For a growing number of Americans in positions of trust and responsibility, Taiwan is front of mind. Inside ornate White House deliberation rooms, around stern Pentagon war tables, and across grand Congressional halls, everyone is talking about the gathering crisis.
What will we do if China attacks? Could Taiwan hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive? What if a limited conflict spirals out of control and goes nuclear?
“The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested a long time,” said Admiral Charles Richard, the commander of US Strategic Command. “As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking. It is sinking slowly. But it is sinking.”
Richard’s statement comes amid a flurry of ominous warnings from high-ranking commanders, who have access to exquisite intelligence on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its armed forces.
THE CLOCK IS TICKING
In 2021, Admiral Phil Davidson, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China could be ready to invade Taiwan in 2027, if not sooner. Other admirals and generals have made similar estimates. This February, CIA Director William Burns revealed that Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) has ordered his military to “be ready by 2027”.
Taiwan’s great military minds are even more concerned. For them, it is not just a matter of capability, but also unwavering — and increasingly obvious — intention.
“As long as China’s one-party authoritarian political system doesn’t change… it should be obvious that unifying Taiwan will not be a question of ‘if’ but rather a question of ‘when’,” said Admiral (retired) Lee Hsi-min (李喜明), the former supreme commander of the Taiwanese military and author of the book, The Overall Defense Concept: An Asymmetric Approach to Taiwan’s Defense. “The goal of those providing ‘strategic warning’ is to get the nation to prepare for war as fast as possible, thereby producing a deterrence effect.”
Strategic warnings are not falling on deaf ears in Washington and Taipei. President Joe Biden is rallying democratic allies, sending rush orders of equipment, and dispatching hundreds of US troops to serve as trainers in Taiwan.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has increased Taiwan’s defense budget, enhanced reserve force training, and extended mandatory conscription from four months to one year for all eligible men.
Political leaders, then, are taking many important steps to bolster Taiwan’s defense. If current trends hold, Taiwan will be better prepared for an uncertain future. But it still won’t be ready to deter conflict. Not even close.
CHINA’S MASSIVE MILITARY BUILDUP
Chairman Xi has made the annexation of Taiwan his top priority, and the CCP is investing accordingly. Make no mistake about it, China’s government is deep into the process of building the most powerful amphibious force in the world. Admiral Lee points out that the Chinese military is now mass-producing the world’s fastest hovercrafts and swimming tanks. It is also fielding a colossal helicopter fleet for air assault operations.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is preparing with remarkable degree of intensity and focus, and it’s backed by the full authority of a one-party dictatorship that has a unique ability to extract private resources for the state’s use. In 2019, Conor Kennedy, a China expert at the US Naval War College, discovered that the PLA was transforming its large merchant ships into readymade troop transports. More recently, Lonnie Henley, a former strategic warning official at the Defense Intelligence Agency, argued that the PLA’s unorthodox invasion fleet “could prove good enough to enable a large-scale amphibious assault.”
SAPPING THE WILL TO FIGHT
Taiwan’s rugged terrain makes the country a defender’s paradise. If the Taiwanese people fight like Ukrainians, even a mighty PLA landing force would likely flail and be unable to kill its way into Taipei. With this in mind, CCP agents are working overtime to weaken resolve and soften up the “human terrain” of the future battlefield.
To enfeeble their victims, the CCP’s spy services, the shadowy Ministry of State Security (MSS) and PLA Liaison Bureau, are carrying out a sweeping campaign of covert operations. Their goal is to eat away at the Taiwanese government, military, and society from within. If their strategy achieved total success, they could subvert and overturn Taiwan’s democracy, leaving the occupation force to confront a short guerrilla war and American trade sanctions.
But even if the CCP’s dream scenario is unreachable, Beijing’s undercover operatives have already seduced, entrapped, and corrupted a sufficient number of opinion leaders to minimize a sense of crisis and pour cold water on public demands for action. Needed political and military reforms in both Taipei and Washington continue to be delayed.
“Let’s not forget the importance of one of the main targets of MSS influence operations: scholars, commentators, and non-governmental observers of China,” said Alex Joske, author of Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. “The degree of obliviousness and recklessness with which some of these people have treated the CCP is astounding.”
The distressing reality is that the CCP has an army of secret agents dripping poison into hearts and minds, and they have already been effective at making some seemingly common-sense policy changes appear unthinkable.
For example, consider the following questions: Why doesn’t Taiwan have a mandatory, two-year military service requirement for all men and women? Why doesn’t the US Marine Corps begin to migrate units from Okinawa to northern Taiwan, where they are most needed? Why don’t the US and Republic of China (ROC) governments have bilateral working groups on everything from blockade breaking to strategic psychological warfare?
And why in the world aren’t the US and ROC militaries developing tactical and operational communications mechanisms for avoiding friendly fire? Why aren’t they conducting joint air and naval patrols of the Strait to reduce the likelihood that such mechanisms are ever used in actual combat?
If the prime directive of the free world continues to be: “Avoid provoking the CCP”, then an earth-shaking tragedy is almost certain. While it might be comforting to believe that Beijing will respond positively to concessions, in reality, they only make Taiwan more vulnerable.
Preserving the peace will require a titanic, all-domain campaign to defend Taiwan. Absent that, the doomsayers are likely to be proven correct. Future historians will wonder why so few listened to the admirals until it was too late.
Ian Easton is a senior director at the Project 2049 Institute and the author of The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan’s Defense and American Strategy in Asia.
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