Who would win a war over Taiwan?

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies set out to test what would happen if China attempted an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. Picture: AFP

Good news: The Chinese military can’t easily seize Taiwan by force. That’s the gist of the headlines about a recent war game from a Washington think-tank. But that’s not the full story, and the details in the 160-page report show that even a victorious fight for Taiwan would be a ruinous affair, and the US is still showing little sense of urgency in deterring it.

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies set out to test what would happen if China attempted an amphibious invasion of Taiwan. Analysts played the war game 24 times, and in most instances US intervention beat back the invasion. Taiwan remained an autonomous democracy, albeit as a ravaged island without basic services like electricity.

War games are a product of choices and assumptions, but there were four preconditions to defeating an invasion, none of them guaranteed. First the Taiwanese have to fight. The island is ramping up its spending on defence but its conscription and readiness are underwhelming. Condition two: Arms need to be pre-positioned; the US can’t pour in weapons over friendly borders after the fight starts a la Ukraine. American weapons deliveries to Taiwan now lag years behind orders.

Three: The US must be able to rely on its bases in Japan. American fighter jets lack the range to commute to the war without Japan’s outer islands, one more reason Tokyo is America’s most important Pacific ally. The fourth condition? The US “must be able to strike the Chinese fleet rapidly and en masse” with long-range weapons.

Chinese soldiers conduct operations during joint combat exercises and training around the Taiwan Island in August last year. Picture: AFP

The cost in blood of US sailors and airmen would be enormous. “In three weeks,” the report notes, the US would suffer “about half as many casualties as it did in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Commanders would have to “move forward despite a high level of casualties not seen in living memory.”

The American public has no experience since World War II of enduring dozens of lost ships, including two US Navy aircraft carriers (crew: 5000) badly damaged or lost in most scenarios. The casualties and equipment losses compound the longer the US waits to intervene, a warning about the costs of political indecision in a crisis. It’s also worth asking if a US President in his 80s would have the stamina and concentration to manage the flood of difficult decisions coming at him.

The weapons that can help win faster are available, yet the US is making little progress in acquiring them in sufficient numbers. In the war game, American attack submarines “wreaked havoc” on the Chinese fleet. The US Navy now has a fleet of about 50 attack subs and a goal of 66, but the shipbuilding plan doesn’t hit 60 boats until 2045. Congress wants to buy three hulls a year but the US industrial base delivers about 1.2.

Submarines would play a key role in any battle for Taiwan. Picture: Supplied

Another war-winner: Long-range anti-ship weapons, known as LRASMs. Bombers could fire these weapons without having to enter contested airspace, which significantly reduces US casualties. One problem: “The United States expended its global LRASM inventory within the first few days in all scenarios.” The Pentagon should run a public campaign to buy a LRASM to save American pilots, and procure them in the thousands.

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One known unknown is how well the Chinese military would perform, a warning to the Communist Party. A contested amphibious assault, across about 100 miles of ocean, is a varsity operation, much harder than rolling over a land border as Vladimir Putin did in Ukraine. The last time a Chinese combat plane shot down a manned aircraft was 1967.

Missile defences may work well in peacetime testing but fail at higher rates in combat. One question Chinese President Xi Jinping might ask himself, after watching Mr Putin’s travails in Europe, is whether the reports he’s receiving on his military’s prowess are accurate.

One known unknown is how well the Chinese military would perform. Picture: AFP

Some readers may conclude the answer to all this is to let Taiwan fall, but that would end America’s status as a credible global power. US allies would recalibrate their alliances, and rogues would take more risks. All the more reason to spend the money and energy on demonstrating to China that it will lose a Taiwan war. CSIS has done a service in putting out an unclassified document that can educate the public on what is required.

The Wall Street Journal