Breaking the Blockade: Preparing for Conflict in Taian
The Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis will not vanish like the previous three. While the PLA has not demonstrated its military strategy to take Taiwan, it has eroded a key cross-strait norm: from now until the Politburo takes its next step, the PLA will threaten to bracket and blockade Taiwan. The United States and its allies cannot assume that Taiwan will be continuously accessible. Plans must be made accordingly. The U.S. should ensure that Taiwan has not only the stocks, but also the economic and agricultural reserves, to survive Chinese military pressure.
Nancy Pelosi’s visit inaugurated the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis. It ended neither with her departure from Taiwan nor the subsequent bipartisan congressional delegation to Taiwan. Nor did it cease with the expiration of PLA exercise zones around Taiwan. This crisis is distinct from the previous three. Unlike in the past, the PLA is near to fielding the capabilities needed to assault Taiwan.
This is not a matter of missiles alone, no matter how numerous and long-range they may be. Three days of war taught the Kremlin that Ukraine would not submit to optical bullying and the illusion of massed forces. The Zhongnanhai cannot have missed this lesson: Taiwan must be taken physically with the “boots on the ground” that have bedevilled Western strategists for the past thirty years.
Rather, the PLA has a growing fleet of amphibious assault ships and airborne transports capable of delivering some 30,000-or-so soldiers in an initial wave. This figure—it is important to remember—is conjecture. Actual Chinese capabilities remain classified and difficult to assess in the open-source and, even more relevant, insufficient to subjugate Taiwan. Yet by the decade’s end, the PLA will have constructed at least one, quite possible three, flat-decked amphibious assault ships and another seven large well-deck amphibious warships, adding to the PLA’s first-wave punches by a third or more. Moreover, the PLA can call upon a host of civilian transports that, when combined, equal the tonnage of the entire U.S. logistics fleet, a force with far greater geographical demands than the PLA’s logistics.
This alone does not guarantee victory – the PLA’s planners likely would prefer greater non-civilian capacity – but it does make an invasion viable, particularly if the PLA can cordon off Taiwan and prevent U.S. and allied support. It is here that the recent exercises and continued major PLA airspace and maritime violations are relevant. They allow the PLA to pre-position assets that can blockade Taiwan. By repeatedly surging aircraft and warships into the Bashi Channel and Miyako Strait, and at times bracketing Taiwan with surface combatants from the east, the PLA can rehearse the logistics and refine the command structures for a Taiwan blockade. Were hostilities to begin, a missile bombardment will supplement the blockade, targeting Taiwanese military installations, and probably U.S. and Japanese forces. This is more difficult to rehearse, but periodic command post and snap mobilisation exercises in the Eastern Theatre Command provide experience.
These two facts—improved PLA amphibious capacity and a now-viable, if uncertain, Taiwan blockade—separate this crisis from its predecessors. In the 1950s, although the PLA could pressure and even take Taiwanese islands near the Chinese coast, American and Taiwanese naval forces could prevent a blockade, sustaining Taipei despite pressure and leaving Beijing with few military options. In the 1990s, the PLA was capable of threatening Taiwan, but still lacked the naval and air capabilities to do more than menace it: an American carrier group transited the Taiwan Strait primarily because the PLA had no ability to win a war with the U.S.. Today, the PLA can cordon off Taiwan militarily and transport men and materiel to seize the island.
However, time is the most relevant planning factor, as it often is during combat. The CCP and PLA may accept a longer war with the United States. Paradoxically, it is not American resistance that frightens the CCP. If Taiwan is subjugated, the PLA both improves its naval-aerial position, gaining access to greatly improved submarine and air basing, and fights a sea war, not a land war.
Naval combat, by its nature, involves high casualties. Warships are still large, complex systems, crewed by hundreds to thousands of servicemembers. But the scale of destruction is relatively concentrated. The sheer numbers involved in ground combat make casualties higher. During the Second World War, the closest point of comparison that exists, ground forces for every nation bore half or more of the casualties. A long-term, grinding fight in Taiwan, especially a hybrid conventional war and insurgency, will claim tens of thousands of Chinese lives. Moreover, naval combat has a different rhythm: major engagements are far rarer than sustained gradual fighting with limited casualties.
Xi Jinping is acutely aware of China’s weaknesses. It is energy and food import dependent. Its birth rate is low and population ageing. Its property bubble must be deflated, but a recession or banking collapse would trigger disastrous internal effects including a squeeze on money for the military. Nevertheless, he surely recognises that China’s window of opportunity is already upon it and will not remain open indefinitely.
The KMT is unlikely to return to power in Taipei before 2028 at the earliest, and unlikely to remain a pro-mainland party if the DPP, as expected, solidifies its monopoly on Taiwanese political power. American strategic attention remains directed toward Europe, and Western military stockpiles are dwindling, with little likelihood of replacement before the late 2020s. Taiwan has received few of the promised capabilities from its most recent arms deals with the U.S.. Years will pass before the distributed missiles, UCAVs, and counter-UCAVs that have been so relevant in Ukraine, and would also disrupt a Chinese invasion, reach Taiwan.
It is not, in turn, Taiwanese military capacity alone that will allow Taipei to resist. Also included are Taiwan’s food and energy reserves. Nearly all Taiwanese energy is imported. Even a temporary blockade without conflict might grind the Taiwanese economy and military to a halt. Targeted strikes on reserve depots would accelerate the process. Taiwan produces some of its food and has stockpiled foodstuffs. The $3.3 billion dollars in agricultural products Taiwan purchased from the U.S. alone in 2020 indicates its dependence on imports for essential needs, A long-term war will require months to years of pre-conflict food and energy supplies.
The U.S. should prepare Taiwan for a long-term conflict, not only by accelerating the transfer of weapons systems it needs to resist Chinese predation, but also providing it with energy and food supplies to be stockpiled for a future war. American oil and gas reserves have partly insulated the U.S. from the impact of the Russo-Ukrainian War, at least relative to Europe. Similarly, the U.S. remains a major food producer and exporter. The Biden administration should make a concerted effort to siphon off even a small portion of U.S. production and transport it to Taiwan.
Additionally, this transport should not simply be civilian led. Just as the PLA is rehearsing a Taiwan blockade, the U.S. military ought to rehearse anti-blockade operations. The U.S. Pacific Fleet’s surface combatants and submarines, with the necessary air support, may eventually be required to protect Taiwanese-bound food and oil shipments. For now, a limited escort mission would teach the lessons needed to sustain Taiwan in a major conflict. The U.S. initiated planning for the protection of trans-Atlantic convoys six months before the U.S. entered World War II. Better to anticipate this far more difficult task today than when Taiwan’s existence depends on it.
Article originally appeared on Real Clear Defense