The Marine Corps Must Plan Now for a Long War with China | USNI Proceedings

“Prepare the Marine Corps for a Protracted War,” published in the April 2026 edition of the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings by Lieutenant Colonel Brian Kerg, argues that the Marine Corps must plan now for force regeneration and expansion to fight and win a long war against China. Kerg warns that China’s precision-strike capabilities will rapidly degrade III Marine Expeditionary Force in the opening phases of a Pacific conflict, consuming the entire Fleet Marine Force and its reserves within 30 days.

The Marine Corps must account for the cadres needed to regenerate the forces that will be lost and the resources needed to expand training facilities and training cadres to grow the force to the size required to finish the fight. If the Marine Corps does not commit to this plan now, it risks expending its resources in the opening phase of the next war in the Pacific.

Great power wars tend to last for years, and the Marine Corps will need to reconstitute destroyed formations and expand the force significantly to sustain operations through a conflict’s end. Kerg draws on four World War II lessons: building experienced training cadres, integrating draftees, expanding basing and training infrastructure, and reconstituting attrited formations. He calls on the Marine Corps to identify and preserve those cadres now, plan for forward basing closer to the first island chain, and account for societal changes that affect recruiting and retention. Without this planning, the Marine Corps risks expending its most capable forces in the war’s opening phase, leaving nothing to sustain the years of combat that follow.

Overall, the Marine Corps’ rapid expansion and adaptation during World War II were essential for its successful contribution to the Allied victory. A war against China would be similar in its scale of destruction… By planning for challenges in a war with China similar to those it faced in the war with Japan, the Marine Corps will be postured to fight not just in the war’s opening phases, but also through the war’s end.

“Unpreparedness is a Choice” by Col. (ret.) Shawn Creamer (Small Wars Journal, March 2025) makes a strikingly parallel argument at the joint force level, contending that failing to prepare for a protracted, multi-theater great power war is itself a strategic choice.

Now is the time to act. The United States must rearm, rebuild its national preparedness program, and re-establish its national mobilization architecture it assembled in the 1980s so that it can fight and win a protracted multi-theater general war against the autocrats if they elect to pursue aggression and war.

Creamer calls on the Joint Staff to develop a “Victory Plan of 202X” modeled on the 1941 Victory Plan, one that would frame the expansion of the force from its current size to the millions of troops required to fight and win a multi-year great power war, explicitly incorporating conscription planning and the operational reconstitution of attrited forces.