This assertion ignores the role Taiwan would play as a springboard for Chinese power projection should China hold the island. So already Eland's analysis is bad.
And he ignores the morality of abandoning free people to China's communist rulers.
Of course, we'd have to abandon Taiwan if his ideas on what is enough defense against China are adopted, since he finds it ridiculous that we deploy so close to China:
Furthermore, the U.S. military deploys far forward around China; China’s general military forces do not deploy in the Western Hemisphere and do not threaten the United States. The most important finding in the Pentagon’s report was that China could not deploy and sustain even small military units far away from its borders before 2015. The report continued that China would not be able to deploy and sustain large units in combat far away from China until well into the decade after that. Instead, the Pentagon concluded that China is modernizing its military for short conflicts around its borders. In other words, China’s capability to project conventional power is and will remain pathetic far into the future -- thus making most of China’s neighbors relatively safe, and the faraway U.S. very safe, against a Chinese attack.
His military analysis falls short again when he asserts Taiwan's air force could take out China's invasion fleet without considering China's long-range air defense missiles and growing advanced fighter fleet. Nor does he consider that China's missiles could be used to disrupt Taiwan's air bases. The balance in the air over the Taiwan Strait has clearly tilted to China.
Eland also ignores the fact that China aims for short wars to win before we can deploy our superior but mostly distant military power. If China's short-war assumptions hold true, they don't need to fight more than a short war to beat us. Again, Eland doesn't understand the military reality.
But most fundamentally, Eland seems to disregard the need to deploy our forces near China. A century ago, we built shore defenses to repel enemy ships which would attempt to bombard or invade our shores. Seventy years ago, we planned to defend against Japan (whose GDP was a tenth of ours) on a line of Aleutians-Hawaii-Panama. We talked of rushing to the Philippines, but it was ruled out by reality after Japan attacked us. Doe we really want to defend on our door step?
And then there's the issue of whether we'd have allies with Eland's defense plans. We could surely have a defense budget just a fraction of our current budget and hold China on the line of Alaska-Hawaii-Australia. But that would abandon Taiwan to its fate. Oh, and add in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Singapore to the list of those behind enemy lines should it come to war. More free people would be tossed to the wolves. (Not to imply all those nations are free.)
By deploying forward, we gain not only the military power that we pay for, but draw strength from allies who spend on their own defenses and augment ours--rather than being neutral or siding with China. Would our allies continue to be our allies as they watched us retreat east while they remain under China's guns?
Some people can advocate retreat no matter how they have to twist reality to justify it. Eland is more of the same. CATO is good at that.
