Do we need to risk "provoking" a Chinese invasion of Taiwan now in order to deter a more capable invasion later? It is worth considering and pondering how to do it without triggering a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
So I'm reading a Forbes article about a U.S. Army role to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. This should be interesting, I thought. And then I get to this part:
As Brian J. Dunn observed in a seminal assessment for Military Review last year, "To defeat Taiwan and avoid war with America, all China needs to do is get ashore in force and impose a cease-fire prior to significant American intervention."
Huh. That was unexpected. The link in that quote is to my Military Review article on Taiwan. The issue itself is mostly focused on Taiwan, including the subject of returning American forces to Taiwan. I recommend it if you are interested in the subject.
The key is that we need to figure out how to prevent Chinese forces from remaining on Taiwan. Too often the issue has been framed as an all-or-nothing framework. If American and allied forces make it to Taiwan before the capital falls then somehow China loses the war. I don't assume China just evacuates their army if Taiwan holds on long enough for American to intervene and land on the island in force.
Even if the Chinese don't want to risk a wider war by engaging American troops, China is on the island, after all. I propose American heavy forces as the ultimate guarantee that the PLA is driven into the sea so China doesn't prepare for a decisive round two in the future from within a secure bridgehead on Taiwan.
Thompson proposes a Army heavy brigade as a tripwire on Taiwan to account for the time it would take to move Army heavy forces to Taiwan. The purpose would be to deter China with the threat of immediate combat with American forces. He could be right.
Although to be fair in regard to his criticism of moving many heavy forces to Taiwan, I did not mean to imply that an Army heavy corps sent to Taiwan would be all heavy brigades.
That said, I recognized the deployment time issue. I noted the option of afloat prepositioning of Army brigade sets to speed deployment. And I urged Taiwan use heavy forces to counterattack bridgeheads early, confident that American heavy reinforcements are on the way in case the Taiwanese fail to drive the PLA into the sea.
I'm certainly not against stationing a heavy brigade on Taiwan. But we may need to slowly build up to that to avoid giving China a pretext to invade. Introducing American forces to Taiwan is a normal thing for two countries to do. But China, of course, claims Taiwan. And in theory China might consider that a trigger for invasion.
Perhaps a company-sized Army heavy team goes in for exercises. Then it stays. Then it is reinforced to a battalion-sized task force. Then prepositioned equipment for the rest of a brigade is sent. Along with air defense forces to protect it. Eventually the fully manned brigade could be established. Done over time, any single increment might be too low for China to justify war.
And for God's sake make sure the Navy and Air Force can establish and hold open the line of supply to Taiwan.
My thanks to Thompson for the shout out on the need to make sure the PLA does not remain on Taiwan when the shooting stops. And amplification of the concept that an Army role in INDOPACOM shouldn't be just killing enemy ships. Which I wrote about more generally in Military Review.
