The Department of Defense lacks some nuance when it comes to assessing China's options to capture Taiwan.
The Department of Defense outlines potential military operations against Taiwan in its most recent report on China's military power:
Air and Maritime Blockade. PLA writings describe a Joint Blockade Campaign in which the PRC would employ blockades of maritime and air traffic, including a cut-off of Taiwan’s vital imports, to force Taiwan’s capitulation. Large-scale missile strikes and possible seizures of Taiwan’s offshore islands would accompany a Joint Blockade Campaign in an attempt to compel Taiwan’s surrender, while at the same time, posturing air and naval forces to conduct weeks or months of blockade operations if necessary. The PRC likely would complement its air and maritime blockades with concurrent EW, network attacks, and IO to further isolate Taiwan’s authorities and populace and to control the international narrative of the conflict.
Limited Force or Coercive Options. The PRC could use a variety of disruptive, punitive, or lethal military actions in a limited campaign against Taiwan, probably in conjunction with overt and clandestine economic and political activities supported by IO to shape perceptions or undercut the effectiveness or legitimacy of the Taiwan authorities. Such a campaign could include computer network or limited kinetic attacks against Taiwan’s political, military, and economic infrastructure to induce fear in Taiwan and degrade the Taiwan population’s confidence in their leaders. Similarly, PLA SOF could infiltrate Taiwan and conduct attacks against infrastructure or leadership targets.
Air and Missile Campaign. The PRC could use precision missile and air strikes against key government and military targets, including air bases, radar sites, missiles, space assets, and communications facilities to degrade Taiwan’s defenses, neutralize its leadership, or undermine the public’s resolve to resist.
Amphibious Invasion of Taiwan. PRC writings describe different operational concepts for an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. The most prominent of these, the Joint Island Landing Campaign, envisions a complex operation relying on coordinated, interlocking campaigns for EW, logistics, air, and naval support. The objectives are to break through or circumvent Taiwan’s shore defenses, establish a beachhead, build up combat power along Taiwan’s western coastline, and seize key targets or the entire island. The PLA continues to test new options to force unification. In October 2022, seven Chinese civilian car ferries, under CMM, participated in amphibious landing drills on Chinese beaches in the Taiwan Strait. In August 2022, in response to the U.S. Speaker of the House CODEL to Taiwan, the PLA conducted joint exercises focusing on establishing air, maritime, and information superiority. The exercise consisted of joint air and maritime activities to the north, southwest, and southeast of Taiwan, focused on establishing air dominance, according to Eastern media reporting. A large-scale amphibious invasion would be one of the most complicated and difficult military operations for the PLA, requiring air and maritime superiority, the rapid buildup and sustainment of supplies onshore, and uninterrupted support. It would likely strain the PRC’s armed forces and invite a strong international response. These factors, combined with inevitable force attrition, the complexity of urban warfare, and potential for an insurgency, make an amphibious invasion of Taiwan a significant political and military risk for Xi and the CCP, even assuming a successful landing and breakout past Taiwan beachhead defenses.
Small Island Seizure. The PLA also is capable of attempting various amphibious operations short of a full-scale invasion of Taiwan. With few overt military preparations beyond routine training the PRC could launch an invasion of small Taiwan-occupied islands in the SCS, such as Pratas or Itu Aba. A PLA invasion of a medium-sized, better-defended island, such as Matsu or Kinmen, is also within the PLA’s capabilities. Such an invasion would demonstrate military capability, political resolve, and achieve tangible territorial gain while simultaneously showing some measure of restraint. However, this kind of operation involves significant, and possibly prohibitive, political risk because it could galvanize pro-independence sentiment on Taiwan and generate powerful international opposition.
The options involve a wide range of effort and potential scope of victory. Since China absolutely wants to control Taiwan completely, settling for a lesser military effort clearly depends on China's ruler deciding that it either cannot achieve the maximum objective because its military is too weak or because Taiwan can resist China long enough to allow America and its allies to intervene and stop China.
Overall, I consider aerial bombardment or blockade least likely as stand-alone options. They inflict pain without promise of decisive results in any reasonable amount of time. And it gives Taiwan's allies time to intervene. Now, if China wants to "punish" Taiwan or "teach it a lesson", China could carry them out for a limited amount of time before it escalates out of control.
Of course, if invasion is the main effort, the other options will likely be part of it, too.
But what is the most likely form of a Chinese attack on Taiwan?
First, does China assume America intervenes? Because if it assumes America will intervene it may make sense for China to attack American forces before or while it begins the attack on Taiwan. Otherwise, delaying American intervention--by posing a threat to our forward forces and bases--while China defeats Taiwan would be the best course of action.
Recent war games concerning a Taiwan contingency suggest devastating losses to both sides, a significant risk of escalation — including to the nuclear level — and only pyrrhic victors. But what if such a scenario has it backwards, and all-out conflict is Beijing’s least-favored path? China could employ a spectrum of non-kinetic coercion ranging from economic, political, and tech-centered means up to naval blockades to pursue a nonconsensual unification with Taiwan, forcing the United States to escalate.
This is an excellent point. One would think tearing the bandage off fast is the best path to avoid giving Taiwan and America a warning that they'd best rapidly escalate their military power to resist China's slow-developing attacks or a future invasion. But if China must act before it can conquer Taiwan in one campaign, that changes the issue. China may need to show progress toward controlling Taiwan even if China cannot complete the conquest.
Yet saying China must choose a lesser option than invasion because it lacks the dedicated amphibious lift platforms that would allow a D-Day scale invasion neglects two things.
One, America today lacks that scale of capability. And if we lack it given our heavy investment in amphibious warfare ships, how could China possibly build that capability?
And two, America builds that capability because it needs to launch invading
forces around the globe. And these days from over the horizon from the target to avoid being targeted by land-based systems. As I observed in the update to this invasion post,
China has a huge helicopter platform--China itself!--that will substitute
for many amphibious warfare ships in any scenario near China.
Taiwan is China's core interest. If
China believed it needed a fleet of amphibious warfare ships to take
over China, China's massive naval build up would have included them. China can come from the air and sea in ways that don't look like D-Day.
But I think the DOD invasion option leaves out some nuance. Yes, if China decides it cannot invade and conquer Taiwan in one blow (and I fear the Taiwanese aren't as resolute as we hope), the other options move to the top unless China wants to concede it can do nothing. That might threaten the CCP's claim to a monopoly of political power in China.
But even the invasion option can be adapted to fall within that limitation. Basically, why does it have to be all or nothing? The assumption is that China must invade, drive on Taipei, and conquer the island to win. Otherwise China loses. That is the wrong way to look at it.
I think China could do what Russia has done to Ukraine. Russia's first invasion in 2014 seized advanced positions in Crimea for future attacks in 2015 in the Donbas and then the big effort to occupy all of Ukraine that began in 2022 and continues today.
China could invade Taiwan with forces only large enough to establish a bridgehead. Then, after a ceasefire and build up, resume the war to finish off Taiwan. Rather than be sobered by Russia's experience in Ukraine, China can learn from Russia's phased invasion. That eventual Chinese killing blow would be much easier than Russia's 2022 effort given Taiwan's lack of strategic depth.
Which has implications for Taiwan's force structure and strategy, like recognizing the "porcupine" strategy as a path to eventual Taiwanese defeat; as well as implications for the United States Army. I explored both aspects in Military Review.
My "seminal assessment" on this issue has not been absorbed.
And while I'm at it, the talk of how China would have troubles with an insurgency in the cities and mountains even after conquering Taiwan assumes the Taiwanese people resist--and that China won't use more brutal methods than we would to win.
Let's not artificially define China's chances of victory as impossible. Just as lesser options of blockade, psychological warfare, bombardment, or the capture of smaller objectives would require future operations to complete the capture of Taiwan, a full invasion can succeed with the same requirement for future operations to complete China's victory.
UPDATE: If you think China wouldn't use more brutal methods to control Taiwan, as I noted in that old link above, note what Russia is doing right now to Ukraine:
Russia has already been moving Ukrainian civilians it controls to different parts of Russia where it will be easier to exterminate Ukrainian culture over a few generations. Russians are then moved into the territory formerly occupied by those Ukrainians to make those areas very Russian.
For more than a decade, U.S. officials have encouraged Taiwan to invest in small, relatively cheap weapons such as shoulder-fired missiles, drones and sea mines. The goal would be to bring a Chinese amphibious invasion force to a halt at close range with thousands of small strikes. ...
Taiwan fears the same plight [as Ukraine faces without Western heavy equipment] if China amasses forces around the island in a blockade, or if Beijing’s military establishes a firm beachhead on Taiwan. In such scenarios, small, short-range weapons could be less effective at degrading the enemy, and Taiwan would need bigger hardware, Taiwanese defense officials and analysts say.
Taiwan's assessment is right:
A direct analogy to Ukraine could come if Chinese forces succeed in landing on Taiwan. American military strategists generally assume Taiwanese forces could hold out for a few months at most without outside support. But with U.S. intervention, the battle might shift to an effort to dislodge the Chinese military.
In that scenario, Taiwan would need the same equipment Ukraine is urgently requesting, strategists in Taiwan say.
“Asymmetrical weapons are necessary but not sufficient for the challenges Taiwan faces,” said Guermantes Lailari, a former U.S. Air Force officer who is now a research fellow at National Chengchi University in Taiwan.
If the PLA gets ashore despite those "porcupine" weapons, without bigger hardware Taiwan won't be able to drive the invaders into the sea. That guarantees eventual Chinese victory.
Perhaps the Taiwanese absorbed my assessment.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
