We can't--and shouldn't--preemptively destroy Taiwan in order to save it from China. I'd rather deflect China.
A Chinese proverb asks, “Beneath a broken nest, how (can) there be any whole eggs?” The proverb means if the United States cannot prevent China from seizing Taiwan by force, it should instead develop a strategy to convince China’s leaders an invasion would produce a peace more injurious than the status quo. ...
To start, the United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain. This could be done most effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the most important chipmaker in the world and China’s most important supplier.
Would destroying the chip fabricating plants and otherwise conducting a scorched
earth strategy deter China from invading (tip to The Morning Briefing)?
To be fair to the authors, that is just the start and highlight of a broad level of defense and resistance to make the price of capturing Taiwan too high. But the chip aspect is what is highlighted.
Most fundamentally, I don't think the Taiwanese would ruin their own country as a strategy. But if China defeats Taiwan, I'm sure we'd bomb vital Taiwanese plants and assets; and evacuate key Taiwanese personnel if we can't defeat the Chinese invasion. The British struck the "neutralized" French fleet lest it fall into Nazi hands, recall.
The authors are right that a
similar American strategy relying on bombing the mainland to impose
economic costs on China is risky for America. But rather than push China that hard, I'd give China
higher priority objectives inland to protect Taiwan.
As I've long said, my priorities are to deter China rather than defeat them. But deflecting them inland should be a higher priority than defeating them:
We have reacted by trying to arm Taiwan with better weapons and to whip the Taiwanese military into shape to actually fight off an invasion. We've pulled Japan into the arena with a commitment to defend Taiwan and we are making a major play toward incorporating India into our alliance system. We have Australia on board and our forces are based in Central Asia.
While all this looks good for building an alliance to fight and defeat China, this is not playing the Great Game. This is making the best of a worst case scenario--war with China. Sure, if we must fight I'd rather win, but just going to war is going to cost us in lives and money.
One can say that we hope that by becoming strong enough we deter the Chinese but this is still only second best. A deterred China will always be on the verge of attacking, just waiting for the moment when we cannot stop them for one reason or another and so cannot deter them for even a short window of opportunity.
No, defeating China makes the best of the worst case and deterring China makes the best of the second worst case. We need to shovel the Snow back north. We need to play the Great Game in Asia to achieve our best case--a China pointed away from the south--Taiwan and the United States and our other allies--and pointed toward the north and the interior of Asia.
Also, I don't think China can win in 14 hours. Unless you define "win" as getting ashore and being too strong to drive into the sea, as I wrote in Military Review.
Back to the main point, denying Taiwan as an economic prize for China is meaningless to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
China wanted Taiwan when Taiwan was a poor dictatorship. Returning
Taiwan to the embrace of the mainland where it "belongs" is the
objective. That is the most core of China's "core interests". Taiwan is a political objective and not an economic objective.
And I think the viability of resistance as one part of destroying the value of Taiwan to China--if the Taiwanese are willing after failing to fight hard with their army--need to be thrown out when it comes to a Chinese counter-insurgency campaign:
There will be no hearts and minds campaign or tribal negotiations. They could ship off the native Taiwanese to distant and isolated Tibet and the Moslem areas of western China--where they can learn to be proper Chinese citizens in a sea of hostile Tibetans or Moslems who will see them as Chinese and not fellow oppressed victims of Chinese aggression--and where they can't complain and be heard by the Western press. Ethnic Han Chinese don't seem to want to move out west so making Taiwanese move there will do in a pinch to move demographics against the ethnic minorities.
The Chinese could then ship in plentiful Chinese mainland colonists to Taiwan from the Han parts of China to bolster the former KMT descendants living on Taiwan who still feel more Chinese than Taiwanese. Taiwan will be a more appealing destination than the wild west.
Remember, too, that a loss of Taiwan chips to the world is still a net gain for China by dragging the world down to China's level. Consider it the equivalent of China letting the Xi Jinping Flu Covid-19 virus spread to the world rather than warning the world to brace themselves. Although in time America and Japan will get Taiwanese chip plants. So China has a deadline if that is a factor, I suppose.
China would like to own Taiwan's chip plants. But that's a bonus. Failure to get them makes Taiwan no less important to the CCP. The real "nest" that Xi Jinping wants to preserve intact is the CCP's continued monopoly on power in China. If taking a smoldering Taiwan achieves that, mission accomplished.
The link to the Parameters piece referenced in the initial article is here.
