11/17/2025 at the Aspen Institute in Washington D.C.
Phillips O’Brien is a professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews, and the writer of How the War Was Won and War and Power. He also has one of the beefiest substacks on the net.
*All quotations are paraphrased. I write down quotes to the best of my ability, but it may not be word-for-word accurate. Paraphrased quotes are in “”, while ‘’ are my own snarky air quotes.
Phillips O’Brien warned the audience that his visions of the future are dark. Very dark. But the darkest it got was that his new framework indicates that China would win a war in the Indo-Pacific with the US. And that because of this, the US might not bother fighting China at all. He mentioned that his pals at CSIS were much more optimistic, but as an armchair newspaper reader, I was surprised that his assessment wasn’t more depressing.
The talk was a book launch of O’Brien’s new book, War and Power. The book came together in the aftermath of Russia’s 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine, when many news outlets and analysts (some even in the Pentagon!) completely flunked their predictions. They believed the war would be over in a matter of days, that Russia’s military capabilities were a “near peer” of the US, and that as a Great Power, Russia was sure to dominate the smaller power of Ukraine. ‘How could so many get it so wrong?’ O’Brien asks.
Word Salad:
O’Brien thinks that think tanks and national security agencies are getting less helpful. There are so many of them, producing too much intelligence. In order to secure government contracts, these agencies present themselves as the Oracle. Everyone needs to have an answer, with no room for uncertainty. Everyone is competing for the same contracts too, meaning that there is an inevitable temptation to write what they think the employer wants to hear. Or at least what will keep them coming back for more. And that leads to lots of analysis being dead wrong— like with Russia-Ukraine.
But when you look back, for example to intelligence gathered before the outbreaks of WWI and WWII, there are hardly any drastic miscalculations. Back then, analysts were much more forthright about uncertainty. Maybe this will happen, maybe not. We don’t know enough about this, and we aren’t foolish enough to assume we know everything. It isn’t new that intelligence is flawed. This limitation comes up in the introductory chapter any time you pick up a book about intelligence. But what was devilishly interesting was that intelligence assessments of yesteryear were more accurate, while today’s are more precise.
The second standout moment has to do with terminology. Even after years of paging through Cold War history books and complaining about buzzwords which lack proper definition, I never realized that ‘Great Power’ was one of those slippery terms. Because what even is it? ‘Great Power’ has no standard definition. Those that do exist are often linked to military might: Russia is a Great Power while Japan is not, even though Japan’s economy is far stronger than Russia’s. Russia has nuclear weapons, but then so does North Korea. And no one is calling North Korea a Great Power.
(Strangely, nuclear weapons were almost entirely absent from O’Brien’s talk, so perhaps it needs revisiting. Check in when I do my review of the launch event for CSIS’ Project Atom 2025 Report.) Quoting someone whose name I didn’t write down because I had better things to do, O’Brien said, “A Great Power is one that can stand against all other powers in the world”. It has a nice ring to it, but then he said that no nation can do that. The term can mean so many things, so be careful when using.
O’Brien was full of zingers. “Amateurs discuss tactics, experts study logistics,” he said. “Although, if that were true, we would have no experts”, since barely anyone studies logistics. No one is as excited about trucks and aluminum shipments as they are about tanks. And that’s a damn shame.
It is important to question “Mirror Image” narratives. In the runup to 2022, there was the assumption that Russia, being a great power, was a “near peer” to the US, leading analysts to grossly overestimate Russia’s capabilities. This wasn’t just in terms of equipment or types of operations the Russians could have pulled off, it was also the assumption that the Russian military would take the same actions as the US military on their A-game. American analysts looked at conflicts the US had been a part of to try and see what Russia would do, instead of using conflicts that Russia had participated in to inform their analysis. So, for the aspiring analyst, make sure you have a solid cultural and historical understanding of the country you’re looking at. Russia will act like Russia, the US will act like the US, and (presumably) China will act like China, and we cannot assume that they will be mirroring each other.
China was the elephant in the room, and O’Brien did get the chance to speak about US-China tensions. For him, Taiwan is of the utmost importance. If China takes Taiwan, they have the naval reach to cut off Japan, completely disrupting the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. No shipments would be able to reach Japan without China’s permission. Considering that China’s comportment in the South China Sea would serve as a blueprint for the rest of the Pacific, that scenario would suck.
O’Brien brought up briefly the strategies China might employ to ‘reunify’ Taiwan with the Mainland, including “the Hong Kong way”. This would be by having a Mainland-backed party win elections in Taiwan, and then start ‘democratic’(?) processes to reunify with the mainland. O’Brien said many things, much of which can be summed up as, ‘if China gets Taiwan, it’s so over’.
I’m not sure how convincing O’Brien’s arguments were when it comes to China, simply because I don’t think that’s his area (but it’s the area everyone wants to know about). After all, Taiwan and Hong Kong are quite different in practically every way. Taiwan is actively rooting out PRC-backed politicians. They have their own military. It’s a very different situation from Hong Kong. No doubt the PRC will try something like that, but they would likely face a Euromaidan movement, or an Umbrella Movement, but much more intense.
Maybe I’m using the minutiae to disqualify the larger argument, which is dangerous. All the points O’Brien raised are true, and need to be addressed if the USA wants to preserve the current rules-based world order.
Meat and Potatoes:
But back to the meat of the talk. O’Brien outlined four overarching factors that influence the ability to wage and win wars:
- Economic / Technological Strength: This is a foundational necessity. The ability to procure a “huge amount of the best stuff” is crucial. This isn’t a shaping factor, but a bare necessity. You need it to even be in the conversation. Otherwise, there simply is no way to win.
The next three factors are ‘shaping factors’, which determine how the conflict plays out.
- Leadership: Leadership matters. This is somehow a controversial, unpopular ‘hot take’, but it does matter. I know we’re getting into counterfactuals, but a war instigated by Putin would be different than a war instigated by a different leader. And you’d have to be head deep in the sand to think that there was no difference from Biden to Trump when it comes to the Russo-Ukrainian War.
- Society and Structure: Some societies are structured in a way that is more conducive to war. O’Brien didn’t delve too much into it, but some factors include the unity/disunity of the society, but could also extend to willingness to fight, governmental systems, and more things that you’ll have to buy the book to learn about.
- Alliances: This one is important. It might even be the most important. One line that stuck with me was O’Brien saying: “There are no Great Powers, only great Alliances.” A bad ally can hold you back (Mussolini’s Italy), and a good ally can carry you (FDR’s USA). Referencing the US’ handling of the War on Terror, and the USSR’s late stage woes, he also warned that failures arise when a nation forgets the value of good alliances.
Then we got nittier and grittier. What factors into military success?
- Complex Operations, SEAD [Suppression of Enemy Air Defences] and Logistics: This is really hard to do, and not every military can do them. These operations have many steps, and they need to happen fast and seamlessly.
- Human Factors: Are the people willing to fight? History shows that underdogs with staying power can win. In the 60s and 70s, Vietnam ranked as one of the world’s poorest countries, but it can legitimately claim victory over the USA during the Vietnam War. You could look at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the current war in Ukraine too. Willingness matters.
- Sustainment / Replenishment: “What you make during the war is far more important than what you bring to the war.” The weapons you bring are going to get broken, so it’s vital to be able to restock and replace equipment/personnel in wartime, since replenishment is inevitable. Wars are rarely short. In fact, the only exception to this O’Brien could come up with were wars in the Middle East. But even those can be considered as parts of larger, longer conflicts. This sustainment problem is the main reason O’Brien says that the USA would not win a war against China in the Indo-Pacific. The US doesn’t have the replenishment capabilities (unless Japan and Korea help), but China does.
- Alliances (again): Never forget about the power of friendship.
Dessert: Food for thought, tidbits, and Q&A
- Russia/Eurasia academic powerhouse Fiona Hill attended the talk, even helping answer audience questions.
- One audience member asked for O’Brien’s perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict. I didn’t write down his response, but it was a good one.
- Are robots really going to be a thing? This is the second China talk I’ve been to that brought up robots.
- Sanctions on Russia are ineffective. Is this true?
- While Russia has not been successful on the ground, it has been incredibly effective in the sphere of cyber and misinformation. How did they get so good at it?
- Fun Fact: 1815 was the last time military leadership was on the battlefield. Since then, they’ve been commanding from afar. Isn’t that so interesting?
Anyway. Make sure to floss.