"The Battle for Taiwan: Long or short? Invade or Squeeze?" Topic

… Bomb or Seize?

"On Taiwan and its sovereignty, alarmism has become a hallmark of conflict prediction and analysis. Some of it is well-founded, such as the critical lack of interceptors and exquisite strike munitions available to the United States and its allies, but much of the current fear is the sum of highly specific views on how a war would unfold. The prevailing framing relies on readers accepting that China can pursue multiple strategies at once while Taiwan and its allies merely observe, which drives an unrealistic view of the "China Threat" as potentially overwhelming. A recent example is the claim that warning times of a Chinese attack have been decreasing. In reality, this does not mean that the People's Liberation Army can make thousands of troops and their logistics appear overnight on the beaches of Northern Taipei; it more likely means the missiles on the ships that China keeps moving ever closer to Taiwan (within range of Taiwanese Hsiung Feng III batteries) have to travel less distance to hit their targets.

This position should be reframed: policy makers should focus on what is possible, and analysts should present causal arguments organized by their commonalities or contrasts with past cases. This is the essence of John Stuart Mill's method of agreement and disagreement, which identifies common or uncommon variables across like or differing cases. On China, two key factors, both with abundant historical examples, should drive analysis: what does Beijing seek to accomplish, and what can the Chinese military actually do? Crucially, these assessments cannot be made in a void in which each analyst selects the variables that best justify a preferred conclusion. To be credible, an argument must engage the existing body of work, and it should either challenge the conventional wisdom or build upon it; reinventing premises from scratch only propagates confirmation bias…"

link

Armand

No need to go in over the beaches. The initial wave will be specially-constructed container ships that can carry a fast-strike invasion force and be unloaded in the harbors and head for objectives inland, followed up with air and missile attacks as a diversion. After that, well…

Squueze.

Laat summer, this was wargamed out – 26 slightly different scenarios run by the think tanks.

Blockade Only.

The US forces force the blockade, with poor results.

We had the highest casualties.

Hundreds of cargo ships lost, upwards of 50 US major warships along with 2 of our CVs.

Hundreds of aircraft lost on Guam, Okinawa, Japan proper and the Phil. Islands – inadequate number of hardened shelters.

Quite the disaster.

Not sure the present administration would become that involved that we would loss those many ships.

Thought the plan was to remove all the technology and manufacturing capabilities into mainland USA and throw Taiwan under the bus.

After all, who needs allies when you got the biggest and bestest and mostest of everything. 🤷‍♂️

At least, that's what it looks like from over here in the UK and Europe…

A pretty good summary, IMO. I don't know much about those wargames. But the Chinese navy does not appear to be ready yet to reach those kind of results. No combat experience. Leadership untested and politically appointed. Corruption.

A fleet with comparatively limited range dependent on 20th century fuel supplies arriving from a long and vulnerable supply line. Invasion transport still somewhat dependent on the Chinese civilian militia navy to help conduct one of the most complex and risky types of military operations. Taiwan is not defenseless, has sophisticated weapons systems. Its surrounding waters may already be mined with remotely detonated US mines.

It would be time consuming and hard to conceal Chinese preparations. Ships, crews, pilots, of unknown quality. They are moving to address the shortage of amphibious support ships.

Plus Tort,

China saw what has happened to Russia. Ukraine was supposed to be a walk over. Done in a couple of weeks. This has to make China, who has not fought a war in what, some 50 years, pause in thinking of invading Taiwan. I think the last conflict China was involved with was in the 70s when it attack Vietnam and got it's butt kicked.

It will be a political coup from the inside.

Tortorella and Grattan54 + 1

Armand