recent video on lessons learned from Vietnam that we have to remember when fighting China.
Anyways, stay tuned for more, and thank you all for being subscribers.
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Image Credit: Photo by Abdullah Al Hasan on Unsplash
My poor little pea brain is not able to read and appreciate what's in that Rand report, so I rely upon you, Ryan, to break it down into short sentences using small words. 😁
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The best source of information regarding China is still laowhy86, an American, who speaks fluent Mandarin, married a Chinese woman, lived in China for many years, and understands the mentality of the Chinese people and the Chinese communist government.