ASPI - The Strategist
The protraction trap: why a regional conflict could be hard to end
The most dangerous assumption in current contingency planning is that any war, even a regional war involving the United States, would be short.
Four interacting forces would make high-intensity regional conflicts hard to terminate: regime legitimacy pressures, alliance dynamics, operational stalemate and nuclear escalation limits. Together they create a protraction trap.
This means that strategies for deterrence should prioritise the ability to sustain and manage a conflict that lasts for many months, at least.
The outcome of such a conflict may depend less on who wins the opening battle than on who has greater political, military and economic endurance. One side may seek rapid victory, but the US and its allies should plan to sustain the fight.
Regime legitimacy constraints
Wars become hard to stop when political leaders face political costs for backing down. Once they commit people in the armed forces, retreat can be more dangerous for leaders than continuing the fight. This is particularly the case for a leadership for which seizing some land is not merely an economic or military gain but is seen as part of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Negotiated withdrawal after a failed or stalled invasion could carry profound political consequences, making persistence look less risky than defeat.
Similar pressures would emerge in other countries. The government of the targeted country would face strong domestic expectations to resist coercion and defend sovereignty. Washington and any allied governments would confront issues of credibility and commitment, as withdrawal would risk undermining US alliances, with political costs at home. These pressures narrow the space for compromise.
Alliance dynamics and horizontal escalation
The involvement of multiple allies can help prevent a war but also tends to prolong it.
Such a conflict might involve several countries from the outset. The US would play a central role but regional allies and partners could become involved since they would be hosting American bases and operational infrastructure.
Involvement of alliances is more likely to expand the geographic scope and political complexity of the conflict. Allies that at first refrain from kinetic involvement may nonetheless be drawn in.
For example, military aircraft from the targeted country might seek emergency landing or dispersal at airfields in neighbouring countries. Given the humanitarian and alliance implications, it may be politically difficult for those neighbouring countries to refuse, even under pressure from the adversary. The neighbouring country therefore becomes more exposed to attack.
As more countries are drawn in, coordination becomes more difficult, as governments differ in their threat perceptions and risk tolerances. For example, if a partner suffers limited territorial loss or sustained attacks on its territory during the conflict, domestic political pressures within that partner, as well as alliance expectations regarding credibility and commitments, may lead it to seek to influence Washington’s position on settlement terms, complicating agreement on de-escalation and war termination.
Operational stalemate and the logistics challenge
The operational environment of a contested maritime and air domain will also tend to protract such a conflict. For example, an attacker might undertake an amphibious invasion, one of the most complex military operations, requiring sustained logistics across contested maritime and air domains. Even if initial landings succeeded, an attacking force might have difficulty in pushing forward. Ammunition, fuel and reinforcements would have to flow continuously across contested sea lines of communication, relying largely on maritime transport and vulnerable ports or temporary piers.
This creates a structural risk of stalemate as the attacker persists with parallel operations – say, a blockade – and prepares for follow-up landings or resupply efforts. Even without decisive battlefield success, both sides may deny the other a quick victory, shifting the conflict into a contest of endurance.
Logistics can also create a critical asymmetry, especially in the case of a force projected across a body of water. An attacking force that must sustain operations across a contested maritime approach faces greater challenges than a defending force that can focus on disrupting supply lines from a distance. Proximity might offer advantages if the body of water is not wide, but sustaining operations over any exposed maritime route brings vulnerabilities, such as reliance on a limited number of ports and temporary landing sites that are highly susceptible to disruption. By contrast, the US and its allies might be able to draw on bases as rear-area hubs. These bases, though themselves perhaps vulnerable to attack, can be repaired and replenished repeatedly and quickly, outlasting the attacking side’s ability to sustain operations against them. Paradoxically, proximity may not translate into logistical advantage for the attacking side in a prolonged conflict.
The nuclear escalation ceiling
A final structural factor shaping war termination is the background presence of nuclear weapons. If the US’s opponent were a nuclear power, both sides would fear the unleashing of such weapons. They would avoid escalation in conventional fighting that could bring the war riskily close to nuclear release. Thus, nuclear deterrence would put a ceiling on escalation.
That, in turn, can make military decision harder to achieve, because escalation might be just what is needed for it. For example, strikes on an adversary’s mainland bases or critical command infrastructure might offer a decisive advantage, yet may be avoided for fear of escalation against a nuclear-armed state.
The protraction trap
None of the four drivers discussed above need be decisive in preventing military decision, but together they create a loop that binds both sides ever more tightly into continuing the war.
Consider this plausible sequence. Following the initial phase of conflict, the attacking side’s forces suffer unexpectedly high losses as the target country, helped by the US, resists, while expectations of victory held by the attacker’s public raise the political cost of backing down. Aircraft from the targeted state seek dispersal at bases in friendly countries, increasing the likelihood of strikes on those bases, and perhaps on US facilities if they are also present where the aircraft land. The friendly governments, perhaps allies of the US, face a stark decision: accept deeper involvement and risk further retaliation, or limit their participation and undermine alliance cohesion, each carrying significant political and strategic costs. As operations continue, neither side achieves a decisive advantage. Instead, denial strategies by the defending side and US interdiction of the adversary’s rear-area logistics in the targeted country combine to reinforce a costly stalemate.
Efforts to break the deadlock, such as strikes on mainland bases, are constrained by the risk of nuclear escalation. Losses mount and costs accumulate, intensifying domestic pressures on all sides to continue the fight, reinforcing earlier regime-legitimacy constraints and narrowing the space for compromise. These interacting dynamics create a self-reinforcing loop that makes termination increasingly difficult.
Once a conflict became protracted, time would become a strategic variable. The costs of continued war would rise more for one side than for the other. It might suffer from sanctions, lose seaborne trade and perhaps see yet more countries join the fight against it. By contrast, the US and its allies may benefit from having time for industrial mobilisation and improving alliance coordination, while the opposing side may face increasing economic pressure and disruption to external trade.
Implications for deterrence
Deterrence fails if an adversary believes it can outlast the alliance’s will. If a conflict is prolonged, supply of munitions and other material will be increasingly decisive. Deterrence should therefore focus not only on a quick victory but on endurance.
The US and its allies may already have the benefit of the strong capacity of a key regional ally for physical recovery, which would mean rapid repairs of infrastructure for basing, supply and other purposes. If allied forces can restore operational capacity faster than an adversary can sustain forward operations, the strategic balance may shift over time.
Whether such an ally were available or not, more preparations are needed for a long war. An obvious one is the scale of munitions stocks. They should be expanded.
Effective alliance decision mechanisms will also be essential for sustaining operations in a prolonged conflict, as they enable timely and coordinated responses to disruptions and reduce the risk of fragmentation and unintended escalation. Establishment of joint operational commands and the transformation of forward-deployed US headquarters into a more operational headquarters may offer opportunities for better coordination. Through these institutions, the two allies could strengthen decision making and command integration.
Preparations should be made for US allies to play central roles in sustaining alliance operations as hubs for logistics, repair and coordination.
Finally, political resilience may become a critical element of warfighting capacity. Governments will need to be clear in public communication about the costs and stakes of the conflict in order to sustain public support during a prolonged war. They must be prepared for rapid and coordinated strategic messaging to maintain domestic and allied cohesion and to counter coercive diplomacy, military pressure and grey-zone activities. Timely communication among allied governments and with domestic audiences can restrict an adversary’s ability to exploit political divisions.
Preparing for a long conflict may be the most effective way to prevent one. Deterrence in such a contingency may ultimately depend not only on convincing an adversary that it cannot win quickly, but on demonstrating that, once begun, the conflict would become increasingly difficult to terminate – falling into what this article terms a protraction trap.
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