China is building up its military defenses to deter U.S. intervention in case of war with Taiwan, the island's defense ministry said Monday.
Beijing is focusing on developing long-range missiles "to strike at American bases and battle carrier groups stationed in the Asia-Pacific...so as to block the United States from coming to the rescue of Taiwan should war break out in the Taiwan Strait," the ministry said in a report released Monday.
"Although the Chinese communists have claimed they would like to solve the Taiwan issues in a peaceful manner, they have asked their forces to step up preparation for military struggles against Taiwan," the report said.
That's right. It isn't that China is becoming stronger than America.
The problem, as I've tediously repeated for many years, is that China is becoming strong enough to deter American military power long enough for China to maintain a military advantage over Taiwan sufficient to conquer Taiwan.
We continue to work the problem of being able to rush forces to defend Taiwan. But we need to have something left on Taiwan to defend by the time we get there.
The Taiwanese, therefore, need to bolster their defenses long enough to hold off the Chinese for as long as we need to reach Taiwan in sufficient strength to resist the Chinese.
If the Taiwanese understanding of the problem is translated into actual military capabilities and psychological readiness to endure a Chinese assault and resist effectively, Taiwan will remain a free and prosperous democracy.
Heck, it might even prevent a war in the first place.
UPDATE: Mad Minerva sends me this article. I may have been hasty in judging that the Taiwanese understand their problem:
The report added that China's military strategy toward Taiwan was to use force to deter Taiwanese independence.
This would be done by launching blockades of Taiwan's outlying islands and sea lanes or launching a full-scale missile attack against Taiwan.
Good grief. The Taiwanese actually think that the Chinese would either isolate the offshore islands which don't affect Taiwan's security; would blockade Taiwan--which would result in a naval and air war off of Taiwan's east coast where Taiwan would have the greatest chance of victory given Taiwan's naval strength and the problem China would have projecting air and naval power to the far side of Taiwan; or would execute a drive-by shooting with a missile barrage that would do nothing but anger the Taiwanese. Even 1,500 missile warheads would be nothing on their own.
This delusional thinking does make it easier for Taiwan to believe they can hold off China until we can arrive--since the Taiwanese don't assume that the Chinese will actually try to win a war with Taiwan by invading.
So logically, the Taiwanese military is still clueless about the threat that looms over them. They have chosen to believe the Chinese will fight ineffectively should it come to war.
