Is China an imminent threat to Taiwan?
Well, one day the threat could be imminent. Perhaps one day soon:
US defence secretary Pete Hegseth warned that a Chinese military attack on Taiwan “could be imminent” as he called on America’s allies in the Indo-Pacific to boost defence spending as a further deterrence to Beijing.
China certainly wants Taiwan and is preparing to throw an army across the Taiwan Strait. And I think China will throw that army across with a wide variety of means.
I'm not prepared to call it an imminent threat.
But as I wrote in Military Review, and as Forbes noted, victory for China rests on getting ashore in force to stay rather than immediately driving on Taipei to end the war with conquest:
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."
So China is closer than we hope. China can take the next steps years later. I mean, Russia has taken several bites out of Ukraine since capturing Crimea in 2014. It still counts as conquest even if not done all at once.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
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NOTE: I made the image with Bing.
