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「兩岸關係」 – 開欄文
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瀏覽8,544 ｜回應49｜推薦2 |
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俄烏戰爭在一年半以後，俄國憑藉其龐大的國力和人員，似乎拖垮了烏國的戰力、士氣、和民心。以巴戰爭又平地一聲雷的爆發，不但以國周邊的阿拉伯諸國虎視眈眈、蓄勢待發；也讓美國軍力和軍援左支右絀。這些發展勢必影響美國當下和未來在台海的軍事部署和決策。
我曾預估：2027年前台海無戰事。但俗話說，世事難料；我們升斗小民只能期望政治領袖們不以老百姓為芻狗，盡量發揮理性和睿智以和平方式解決利益衝突。
兩岸關係從過去的和平對峙隨著中、美國力的長消，逐漸進入外弛內張的狀況。雖然還說不上戰雲密布或圖窮匕見；但讓關切時局者緊張兮兮應該是有的。這個部落格過去也常有報導和評論；現在開一個專欄，今後將把相關議題集中討論。
本文於 修改第 4 次
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霍爾姆茲海峽是台灣海峽寫照 - Todd G. Buchholz
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請參考：
The Strait of Hormuz chaos is just a ‘dry run’ for if war breaks out between the U.S. and China, Singapore foreign minister says
下文作者的分析有板有眼；可惜最後一句話卻顯示出：「他的書都讀到狗肚子裏去了」(該欄2026/04/23貼文及其中文標題)。
Hormuz Today, Taiwan Tomorrow
Todd G. Buchholz, 04/20/26
By closing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has handed the Trump administration a practice test. To pass—and preserve deterrence against a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan—the United States must reopen the Strait decisively and visibly with escorts, minesweepers, and strikes on launch sites.
SAN DIEGO—Most schoolchildren learn that the Earth is roughly 25,000 miles around (40,000 kilometers). They do not learn that the global economy depends on just 100 of those miles.
Blocking two narrow waterways—the Strait of Hormuz and the Taiwan Strait—can send the economy back in time, if not to the Stone Age that US President Donald Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran back to, then at least to the mid-20th century, before the Rolling Stones first hit the airwaves.
Over the past month and a half, Iran has turned the Strait of Hormuz, which is about 21 miles wide at its narrowest point, into a floating shooting gallery. Shipping traffic has plunged, with tankers loitering nervously while Iranian speedboats and drones play pirate. The standstill has throttled the world economy, as a large share of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas transits through the Strait.
This is not just a Middle East quagmire. It’s a live-fire dress rehearsal for conflict in Asia, offering China a battle plan for Taiwan. The Taiwan Strait, which is about 81 miles wide at its narrowest point, is like the Persian chokepoint but for semiconductors. Taiwan’s TSMC fabricates more than 90% of the world’s most advanced chips—the “brains” of AI data centers, fighter jets, and smartphones.
The United States, alarmed at the national-security vulnerabilities posed by foreign chips, passed the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act to lure producers to build factories stateside. Despite plans for new fabrication facilities in Texas, Ohio, and New York, the US still depends heavily on chip imports—as do most other countries. Thus, a Chinese blockade or invasion of Taiwan would starve the 21st century’s technological nervous system. Global losses could hit $10 trillion. That is not a recession; it is a supply-chain cardiac arrest.
President Xi Jinping does not want to be remembered in China’s 4,000-year history as the guy who built better car batteries than Elon Musk. Tesla knockoffs are mere trinkets. Xi wants to achieve what Mao Zedong promised: one China, no asterisks, no renegade island thumbing its nose at the Communist leadership. He wants to break a 75-year stalemate by dragging Chiang Kai-shek’s heirs back into the fold.
Deterrence evaporates if Xi believes that America might hesitate, muddle through, or bargain following an attack on Taiwan. If the world’s mightiest navy cannot reliably escort tankers past a battered regional power, whose own fleet has been reduced to cigarette boats you would rent on a summer holiday in Nantucket, why would Xi conclude that the US will risk aircraft carriers, submarines, and thousands of American lives to break a Chinese blockade of Taiwan?
In such a case, Taiwan suddenly looks less like a fortress and more like a question mark. Game theorists call it a question of “credible commitment”—your opponent must believe that you will follow through, or the payoff matrix collapses.
History is a harsh tutor to the hesitant. When Mussolini tested the League of Nations over Ethiopia and found it toothless, Hitler took note. After Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser seized the Suez Canal in 1956, Britain and France folded when Eisenhower arched a skeptical brow. More recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin goose-stepped into Crimea after President Obama blinked when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons—allegedly a red line. Credibility, once squandered, cannot be easily restocked at the corner market.
The remedy is straightforward, painful, and overdue. America must reopen the Strait of Hormuz decisively and visibly: escorts, minesweepers, strikes on launch sites, and seizure or annihilation of Iran’s tollbooth islands, Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunbs. Once the Strait is secure, the US should send in the tall ships that grace New York Harbor every Fourth of July. Nothing says “open for business” like 18th-century sailboats cruising through the shipping lane past smoldering Iranian artillery nests.
In the longer term, the US must accelerate shipbuilding, replenish precision munitions, and support more pipelines in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and beyond. In 2020, Greece, Egypt, the Palestinian National Authority, and Israel—governments that rarely agree on anything—established the East Mediterranean Gas Forum with other regional powers to exploit newly discovered gas fields. Unfortunately, President Joe Biden’s administration withdrew US support for the proposed pipeline from Israel to Europe. But this is precisely the type of project that could reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz.
The choice is stark: reopen the Strait by force or watch Xi pencil in a Taiwan invasion date, all while European diplomats issue strongly worded epistles. By rebuffing Trump’s calls for backup, Europe has revealed itself as a free rider, loath to defend the global economy. And this despite America long serving as the world’s marine-traffic cop, keeping sea lanes open so that European and Asian countries—including China—could gorge on cheap energy and hawk their wares on any continent.
The good news is that the US still has the world’s most lethal navy and the economic muscle to outlast any rival. Iran handed the Trump administration the equivalent of a practice test. Taiwan is the final exam. Xi and his leadership team have been studying Trump’s steps before the Iran war and throughout. With the stakes so high, Trump’s mercurial mind and unpredictable moves may be less a flaw than a strategic asset.
Todd G. Buchholz, a former White House director of economic policy under President George H.W. Bush and managing director of the Tiger hedge fund, is the recipient of the Harvard Department of Economics’ Allyn Young Teaching Prize. He is the author of New Ideas from Dead Economists (Plume, 2021), The Price of Prosperity (Harper, 2016), and co-author of the musical Glory Ride. He,s been writing for PS since 2019
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* Hungary’s New Leader Must Avoid Joe Biden’s Mistakes, Apr 15, 2026 Aziz Huq
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* What Really Drives China’s Massive Trade Surplus, Apr 20, 2026 Shang-Jin Wei
* The West Is Still Getting Russia Wrong, Apr 21, 2026 Inna Bondarenko
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2027「武統」議題尚無定論 -- Reuben Johnson
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下文第二節的標題：「拜登時代的前朝舊臣」，顯示作者毫不掩飾自己「人身攻擊」的邏輯謬誤。內容除了「動機論」和「官方發言論」外，也沒有任何拿得上檯面的實質性分析。這是「理屈詞窮」情況下的「狗急跳牆」，還是「狺狺狂吠」？
The 2027 ‘China Invades Taiwan’ Question Isn’t Settled
Reuben Johnson, 04/04/26
U.S. Intelligence Says No Taiwan Invasion by 2027. Critics Say That’s Naive
The subject of China’s plans to invade Taiwan provokes steady debate, and arguments over the matter broke into the public arena once again this past week.
Sparking the new round of debate was the annual report on global threats by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which, according to some China experts, is wrong to assess the Chinese military does not plan an assault on Taiwan by 2027.
The DNI Annual Threat Assessment, known by its acronym ATA, was made public on March 16.
The assessment states that this year, Beijing will “probably” move forward with creating a set of necessary preconditions for annexing Taiwan, but that mainland actions would fall “short of conflict.”
The section of the report addressing this issue is called “China-Taiwan” and was drafted by David Shullman, who was the Deputy National Intelligence Officer for China on the DNI’s National Intelligence Council, according to former officials who spoke to U.S. media outlets to criticize the document.
Biden-Era Holdovers
Prompting some criticism is that some of those involved in its preparation are holdovers from the Biden Administration who, state some of the critics, followed a consistent pattern of soft-pedaling assessments of China’s military and political ambitions, as well as the timeline.
“China, despite its threat to use force to compel unification if necessary and to counter what it sees as a US attempt to use Taiwan to undermine China’s rise, prefers to achieve unification without the use of force, if possible,” reads the report. The document also states that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) continues to develop forces for an annexation of the island with military action, if ordered.
But the overall orientation of plans for Taiwan is downplayed, as the report says progress on PLA capabilities for an invasion continues and is “steady but uneven.”
The report does concede the PLA continues to develop forces for an invasion, but does not say that a military takeover is Beijing’s goal.
Beijing’s Timetable
“The IC assesses that Chinese leaders do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027, nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification,” the DNI report states. This seems to back down from estimates that 2027 was the deadline for an invasion.
This conclusion, however, ignores that Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as other former and current members of the Chinese Communist Party leadership, have stated unequivocally that taking over the democratic-ruled island is required as part of a plan for so-called national rejuvenation by 2049.
The year 2049 is the 100th anniversary of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party taking over in 1949 from the Nationalist KMT government, following a brutal and violent revolutionary war. Mao’s army of communist guerrillas achieved victory in part due to extensive support from the Soviet Union, including strategy, equipment, and training.
The civil conflict that brought Mao to power killed millions—an estimated 1.5 million Communist troops, around 600,000 Nationalist troops, and approximately 5 million civilians.
“There is little reason to expect that a PRC invasion of the ROC would be any less brutal and bloody should the invasion bog down and turn into a protracted conflict – as has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” said a retired U.S. intelligence analyst.
Another senior China expert, a retired former U.S. Naval Intelligence Chief for the Pacific theater Captain James Fanell, told the Washington Times that NIOs like Shullman have long held influence on U.S. policy toward China. His particular position at the ODNI has for years been staffed by what he said are “China engagers”.
These tend to be individuals within the US intelligence community who built their careers and reputations on the view that engaging with China best serves U.S. interests.
“It’s nothing more but engagement for engagement’s sake,” said another former retired intelligence officer who served tours at the embassy in Beijing. “Meanwhile, the PLA keeps building more and more capacity, and we keep rather woodenly asking ourselves ‘is the invasion for real coming or not’.”
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two consecutive awards for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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China’s H-20 Stealth Bomber Is Skipping 40 Years of Development
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伊朗戰爭對台海情勢的啟示 -- Christopher Roberts
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下文作者有嚴重的「思考邏輯」問題，希望我能盡早寫出個批判。
How the Iran war has changed the Taiwan playbook
Christopher Roberts, 04/01/26
President Donald Trump’s allies once boasted he was the master of 4D chess.
In Washington, Taipei, Tokyo and a constellation of think tanks, military-minded policy wonks keep gathering around maps to play a different game: What happens if China decides to seize Taiwan?
The pace is slower than you might think—more Risk than charades. The war games don’t generally start with Chinese marines clawing their way up a beachhead, Normandy style. They start with something quieter and, in some ways, even more frightening: a Chinese coast guard vessel ordering a merchant ship to submit to inspection, an undersea cable cut, lights going out across the island. The point of the games is to identify the threshold at which coercion becomes crisis.
Many of them share an assumption: that China would tighten the noose gradually and the United States would try to manage the situation, not escalate it. It might escort shipping, redeploy forces and voice public opposition, but it would move carefully because the risks of open war would be too costly unless there were no other option.
Then Trump attacked Iran, and now those assumptions may have changed.
How the Iran War Has Changed the Taiwan Playbook
The lesson from Iran is not that China is Iran. It is not that defending Taiwan would be easy. It is about how politics changes the calculus. When the Trump administration decided on war, for reasons that are still publicly opaque, the U.S. did not slowly escalate. It attacked with crippling force at the heart of the enemy.
Operation Epic Fury began at 1:15 a.m. ET on February 28. In the first 24 hours U.S. forces—in concert with Israel—struck more than 1,000 targets, including control centers, air defense, communications and, shockingly for Iranians and the world, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself. By March 10, they had struck more than 5,000 targets while sharply reducing Iranian missile and drone attacks.
That changes the outlook on Taiwan because the war Beijing is most likely to start is not necessarily the war most people still imagine, in which China fires salvos of missiles, batters Taiwan and U.S. bases, drives U.S. carriers away, then sends the invasion fleet across the Strait under a screen of warplanes and drones. The war games and analytical studies point toward something more incremental and more plausible: quarantine, blockade, cyberattack, then escalation at sea and in the air, and only after that, perhaps, an invasion attempt.
That version of the war may look safer for Beijing at the beginning. It may also be the version most likely to trigger devastating American escalation far sooner than observers had previously thought. Chinese caution is not a superpower against an enemy that throws caution to the wind and doesn’t appear to care what either its allies or critics think.
Why Iran Changed the Taiwan Equation
The most important thing Operation Epic Fury demonstrated was not that American air power is invincible (it clearly isn’t); it was that America still remembers how to fight a systems war, and that this White House is capable of choosing it. More than 100 aircraft launched from land and sea in the first day, with cyber and space campaigns degrading Iranian communications and sensors while the air campaign struck command-and-control centers, ballistic-missile sites, naval forces and intelligence infrastructure. B-2 stealth bombers flew a 37-hour round trip from the continental U.S. to drop penetrating munitions.
The Northrop B-2 Stealth Bomber pictured on March 27, 2001, over the Midwestern U.S. 照片
By March 10, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was saying Iranian ballistic missile attacks had fallen 90 percent from day one and one-way drone attacks 83 percent, while more than 50 Iranian naval vessels had been hit in the opening stage of the war. The old thinking on Taiwan often assumes the U.S. would marshal its forces at the start of a crisis, step up escorts, move carriers and bombers and only attack the Chinese mainland after Beijing had already crossed every obvious red line. Iran showed another possibility. Once the administration decided it was in a real war, it went after the brain, the nervous system and the limbs all at once.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that U.S. forces fired 786 JASSMs and 319 Tomahawk missiles in the first six days of the Iran war—several years of production in both cases. Missile stocks can be burned down quickly in a high-end campaign, and restoring them remains a significant industrial challenge. However, the lesson is that it can front-load violence on a scale some analysts had stopped imagining—and now Beijing has to plan around that possibility.
Not only that, but Chinese developed air defenses and intelligence have proved to be disappointing for its allies Venezuela and Iran. Its exports, especially the HQ-9B missile system and JY-27A radar, which Beijing has marketed as a long-range shield against advanced aircraft and missiles, comprehensively failed in the face of American assaults.
A U.S. military source who was involved in the Venezuela operation, and who was not authorized to speak publicly, told Newsweek: “I think the narrative we [the U.S.] should be projecting globally is, ‘Be careful depending on China, Russia and Iran for security.’ When the U.S. started pressure in Venezuela, their ‘friends’ weren’t vocal enough diplomatically.
“When the U.S. planned the operation to capture [then-President Nicolás] Maduro…all their intelligence failed miserably and they were completely unaware. Those intelligence agents and techies also failed to identify the U.S. coming in. We made them think what we wanted them to think and do what we wanted them to do. Militarily, all their high-end military equipment that Venezuela had also completely failed. Air defense, radars…garbage.
Cheng-Yu Wu, policy analyst at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taiwanese think tank, agreed with that assessment. “Recent real-world failures in conflict zones like Iran and Venezuela reveal a fundamental flaw in China’s defense technology: a lack of ‘systemic resilience,’” he told Newsweek.
“While Chinese-made detection systems look impressive on paper, they often act as ‘fair-weather assets’—they perform well in theory but can collapse when faced with advanced electronic jamming or stealth tactics.
“China’s air defense systems are ‘offensive-heavy but defensively brittle.’ They are designed to see far and hit hard, but they lack the flexible command structures and hardened protection needed to survive a modern digital battlefield. Because these systems rely on a rigid, centralized ‘brain,’ they can quickly become blind targets if their communication links are disrupted or cut.”
A plume of smoke rises on March 3, 2026, after a strike on the Iranian capital Tehran. 照片
The War Everyone Imagines
There is a reason the conventional story of a Taiwan war has become something approaching popular orthodoxy: It is built on real Chinese advantages. The Chinese navy is the world’s largest by hull count, with a battle force of more than 370 ships and submarines and more than 140 major surface combatants. China also fields the largest aviation force in the Indo-Pacific and the third largest in the world, with more than 3,000 aircraft overall and roughly 2,400 combat aircraft. Its Rocket Force exists in large part to impose a missile shadow over any Taiwan contingency, and its anti-ship ballistic missiles are designed specifically to threaten U.S. intervention.
Geography is still destiny. China’s coast opposite Taiwan is lined with ports, airfields, missile bases, rail lines, shipyards and factories. On paper, that creates a brutal opening scene: missiles streaking toward Taiwanese air defenses and U.S. facilities at Kadena, Yokosuka, Sasebo, Iwakuni and Misawa in Japan and Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, while carriers are pushed east and the invasion fleet crosses under a protective umbrella of warplanes, drones and long-range fires. The problem with that scenario is not that it is absurd; it is that it hands China all the advantages of its undoubted strength and too few of the constraints. It imagines Beijing choosing the cleanest, most escalatory path immediately, even though Chinese planners know that the first side to hit U.S. forces openly may also be the first side to unify Washington, Tokyo and other allies into a wartime coalition.
That is why a growing body of work now treats blockade, quarantine and graduated coercion not as sideshows to invasion, but as the more plausible opening chapters of the war.
Phase one: Blockade
A blockade is easy to underestimate because it can begin in the language of administration rather than annihilation. A coast guard boarding. A customs inspection. A notice to shipping companies that certain routes are no longer safe without Chinese permission. Why hand the Americans a casus belli if coercion might work first?
That logic now sits beside a fresh U.S. assessment reported by The Wall Street Journal: Beijing is not understood to be working to a fixed 2027 invasion deadline and still appears to prefer nonmilitary pressure if it can move Taiwan politically without taking on the risks of a large amphibious assault.
A blockade also exploits the commercial nervous system of the island. It begins to bite not when dozens of ships have been sunk, but when insurers, shippers and energy traders decide the route is no longer normal business, as has been demonstrated recently in the Strait of Hormuz.
USS Dwight D Eisenhower returning to Naval Station Norfolk on July 14, 2024, after a 9-month deployment to the Middle East. 照片
Phase Two: Cyberwar and Confidence Collapse
The second phase is not chiefly about stealing secrets; It is about breaking confidence. Taiwan’s National Security Bureau said that in 2025 the island faced an average of 2.63 million cyber intrusion attempts per day across nine critical sectors. It also said cyberattacks rose on 23 occasions during 40 People’s Liberation Army joint combat readiness patrols.
In a blockade scenario, cyberwar is a force multiplier for fear. Hit hospital systems and ordinary life starts to feel brittle. Disrupt shipping platforms and cargo becomes harder to route even when vessels can still reach port. Tamper with power management or telecommunications and every rumor becomes more believable. The point is not espionage as such; it is to make the island feel ungovernable.
In modeling by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in a similar scenario, Taiwan’s natural gas stocks were exhausted in roughly 10 days. Coal lasted about seven weeks. Oil lasted about 20 weeks.
The information war would almost certainly thicken at the same time. Taiwanese authorities have already highlighted Chinese deception activity in the air and at sea, including large military drones transmitting false aircraft identities. Wu, the Taiwanese defense analyst, said this was part of the “complexity race.”
“Victory will not go to the side with the most planes, but to the side that can clear the ‘fog of war’ [the uncertainty or lack of information on the battlefield] and process information the fastest,” he said.
“For regional allies, the smartest counterstrategy is not to match China jet-for-jet, but to build a smarter, more resilient web of sensors that can withstand pressure and keep the picture clear.”
Phase Three: The Hinge Point Phase
This is the phase that matters most, because it is where strangulation starts turning into war. In the CSIS blockade games, Taiwan could withstand a nonmilitary blockade, but the picture worsened sharply when China used submarines, mines and limited military force. Without U.S. intervention, Chinese submarines and mines destroyed 40 percent of inbound ships even when Taiwan exerted maximum effort and partners pursued a kind of Ukraine-style resupply.
Chinese aircraft carriers Liaoning and Shandong carry out a dual aircraft carrier formation exercise for the first time in late October 2024 in the South China Sea. 照片
That finding should change how one thinks about timing. If Washington waits for the most photogenic moment of crisis—the sight of landing craft approaching a beach—it may already be too late.
This is also the point at which the lesson from Iran becomes clearer. The older consensus assumes Washington would still try to stabilize the situation—escort shipping, surge regional forces, send warnings, hold back from hitting the mainland. After Epic Fury, that looks less solid. The threshold for U.S. attacks on Chinese military infrastructure may arrive much earlier, because an attempted strangulation of Taiwan is already an act of war and also because the systems sustaining it are precisely the systems Washington is now more confident it can attack with extraordinary violence.
That does not mean the United States would immediately try to level China’s military. It means the logic of intervention shifts. The target set could be the Chinese operating system: coastal radar, air defense sites, missile support infrastructure, command-and-control centers, naval bases, air bases generating sorties over the Strait and the sensor chains that make anti-ship missiles dangerous.
Iran showed how quickly Washington can move from shock decision to that kind of target list.
The temptation to attack what is known as the kill chain would be especially powerful. China’s so-called “carrier killers,” its hypersonic anti-ship missiles, are real, serious weapons. But each depends on a kill chain: detect, fix, track, decide, transmit, strike. The missile’s speed is not the end of the story. The system needs to survive jamming, deception, cyberattack and physical destruction. Iran offers a concrete example of how fast the character of a campaign can change once air defenses begin to fail.
Epic Fury opened with the most exquisite tools available—stealth bombers, stealth fighters, electronic attack, cyberwar, long-range cruise missiles and penetrating munitions. Once the airspace became more survivable, the war moved on to a broader and cheaper footing. A U.S. campaign in a Taiwan crisis could begin with expensive suppression, but the goal would be to unlock a more sustainable attack on the Chinese system once the first defensive layer had been blinded or broken.
There is, of course, a rejoinder: China is not Iran. It is much more modern, much more heavily armed, far better dispersed and protected, and close to its own industrial base. But it still leaves open the central question: Does Washington have to wait until Beijing has already launched the armada? Or can it try to wreck the architecture of coercion in Phase Three, before a full-scale landing attempt begins?
After Iran, it is much harder to dismiss the second possibility.
Phase Four: The Crossing
If blockade and coercion fail, Beijing still has a military framework for invasion. The Pentagon’s China military report says the PLA fields six amphibious combined-arms brigades, four in the Eastern Theater Command and two in the Southern Theater Command. The PLAN Marine Corps has been expanded for regional amphibious operations.
Pilots scramble to their Taiwanese air force F-16V fighter aircraft during a military exercise on January 27, 2026, at Chiayi Air Base in Taiwan. 照片
Yet the truly decisive problem is not glamorous. It is freight. Reuters’ August 2025 reporting on Chinese exercises near Jiesheng in Guangdong showed why. Twelve civilian vessels—six roll-on, roll-off ferries and six deck cargo ships—took part in the exercise. Satellite imagery showed cargo ships unloading vehicles directly onto a beach via ramps, with at least 330 vehicles visible on and near the shore. The exercise also highlighted the reappearance of a temporary pier system.
China’s dedicated military amphibious lift is formidable, but it is not enough by itself. Any serious assault depends on a huge conveyor belt of civilian ferries, deck cargo vessels, pier sections, ports, marshaling yards, beaches, fuel points and unloading nodes.
That conveyor belt is where the alleged romance drains out of invasion theory. Analysts told Reuters that dedicated military ships and landing craft can carry only about 20,000 troops and their equipment in the first wave. Estimates of what it might take to subdue Taiwan run from roughly 300,000 to more than a million personnel. Invasion is less a cinematic landing than an industrial process under fire.
Taiwan’s job, then, is not to emerge from the first blow untouched. It is to emerge alive enough to keep that conveyor belt from running smoothly. Han Kuang 2025, Taiwan’s largest ever exercise, mobilized about 22,000 reservists and for the first time featured the HIMARS and Sky Sword systems prominently. Taiwan has been emphasizing mobility, rapid rearming, dispersal and layered coastal defense. It has completed the upgrade of 141 older F-16 fighters. In drills, Taiwan has rehearsed repelling a seaborne assault with drones, fast patrol craft, mobile Hsiung Feng anti-ship missiles and Marine Corps teams.
The significance of early U.S. escalation is obvious. If Washington waits until the invasion fleet is already assembling for the crossing at full capacity, China begins Phase Four after enjoying every day of unmolested preparation that blockade and coercion bought it.
If Washington has already spent Phase Three attacking key air bases, sensors, logistics nodes and naval infrastructure, then the crossing does not necessarily disappear—but it begins degraded. The conveyor belt stutters.
China’s President Xi Jinping attends a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of World War II, in Tiananmen Square on September 3, 2025, in Beijing, China. 照片
Phase Five: The Long War
This is another place where the popular imagination often compresses the problem. People still talk as if a Taiwan war would be decided in a few cinematic days. Most analysis does not say that. The CSIS major invasion study, ‘The First Battle of the Next War,’ ran 24 iterations and found that a Chinese amphibious invasion was defeated in most scenarios, but only at extraordinary cost.
The German Marshall Fund think tank reached a similarly grim conclusion. In its full-invasion scenario, the war lasted months, not days. Chinese forces got ashore, but reinforcement and resupply across the Strait were mauled by sustained Taiwanese and U.S. attacks. Eventually the PLA withdrew after roughly 100,000 personnel losses. Taiwan suffered around 50,000 military dead and another 50,000 civilian casualties. The United States lost around 5,000 military personnel and 1,000 civilians. Japan lost roughly 1,000 military personnel and 500 civilians.
Chinese Military Weakness Is Not About Hardware Alone
China is not weak. Its best aircraft are serious. Its missile force is formidable. Its navy is vast. Any fight over Taiwan would be ghastly, uncertain and escalation-prone. The mistake is not overestimating Chinese power but instead imagining that power as a pile of platforms, rather than a system that has to survive first contact.
Wu from INDSR agreed: “The operational friction observed in Iranian and Venezuelan theaters exposes a fundamental flaw in Beijing’s defense architecture: a severe lack of systemic resilience.”
The U.S. has its own vulnerabilities, of course. Kadena can be hit. Andersen can be hit. Yokosuka can be hit. But America’s comparative strength lies precisely in the qualities Wu emphasized: the ability to keep enough of the network alive to continue fighting after the first shock. The forward-deployed aircraft carrier USS George Washington, rotating fighter packages at Kadena, bomber task forces through Andersen and the Marine Corps’ evolving littoral anti-ship capability around Okinawa are all designed for resilience.
The real American objective, if war comes, would not be some glorious dogfight over mainland China. It would be to cut sortie rates, slow the conveyor belt and break the kill chain.
President Donald Trump delivers a speech onboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier on October 28, 2025, at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan. 照片
After Iran
None of this is a promise of easy victory. A Taiwan war could still kill tens of thousands of people, devastate the island, smash U.S. bases across the region and risk catastrophic escalation. It could also expose painful limits in American industrial capacity if the war became a prolonged exchange of expensive precision weapons.
What it cannot any longer be described as, at least not honestly, is a problem that begins only when Chinese troops start storming ashore.
The implication of Iran is that the U.S. may choose to intervene decisively at an inflection point rather than waiting for the beachhead. If that happens, the war China started as a controlled strangulation could become a violent contest over whether its own military system can survive being hunted.
There is also a deeper historical reason Beijing may have assumed Washington would stop short of striking the Chinese mainland. In the Korean War, as U.S.-led forces pushed north toward the Yalu River in 1950 and the conflict threatened to spill directly into China, President Harry Truman ultimately chose restraint. General Douglas MacArthur, commanding the U.S. forces, wanted a wider war; Truman refused, and later removed him from command. The lesson has resonated for more than 75 years: Even after Chinese intervention, the U.S. still chose to contain the war rather than carry it into China itself.
It helped to codify in Beijing a potentially dangerous assumption about American statecraft: that the U.S. might fight fiercely on China’s periphery, but would hesitate before crossing the threshold into attacks on the mainland. If Trump has now shown a greater willingness to strike at the heart of an enemy early, rather than slowly manage escalation, that changes the political weather.
Trump may soon be carrying these tensions to Beijing, though talks scheduled for the end of March were postponed. Taiwan will overshadow everything when they do start. China’s President Xi Jinping has already warned about U.S. arms sales to the island. The lesson for Xi after Iran, though, is that he has less reason than before to assume there will be multiple warning shots before the real shooting starts.
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台灣殷殷期盼的保護傘沒了？ - Vishwam Sankaran
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看來，某君既抱不緊川普的大腿；又貼不上他的冷屁股；真是情何以堪。或許，石敬瑭模式可以管活命。
Taiwan’s omission from Trump’s new defence strategy raises alarm as China conducts sorties near island
Vishwam Sankaran, 02/01/26
The absence of any mention of Taiwan in Washington’s new defence strategy document has raised concerns in Taipei, at a time when Beijing continues to threaten the island with naval and air force sorties.
The 2026 National Defense Strategy has been described by analysts as a dramatic reordering of the Trump administration’s defence priorities, and where it sees its limitations.
And while the 2022 edition of the document mentioned Taiwan several times, with Beijing described as launching “increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive actions” that “threatened stability” across the Taiwan Strait, there was not a single direct reference to Taiwan in the new version released last week.
Earlier editions made note of China’s overt threats to Taiwan – Chinese president Xi Jinping has vowed to “reunite” the self-governed island with the mainland by force, if necessary, and the US is bound by treaty to help arm Taipei to defend itself from attack.
One Sunday, Taiwan’s defence ministry said it detected a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) helicopter and six naval vessels on sorties that crossed the median line between the island and the mainland.
The defence ministry said it deployed aircraft, naval ships, and coastal-based missile systems in response. “We have monitored the situation and responded,” it said in a post on X.
Some experts said the omission of Taiwan from the NDS document was part of a wider strategy for the Trump administration to remain open for negotiations with Beijing.
Trump is scheduled to meet the Chinese president in April, according to Dennis Weng, a Taiwanese political scientist.
“This document adopted a more restrained, pragmatic and even reconciliatory language for Beijing,” Dr Weng, founding director of the Asia Pacific Peace Research Institute (APPRI), said in a post on Facebook.
Taiwan’s main opposition party, Kuomintang (KMT), raised concerns over what message the omission sends before Trump’s planned meeting with Xi.
“Even though we have spent so much buying US arms, there is no mention of Taiwan’s security in this strategy. That shows where Trump’s priorities lie,” KMT legislator Lai Shyh-bao told SCMP.
“Taiwan has met what the US demanded, but cannot even get a single mention in return. That leaves people with a bitter feeling,” said Wang Hung-wei, another KMT lawmaker.
Officials from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) cautioned against reading too much into the report, arguing that Americas’s “actions and institutions” meant more than any strategy document.
The document also appeared to suggest that the new US defence strategy would focus more on internal security.
“As US forces focus on Homeland defence and the Indo-Pacific, our allies and partners elsewhere will take primary responsibility for their own defence with critical, but more limited support, from American forces,” the document noted, indicating a reduction in US military presence in other parts of the world.
The document does mention security in the Asia-Pacific region, even if it is short on details. The document says the US military will “erect a strong denial defence along the First Island Chain” – a string of islands that includes Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.
It adds that the US military presence in East Asia would continue “to ensure that neither China nor anyone else can dominate us and our allies”.
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透視中國解放台灣的作戰規畫 - Allegra Mendelson
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How China plans to land the world’s largest army on Taiwan
An invasion would likely start at the ‘red beaches’ – now among the most dangerous places on Earth
Allegra Mendelson, 01/03/26
It’s a gloomy day in northern Taiwan and fisherman have gathered on Linkou beach to chat about the day’s haul.
We’re about 30 minutes’ drive from Taipei, and in warmer weather one might sees families under umbrellas on the sand, here to escape the hustle and bustle of the city.
At first glance, Linkou Beach looks like any other. Yet it might be one of Taiwan’s – even the world’s – most dangerous places.
This is one of up to 20 “red beaches” – sections of Taiwan’s coast that are considered likely places for China to land its troops during an invasion.
Linkou makes up part of the coastline of New Taipei City, a municipality that surrounds the capital. Of all the red beaches, this one holds the most strategic value.
It’s near Taiwan’s largest airport, which services the capital; it’s next to the Port of Taipei, a strategic deep-water port, and it borders the mouth of the Tamsui river, which flows through the centre of Taipei and into the Taiwan Strait.
Dr Tzu-yun Su (蘇紫雲) is a research fellow and director at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defence and Research (INDSR), a military think tank.
He said: “Seizing this area would cut Taiwan’s primary external connections to Taipei, isolating the capital, disrupting its food supply, and undermining morale – essentially a blitzkrieg-style campaign.”
The threat posed by China was demonstrated on Tuesday, when it launched its most extensive military drills around Taiwan to date. It fired rockets towards the island and simulated a blockade of its major ports – including the Port of Taipei.
China called it a “stern warning” against “Taiwan independence separatist forces and external interference”.
Experts estimate that if China successfully lands at Linkou – and that is a big “if” – it could access Taiwan’s main control centres in less than an hour.
An invasion would require hundreds of thousands of well-trained troops, and a vast navy with cutting-edge warships, ordinary civilian barges and everything in between. It would take months or years of planning. Yet, Beijing already seems to be building up such a force.
An unmatched navy
China has one of the most active shipbuilding industries in the world. Experts estimate that its shipbuilding capacity is at least 200 times greater than the United States’, despite its much smaller military budget ($246bn in 2025 against $850bn).
Today, China has an estimated 405 warships to the US Navy’s 295, and is on track to have at least 30 more by 2030.
In fact, a recent report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) found that, while most of China’s defence firms had been losing revenue, the one area where revenue was rising was shipbuilding.
However, China wasn’t always a maritime leader. It’s only in recent decades that it has turned its navy – and its entire military apparatus – into one that rivals the world’s major powers.
Ridzwan Rahmat, the principal defence analyst at Janes, a leading military intelligence platform, said: “For a long time, the Chinese military modernisation focused on the land domains, because that was the existential threat at that time.
“But over the years, especially in the last 30 years or so, China’s existential threats have appeared from the sea, and the sea is a domain where they have been lacking compared to their adversaries.”
Today, China’s defence priorities are mostly maritime. These include disputes over islands in the South China Sea and its claims over Taiwan, which is across a nearly 100-mile wide body of water.
Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, has made the “reunification” of Taiwan central to his legacy. Hardly a week goes by without the president or one of his officials mentioning Beijing’s goal of bringing the country under China’s control.
The topic has had a particularly high profile in recent weeks, after Sanae Takaichi, the new prime minister of Japan, suggested that a conflict over Taiwan could trigger Japanese military involvement, prompting a fiery response from Beijing.
An $11bn arms package supplied to Taiwan by the US has similarly angered China.
A civilian armada
While the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy has hundreds of warships, these alone would not be sufficient for an invasion of Taiwan, said Tom Shugart, a former US submarine officer and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).
He said: “There’s no question whatsoever that if you just look at the grey-painted PLA Navy amphibious assault shipping, it is nowhere near enough to do an invasion.”
Instead, China has maximised its dual-use shipbuilding, where civilian vessels are kitted out with military technology. Since 2015, all civilian shipbuilders have been required to ensure that any new ships could be used by the military in the event of an emergency.
The China Classification Society, a shipping industry association, said at the time that this plan would “enable China to convert the considerable potential of its civilian fleet into military strength”.
The plan included five types of ships, which are already being tested: container, roll-on/roll-off, multi-purpose, bulk carrier and break-bulk cargo vessels.
The roll-on/roll-off vessels, known colloquially as “ro-ro ships”, are commercial transport ships with reinforced ramps that can transport large military trucks and equipment.
China has been increasing production of ro-ro ships in recent years, with an estimated 200 set to be completed between 2023 and 2026 – more than double the number manufactured between 2015 and 2022, according to the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
It has also been increasing its use of semi-submersible vessels – heavy-lift ships that can partially submerge their cargo – as helicopter carriers. They are being tested in landing trials that seem to simulate a Taiwan operation.
Six ro-ro ferries were monitored in a recent Reuters investigation, alongside six-deck cargo ships, as they sailed from shipyards near Beijing in northern China to the waters off the coast of Guangdong further south, in what appeared to be a practice landing operation.
In 2020, the Chinese Ministry of Defence carried out a training scenario using semi-submersible ships to refuel helicopters as it rehearsed rescue operations with injured soldiers.
‘Squeeze Taiwan until it surrenders’
While China appears to be preparing for a large-scale amphibious assault, it is unlikely that an attack against Taiwan would begin with a landing operation.
Alexander Huang, the chairman of the Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies, has spent the past 10 years simulating different ways China could attack Taiwan.
Based on his research, he sees two possible paths.
The first begins with a cyber attack as well as moves against critical infrastructure to “kill Taiwan’s communication control and command control systems”. This strategy would seek to “divide or weaken Taiwan for a swift victory”, said Mr Huang.
The second starts with a “maritime quarantine”, which would gradually block Taiwan’s energy supply and communication networks, to cut the island off from the rest of the world. Unlike a blockade, which would be enforced by the military, a quarantine would use coastguard and civilian ships.
As an island, Taiwan relies on imports for its energy and food, and a quarantine or blockade could be disastrous. Experts told The Telegraph that its current energy supply – which includes liquefied natural gas, renewable production and coal resources – could sustain the island for about 40 days.
A major military operation against Taiwan would likely take four times as long, and, said Mr Huang, China would effectively “squeeze Taiwan until it surrenders”.
Beijing has been practising this type of coercion for years. It has routinely deployed hundreds of ships and planes around Taiwan as part of its “grey zone” pressure – activities that fall short of open warfare but aim to demonstrate strength in the lead-up to an actual conflict.
Prior to the latest drills on Dec 30, China had previously launched a massive exercise around Taiwan days after Lai Ching-te was inaugurated as president in May 2024. More than 110 aircraft and 50 navy and coastguard ships were deployed.
Donald Trump said the latest drills were not a cause for concern because China had “been doing naval exercises for 20 years in that area”.
However, Taiwan’s Coast Guard Authority told The Telegraph that China seemed to be using the tactics “to familiarise themselves with the battlespace for future operational planning” and were simulating blockades “to apply military pressure to test Taiwan’s defence readiness”.
How ‘China’s D-Day’ could unfold
With a fleet at the ready, the next question is where China would land its troops – and how.
The Taiwan Strait is 110 miles wide, but with strong winds and high waves, it is a difficult body of water to navigate. Monsoons and typhoons – especially in summer – make it all the more treacherous.
If China were planning an amphibious assault, it would likely be limited to a handful of months.
What’s more, most of its vessels would need to dock at a port or jetty because they are too large to reach land through the shallow waters around much of Taiwan’s coastline.
Experts said that if China were able to take a port, it would make an invasion far easier, but it is unlikely to be allowed to do that in a wartime situation.
Mr Rahmat, of Janes, said: “In the event of an invasion, port infrastructure [and] a lot of piers and jetties will have been destroyed by Taiwan to slow down the invasion forces.”
China tests landing barges during an exercise off Donghai island. (東海島) They could be used to create a deep-sea port off Taiwan – Vantor 照片
Instead, China has been building barges, which seem ideal for a landing on a vulnerable red beach. These commercial vessels are equipped with legs that anchor into the sea floor, and extendable bridges that can connect to land, or other barges or ships.
China has at least two sets, according to satellite images seen by The Telegraph. Each set consists of three ships of different sizes. They could be used to create a deep-sea port miles off the coast, allowing it to land troops and equipment.
Mr Rahmat said: “The barges play a large part in ensuring that there is still connectivity between the large transport ships and logistic ships and [Taiwan’s] island itself.”
Even with the barges, some experts, including a former defence official who spoke to The Telegraph on the condition of anonymity, were sceptical of China’s ability to land troops on Taiwan.
They believe that changing sea levels and commercial construction, among other factors, along Taiwan’s coast have made virtually all of the beaches untenable for a landing operation.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence said its armed forces “regularly survey major beaches and deploy marine corps to verify if the beaches are potential landing sites”, but wouldn’t comment on which locations posed the greatest risk.
The warships
While Beijing is focused on its dual-use maritime capabilities, it also has hundreds of cutting-edge amphibious warships on hand.
In November, China launched a new aircraft carrier known as the Fujian.
It is the most advanced carrier in its fleet, and has an electromagnetic aircraft launch system allowing it to catapult fighter jets on and off its deck. The only other ship in the world with this ability is the US Navy’s newest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford.
Before the Fujian was commissioned, building was already underway for China’s next new carrier – its fourth, and known as 004 – which will most likely be nuclear powered.
Experts told The Telegraph that in satellite images of the carrier at the Dalian shipyard, there did not appear to be exhaust ducts, which suggest it will rely on nuclear power instead of diesel.
Mr Rahmat said: “The problem with diesel aircraft carriers is that you can’t deploy too long beyond a two or three week window.
“Every three weeks you need to bring the ship back to port so it can be refuelled. However, if you have a nuclear aircraft carrier, the ship can remain on station almost indefinitely.”
A satellite image of early construction work on China’s vast 004 aircraft carrier, which experts believe will be nuclear powered – Vantor 照片
For this reason, the latest US carriers are nuclear powered, and China has long been looking to do the same, although it has struggled to master the shipbuilding techniques.
A nuclear powered ship would give China a major leg-up in the event of escalation with Taiwan because it would allow the ship to remain at sea.
Along with the 004, China also recently launched the first amphibious assault ship in the world equipped with an electromagnetic catapult capable of launching drones, including the advanced GJ-11 stealth combat drone and the WZ-7 reconnaissance drone.
These warships would very likely join the merchant fleet in any assault against Taiwan, bringing the number of Chinese ships to an unprecedented scale.
Mr Shugart, of CNAS, said: “On the Chinese side, this is where I think most people may not understand the scale of what China would bring to a landing campaign. It’s not going to be dozens of ships in the Taiwan Strait, it’ll be thousands.”
This article is the third of four pieces The Telegraph is publishing on Taiwan’s plans to repel a Chinese invasion and Beijing’s efforts to undermine the island’s defences. The fourth story will be published at 6am on Sunday.
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中國隱形機接近屏東空軍基地 - Christopher McFadden
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請參考：
* 不只空拍101，高雄85大樓也入鏡！解放軍釋出更多畫面：新竹空軍基地疑被鎖定，殲-20與屏東同框？
* 殲20飛越恆春沒偵查到？軍事專家曝偵測手段
* 陸殲-20戰機進逼台灣空軍基地？專家打臉了
此之謂「兵臨城下」還在花銀子買廢銅爛鐵？還是：你有「隱形機」，我有「大嘴砲」？讀到這條新聞後，讓我不禁想起李義山的《北齊》之一：
一笑相傾國便亡，何勞荊棘始堪傷。
小憐玉體橫陳夜，已報周師入晉陽。
最近逛皮箱店的人，或許會碰上幾位賴政府的高層？
China’s stealth fighter jet approached key Taiwanese airbase without detection: Report
The PLA’s latest footage fuels uncertainty over how close stealth aircraft can operate to Taiwan without escalation.
Christopher McFadden, 01/03/26
New footage has been released that seems to show a Chinese Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter flying close to a Taiwanese airbase during a recent military exercise. Purportedly taken during the recent “Justice Mission 2025," this has sparked debate as to whether the aircraft was able to approach undetected or not.
“China’s J-20 stealth fighter flew within visual range of Taiwan’s coastline. The Taiwanese failed to detect the J-20. It would’ve been a propaganda coup if Taiwan got a photo of the J-20 with their F-16 sniper targeting pod. This happened around Checheng township in Pingtung, at the very southern tip of Taiwan,” wrote a defence analyst on X.
While hard to confirm, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has claimed that one of its J-20s managed to fly close to Taiwan's Pingtung airbase. According to reports, this incident occurred on Tuesday (Dec 30) during the second day of the exercise.
It is important to note that these claims have yet to be confirmed by third parties, notably whether the J-20 was actually able to penetrate Taiwanese airspace in the first place.
J-20 approaches Taiwanese airbase
If true, then such an occurrence would be very worrying for Taiwanese defense forcesm notably how this could happen in the first place. It could, of course, just be a bluff from the PLA to make Taiwan question its defensive readiness against Chinese forces.
While no missiles were fired or lives lost, the supposed incursion by China's fifth-generation J-20 will not be without consequences. Likely, Taiwan will now have to assume worst-case scenarios and spend some time investigating what happened.
They will want to know if the J-20 was able to find radar blind spots in its air defense and take corrective actions accordingly. That will come at a cost for Taiwan.
The focus on Pingtung is also interesting as it is one of the nation's key airbases. It has some critical training and sortie-running infrastructure for the Taiwanese air force and is a cornerstone of its air defense.
If China can operate stealth aircraft near that area (even occasionally), it compresses Taiwan’s reaction time in a real crisis. That is strategically more important than whether this specific flight happened exactly as claimed.
Playing a dangerous game
So far, Taiwan has remained silent on the matter, with key officials neither confirming nor denying China's claims. This is likely deliberate to prevent China from taking a public relations victory.
If they deny the claim, this will look to some like Taiwan is covering up for a failure of its air defenses. Confirming the event would also validate PLA propaganda.
Whether the J-20 incursion occurred or not, it has wider implications for the region, too. Firstly, it helps to normalize PLA proximity to Taiwan and blurs peacetime versus wartime behaviour.
It also serves as a training for PLA forces under realistic conditions, and can be used by them to sow doubt and confusion. So while the claim could be fictitious at worst or exaggerated at best, it will have very real impacts on Taiwan one way or the other.
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中國將攻打台灣 – Vikas
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China Will Attack Taiwan: Stop Playing With Fire
Japan’s Statement: Rise of Nationalism and Pushing East Asia Toward a Historic War
Vikas, 11/14/25
0. 前言
Tension in East Asia has reached a level the world has not seen in decades. A single statement made in Japan’s parliament has triggered warnings, threats, death threats, viral debates, and global fear of a coming conflict.
And all of it revolves around one issue: the Taiwan question.
China has openly warned Japan, “stop playing with fire,” and this warning comes at a time when nationalism in China is rising, Japan is becoming more assertive, and Taiwan is living under the shadow of a possible war.
During a Diet hearing, she said that if China used battleships or force against Taiwan, it could create a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. This phrase is not casual.
Under Japan’s 2015 security law, it allows Japan to activate its Self-Defense Forces and even join a conflict.
Beijing saw this as a direct challenge.
Within hours, China condemned the remark as “egregious” and demanded Japan withdraw it. Japan refused. China escalated.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson posted bilingual graphic warnings on X:
“Stop playing with fire on the Taiwan question. If Japan dares to meddle, China will respond firmly. Those who play with fire will perish by it.”
This was one of the harshest warnings China has issued to Japan in modern times. But it did not stop there.
China’s Consul General in Osaka posted something no diplomat should ever say. He wrote that Japan’s Prime Minister’s “dirty head” should be “cut off.”
The post was deleted, but the shock was global. Japan protested. China defended the diplomat. Tension skyrocketed.
It showed how emotionally explosive the China–Japan relationship is, especially when Taiwan is involved.
1. Why China Reacts So Aggressively When Japan Mentions Taiwan
To understand Beijing’s fury, you must understand its history.
During World War II, Japan’s military killed an estimated 35 million Chinese civilians. This trauma is deeply rooted in China’s national identity.
The Communist Party has built decades of nationalism around this memory. School textbooks, films, speeches, and propaganda keep this anger alive.
So when Japan speaks about Taiwan — an issue China considers sacred — the emotional reaction in China is instant and intense. This is why Taiwanese think that if Japan gets involved in Taiwan’s defense, China will attack “10,000% guaranteed.”
In their eyes, Japan’s involvement turns a dangerous situation into a guaranteed war. Inside Taiwan, fear has started rising again. Many Taiwanese citizens believe Japan is serious when it says it will defend Taiwan.
But they also know that Japan’s support may provoke China faster than anything else. Taiwan faces a painful reality. If it stands alone, China may hesitate. if it forms deeper alliances with Japan, China may attack.
The island sits at the center of a geopolitical triangle where every choice carries a risk. No matter what Taiwan does, the danger grows.
2. China’s Timeline and Xi Jinping’s Pressure
China’s rise has transformed the balance of power in Asia. Under Xi Jinping, nationalism has become central to China’s identity. China calls the loss of Taiwan part of the “Century of Humiliation.” Xi has promised “reunification” before 2049.
China is building the world’s largest navy. Its missile systems, drones, fighter jets, and cyber capabilities are expanding rapidly. Military modernization is designed to peak around 2027.
But China also knows the clock is ticking.
Its population is aging. Its economy is slowing. Its demographic window is closing. If China wants to take Taiwan, the next decade is its strongest moment. This is why many experts believe China will act sooner rather than later.
3. Why a Taiwan War Would Change the World
A Chinese attack on Taiwan would cause global shockwaves.
As we all know, Taiwan produces 92% of the world’s advanced semiconductors. Every smartphone, every car, every computer depends on chips made in Taiwan. If war breaks out, production collapses. Global trade melts down. Technology supply chains freeze.
A Bloomberg estimate found a Taiwan war could cost the world $10 trillion. More than the entire economy of Japan.
China would face crippling sanctions. Its oil supply, which passes through the Malacca Strait, could be blocked. The US Navy could choke off China’s trade in multiple areas. China knows this. But pride and nationalism are pushing Beijing toward a historic gamble.
Japan is trapped by its geography.
Most of Japan’s energy, food, and essential trade passes through waters near Taiwan. If China controls Taiwan, Japan loses its strategic lifeline. This is why former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said:
“A Taiwan emergency is a Japan emergency.”
Japan cannot remain neutral. Even if it tried, it hosts tens of thousands of US troops. The moment China strikes Taiwan, American bases inside Japan become targets. China has already said that if Japan intervenes militarily, Beijing will treat it as an act of invasion.
That means Japan’s involvement instantly becomes a China–Japan war. And a China–Japan war automatically becomes a US–China war. This is how easily the Taiwan crisis becomes a global crisis.
Beijing will not forgive Tokyo for speaking on WWII and the Taiwan question. Military drills will intensify. Nationalism will rise. And one day, the world may wake up to the news that China has launched a massive assault across the Taiwan Strait.
Written by Vikas
I'm a writer, editor, and researcher who likes to explore a wide range of topics but passionate about geopolitics.
Published in The Geopolitical Economist
In The Global geopolitics, truth is one, but the wise interpret it differently.— Here, we interpret these diversions.
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中國在台海戰爭中將擊潰美軍 - Benedict Smith
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本欄/本部落格已經刊出過多次類似下面史密斯先生這篇文章的報導；它並非「新聞」，只是「舊聞更新」。
“big five” defence companies：1 ·Lockheed Martin 2 ·RTX Corporation 3 ·Northrop Grumman 4 ·Boeing 5 ·General Dynamics
China would destroy US military in fight over Taiwan, top secret document warns
Beijing’s hypersonic missiles ‘could sink US aircraft carriers within minutes’
Benedict Smith, 12/11/25
Washington loses ‘every time’ in war games against China, the Pentagon has warned - Jeanne Accorsini/SIPA/Shutterstock照片
China would defeat the US military in a war over Taiwan, according to a top-secret US government assessment.
US reliance on costly, sophisticated weapons leaves it exposed to China’s ability to mass-produce cheaper systems in overwhelming numbers, the highly classified “Overmatch Brief” warns.
A national security official under Joe Biden who reviewed the document is said to have turned pale on realising Beijing had “redundancy after redundancy” for “every trick we had up our sleeve”, The New York Times reported.
Losing Taiwan, the US’s key bulwark against Chinese power in the western Pacific, would deliver a severe strategic and symbolic blow to Washington.
The country’s most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R Ford – recently sent to the Caribbean for Donald Trump’s crackdown on drug traffickers – is often destroyed in the wargames outlined in the brief.
The $13bn (£9.75bn) vessel, which entered service in 2022 after years of delays, is vulnerable to attacks from diesel-electric submarines and China’s arsenal of some 600 hypersonic missiles, capable of travelling at five times the speed of sound.
The Pentagon is planning to build nine additional Ford-class aircraft carriers - TAJH PAYNE/DoD/AFP via Getty Images照片
Beijing displayed its ship-destroying YJ-17 missiles, estimated to travel at eight times the speed of sound, at a military parade in September.
Nevertheless, the Pentagon is planning to build nine additional Ford-class aircraft carriers, while it has yet to deploy a single hypersonic missile.
China paraded ship-destroying missiles at a military parade in September - VCG via Getty Images照片
Eric Gomez, a research fellow at the Taiwan Security Monitor, said the end result was unclear when he participated in a wargame for a Taiwan conflict, but noted the US suffered heavy losses.
“The US loses a lot of ships in the process. A lot of F-35s and other tactical aircraft in the theatre are degraded pretty rapidly too,” he told The Telegraph.
“I think the high cost of it was really sobering when we did the after-action summaries, and we’re like, ‘Okay, like, you guys lost 100-plus fifth-generation aircraft, multiple destroyers, a couple of submarines, a couple of carriers’.
“It’s like, ‘oh gosh, man, that was a heavy toll’.”
Hegseth: China could destroy US carriers in minutes
Last year, Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said that “we lose every time” in the Pentagon’s war games against China, and predicted the Asian country’s hypersonic missiles could destroy aircraft carriers within minutes.
China has significantly expanded its arsenal of short, medium, and intermediate-range missiles, which means it could destroy many of the US’s advanced weapons well before they could reach Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the “big five” defence companies, a number which has dwindled from ten times that amount in the 1990s, continue to sell the US government costlier versions of the same ships, aircraft and missiles, according to The New York Times.
Defence officials have realised the US is vulnerable because these complex weapons are impossible to mass produce, following a series of recent wars, including the Ukraine-Russia conflict, which have shown the devastating capabilities of relatively cheap weapons like drones.
Congress has earmarked around $1bn (£750m) to produce 340,000 small drones over the course of the next two years.
Mr Trump views Taiwan as important to the US economy because a third of global shipping heads through the South China Sea - REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein照片
Mr Trump has appointed Dan Driscoll, the US head of the armed forces, as his “drone guy,” charged with modernising America’s outdated tech and countering enemies’ drone efforts.
However, the US is nevertheless playing catch-up with its adversaries, and experts have previously told The Telegraph that it cannot compete on costs with countries like China, where labour costs are lower and regulations looser.
A decisive change in US policy would likely need substantial investment, yet defence spending is at its lowest level in around 80 years, at roughly 3.4 per cent of GDP.
Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser, has warned the US would quickly run out of essential munitions like artillery shells in a war with China.
Internal Pentagon assessments show China vastly outnumbers the US in its arsenal of almost all cruise and ballistic missiles. Both superpowers maintain a stockpile of 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The US reportedly used up roughly a quarter of its high-altitude missile interceptors to defend Israel against Iran’s 12-day ballistic missile barrage in June this year.
Moreover, China’s state-sponsored hacking group Volt Typhoon has installed malware on critical computer networks for power grids, communications systems and water supplies for American military bases.
How Taiwan invasion could develop – and Trump’s response
The security threat, which US officials have struggled to locate, could hamstring the military’s ability to move weapons and forces if war breaks out in the Pacific.
Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, claims seizing Taiwan is an “historical inevitability” and has ordered his military to be ready to seize the island by 2027.
Nevertheless, he is thought unlikely to move unless China achieves such an overwhelming military advantage that it could effectively be certain to take the island. Failing to do so would be a humiliating blow that would likely end his 13-year-premiership.
The US has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and, since the 1970s, has pursued a policy of “strategic ambiguity”, avoiding saying explicitly whether it would militarily defend the island chain.
Xi Jinping claims seizing Taiwan is an ‘historical inevitability’ - DALE DE LA REY/AFP via Getty Images 照片
However, since the days of Dwight D Eisenhower, it has viewed the island as an important check on Chinese expansionism, and is obliged by law to provide weapons for Taiwan to defend itself.
Mr Trump has stuck to the “strategic ambiguity” policy, although he has complained about the cost of protecting Taiwan.
“I think Taiwan should pay us for defence. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything,” he told Bloomberg last year.
He went on to note that Taiwan was a short distance from China’s coast compared to thousands of miles from the US, which gave Beijing “a slight advantage”.
“That’s the apple of president Xi’s eye,” he added.
In the Trump administration’s national security strategy, published last week, it said the island was important to the US economy because a third of global shipping passes through the South China Sea.
The US’s priority is to preserve “military overmatch”, it stated, meaning that America’s military capabilities must outstrip China’s so far as to deter Xi against making a move, something which, according to this memo, it has failed to do for some time.
China and the US have launched a frantic arms race to prevent either from achieving a decisive advantage that could embolden Beijing or deny its imperialist ambitions.
In January, The Telegraph reported China had constructed D-Day-style barges that could be used to bypass Taiwan’s beaches and provide multiple fronts for tanks in an amphibious invasion.
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Is China about to invade Taiwan?
Conflict in East Asia ‘would be one of the most dangerous and consequential events of the 21st century’
The Week UK, 11/28/25
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Taiwan split from the People's Republic of China during a civil war in the 1940s| Credit: Illustrated / Getty Images 請至原網頁觀看示意圖
Taiwan’s president has announced a $40 billion security package to strengthen the island’s defences against a possible invasion by China.
Warning that Beijing’s threats are “intensifying” and its preparations to invade are speeding up, Lai Ching-te said: “This is not an ideological struggle, nor a ‘unification vs independence’ debate, but a struggle to defend ‘democratic Taiwan’ and refuse to submit to being ‘China’s Taiwan’”.
The new eight-year plan includes the development of a “T-dome” air defence system, modelled on Israel’s Iron Dome,“ accompanied by a focus on the use of artificial intelligence, drones and other high-tech defence methodologies to boost Taiwan’s ‘asymmetric’ response to a Chinese attack”, said The Times.
Beijing views Taiwan as a rogue breakaway territory that needs to be brought back under control, by force if necessary. This makes it arguably “the most dangerous place on Earth”, said The Economist.
How likely is an invasion?
US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth warned in May that China’s attempt to conquer Taiwan by force “could be imminent”.
Yet experts “disagree about the likelihood and timing of a Chinese invasion”, said the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank.
China has been engaging in “unprecedented aggression and military modernisation”, Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, told the US Congressional Armed Services Committee earlier this year. Underscoring the seriousness of this escalation, he said China’s drills around Taiwan are “not just exercises – they are rehearsals”.
While “alarming”, said the Atlantic Council, this “unfortunately reflects a broader, consistent trend” of escalating activities by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), including persistent crossings of the Taiwan Strait’s median line.
Data from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence found that sorties across the Taiwanese-declared dividing line between Taiwan and China have increased from 953 incidents in 2021 to 3,070 in 2024.
There are other indications that Beijing is preparing to move on Taiwan. China has been stockpiling record amounts of gold, which could be part of a strategy to defend itself from Western sanctions in the event of an attack on Taiwan. It has also been building a solid legal ground for a potential invasion, aiming to frame the attack as a legitimate internal matter.
“This will help the country to delay a collective security and economic response from the West,” said The Sun.
When could an invasion happen?
Paparo told members of Congress that the PLA are “stretching their legs” to meet President Xi Jinping’s military readiness goal of being capable of taking Taiwan by force by 2027. That year is seen as “magical” because it marks the centenary of what was to become the PLA, said Robert Fox in London’s The Standard.
Despite living under the constant shadow of Chinese invasion, most people in Taiwan – 65%, according to a survey released in May by the military-affiliated Institute for National Defense and Strategic Research – believe it is unlikely that China will attack in the next five years.
Lai and his government have adopted a mantra: “by preparing for war, we are avoiding war”. They have initiated “major military reforms”, expanded the mandatory conscription programme, “increased pay and benefits for the military, and introduced more rigorous training”, said the BBC. The extra $40 billion announced this week is part of a “long-term plan” to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2030, “a response to demands from the Trump administration not to rely solely on the United States coming to its aid”, said The Times.
“Others believe 2049 is a critical date,” said the CFR, as Xi Jinping has “emphasised that unification with Taiwan is essential to achieving what he calls the Chinese Dream, which sees China's great-power status restored by 2049”.
How could an invasion start?
There are three possible avenues that could lead to conflict, said Joel Wuthnow in Foreign Affairs.
A “so-called war of choice” would see Beijing “try to capture Taiwan by force after careful consideration of the economic, military, and political risks”.
Alternatively, a “war of necessity” might be launched if it felt Taiwan “had crossed a political red line that permanently threatened China’s control of the island”; for example, with a formal declaration of independence.
The third possibility, that “has received much less attention – yet may be even more likely”, is a war resulting “from an accident or miscalculation that spirals out of control”.
Given recent events it is easy to see how such a miscalculation could spiral into full-blown conflict.
Chinese military drills last year surrounded Taiwan’s main island with joint exercises by all branches of the PLA and, unusually, an increasingly militarised coast guard. Then, in January, Naval News first reported the construction of new amphibious barges at Guangzhou Shipyard, in southern China.
These new barge-like Shuiqiao ships (水橋型兩棲登陸艇) are potentially a game-changer for Beijing and provide “insight into China's integration of its military, paramilitary and civilian operations – and its plans for a potential invasion”, said The Guardian.
The barges feature bridges that could be used to transport tanks and supplies over previously uncrossable land, said The Telegraph, giving them multiple fronts for an invasion and “thinning out” Taiwan’s line of defence.
The likely strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning.
That would mean in the early hours of a Chinese invasion, the narrow strait separating the island from the mainland would likely be “transformed into a ferocious battlefield”, said Business Insider. Aside from deploying more traditional weapons such as missiles or warships, “vast fleets of unmanned aerial and naval drones will likely darken the skies and hide beneath waves, bringing with them a deadly threat that Taiwan and its allies are ill-prepared to counter”. During Joe Biden’s presidency, the US strategy to counter this – dubbed “Hellscape” – hinged on deploying thousands of new drones that would swarm the Taiwan Strait and keep China's military busy until more help could arrive.
How would it play out?
Chinese action against Taiwan would be an “act of war that sparks a global crisis”, said The Wall Street Journal. “It would provoke a military response by Taiwan, force President Trump to decide whether the US military should help defend the island, disrupt global trade and impel European nations to impose punishing sanctions on Beijing.”
China has warned it will “crush” any foreign attempts to interfere on behalf of Taiwan, after Japan announced plans to deploy missiles near the independent island. It comes less than a week after Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said her country would regard an attack on Taiwan as an “existential threat” to security in the region and would likely intervene.
If a conflict were to break out it would be “a catastrophe”, said The Economist. This is first because of “the bloodshed in Taiwan”, but also because of the risk of “escalation between two nuclear powers”, namely the US and China.
Beijing massively outguns Taiwan, with estimates from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showing that China spent about 23 times more on its military in 2021. The PLA also boasts more than two million active soldiers. The US is bound by the Taiwan Relations Act to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” and discourage China from using force or coercion to achieve its goals regarding the island. This could see Washington drawn into any conflict – although there is growing scepticism in Taipei that Trump would intervene militarily in the event of a full-blown Chinese attack.
That means any invasion “would be one of the most dangerous and consequential events of the 21st century”, said The Times, and “would make the Russian attack on Ukraine look like a sideshow by comparison”.
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防止台海發生戰事的最佳戰略 - Zack Cooper
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How War in Taiwan Ends
If Deterrence Fails, Could America Thwart China?
Zack Cooper, 11/06/25
In recent years, many in Washington have focused on deterring China from invading Taiwan. Before taking office earlier this year, Elbridge Colby, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, asserted that Taiwan should be “laser focusing on implementing a denial defense against invasion.” Indeed, an array of small, inexpensive weapon systems holds great promise for repelling a Chinese amphibious landing. The Trump administration’s new National Defense Strategy is therefore correct to embrace a strategy of denial for stopping an invasion of Taiwan.
But rebuffing an invasion might not end the war. Joel Wuthnow, an expert on the Chinese military, has warned, “There is no scenario in which China, following an unsuccessful invasion, accepts responsibility, acknowledges that military solutions are impractical, or pivots to a fundamentally different set of political objectives toward Taiwan.” In the wake of a failed invasion, Chinese leader Xi Jinping (or his successor) would be unlikely to simply pack up and go home. Instead, Chinese leaders might reason that they have less to lose by continuing the fight.
This is why the political scientist Michael Beckley has argued that “war over Taiwan likely would become protracted, as nearly all great power wars have since the Industrial Revolution.” World War II ended only when Allied forces captured Germany’s capital and the United States dropped nuclear weapons on Japan. Neither option seems advisable in the context of a U.S.-Chinese war; Washington needs to find other ways to end it. And so, in the years to come, the United States must prepare two forces: one to stop a Chinese invasion and another to end the conflict. Preventing a war from starting in the first place will rely to some extent on the innovative forms of deterrence by denial on which the Trump administration and others have focused. But denial capabilities on their own will not be enough. Ending a war that churns on even after a failed invasion will also require old-fashioned power projection.
IN DENIAL
In the twentieth century, the United States perfected the art of projecting power around the globe. A combination of forward bases and aircraft carriers allowed U.S. forces to operate worldwide. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. military’s dominance also meant that one set of forces could employ two distinct forms of deterrence simultaneously: denial and punishment.
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Consider the role of U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups during the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. At the time, China was staging military exercises and testing missiles in the waters around Taiwan. As tensions rose, Washington maneuvered two carriers near the island. Those strike groups practiced deterrence by denial by threatening to physically repel an attack. But they also performed deterrence through punishment by threatening severe consequences if Beijing went through with it, since carrier-based aircraft could strike ships heading toward China and even targets on the Chinese mainland.
In the last few years, however, the United States has begun tailoring its forces—and those of its allies and partners—for more specific missions. Forward bases and aircraft carriers are expensive to build and maintain, yet still vulnerable to ballistic missiles and other asymmetric systems. Pentagon officials are therefore pushing to acquire more “attritable” systems, which are relatively cheap to produce and designed to be expendable, for use by small units operating within the expanding area that China threatens. As David Berger, the former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, explained at a defense industry conference in 2021, the United States must “get comfortable with throwaway things.”
Ending a war over Taiwan will require old-fashioned power projection.
But attritable systems are of limited use against China’s day-to-day coercive operations in the air and sea around Taiwan. Last year, Taiwan detected 5,105 Chinese sorties into its airspace. Defending against these aircraft requires expensive jets rather than low-flying drones. In the maritime context, responding to Chinese naval incursions in the waters around Taiwan will require vessels that can monitor those activities and challenge Chinese forces if necessary.
Even after open conflict begins, denial is still only a partial answer. U.S. mines and missiles can sink Chinese vessels, killing thousands of troops in the process, but Chinese leaders might still seek at least a partial victory. The People’s Liberation Army could attempt to seize Taiwan’s outlying islands or conduct a maritime blockade while its military arsenal makes the waters around Taiwan a no man’s land. “There is no path to U.S. victory that does not include the long blockade,” the former intelligence officer Lonnie Henley has argued.
That is why the United States must be able to convince China that it will face unacceptable costs if it continues fighting in the wake of an unsuccessful invasion. A strategy of denial is only step one; the threat of punishment will be the United States’ ultimate trump card.
CAN’T STOP, WON’T STOP
The war in Ukraine illustrates the difficulty of terminating a conflict even after an initial invasion has bogged down. With small and cheap systems such as drones and mines, Ukraine was able to deny Russia a swift victory but has failed to impose costs high enough to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop fighting. Russia has suffered terrible losses in the war, but Putin appears to have calculated that the costs of continuing are lower than the costs of admitting defeat.
Russia’s example serves as a warning about China’s likely behavior. Ideally, the prospect of a failed invasion of Taiwan would deter China, but Chinese leaders might perceive several incentives for protracting a war following an initial loss.
First, China’s industrial capacity far outstrips that of the United States, so it could recapitalize its forces more rapidly. Over the last three decades, China has undergone a massive military buildup. The Office of Naval Intelligence has assessed that China has over 230 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States. Meanwhile, U.S. armed forces face significant munitions shortages, with some experts predicting that American stockpiles would be expended after just weeks, or even days, of a conflict with China.
Beijing might believe it can outlast Washington and Taipei in terms of other supplies, as well. Getting provisions across land into Ukraine has proved challenging; delivering even basic necessities over water to Taiwan amid a conflict with China would be an order of magnitude more difficult. Taiwan is a relatively small island with limited food and energy stockpiles. Conversely, Beijing’s rapid expansion of wind, solar, and nuclear power would help insulate it against a U.S. energy blockade.
Beijing believes it could win a contest of wills over Taiwan.
A conflict over Taiwan could eventually become a contest of wills—which Beijing believes it could win. Chinese officials have described Taiwan as “the very core of China’s core interests.” U.S. President Donald Trump’s take is decidedly different: “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “It’s 68 miles away from China. I just think we have to be smart . . . it’s a very, very difficult thing.” The American people support Taiwan, but many do not want a direct conflict with China: when asked in 2024 by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs about their commitment to defending Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, the majority of Americans surveyed either opposed such a policy or were unsure.
A Chinese failure in a conflict over Taiwan could also threaten Xi or his successor’s hold on power and undermine the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. Xi would want to avoid an admission of failure and thus might order the Chinese military to keep waging an unsuccessful war. Without the prospect of punishment, the CCP might decide that failure poses a greater risk than continuing the conflict.
For all these reasons, Chinese leaders might prefer to keep fighting even after an initial defeat. To bring the conflict to a close, the United States would need to credibly threaten punishment. Colby and other Trump administration officials clearly recognize this; he co-authored a 2022 report advocating “selective punishment operations” and “cost-imposition to favorably manage escalation and seek to terminate a war with China.” These operations could include an embargo or the seizure of Chinese assets held abroad. But Beijing has been insulating itself against political and economic pressure, so military escalation might well be required, including strikes on critical infrastructure and parts of China’s defense-industrial base. These moves would raise the costs for China of continuing a conflict, but they also present a strategic dilemma.
THE GOLDILOCKS PARADOX
A number of factors would complicate any threat of punishment.
First is what researchers at the RAND Corporation have termed the “Goldilocks challenge”: threats of punishment must be high enough to persuade Beijing to end a conflict in which it is deeply invested but low enough to avoid provoking unacceptable escalation, such as nuclear use. Finding this middle ground would not be an easy task.
It will therefore be important to try to keep an initial fight over Taiwan limited in order to provide Chinese leaders a pathway for deescalation. Chinese leaders might back down after claiming to have taught Taiwan a lesson or taken some contested territory. Yet China’s own messaging before a conflict could set a higher bar: Chinese leaders might demonize Taiwan and the United States to rally public support, while trumpeting the PLA’s military superiority and China’s great rejuvenation. An invasion of Taiwan might start with Beijing metaphorically burning its ships so there would be no turning back.
In the aftermath of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, politicians in Washington, Taipei, and elsewhere might themselves raise the stakes. They could seek to use Beijing’s moment of weakness to constrain China’s ambitions, formalize Taiwan’s independence, or undermine the CCP’s hold on power. There would be a fine line between “too hot” and “too cold” policies, and the tradeoffs would become more difficult as the war grew longer, bloodier, and more destructive.
A second challenge is that U.S. “horizontal escalation”—widening the scope of the conflict—may not be as effective today as it once might have been. Devoting more funding to denial capabilities risks cannibalizing resources for military platforms more capable of threatening punishment, such as stealthy bombers and submarines armed with cruise missiles. And although American strategists have discussed the possibility of a blockade to prevent China from importing energy supplies, the country’s nuclear power plants and renewable energy sources now account for a third of its energy production, so that Beijing is less vulnerable to an energy blockade. Cutting China’s fossil fuel imports would hurt over time, but Taiwan would be in a far more dire position.
Therefore, the biggest challenge for the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy is not whether it allocates resources to a strategy of denial but how it integrates denial and punishment into a holistic deterrence framework. Rebuffing an initial attack on Taiwan is necessary but not sufficient. Without a plan for terminating a war, Washington would risk repeating the pattern of U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan that many Trump officials critiqued: winning the first battle but losing the war. If the United States is to deter China, it will have to persuade Chinese leaders that Washington has a strategy not only for the early stages of a conflict but also for the end stage of a war.
ZACK COOPER is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a lecturer at Princeton University. He is the author of Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries.
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