War in the Taiwan Strait: Prospects and Possibilities

There's been quite a bit of discussion in the blogs lately, triggered by a hysterical article in the Washington Times from Bill Gertz. Asiapundit made the roundup here. One of the slew of largely identical red state sites added its two cents here. Much of this commentary has the laudable goal of countering what is essentially a bit of propaganda. Yet, in doing so, these pieces tend to go overboard with naive assumptions about the rationality of government actors in NE Asia, naive assumptions about what China is, and naive assumptions about the ability of the US to project power in the region. Essentially, this writing overestimates the power of the US, Japan, and especially Taiwan, and deeply underestimates the ability of the PRC to conduct a limited and successful war in the Taiwan Strait while suppressing public opinion at home, should any contrary opinion arise.

Let us first take up a couple of points.

In the event of a cross-strait conflict, would Taiwan's military fight. Maybe, and maybe not. The military rank and file are Taiwanese, but the officer class remains mainlander and therefore, in its heart, pro-China. I'd imagine there would be some outright defections if the Chinese actually moved, and there would be quite a lot of sabotage one way or another. The local military is riddled with PRC spies, and there has been a steady flow of retired military officers moving to China and selling local military secrets. When Chen Shui-bian became President, senior military leaders bluntly said that they would not defend the island if it declared independence.

A second problem is that the Taiwanese themselves do not want to fight China. A recent poll said about two-thirds of the young people would not fight if China came over.

A third problem is that the local armed forces are of questionable competence. Taiwan has been a pariah state for three decades now and the military has had almost no practice with foreign powers. Its tactical and technological ideas are often years out of date. The Taiwan military has four major branches, army, navy, air force, and logistics, and the last is extremely corrupt. My students, many of whom have served as conscripts in the military, often wryly joke that their job if attacked is to stand there and die.

How powerful is Taiwan? I think there are many people who consciously or subconsciously imagine that Taiwan is some kind of East Asian version of Israel. Don't.

Many pundits argue that China would be sufficiently deterred from attacking Taiwan because Japan and the US are more powerful than it, and defending Taiwan. That may be true on paper. But the US has conducted no joint large-scale exercises with the Taiwan on a regular basis. I do not know what the current level of military liaison between the two states is, but it is not very high, and certainly no tested skeleton or infrastructure exists for a wartime expansion. The same issue applies to the Japan. Again, Japan has conducted no large-scale exercises with Taiwan. This is further complicated by the fact that Japanese equipment is home grown in many cases, and not compatible with the US equipment used by the US and Taiwan. Again no formal infrastructure exists for cooperation between the two powers. In short, the US-Japan-Taiwan alliance is like the WWII ABDA alliance, one that looks great on paper, but whose mutual fighting qualities are likely to disintegrate under the pressure of serious warfare from a determined opponent. Jing asked these questions of the PLA:

What are the education levels of the officer corps? How effective is the PLA in retaining trained personnel that might otherwise head for the private sector? How quickly can decisions can be made and passed down the chain of command? How efficient is the general logistics department? How well can different combat units integrate their battlefield awareness? All of these are complicated questions that Gertz has not even addressed that are far more significant in the long term than simple hardware acquisitions.

I suggest that Jing ought to ask them of any three-way alliance of Taiwan, Japan, and the US. How long would it take to get moving? How would they talk to each other? Pentagon officials have suggested that it would take a week or two to organize a US response. China can get troops across in hours -- the Strait is only 100 kms wide. What would happen if China got troops across, in good organization, and supported by air power, and kept them there for a few days? Taiwan's largely mainlander officer corps may well defect to the other side en masse, effectively finishing any war.

Myrick at asiapundit assures us -- seriously -- that the goal of current Chinese leadership is to get rich. "In a couple of decades the WT article may make a fine basis for a Philip K Dick-style novel. Right now, it gravely misinterprets the goals of the Chinese leadership which is, simply put, to get rich." This is quite true, and yet, the goals of Chinese leadership do not end there. Annexing Taiwan is also an important goal, one that the leadership puts great stress on. It is interesting to note that China recently negotiated with Russia to let that nation have a piece of China long claimed as sacred national territories, but no flexibility is evident on Taiwan. This complete lack of flexibility should be an indication that the leadership is (1) actually dedicated to this goal, and not merely mouthing nationlist pap to feed the masses and (2) the leadership is not rational on this issue. Leaders of great nations are as susceptible to sentimentality as anyone else.

From many years of reading and watching history I put very little faith in the ability of leaders to rationally manage events. Asia watchers especially should be the first to discount the idea that leadership will avoid war to get rich, or for some similar material goal. Prior to WWII Japan followed policies whose goals were to bring it into war with China, Russia, the US, and the UK, the four largest political entities on earth, all at the same time. The current US administration invaded Iraq for no good reason at all, and persists in its folly despite the fact that it has lost that war, and despite the fact that the US did the exact same thing in Vietnam within the memory of those now serving in the military and in the Administration.

A further problem with the "don't worry be rational" theory of non-conflict is that all four states possess domestic political pressures that may compel them to act in ways counter to rationality. A good example is the recent flap over the Diaoyutai, which saw pro-China lawmakers in the Taiwanese legislature demand that Taiwanese naval units be sent to show the flag in islands whose sovereignty is disputed with Japan. The anti-succession law in China is another example, as are the anti-Japanese riots. Even where leaders are committed to "rationality" their hands are tied by other factors. As the CCP has lost its legimacy based on Party orthodoxy, it has made use of a legitimacy based on nationalism and economic growth. Invoking nationalism is dangerous, for the population is likely to be as dissatisfied with Taiwan not taken as it might be with a war to take Taiwan.

Additionally, history watchers underestimate the ability of authoritarian states to take unpopular moves while suppressing dissent. Were China to move against Taiwan, a short war might be only a blip on the development radar. Europe does not support Taiwan or Taiwan independence, and has always been ready to sell the island out in exchange for favors from Beijing. Why would trade with Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South America cease if a war begins? Certainly shipping rates might rise -- but that can be compensated for by shipping out of north China and south China, far from the war zones. If all sides tacitly agree to contain the war to Taiwan and contiguous air and water space, as seems likely, then China's economic growth need not suffer severely. Does anyone really imagine that if there is a serious war the population of China will conduct mass protests against it? As long as the economy stays liquid and the government controls the news, there will be no trouble.

Again, the "argument from the growing economy" depends on constant economic growth. Should FDI slow, or the economy fail to grow, CCP leadership may well conclude that a war would become feasible as (1) the economy is tanking anyway and (2) the public needs a diversion from worsening economic conditions. And while many reassure themselves by saying that war will bring about economic devastation, few consider the possible economic consequences to the US. Can the US sustain any kind of war with China? We cannot even afford to pay for a conflict against insurgents in Iraq.

Indeed, since only Japan and America will be prosecuting a war against China over Taiwan, it seems quite likely the opposite would happen: that those two nations will find themselves isolated from world opinion, and fighting alone. Europe will almost certain support China in a serious conflict, the Bush Administration having driven a truck through our alliance systems. China is even now reaching out to the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, on one hand for energy, but on the other, to cultivate long-term diplomatic relationships that will pay off in a conflict with the US. Again, pundits overestimate the ability of the US to bring the world in on its side, and underestimate the diplomatic skills and position of the Chinese. Many nations are dependent on the Chinese economy as major markets, and will not want to see those markets lost in wartime. They will continue to deal with the Chinese even in the event of war, and even if it means risking US wrath.

As for the Nazi comparison, I'm sure the pundits are right: the CCP, with its state capitalism, its child, youth, and adult groups, its authoritarian oversight of society, its control of the press, the internet, and the publishing industry, its Army as a state-within-a-state, its widespread corruption, its promotion of the children of the powerful to high position, its sense of racial superiority that denies the findings of modern anthropology (for example...), its structure of Leninist, centralized control, its occupation of neighboring countries like Tibet, and covetous eyes on other nearby areas, its thought police and secret police -- is nothing like Nazi Germany. No doubt any resemblance between two Leninist, nationalist, centralized, state capitalist, parties running on cronyism, and controlling the public through false historical grievances and propaganda is purely coincidental.

It is true that Gertz's writing is overblown. But the response from pundits has not been very well thought out. It consists mainly of reassurances that God's in his heaven and all is right with the world. Well, folks, there are no gods, and the world is a very uncertain place where US power has become extremely impaired by our idiotic war in Iraq and the subsequent degradation of our military, massive public debts, and the appearance of the Euro as a viable alternative currency. Things are not what they were even 10 years ago. Each of the "don't worry be rational" arguments depends on the continuance of conditions like the US ability to wage war or continued economic growth in China, whose persistence is by no means assured.


UPDATE: Maddog blogs on this topic here, with a link to James Lilley's claim that all that Taiwanese investment in China will keep things safe. Maddog is suspicious, and so am I. MeiZhongTai nails Gertz here, and links to a good article from Arms Control Wonk here.

MeiZhongTai cites David Shambaugh, who is very pro-China on the Taiwan issue (at least from what I can recall) saying:

At present, an amphibious landing and full invasion of Taiwan remains far beyond PLA sealift and airlift capabilities. The conventional wisdom is that, in such landings, a 5:1 numerical advantage is needed (irrespective of terrain): thus the PLA would have to land approximately 1.25 million troops on Taiwan within the first few days of the invasion. This is, of course, impossible. At present, it is believed that the PLAN only has the sealift capability to transport one or two divisions and about 300 tanks at a time, far short of the numbers necessary to establish a beachhead on the heavily fortified western approaches of the island. It would take approximately 600 landing crafts nearly two weeks to transport twenty infantry divisions to Taiwan. (325)

This kind of "authoritative" discussion is exactly what I am talking about. People read the possibilities by projecting US logistical behavior and demands onto the siutation. But the US army is like eccentric old woman who, wherever she goes, takes her 38 suitcases with her. The idea that anyone would plan to invade Taiwan with 1.25 million men all at once is absurd. The 5:1 formula is not total national strength but forces at the point of attack. Since China can choose a number of landing spots, including developed port areas and seafront towns, it is hard to imagine that they would move against "heavily fortified western approaches." Shambaugh is simply constructing reassuring strawmen.

How many men would be necessary to establish a beachhead on Taiwan? Not as many as Shambaugh's strawman implies. Taiwan's military is currently at 300K men (falling to 265K under planned reductions), but 50K are stationed on the offshore islands, useless for the defense of Taiwan. The reserve is about 3.8 million. Since China would not throw troops over without control of the air, the actual situation would be one where PRC troops can move over even on small craft -- commandeered fishing craft -- to reinforce a beachhead, while movement toward the beachhead by Taiwan forces is interdicted by Chinese aircraft (helped by sleepers and sabotuers). Shambuagh writes as though the Chinese are really going to invade Taiwan by formula, with overwhelming force, like the Americans would. The Chinese can improvise. (from the link below)

The PLA also adopted a new strategy during invasion of Hainan Island in April 16, 1950; while they continued to conscripted civilian ships to transport the troops, they modified 32 of them into motorized gunboats by shielding them with sandbags and arming them with light artillery. To gain an element of surprise, the cross strait operation was conducted at night, and it was also backed by artillery and air cover, which were lacking during Jinman.

Read up on the Hainan operation -- note that the Chinese conducted the operation despite the fact that total KMT forces on Hainan were 100,000, same as the attacking force. For some reason the Chinese felt a 5:1 superiority was unnecessary. And instead of dedicated sealift forces, they commandeered whatever civilian craft were around. In short, Shambaugh does not credit the Chinese with enough daring and imagination. Read here for more: Chinadefense.com review article of PLA amphibious capabilities.

[Taiwan][China]