What Would a Future War with China Look Like? A Military Expert Envisions Catastrophe in 'White Sun War'

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"Many military institutions engage in thinking about, wargaming and planning for the next war. They often get it wrong," retired Australian Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan writes on his blog. "Often this is because the wrong lessons are taken from previous conflicts. This is because the context or political objectives of future warfare diverge from those of the conflict from which lessons were taken."

Ryan knows what he's talking about. On top of his 35 years of military experience, he is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the U.S. Marine Corps University Command and Staff College and School of Advanced Warfighting. He was a scholar at the Modern War Institute and is currently an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In his 2022 nonfiction book "War Transformed," Ryan previewed the ways emerging technologies will impact conflicts of the future. His latest fiction book, "White Sun War: The Campaign for Taiwan," gives us a glimpse of a future in which robots and artificial intelligence enter the equation.

At the end of the Cold War, the United States became the world's lone superpower, but rising countries and alliances are creating an increasingly multipolar state of affairs. China, the European Union, Russia and nonaligned economies have become increasingly complex -- which, some international relations theories hold, makes for an unstable global system.

Great powers are prone to great errors in judgment, which can lead to great power conflicts. This is especially true when one power underestimates an emerging force, like in the case of World War I. In "White Sun War," it leads to the United States and China going to war over Taiwan in 2028.

Also like WWI, new industrial and technological developments can lead to killing on an unprecedented and unpredictable scale. Ryan believes a real war fought in the same way wouldn't be too far from what he describes in "War Transformed," but he chose to play out the scenario in speculative fiction instead of writing another nonfiction book.

"I wanted to make the material as accessible as possible," Ryan writes. "Despite my best efforts, even the best written nonfiction books on war and competition contain a certain level of jargon that some find difficult to understand. I find that fiction allows the use of more accessible language to examine some of the complexities of humans and technology in war."

Ryan says he structured "White Sun War" akin to Michael Shaara's 1974 Civil War classic "The Killer Angels," which followed the Battle of Gettysburg using a few key figures from both sides of the war. Indeed, Ryan's book is told through the eyes of a U.S. Army cavalry captain, who commands both human and robot forces; a Taiwanese soldier working in the headquarters of a mechanized brigade; a U.S. Space Force noncommissioned officer who specializes in orbital combat; a Chinese colonel in command of a Marine brigade; and a U.S. Marine colonel commanding a new Marine Littoral Regiment in Taiwan.

Fiction, Ryan says, allows him to use operational scenarios and organizations without disclosing classified information or war plans. It also allows him to use his imagination when considering the Chinese military buildup and the aftermath of the Ukraine-Russia War.

"One of the worst things that an institution can be accused of is to have a failure of imagination. Such a concept has been the foundation of strategic failure in the past," writes Ryan.

To see how a war between the United States and China might be complicated by autonomous technology and artificial intelligence, check out "White Sun War: The Campaign for Taiwan," available now in paperback and on Kindle or audiobook.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, or on LinkedIn.

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