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This is CBS I On The World with John Bacheler. Here's John Bacheler.

This is CBS I On The World. I'm John Bacheler. I welcome Elbridge Colby, the author of the new book, The Strategy of Denial, American Defense,

in an age of great power conflict. Elbridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative.

He has served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development 2017 through 2018,

and we turn to the condition at hand in the world as we know it.

The great power competition involves the players from the 20th century plus China. And Bridges book looks at all of those possibilities, but focuses on China.

So before we come to the examples of China and the US and conflict in East Asia, we begin with definitions.

Bridges, a very good even to you. Congratulations, a military strategy for a limited war. What is limited war? And what does the US now know about its possible opponent China in a limited war? Good evening to you.

Good evening, John. It's wonderful to be back on with you. It's a thanks for a pleasure to be back on and an honor.

What is a limited war? A limited war is something that sounds paradoxical, but is very actually deeply rooted in human nature and certainly military affairs, which is the idea that even in wars that engage people's deepest emotions and aspirations and fears,

there are almost always incentives to keep a war from spiraling to the very worst levels of violence. World War II is in most respects a total war, but the vast majority of other wars in human history have been limited.

Whether because of the choice of the participants for some reason or another because they're pursuing political objectives and they have other interests in the world, or a lack of capacity.

In the context of China, there's these kind of old varieties of limited war, but there's also a particularly important one, which is that both sides have what's called survivable nuclear arsenals and in addition to nuclear arsenals have enormous additional ways of hurting each other.

So you essentially have what Tom Shelling famously called two scorpions in a bottle, right, which is they can both thing each other.

We in the Chinese can hurt each other gravely under any circumstances, even if we were beating the other in a limited war.

But in this context, both sides have a very strong incentive to avoid things getting completely out of hand because whatever goals they're pursuing in the world will be vitiated by a war become apocalyptic.

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