Crossing the Pacific Rubicon
War with China as a Strategic Reset of American Power
WHITE PAPER
Title: Crossing the Pacific Rubicon: War with China as a Strategic Reset of American Power
Author: [REDACTED]
Institution: National Strategic Futures Group
Date: April 2025
CLASSIFICATION: CONFIDENTIAL (For Executive Review Only)
Executive Summary
This white paper examines a radical but increasingly relevant grand strategy: leveraging a limited war with China as a catalyst for transformative change in the United States. The scenario envisions a shift away from global hegemony toward hemispheric consolidation, full reindustrialization, and the centralization of executive authority. Drawing upon historic parallels with Rome’s transition from republic to empire, this analysis frames war not as a failure of diplomacy, but as a tool of systemic reset.
The underlying thesis is simple, but bracing: if the United States cannot sustain global dominance, it must redefine power on terms that ensure its long-term civilizational survival.
Introduction: The Rubicon Before Us
In 49 BCE, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River, violating Roman law by leading his army into Italy. The Senate had forbidden it. But Caesar understood that the political order of the Roman Republic was already collapsing. In its place, he forged something new—an imperial system that would endure for centuries.
The United States in 2025 faces a crisis of similar magnitude. The long arc of globalization is fracturing. The liberal international order is in retreat. China has become not just a peer competitor but a civilizational alternative. At home, political fragmentation, institutional inertia, and economic fragility weaken the nation’s ability to respond.
The Rubicon of our time is the Pacific Ocean.
I. Strategic Assumptions
This paper begins with a hard-nosed reassessment of current U.S. grand strategy, based on four core premises:
1. Unipolarity is Over
The global dominance of the United States—military, economic, ideological—is eroding. China’s rise is the most salient manifestation, but the deeper trend is the return of multipolarity. The 21st century will not be shaped by liberal order but by spheres of influence.
2. The U.S.-China Economic Relationship is Unsustainable
Decades of economic interdependence have empowered China while deindustrializing the U.S. Decoupling is inevitable. War would merely accelerate what is strategically necessary.
3. Domestic Political Paralysis Blocks Necessary Reform
Reindustrialization, energy independence, infrastructure renewal, and national mobilization are all constrained by fragmented governance. A catalyzing crisis—such as war—could unlock executive capacity on an unprecedented scale.
4. Conceding East Asia May Be Strategically Acceptable
If American strategic focus shifts from global policing to hemispheric consolidation, ceding regional hegemony in East Asia to China may become not a failure, but a trade.
II. Scenario Design: The Pacific War
A. Trigger Event
• China initiates military operations against Taiwan.
• The U.S. responds with a limited, symbolic military intervention—not a full-scale defense.
• Escalation remains conventional, largely confined to maritime and cyber domains.
B. Strategic Objectives (U.S.)
1. Sever all high-tech and critical economic dependencies on China.
2. Reassert U.S. dominance over the Western Hemisphere.
3. Mobilize national resources under a wartime executive framework.
4. Rebuild strategic manufacturing, rare earth mining, and energy independence.
5. Construct a parallel political and economic order—independent of Beijing and Brussels.
C. Strategic Objectives (China)
1. Establish regional hegemony over East Asia.
2. Demonstrate the limits of U.S. power.
3. Force regional actors (Japan, Korea, ASEAN) into neutral or pro-China alignment.
III. Post-War Global Configuration
A. China: Regional Power, Not Global
China would emerge from the war with control or strong influence over:
• Taiwan
• South China Sea
• Economic subordination of Southeast Asia
But global expansion would remain constrained—by geography, resource bottlenecks, and residual U.S. strength.
B. United States: Fortress Hemisphere
• Reindustrialized core economy.
• Strategic energy and food independence.
• Revitalized Monroe Doctrine: Chinese presence removed from Latin America via diplomatic, economic, and covert means.
• A consolidated Hemispheric Security Zone: Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and key South American states drawn into a new inter-American bloc.
C. Institutional Collapse and Replacement
• The United Nations, WTO, and Bretton Woods institutions atrophy.
• Parallel systems (e.g. Western Hemisphere Development Bank, Hemispheric Defense Pact) emerge under U.S. leadership.
• Europe becomes a passive zone of influence, divided between American and Russian gravitational pulls.
IV. Domestic Consequences
A. Article II Expansion
• Wartime presidential powers become normalized: nationalization of critical industries, media oversight, supply chain regulation, selective censorship.
• Congress is sidelined in favor of executive technocracy under emergency doctrines.
• A “wartime constitution” becomes de facto operating system for federal governance.
B. Social and Economic Transformation
• National Service or Defense Corps established.
• Massive public investment in manufacturing, robotics, and raw materials extraction.
• Universal workforce mobilization (especially of underemployed sectors).
• Education and immigration retooled to support strategic industries.
V. Risks and Mitigations
Strategic Risks:
• Nuclear Escalation: Managed through clear signaling, geographic boundaries, and back-channel diplomacy.
• Economic Collapse: Mitigated by capital controls, price stabilization, and domestic investment surge.
• Allied Defections: Offset by compensating core allies (e.g. Australia) with bilateral guarantees and economic integration.
Domestic Risks:
• Civil Unrest: Preempted through control of digital information ecosystems and proactive public mobilization.
• Institutional Breakdown: Addressed by codifying emergency measures and maintaining a “war legitimacy” narrative.
VI. Historical Parallels
• Rome, 49 BCE: Republic collapses, but Empire rises.
• U.S., 1941–1945: Wartime mobilization ends Depression, centralizes power, forges world order.
• Russia, 1999–2008: Regional war and economic consolidation enable authoritarian stability.
VII. Conclusion: The Logic of the Die
The argument of this paper is not ideological but structural. The current American strategy—global military presence, free trade orthodoxy, and liberal institutionalism—cannot survive the twin pressures of Chinese ascendance and domestic disintegration.
By embracing a high-risk, high-reward path—limited war as transformation—the United States may:
• Escape the trap of imperial overstretch.
• Consolidate power in its own hemisphere.
• Forge a durable post-liberal state under strong executive leadership.
Caesar crossed the Rubicon because there was no other path forward. The United States, too, must decide: retreat piecemeal into irrelevance—or use the crucible of conflict to remake itself.
The river is before us. The die is not yet cast. But the logic is clear.
Appendices available upon request:
• Wargame Matrix (Red/Blue/Gray team scenarios)
• Legal Framework for Emergency Article II Expansion
• Economic Reconstruction Blueprint (2025–2035)
• Psychological Operations Doctrine for Hemispheric Integration
Thank you for sharing this summary of a white paper dealing with what comes after US global hegemony. It is an important question and one for which we seem only to be in the spitballing phase of addressing, at least at the public level. Maybe we should always start brainstorming sessions with something like 'when our extraterrestrial overlords take control of the planet...', just to get the ball rolling on generating plans.
In just that same kind spirit, this white paper helps us get over any shyness about saying ideas out loud that might sound stupid.
This paper says that we need some kind of ruse in order to traumatize the American public into accepting technocratic totalitarian rule (that will never, presumably, fall into the wrong hands), you know, after all the domestic bloodshed is mostly over.
The reason we need to do that is because we have to accept that we are returning to a multipolar world and moving on from the liberal order. So the first thing we should do is to blunder into a war with one of those poles, who we do not understand at all, in the name of preserving the liberal order (wink, wink). Don't worry, though, it will only be a limited war, because wars always play out in reality the way they are sketched out on paper beforehand.
This plan has about all the depth of thinking as the following plan: a man tells himself that he has come to a point in his life that he really ought to curb some of his bad habits. So he makes a plan. He will cash in his child's college fund and spend it on strippers to accompany him for a cocaine filled gambling extravaganza. Once his wife then divorces him and his high school aged child vows to never again speak to him, he figures he will have acquired sufficient motivation to make those lifestyle changes he was hoping for.