At Foreign Policy there’s an interesting article by Tanner Greer on a subject I’ve heard discussed many times over the years. If China decided to attack Taiwan, who would win?
China has already ratcheted up economic and diplomatic pressure on the island since the 2016 election of Tsai Ing-wen and the independence-friendly Democratic Progressive Party. Saber-rattling around the Taiwan Strait has been common. But China might not be able to deliver on its repeated threats. Despite the vast discrepancy in size between the two countries, there’s a real possibility that Taiwan could fight off a Chinese attack—even without direct aid from the United States.
Two recent studies, one by Michael Beckley, a political scientist at Tufts University, and the other by Ian Easton, a fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, in his book The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan’s Defense and American Strategy in Asia, provide us with a clearer picture of what a war between Taiwan and the mainland might look like. Grounded in statistics, training manuals, and planning documents from the PLA itself, and informed by simulations and studies conducted by both the U.S. Defense Department and the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense, this research presents a very different picture of a cross-strait conflict than that hawked by the party’s official announcements.
Chinese commanders fear they may be forced into armed contest with an enemy that is better trained, better motivated, and better prepared for the rigors of warfare than troops the PLA could throw against them.Chinese commanders fear they may be forced into armed contest with an enemy that is better trained, better motivated, and better prepared for the rigors of warfare than troops the PLA could throw against them. A cross-strait war looks far less like an inevitable victory for China than it does a staggeringly risky gamble.
I’ve heard that claimed for many years and I don’t know whether it’s true or false or, more importantly, becoming truer or less true.
Claiming Taiwan by force may be good in whatever is the Chinese analog of a stump speech but actually doing it may be something else again. The real question for the Chinese authorities is would they gain more by winning in a war with Taiwan than they would risk by losing?
I think that losing would a far greater negative risk for them than winning would be a positive risk. That leaves them with a couple of alternatives. They could continue to build up their military capabilities, particularly their naval capabilities, to reduce the risk of loss. Or, regardless of what they may say in speeches, don’t attack Taiwan.
If the conflict ever turned hot; its best to reason about it from different time frames.
Who won after 10 days, after 10 weeks, after 10 years, after 100 years would probably produce wildly different answers. Its certainly is the case with the wars the US has engaged in since 1989.
A tyrant whose country’s economy is going on the rocks decides to pump up flagging enthusiasm for his rule by attacking an island nation. Where have we seen this before?
Trouble is this tyrant’s got nukes. That changes the whole equation, especially if the landing force gets their butts handed to them by people who have nothing to lose. I don’t like it. I don’t like it all.