It would seem, from our experience, that simply telling those involved the date and time, and giving them the means of achieving their objective, is a pretty effective plan.
Ya' see, we tend to over-think this stuff. Over-thinking is good for many things, but many an army has been laid low by inferior, but motivated forces using unconventional tactics. In this day and age maybe we don't have to defeat the enemy, just mess with them enough to lower their morale, or create an insurgency. You might not be able to blow up all of their bridges, but plan on doing so. If half of your operatives get caught, you still have seriously crippled your opponent. You try to take down all major communications towers, but even if you are only partly successful, they are still hindered. Heck, they might not even realize it is an attack...
The PRC has many things going for them. There is a fair percentage of the people in Taiwan who are sympathetic to the PRC. There is no physical difference between the Mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese Chinese. There is a flow of traffic on and off the island that is not that closely watched. There are large amounts of cargo being brought in and and shipped out constantly. All of these situations are ripe for the PRC to use for nefarious purposes.
I still say that I would, at the least, use unconventional methods to soften up, or even out right defeat, Taiwan before trying the strictly military option. The US, under the current administration, is almost certain to get involved militarily. You can be certain that if a US Carrier is attacked, Bush will not hesitate to respond with every means at his disposal.
Interesting post.
When you say, "The US, under the current administration, is almost certain to get involved militarily", how do you reconcile that with the latest announcements from Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage?
Would U.S. sacrifice Taiwan? Official says America not required to defend island
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1306400/posts
Against FOUR targets. Power distribution and communications networks, by their nature, are extremely robust targets requiring direct action against SEVERAL HUNDRED nodes simultaneously.
It would seem, from our experience, that simply telling those involved the date and time, and giving them the means of achieving their objective, is a pretty effective plan.
Uh-oh, the plan just changed--there's been a delay imposed by changed circumstances. Better hope your teams got the change to their orders. What's that? They didn't? Hey, guess what? About all you accomplished was to alert the Taiwanese.
Ya' see, we tend to over-think this stuff.
No, the problem is that you underthought this stuff by a wide margin.
In this day and age maybe we don't have to defeat the enemy, just mess with them enough to lower their morale, or create an insurgency.
Which explains why we're now all radical Wahabbist Muslims under the benevolent leadership of Osama bin Laden, the New Salah-al-Din.
You might not be able to blow up all of their bridges, but plan on doing so. If half of your operatives get caught, you still have seriously crippled your opponent.
Blowing up a bridge is a nontrivial enterprise. Blowing up dozens of bridges is best done by a force of B-2 and F-117 aircraft. If you're using people on the ground, it takes a LOT of people to take down ONE important bridge.
You try to take down all major communications towers, but even if you are only partly successful, they are still hindered. Heck, they might not even realize it is an attack...
When your attack plan hinges on your opponent being as moronic as you want and need them to be, that's a sign that you need to go back to the drawing board.
There is no physical difference between the Mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese Chinese.
There are significant cultural differences that would be strikingly obvious.
I still say that I would, at the least, use unconventional methods to soften up, or even out right defeat, Taiwan before trying the strictly military option.
That's nice. If it works, then it works. However, it has a very high chance of spectacular failure. There is no mitigating that risk. Governments are, by their nature, extremely risk-averse.