USS Antietam (USS Antietam, CG-54) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Federalist, a conservative media outlet, said in an article Tuesday (Feb. 2) that President Biden should not make empty promises to bleed Americans in response to the Chinese Communist threat to Taiwan. Instead, a better strategy would be to arm Taiwan to deter and defend against a Chinese Communist invasion.
A translation of the article reads as follows.
According to intelligence sources, the Chinese Communist Party conducted a drill on Jan. 23 to simulate an attack on and sink the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt. But it was barely reported in the mainstream media.
On the day of President Biden’s inauguration, the Chinese Communist Party clashed sporadically with India on the border and sent warplanes to harass Taiwan. But a direct mock attack on a U.S. carrier battle group suggests that Beijing now believes it will engage in a limited military conflict with the United States over Taiwan, to the extent possible.
This leaves us with one of the biggest foreign policy questions of all: How would the United States respond if the Chinese Communist Party invaded Taiwan? The Biden Administration may not be ready to face this question.
So far, the Biden administration has rhetorically indicated that it will continue the coherence of the Trump (Trump) era. Despite many differences, there is a bipartisan consensus in the United States on this point of the Chinese Communist threat. One may not hear in public that either realists, who are more inclined to base their foreign policy on the national interest, or liberals and neoconservatives, who are more inclined to intervene and promote democracy, are by far in agreement on the point that the CCP is the greatest threat facing the United States.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken and newly confirmed National Security Director Avril Haines told the Senate that China (the Communist Party) is the biggest challenge to the United States and that the former president “was right to take a tougher approach. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “What we’ve seen over the last several years is that China (the Communist Party) has become increasingly authoritarian at Home and increasingly arbitrary abroad.” She added that Beijing is now challenging U.S. Security, prosperity and values in ways that have made it impossible for the United States to continue its previous policies toward China.
Taiwan has faced two recent incursions by Communist Chinese warplanes. The first Time there were four J-16 fighters, six H-6 bombers and an anti-submarine aircraft. The second time the total number of aircraft was even greater, with a total of 15 aircraft. This prompted a State Department spokesman to issue a statement saying the U.S. relationship with Taipei was “rock-solid” and pressuring Beijing to stop intimidating Taiwan.
But these Communist incursions are just tests, meant to test the U.S. response without causing war. This is a low-key tactic that the Communist countries have played to perfection. The Soviet Union did this before in Europe to test NATO’s defenses, and Russia continues to employ this tactic along the Baltic coast.
The Chinese Communist Party continues this strategy in order to detect Taiwan’s air defenses, India’s command and control along the Himalayan border, and Japan’s radar on the Diaoyu Islands. Beijing cannot be unaware that a single misjudgment could lead to the outbreak of conflict. And Beijing is not yet strong enough to take on three enemies in three directions at once. But the CCP is counting on the other side to be equally cautious.
But what if fighting breaks out? Elbridge Colby, a former assistant deputy secretary of defense, has proposed a more operational approach, advocating sinking the CCP’s warships and holding the first island chain if necessary. In other words, he argues that Taiwan should be defended with American blood.
But should it? Are Americans ready to do open-ended confrontation with a nuclear superpower adversary as a nation, as a great power and as the leader of a broken West? And this conflict is destined to escalate and spill over to Taiwan as a whole.
A long-term geopolitical struggle requires internal political unity. With Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) agitators now kidnapping major cities on American streets, it is hard to imagine that the United States is ready for a decades-long great power conflict with a well-trained and well-structured adversary.
The Perception of the threat is also different. For this reason, it is important to have an understanding of geopolitics. The original Cold War was dominated by threats of territorial aggression. The Soviet Union was the overwhelming land empire. At the peak of its power, it controlled half of Europe.
On the other hand, the Western European powers were conquered or eliminated at that time. Both France and Germany were depleted after World War II. Britain rapidly lost its imperial status in the 1960s, and although it remained the most powerful nation in Western Europe, it could no longer defend itself against the Russians alone. This, of course, required more aggressive action and direct commitment to stop the Russian adventure.
China, by contrast, is a great power surrounded by great powers. India is a nuclear power with a population of over 1 billion, the world’s fourth largest GDP and a powerful navy. After the United States, Japan has the most powerful navy in Asia. In any conflict, Australia and Vietnam would be on the side of the United States and provide material security.
Even the weakest country, Taiwan has a population of over 24 million, a strong economy and a well-trained military. The Chinese Communist Party has an adversarial relationship with all of these powers, and a war with any of them would give the other powers an advantage over China. Someone in Beijing must have done the math, otherwise we would have already seen a Communist invasion.
That said, the CCP is still counting on Taiwan, and the CCP’s naval build-up is an indication that something is going to happen. With this in mind, a better strategy to stop the CCP would be to arm Taiwan with A2AD weapons rather than an empty promise to engage U.S. forces in war.
The U.S. did not send troops to defend Georgia and Ukraine (rightly so due to lack of strategic interest), and is unlikely to get Americans killed in a war with the CCP. But the U.S. could make Taiwan and the South China Sea a graveyard for the Chinese Communists.
Invasion and war are easy. But a sustained supply chain would be needed in Taiwan, far from the mainland, with 250,000 Taiwanese soldiers armed to the teeth, to contain an insurgency on such a hostile island that would bleed Beijing dry. Not to mention that confronting U.S. weapons could be costly to the invasion itself. As Ben Friedman and Eugene Gholz pointed out in a recent paper, “defensive defense” is a better strategy for protecting vulnerable Asian allies by providing manpower in the event of armed conflict.
As Napoleon once said, it is prudent not to interrupt the enemy if he makes a mistake. Allowing the Chinese Communist Party to overextend itself and bleed in an insurgency after the invasion of Taiwan is a better strategy than any unrealistic false hopes and promises.
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