Insurgency, Not War, Is China's Likely Course of Action

It felt suspiciously like the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and not just because of the smell of baking fuel under the relentless sun at Twentynine Palms. At the Marine Corps’ battalion-level integrated training exercise this past summer, I spent two weeks preparing for a mechanized desert war. When I participated in the same exercise in 2015, sure we spent time assaulting Soviet doctrinal positions — but also days in a mock village with role players, working through the unique challenges of counter-insurgency. This year, though, training was single-mindedly dedicated to conventional maneuver and combined arms — on a desert battlefield utterly devoid of simulated (or even notional) civilians. Mechanized warfare is back in — and low-intensity conflict, from grey-zone warfare to counter-insurgency, is going unmentioned and untrained.