Taking Taiwan Sounds Pyrrhic at Best

In a world where every dictatorial thug seems emboldened by a weak-willed America, it is natural to wonder if or when China's Xi Jinping will invade Taiwan once he's done wrecking his country's own economy.

Michael Fumento considers the question at some length and his answer makes the whole proposition sound borderline ridiculous even without the American assistance such an attempt would deserve.

That last is my opinion, given that Fumento regards American assistance, or at least the prospect of it, as one of the challenges China found face.

His full list is:

1. Potential Combat Allies -- by which he means the United States and Japan directly and the likes of Australia and South Korea indirectly;
2. Strait Jacket -- such an endeavor would require enormous manpower, which would have to be moved across the 100-plus mile-wide Taiwan Strait and landed on an easily-defended coast; and
3. Mines -- which would be far easier for Taiwan to deploy than for China to remove.

Air support for Taiwan looks like the weakest link here, since the presence or absence of American support makes the most difference, but the geographic constraints are impressive. For example:

Image by Tom Ritson, via Unsplash, license.

[M]ost of the Taiwanese beaches are very shallow. The PRC would have to anchor ships far from the coast and move equipment to the shores slowly, making the ships vulnerable to attack...

... Germany had to guard coastline from the French border with Spain all the way to entire Norwegian border... The western coast of Taiwan is only about 100 miles, but because there's so little actual beach areas needing defending would be a fraction of that.

These are the so-called "red beaches," with about 12 facing the PRC or on Taiwan's northern tip. About six are on the far side of the island, requiring landing craft to swing around with every extra mile fraught with peril. Beijing would also have to assume Taiwan could destroy its major ports at a conflict's outset. The paucity of landing zones means these ships would be coming in what we nicely referred to as "kill boxes," albeit moving ones... [link omitted]

Between the huge challenge of actually invading Taiwan and the fact that the strategic thinking of Sun Tzu is widely known by educated Chinese, presumably including Xi Jinping, Fumento generally argues that such a plan is a complete non-starter.

Perhaps Fumento is right about Xi, but he's talking about the same leader who, seeing his country become prosperous under semi-capitalism, nevertheless chose to ignore almost equally widely-known thinking about economics. Why wouldn't someone so foolish try this, anyway?

If Xi is at all a rational actor, Taiwan is safe, but his rationality is hardly a safe bet.

-- CAV