What If?

Chris Williams

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Storm clouds are gathering. The United States faces an increasingly threatening political-military environment driven by a range of hostile adversaries armed with increasingly sophisticated means and methods of debilitating attack. Will current domestic distractions prevent our leaders from fashioning effective policies and plans to anticipate and repel such attacks? Do we have the requisite military capabilities to deter or defeat such threats?

The 9/11 Commission cited “a failure of imagination” as one of the principal causes of America’s inability to anticipate and prevent the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC on that fateful morning almost twenty-two years ago. Consistent with that finding, one must ask: What If?

What if Vladimir Putin, having finally recognized that he will not achieve his goal of subjugating Ukraine, authorized strikes against various Ukrainian targets using low-yield tactical nuclear weapons to shock NATO, destroy critical infrastructure, and leave key cities uninhabitable? What if immediately thereafter Putin agreed to a “ceasefire-in-place” and called for “face-to-face negotiations to resolve the matter of Ukraine” – an approach that would leave Russia in control of occupied Ukrainian territory? And what if Putin encouraged Wagner Group mercenaries to launch attacks against Poland, a NATO ally, all while denying responsibility for such actions? How would the U.S., NATO, and others respond?

What if North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un fomented an escalating political crisis on the peninsula, launched debilitating cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in the South, and demanded replacement of the ruling government in Seoul with a pro-North regime that supports removal of all US forces from the peninsula? What if the North also released a list of a dozen South Korean cities that would be attacked by artillery and rockets armed with chemical weapons if his demands were not met? What if such a warning caused panic and led to hurried evacuations of several of those cities thereby creating a humanitarian and political crisis in the South? What if, amid the crisis, North Korean special forces conducted sabotage operations against ROK command control & communications targets and assassinated South Korean political and industry leaders? And what if Kim asserted that if the US did not begin a full withdrawal of its military forces from the South within one week, the North would launch missile attacks against U.S. military bases in the South and throughout the region and destroy Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities? How would the U.S. and its friends and allies respond?

What if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force launched sustained rocket, missile, and air attacks against key political, economic, and military targets in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain? What if Iran-backed Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad conducted a devastating wave of terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and infrastructure? What if Ayatollah Khamenei called upon “the Palestinian people and their supporters everywhere to rise up to defeat the illegitimate Zionist oppressors” and asserted that if Israel did not immediately surrender then Iran would have no choice but to launch sustained attacks against Israel, including missiles armed with chemical weapons, to “wipe the Zionists off the face of the earth once and for all”? And what if the Israeli Prime Minister informed President Biden that the Israeli Air Force was planning to “strike critical Iranian targets to degrade and destroy Iran’s ability to attack Israel” and formally requested “the active support of U.S. military forces, including air refueling, fighters and bombers, for such operations”? How would President Biden, Congressional leaders, and our friends in the region respond?

What if Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping directed the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to launch a blockade of Taiwan? What if China also launched debilitating cyberattacks against Taiwanese critical infrastructure and Government communications networks, and threatened to invade the island if “splittist political leaders refuse to turn themselves in for reeducation within 72 hours”? What if, during the height of the crisis, the PLA conducted jamming, laser dazzling and cyberattacks on US Government and commercial space systems thereby degrading critical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), missile warning, and communications capabilities throughout the Indo-Pacific region? What if U.S. intelligence agencies reported that PLA Navy amphibious forces had begun marshaling for an invasion and that the PLA Rocket Force had increased the alert status of its intermediate- and long-range ballistic missiles? What if the Chinese Ambassador met with the U.S. Secretary of State and delivered the following ultimatum: “The U.S. must stay out of internal Chinese affairs or American military forces in the region and the U.S. homeland itself will suffer catastrophic losses”? How would the U.S. and its friends and allies respond?

What if foreign intelligence services, aided and abetted by multinational criminal organizations, launched operations to create havoc inside the U.S.? What if such such efforts included sabotage of critical infrastructure and targeted assassinations of American political and business leaders? What if foreign cyberattacks disabled various public services such as power plants and water purification systems in major U.S. cities? What if foreign intelligence services sought to sow domestic political discord through false flag operations, disinformation, and misinformation, including use of deep fakes and other operations to confuse, delay and degrade U.S. decision making processes? How would the President and leaders in Congress as well as U.S. news organizations and social media platforms respond to such activities?

Lastly, what if the series of events postulated above occurred simultaneously as part of a strategy coordinated by Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and Tehran in secret meetings held over the past 12 months? Would America and its friends and allies be prepared to respond in a timely and effective way to such crises? What steps should be taken now to mitigate the risks of such events taking place?

Chris Williams served in various positions in the Executive and Legislative branches of the U.S. Government. He serves as Chair of the Moorman Center for Space Studies at the National Security Space Association and as an independent consultant. The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official policy of the U.S. Government.