“The U.S. military has war-gamed the battle and China wins devastatingly.”
The question is WHICH battle we’ve wargamed. Could we stop a cross-straights invasion in a scenario limited to a static defense of the beaches? Probably not. Taiwan is too near to China and China can exert overwhelming local force.
But that’s not the only question. Will the Chinese navy still be floating a week after the commencement of hostilities? (Will the U.S. navy still be floating?) If the U.S. can maintain naval dominance, is China prepared to live with the closure of all of its ports? And the loss of all of its export markets?
If the naval war is inevitable, whose satellites will still be operational?
If China opens the conflict with a preemptive strike against U.S. naval forces and satellites, then from the get-go, the war is not just about Taiwan. It’s another Pearl Harbor.
Japan didn’t attack Pearl Harbor because it wanted a war with the United States. It attacked Pearl Harbor because it saw the U.S. Pacific fleet, with a major forward base in the Philippines, as a mortal threat to Japan’s projected conquest of the British, French and Dutch possessions in Indochina and the East Indies. Japan wanted to neutralize that threat by taking the Philippines. It attacked Pearl Harbor to forestall a U.S. response. But the goal all along was primarily the Dutch oil concessions in what is now Indonesia.
China can almost certainly take Taiwan. But does China want to live with the consequences? And would China launch a preemptive strategic strike to neutralize those consequences? Those are the questions.
Admiral Yamamoto, every American’s favorite Japanese commander of WWII, tried manfully to warn his government about awakening the sleeping giant.
What is the Chinese calculation about the U.S. response in the Biden administration? I imagine they are confident that Biden would soil his underwear and send someone on an apology tour. But China cannot be certain that Biden will be calling the shots. Nor can China be certain of the reaction of all the other Pacific Rim countries in Asia. India, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan, if united, provide an invasion proof arc of secure bases to support a blockade and complete trade embargo. And most of those countries would quickly go nuclear.
This is why China’s saber rattling is worrisome. If China simply stepped back and liberalized cross-straights commerce and travel, Taiwan would become China’s Canada. A rational thinker would not regard that as a bad outcome. Is the Chinese regime so insecure that it cannot tolerate an offshore Canada?
Due to Obama allowing the Chinese to surpass us in hypersonic technology, we are still doing the R&D to catch up and putting in stop gap fillers until then.
However, do not underestimate our Virgina class attack subs playing havoc in a Chinese assault on Taiwan.
Of course, the fear is that China sees Biden as easy money and goes all in anyway.
Well said.
China’s military outnumbers any potential opponent, but it cannot outmber all of its neighbors and their allies combined.