Taipei skyline at dusk / Debjyoti Bardhan, Wikimedia Commons
Let's talk about Taiwan and why I believe they are destined to go the route of Ukraine.
These points are lifted from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission 2021 Annual Report to Congress. Let me quote selectively from 52 pages of Chapter 4.
1. Improvements in China’s military capabilities have fundamentally transformed the strategic environment and weakened the military dimension of cross-Strait deterrence.
2. China’s increasingly coercive approach to Taiwan puts almost daily pressure on the cross-Strait status quo and increases the potential for a military crisis .
3. …for nearly two decades the (Peoples Liberation Army) has systematically planned, trained, and built the forces it believes are required to invade the island.
4. The PLA has already achieved the capabilities needed to conduct an air and naval blockade, cyberattacks, and missile strikes against Taiwan.
5. PLA leaders now likely assess they have, or will soon have, the initial capability needed to conduct a high-risk invasion of Taiwan if ordered to do so by CCP leaders. They will continue enhancing this capability in the coming years
6. Any near-term PLA invasion would remain a high-risk option. Such an operation would rely on the success of the PLA’s more developed cyberattack, missile strike, and blockade capabilities to sufficiently degrade, isolate, or defeat Taiwan’s defending forces as well as its anti-access and area denial capabilities to prevent decisive U.S. intervention.
7. The PLA’s current military sea and air lift capacity could carry an initial landing force of 25,000 or more troops. China has developed substantial capabilities to use civilian ships in military operations, providing capacity for the PLA to land additional troops on Taiwan after securing a beachhead.
8. Given these developments, it has become less certain that U.S. conventional military forces alone will continue to deter China’s leaders from initiating an attack on Taiwan.
9. A deterrence failure is most likely to occur if Chinese leaders believe the United States is not militarily capable of or politically willing to intervene, or if they interpret ambiguities in U.S. policy to mean that opportunistic Chinese aggression against Taiwan will not provoke a decisive U.S. response.
10. General Secretary Xi’s higher tolerance for risk and desire to establish a lasting legacy could also contribute to a decision by China’s leadership to attack Taiwan despite U.S. warnings.
The 9th point is most significant for me.
Russia used a call for help from Ukraine's breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as an excuse to invade.
Ukraine similarly issued a call for help to the United States. Joe Biden had a brief window of opportunity to respond with a credible show of force. His complete failure to do anything other than trot out more sanctions exposed, to use Winston Churchill's phrase, the soft underbelly of Nato's defender. The US is either not military capable of or politically willing to intervene.
Taiwan's well-deserved dream of independence is now forever lost. The best the island nation can hope for is to negotiate a rapprochement with Beijing to buy time until Xi's era passes.
