While the incoming Trump administration will seek to have a stable relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), albeit in a highly competitive and contentious time, it’s clear that the leaders of China are determined to seek conflict. While any potential war would likely take place over the freedom of Taiwan or friction in the South China Sea, the new administration must take stock of what it has inherited in terms of war plans against China. While great attention has been placed on how best to defeat China in a military conflict over Taiwan, there are secondary and tertiary effects that must also be studied. However much planners assume any such conflagration would largely take place in the Indo-Pacific region, it will quickly become global and involve not just military power but political, diplomatic, economic and informational dimensions as well.

A key element of responsible deterrence planning is examining what the global rollback of PRC influence would look like even as a conflict takes place in the Indo-Pacific. China has consistently grown its influence globally, not just through economic development but by building military bases, ports, surveillance sites and other infrastructure to wage a global campaign against U.S. interests.

In a wartime environment this would all become weaponized against the United States. While much of the Pentagon’s focus will be on higher-end conflict in the Pacific, it must also plan for rolling back PRC influence globally. While any such effort will naturally involve U.S. military capabilities, planning must also incorporate interagency efforts as well including diplomatic engagement, political influence and economic diplomacy, among a host of other actions.

There are four broad categories of global Chinese infrastructure that would need to be addressed in a war environment: military assets, intelligence capabilities, geographic terrain features and war-enabling economic capabilities. Military targets would include overseas military bases (e.g., China’s base in Djibouti, space assets, cyber capabilities), intelligence capabilities would include listening stations (e.g., China’s base in Cuba), terrain features which would be necessary for the flow of U.S. forces into the Indo-Pacific (e.g., China’s control of the Panama Canal), and economic capabilities which enable Chinese military activities (e.g., its space-monitoring station in Argentina). Other necessary actions would include reducing malign economic influence, curtailing their global trade, and tightening what would likely be a robust set of sanctions.

A campaign of this type would require a global, coordinated response even as an Indo-Pacific campaign involved the bulk of U.S. forces and attention. It would cut across regions and functional areas, require a combination of skills including aggression action along with diplomatic tact and political savvy, and take place across a number of different war-fighting domains. Due to its scale and complexity, the incoming Trump administration should consider creating a Joint Interagency Task Force to focus on the issue and make preparations in case China decides to initiate a conflict with the United States. Additionally, the administration should consider working closely with allies and partners to implement a global rollback of PRC influence.

Any such efforts will, of necessity, require incredible resources and the sustaining interest of regional and global allies at implementing these plans and, more importantly, sustaining them for the long term. As President Theodore Roosevelt once said: “Preparation for war is the surest guarantee for peace.”

Daniel R. Green served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for policy and force development (2019-2021) and is co-editor of the book “Confronting China: U.S. Defense Policy in an Era of Great Power Competition” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). He is a reserve officer in the U.S. Navy. His views do not represent those of the Navy or Department of Defense.