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Thread: A U.S.-China War Over Taiwan: How Bad Could It Get?

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    A U.S.-China War Over Taiwan: How Bad Could It Get?

    This article discusses a large report that came out of a recent war game of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

    A U.S.-China War Over Taiwan: How Bad Could It Get?

    Beware, China. And Taiwan, and Asia, and America. Just after the holidays, a team from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released a hefty report entitled The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan. It is jam-packed with insight. One hopes it finds avid readership among the uniformed services, their political masters, and Congress.

    The report details the design and results of an unclassified wargame set in the Taiwan Strait in 2026, toward the end of the much-discussed “Davidson window,” which postulates a Chinese attack on Taiwan by 2027. The game overseers ran twenty-four iterations, changing different variables—political and strategic decisions, alliance politics, strategy and operations, weaponry and sensors available to the combatants—to identify cross-cutting themes, and to compile findings and recommendations applicable across a variety of likely circumstances.


    On the whole the CSIS game struck a more upbeat note than games conducted by the armed forces themselves, which tend to prophesy bitter defeat. The First Battle of the Next War observes that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) generally lost or fought to a stalemate under most plausible scenarios. The coauthors attribute the disparity between think-tank and Pentagon games to the fact that the CSIS hosts factored history into the game’s conduct alongside more traditional statistical methods.


    Bringing in non-quantitative measures is wise. Military sage Carl von Clausewitz warns against trying to reduce a messy, complex affair like warfare to rules and formulas. Relying overwhelmingly on the probability of a kill during an exchange of fire employing certain weapons and sensors, as Pentagon games are wont to do, feels like flouting Clausewitzian counsel.


    History is an antidote to fixating on numbers.
    Probably the three biggest themes to emerge from the report are this: Taiwan must take ownership of its own defense rather than depend on outside intervention for survival; to succeed the U.S. armed forces must obtain permission from the Japanese government to operate from U.S. bases in Japan; and the U.S. military must bulk up its magazine of air-launched anti-ship ordnance to the maximum extent possible in order to sink a PLA Navy amphibious task force trying to cross the Taiwan Strait.


    Otherwise Taiwan will fall. The island and its protectors will be unable to concentrate enough firepower at the time and place of battle to prevail.
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    It'll be ugly, I think. I think it is coming.
    Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect. -- Woody Hayes​

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    Quote Originally Posted by DGUtley View Post
    It'll be ugly, I think. I think it is coming.
    Maybe.

    But as I always have said, China's #1 national security issue is its economic stability. A war over Taiwan may well destroy that stability. The Chinese may not risk it, and the CCP may not survive widespread internal revolt.
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    China need not invade Taiwan, they can blockade or sanction with crippling effect. The US will do nothing and it shouldn't.

    We lost our chance to take Formosa.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
    China need not invade Taiwan, they can blockade or sanction with crippling effect. The US will do nothing and it shouldn't.

    We lost our chance to take Formosa.
    A blockade would be smarter for China. Not sure how the world would react.
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    MisterVeritis (01-24-2023)

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    I bet a look at the internals shows a decisive US loss.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MisterVeritis View Post
    I bet a look at the internals shows a decisive US loss.
    DoD war games do. This was private, and the article explains the differences.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    DoD war games do. This was private, and the article explains the differences.
    I downloaded the 165 page report.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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    Alright. I read the first dozen pages. The games assume a great many things that do not exist today.

    It's goal is to influence policymakers to make appropriate changes.
    Call your state legislators and insist they approve the Article V convention of States to propose amendments.


    I pledge allegiance to the Constitution as written and understood by this nation's founders, and to the Republic it created, an indivisible union of sovereign States, with liberty and justice for all.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    Maybe.

    But as I always have said, China's #1 national security issue is its economic stability. A war over Taiwan may well destroy that stability. The Chinese may not risk it, and the CCP may not survive widespread internal revolt.
    And a demographic crisis is at hand which suggests China's rise and decline may well occur within the same 100 years.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


    ~Alain de Benoist


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