What Sherman's march teaches us about dealing with China

You can plot sequential campaigns on a map or nautical chart using lines and vectors. Sherman’s March to the Sea in 1864 was a sequential offensive. So were Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester Nimitz’s dual offensives across the Pacific against imperial Japan at the end of World War II.

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In a way, China finds itself playing the part of Sherman, Nimitz, and MacArthur today. It operates along two well-defined axes, pointing at the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea and at the islands, atolls, and reefs dotting the South China Sea. This lends focus, simplicity, and clarity to China’s efforts to make strategy while amassing forces sufficient enough to execute the strategy. Advantage: China.

Cumulative campaigns are different, vouchsafes Wylie. They’re nonlinear. They’re made up of widely scattered actions, none of which depends on the others for the effects it creates. In all likelihood, each tactical action is inconsequential in itself. Seeing a merchant ship torpedoed is a bad thing, for instance, but hardly a backbreaker for any serious combatant. In aggregate, though, large numbers of minor actions can wear down or dishearten an opponent.

Plotting a cumulative strategy on the map or chart creates a paint-splatter effect rather than vectors, lines, or curves.

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