The China Landpower Studies Center (CLSC) held the Carlisle Conference on the PLA at the US Army War College’s (USAWC) Army Heritage and Education Center on 16 and 17 October 2024. This year’s conference, a keystone annual event held by the USAWC Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), marked the newly-established CLSC team’s first time in the driver’s seat as it brought together a hundred China-focused experts from the US Department of Defense (DOD), Intelligence Community, think tanks, academia, and private sector to discuss the PRC’s views on and capability to carry out a protracted war in the Indo-Pacific.
The first day of the conference began with comments from the USAWC Commandant, MG Hill, before keynote speaker Dr. Iskander Rehman, author of
Planning for Protraction: A Historically Informed Approach to Great-power War and Sino-US Competition, took the stage to lay the groundwork for both days’ discussions. The USAWC’s own Dr. Jerad Harper then introduced a framework for protracted war in the Indo-Pacific that served as the basis for panel members’ research. The first panel brought together a panel of experts that presented their research on the PRC’s historical and modern views of protracted wars, and the PLA’s lessons learned from other countries’ recent protracted wars. Each of the researchers explained that official PRC commentary on protracted wars was limited, but the PLA has been using its own history and recent case studies to prepare for the potential large-scale conflict. The second panel, made up of defense research analysts, presented their findings on assessed strengths and weaknesses of PLA services in the land, air, and maritime domains. Their research generally found that sustainment capabilities have improved across all PLA forces, but key issues remain with medical and equipment support.
MAJGEN Scott Winter, Deputy Commanding General (Australia) of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), opened the second day of the conference with an overview of US and allied landpower in the Indo-Pacific that included ongoing efforts to gain advantage through partnerships and training in the region. MAJGEN Winter concluded his keynote remarks with an acknowledgement that there is a general lack of understanding of the PLA’s land forces within the DOD and that the Carlisle Conference was helping to bring together expertise to address that gap. The third panel then took the stage to outline the PLA’s strategic and operational-level decision-making entities, while also presenting the tensions that could occur at both levels when commanding forces in a protracted war. There was a consensus among the panel members that the wider a protracted war grew, the more opportunities for a breakdown in PLA command and control would present themselves. Finally, presenters on the fourth panel shared their impressions on how China, Russia, and North Korea could cooperate in an Indo-Pacific protracted war. With sufficient empirical evidence on how the PRC and DPRK are supporting Russian efforts as part of its invasion of Ukraine, the researchers all believed China could rely on those partners for limited resource support during a protracted war.
Audience members actively participated in question-and-answer sessions following each panel. Additionally, CLSC team members and presenters led breakout sessions to garner even more audience participation in robust conversations after each panel. These breakout sessions were regarded as highly beneficial in providing opportunities to bring together experts in open forums to debate hot topics about Chinese and US warfighting capabilities in the Indo-Pacific, as well as improving the researchers’ future conference volume chapters. The conference volume is expected to publish through the USAWC Press in late spring 2025, but keep an eye on the CLSC website for conference-related podcasts and short articles in the coming months.