If You Only Read Two Articles on China/Taiwan This Year:

These are the ones to get your hands on.

First you need to read John Culver’s Carnegie Commentary, “How We Would Know When China is Preparing to Invade Taiwan (https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/10/03/how-we-would-know-when-china-is-preparing-to-invade-taiwan-pub-88053) He focuses in considerable detail on the steps China must take prior to attempting to take Taiwan by force. He then explains why an attack on Taiwan without warning makes little sense. He suggests that we would see clear signs of an invasion years in advance. Also, if as some have predicted that the PRC planned to launch such an attack as early as 2024, we would already clearly see those preparations. I couldn’t agree more.

Unfortunately, it appears John has much more confidence in the Intelligence Community’s (IC’s) ability to do the detail work he calls for than I do. There hasn’t been any serious strategic research on China since the Clinton Administration budget cuts and the IC’s subsequent emphasis on current reporting. He notes that the IC provided considerable advance notice of the Russian invasion. True enough. Preparations for the invasion were hard to miss. Yet CIA and DIA got the details completely wrong – three days to Kyiv and the Ukrainians wouldn’t put up much of a fight. This tells me that the IC remains broken, and we should not expect improvements until it rebuilds a robust strategic research effort at CIA and DIA. For those who believe more, and better collection is the answer, I simply note the instances in which depending on it didn’t work. India going nuclear, for example, or the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9/11, Iraq WMD, and the most recent Russian missteps easily come to mind.

I think most believe that preventing the next Pearl Harbor-like surprise justifies large intelligence budgets and that only collection will provide us with sufficient warning. You would think that after one surprise after another someone would point out that what we are doing isn’t working. As Culver points out, we should see clear signs of Beijing’s decision to take Taiwan by force. Although he doesn’t mention it, his article explains what the IC should be looking for to provide the President with so-called strategic warning. The IC can do this well if it puts its mind to it, but don’t count on it. History tells us that tactical warning – who, what, where, and especially when – what the policymakers needs most, depends more on luck than how much money you spend on collection. Rebuilding the IC’s strategic research capability an issue I am passionate about won’t solve the problem either. It will, nevertheless, make policymakers a lot smarter on range of complex issues such as watching the detailed preparations China might make to take Taiwan by force. Current intelligence analysts simply do not have the time or the expertise to follow closely Culver’s excellent advice on what we should see if China gives up on peaceful unification and prepares for war. Current intelligence analysts are being told that if it isn’t for the President or other top officials it is a waste of their time. This rules out capability studies of the PLA. Is China’s force as brittle at the NCO level as Russia demonstrated in its invasion of Ukraine or have they copied US practice more closely? This and many other questions require a deep dive into the data over time making them beyond the scope of current reporting.

Robert Haddick provides the second must read article, “Defeat China’s Navy, Defeat China’s War Plan.” (https://warontherocks.com/2022/09/defeat-chinas-navy-defeat-chinas-war-plan/) The recent CSIS China/Taiwan simulation suggests the US and Taiwan could successfully defend against an attempt by China to take the island by force, but at a heavy cost (https://breakingdefense.com/2022/08/a-bloody-mess-with-terrible-loss-of-life-how-a-china-us-conflict-over-taiwan-could-play-out/). Rumors suggest that simulations by the Pentagon also calculate a similarly high cost.

I fear that both the Pentagon and CSIS may be fighting the last war against a far more formidable enemy. Indeed, China has studied the Gulf War and the Iraq War closely. From the lessons learned, they have spent the last thirty years preparing to fight the US in close quarters. It is often referred to as A2/AD designed specially to take out our carriers. In the game we lose two of them and roughly 500-900 aircraft in the process. The games give some consideration to Haddick’s approach, and mention as he does that, we are not procuring nearly enough long-range precision munitions to fight China from a greater distance. The worst outcome from Beijing’s perspective would be to start a war and not be able to finish it. Fighting from a distance, with the threat of US, Japanese, and Australian submarines slinking around might provide a deterrent to a Chinese attack ideally without raising the threat of the use of nuclear weapons.

Although the details of the CSIS games will not become public until December, the reports so far (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-09/what-if-war-game-for-a-us-china-conflict-sees-a-heavy-toll) suggest that the rules preclude the use of such weapons. I can find no mention of whether US forces engage targets on the Chinese mainland in the game. Such attacks would surely raise the likelihood that China might consider the use of nuclear weapons and thus should be ruled out.  This becomes even more salient as the PRC’s nuclear expansion nears completion over the next 20 years or so. Otherwise, we could find ourselves facing the prospects of a nuclear holocaust should we intervene to help defend Taiwan. One iteration of the game assumes that a force of US marines is prepositioned in southern Taiwan before the attack begins. It proves to be an important factor in the US/Taiwan success in repelling an invasion. While such a move may appear unlikely to some in today’s world, Culver’s article suggests that the strategic warning of an attack will provide ample rationale in the future for such a deployment. The question becomes would the President at the time take such a step?