Compass Points - China Myopia
Time to move to a global view
Compass Points - China Myopia
Time to move to a global view
July 7, 2025
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In a dangerous world filled with hostile actors in every direction, the United States needs to be able to call on global, flexible, Marine Corps forces, always forward deployed on Navy amphibious ships. A narrow, regional Marine Corps will not be enough. Compass Points has received an overview of the strategic situation facing the United States today. The author is not a theorist, but an experienced Marine Corps officer who has commanded complex military operations around the world. Compass Points thanks General Zinni for his continuing service to Corps and Country.
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Dangers of a China Myopia
From a strategic perspective, the Marine Corps' China / Force Design myopia ignores several realities.
-- Russia may get a good deal on an Ukraine peace deal brokered by the U.S. What next for Putin? My guess is that he will become more aggressive in the Baltics and in the Arctic. Even now there is Russia/China buildup in the Arctic.
-- China is building its Belt and Road strategic reach globally, stretching to every corner of the world while keeping pressure on us in the Western Pacific.
-- North Korea is providing arms and troops to Russia in its expansion ambitions.
-- The Middle East is a mess! No one knows or can predict how things will unfold. We have more carrier battle groups there than in the Pacific! The "China only" crowd ignores these broader threats and will regret it.
-- Events south of our border are also problematic, with narco states and increasing instability.
In the past, the Corps' senior leaders would be busy “selling” our unique capabilities to meet these global threats. Instead, we are prioritizing getting into remote islands with a limited and questionable contribution to a China threat. What the "China only" crowd does not grasp is China might be happy to see the Marines tied up in the western Pacific, leaving China to roam the world creating dependencies and influence.
China myopia means we no longer have a global strategy or view of the world. We do not have it in the USMC today. It was lost beginning in the years we were tied up in the groundhog days of the Afghan/ Iraq wars. Starting a few years ago, the senior leadership of the Marine Corps made a series of misguided decisions that have dismantled the Corps’ global thinking, along with much of our combined arms capabilities. What will it take to get back the global Marine Corps? We can only get it back with relentless education, discussion, and better decisions. Unfortunately, it might also take the turn of global events that may well catch us unprepared.
-- General Anthony C. Zinni, United States Marine Corps (ret)
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General Zinni is a career Marine Corps infantry officer who retired from active duty after commanding US Central Command.
His military service has taken him to over 70 countries and includes deployments to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Western Pacific, Northern Europe, and Korea. He has also served tours of duty in Okinawa and Germany. His operational experiences included two tours in Vietnam, where he was severely wounded; emergency relief and security operations in the Philippines; Operation Provide Comfort in Turkey and northern Iraq; Operation Provide Hope in the former Soviet Union; Operations Restore Hope, Continue Hope, and United Shield in Somalia; Operations Resolute Response and Noble Response in Kenya; Operations Desert Thunder, Desert Fox, Desert Viper, Desert Spring, Southern Watch, and Maritime Intercept Operations in Iraq and the Persian Gulf; and Operation Infinite Reach against terrorist targets in the Central Region. He was involved in the planning and execution of Operation Proven Force and Operation Patriot Defender during the Gulf War and noncombatant evacuation operations in Liberia, Zaire, Sierra Leone, and Eritrea.
Let’s assume for a minute that FD-2030 and EABO were an ideal strategy, masterfully designed, equipped and implemented for utility in the South China Sea for a regional conflict that would not escalate.
The utility anywhere else on earth would still be lacking. The Corps is a global response force for a hundred scenarios expected and unknown. Those capabilities have all been relegated to a tertiary category even if it could be executed at all. What sort of leader would trade a global response force for one with a narrow mission in a specific place. Not to mention that six years later it has not been fielded and innumerable questions remain unanswered and ignored. For the last six years Marines have had to pass on missions that were once their bread and butter.
The dark cloud of reality is that, sooner or later, Congress and DoD will come to the conclusion that the Marine Corps is a one trick pony and can’t even pull that off very well. It becomes pretty obvious that it will not fund 160,000 Marines if their contribution is in a single region in a conflict that might never occur. This is a specialization mirage that leads to complete irrelevance. It is not hard to imagine a new FD-2035 where the Corps is nothing more than a ceremonial force confined to the greater Washington DC area and the flying squadrons turned over to the Navy.
The FD may come to mean Funeral Detail. It is high time for an about face and a realistic re-assessment.
20 years after WW2 the Army was totally focused on the Soviet threat and how to stop them from coming through the Fulda Gap. Then they got thrown into Vietnam where weaponry, tactics and even fatigues and boots needed to be redesigned or adapted to a role they hadn't been designed for. Heavy rifles (M-14) were replaced with a rifle that could be humped through jungles (M-16) with more and lighter ammo. Tanks took a secondary role, helicopters were put into the forefront, riverine gunboats replaced big gun battleships and cruisers. In short, the American military lost a lot of good men while they adapted to a type of warfare they hadn't prepared for. The myopic redesign of the Marines today should learn from this and create a well equipped fighting force that can switch roles rapidly and isn't designed strictly for one mission. Before you know it the USMC will be thrown into a fight for Lithuania, Iceland or Australia and the Commandant won't be able to beg off going there because "We're not prepared for that mission.