The Marine Corps in Conflict: Force Design 2030 and American Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific

Abstract

The US military and its Corps of Marines stand at a crossroads. Beginning in the mid 1990's the People's Republic of China underwent an enormous military build up. For the first time since the Cold War, the United States no longer enjoys assured conventional military superiority anywhere on Earth. Two decades spent waging counterterrorist and counterinsurgent warfare weakened the US military's ability to fight peer-level adversaries. The Marine Corps was especially affected by the Global War on Terror, abandoning its traditional focus on amphibious and maritime operations as it sent tens of thousands of Marines to fight in the deserts and mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now the Marine Corps and US military must rapidly acquire the capability to fight an increasingly powerful opponent at sea, or risk cataclysmic defeat in the Western Pacific and the destruction of the international rules-based order.

Force Design 2030, a revolutionary new plan to reform the Marine Corps, seeks to correct the neglect of the past two decades and enable the Corps to deter and fight the looming challenge in the Indo-Pacific. Force Design 2030 revolves around two key warfighting concepts, Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) and Littoral Operations in Contested Environments (LOCE), revolutionizing the Marine Corps' way of war with new doctrine and systems. The plan has not come without criticism however. Dozens of high-ranking retired Marines have openly lambasted the plan, breaking the traditional neutrality of military retirement, and continue to clamor actively for its repeal.

This paper investigates Force Design 2030, dives into the ongoing process of the Marine Corps to implement EABO and LOCE, and examines the efforts of critics to block it all. Through careful and wide-ranging analysis of Congressional testimonies, scholarly works, news articles, government and think-tank reports, and op-eds from prominent officials and former Marines, this investigation finds that Force Design 2030 represents a radical and revolutionary step necessary to confront the impending challenge to the United States and its allies.