US capable of ’tamping down’ China’s potential invasion of Taiwan: Deputy defense secretary
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WASHINGTON: The United States is capable of “tamping down” China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, said the country’s deputy defense secretary Kathleen Hicks on Friday.Speaking at the online forum held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), one of the US major policy research groups, Hicks also reiterated the US commitment to strengthening Taiwan’s self-defence capability, Focus Taiwan reported.Asked to comment on a potential invasion by China of Taiwan, Hicks said the US has been watching the situation in the region very carefully “day to day”.“We have a significant amount of capability forward in the region to tamp down any such potential,” Hicks said. “We have good relations, of course, with Taiwan. We have commitments to Taiwan that are enduring since the 1970s.“Hicks said the primary issue is that the US is helping Taiwan to raise its self-defense capabilities against a potential invasion by China.“That’s really important. The Taiwanese, their ability to defend themselves effectively, is a game-changer in terms of that deterrent calculus for China,” Hicks said.Since mid-September of last year, Beijing has stepped up its grey-zone tactics by regularly sending planes into Taiwan’s ADIZ, with most instances occurring in the southwest corner of the zone and usually consisting of one to three slow-flying turboprop planes.Beijing claims full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.Taipei, on the other hand, has countered the Chinese aggression by increasing strategic ties with democracies including the US, which has been repeatedly opposed by Beijing. China has threatened that “Taiwan’s independence” means war.On June 1, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to complete reunification with self-ruled Taiwan and vowed to smash any attempts at formal independence for the island.
America Cannot Take On China And Russia Simultaneously
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In a previous article, “Russia and China are Already Winning the Nuclear Arms Race,” I discussed the dangers to U.S. national security from the breathtaking advances by China and Russia in expanding the size of their nuclear arsenals to a level far in excess of the size of the current U.S. nuclear arsenal. The more that Russia’s and China’s superiority over the United States in terms of nuclear and other unconventional weapons such as super-Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and cyberweapons, as well as in terms of overall nuclear war survivability, continues to increase, the greater their temptation will be to engage in increasingly brazen international aggression abroad. We have already seen examples of this happening with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, China’s occupation of disputed islands in the South China Sea over the last several years, and what appears to be an increasingly imminent Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
In March-April 2021, Russia reportedly massed 100,000-150,000 troops along Ukraine’s northern and eastern borders poised for a possible invasion. In response, the United States raised its alert status to Defense Condition (DEFCON) Three for the first time since September 11, 2001. Moreover, U.S. European Command raised its watch level to “potential imminent crisis” in fear that a Russian invasion of Ukraine might be followed by a Russian attempt to overrun frontline NATO states including the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It was this crisis that caused President Joe Biden to propose the June 2021 Geneva summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin to reduce tensions and improve U.S.-Russian relations, which were then at their worst since the end of the Cold War. More disturbingly, Russia’s achievement of nuclear supremacy over the United States could potentially enable it to coerce or blackmail U.S. leaders to do its bidding and unilaterally disarm or, far worse, launch a catastrophic attack on the U.S. homeland with a comparatively low risk of effective U.S. military retaliation. Such an attack would essentially have the effect of erasing the United States from the geopolitical map much as the Allies did to Germany at the end of World War II.
The commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, testified to Congress in April 2021 that the United States might well face a two-front or even a three-front war if Russia were to invade Ukraine and/or other Eastern Europe nations, China were to attack Taiwan, and North Korea were to attack South Korea simultaneously and in coordination. Adm. Richard testified that the United States currently has no contingency plans for how to confront two allied nuclear superpowers in a future war. Thus, the ability of the United States and its allies to survive, let alone win, a war fought with such powerful, unconventional weapons against our enemies remains very much in doubt.
In a recent article in the National Interest, former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs A. Wess Mitchell expanded upon this increasing danger warning that:
The greatest risk facing the twenty-first-century United States, short of an outright nuclear attack, is a two-front war involving its strongest military rivals, China and Russia. Such a conflict would entail a scale of national effort and risk unseen in generations, effectively pitting America against the resources of nearly half of the Eurasian landmass. It would stretch and likely exceed the current capabilities of the U.S. military, requiring great sacrifices of the American people with far-reaching consequences for U.S. influence, alliances, and prosperity. Should it escalate into a nuclear confrontation, it could possibly even imperil the country’s very existence. Given these high stakes, avoiding a two-front war with China and Russia must rank among the foremost objectives of contemporary U.S. grand strategy [emphasis added]. Yet the United States has been slow to comprehend this danger, let alone the implications it holds for U.S. policy…A debate has erupted among defense intellectuals about how to handle a second-front contingency…There has been much less discussion of how, if at all, U.S. diplomacy should evolve to avert two-front war. In the current budgetary environment, though, the most likely outcome could well be the worst of all worlds—namely, that America will continue to try to overawe all threats…while reducing real defense spending. Such an approach keeps U.S. power thinly spread…This creates an ideal setting for an increasingly aligned Russia and China to conduct repeated stress tests of U.S. resolve in their respective neighborhoods and, when conditions are ripe, make synchronous grabs for, say, Taiwan and a Baltic state.
U.S. concerns about the risks of fighting a coming war with Russia and China are well-grounded, given it is unprepared to fight even a purely conventional war with them. In 2019, former U.S. deputy secretary of defense Robert Work, and David Ochmanek, one of the Defense Department’s key defense planners, offered a public summary of the results from a series of classified recent war games. Ochmanek summarized the results of the wargames by stating: “When we fight Russia and China, ‘blue’ [the United States] gets its [butt] handed to it.” As The New York Times summarized, “In 18 of the last 18 Pentagon war games involving China in the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. lost.” While many U.S. leaders have been keen to defend every nation threatened by Russian and Chinese aggression—including those thousands of miles away on their borders, such as Taiwan and Ukraine, where our enemies enjoy overwhelming theater military superiority—they need to adopt a more realistic assessment of the chances of the United States prevailing in such a conflict. In an article for War on the Rocks, Edward Geist, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, notes that in November 2018, the National Defense Strategy Commission found that “If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic contingency or China in a war over Taiwan … Americans could face a decisive military defeat … Put bluntly, the U.S. military could lose the next state-versus-state war it fights.” He surmises that:
These findings suggest that, in a pitched battle with a near-peer adversary such as China, American forces may be defeated even if its commanders don’t make any mistakes…If defeat is to be prevented, U.S. strategy and planning may need to think about all the different forms defeat might take so as to be ready for alternative kinds of conflicts and concepts of operations … In the present, when near-peer adversaries are increasingly capable of defeating U.S. conventional forces on a theater level, U.S. decision-makers can no longer afford to pretend that defeat is not a real possibility. And, so long as policymakers do not take losing seriously, they are unlikely to take the difficult steps needed to prevent such a defeat [emphasis added] … Unfortunately, U.S. strategy has not planned seriously for protracted near-peer conflict since the early Cold War… It is much more unpleasant to envision losing than winning — but this does nothing to change the fact that defeat is an increasingly plausible possibility in a war with Russia or China…An essential first step could be to start taking the prospect of protracted near-peer conflict seriously. Whether or not U.S. policymakers want such a conflict, one may be imposed upon them — and at present, America is woefully underprepared for it.
While U.S. policymakers are right to focus in recent years on the threat of great power wars with Russia and China, it is imperative that U.S. leaders recognize the increasing prospects of defeat in such conflicts so that they can better determine whether fighting losing wars against America’s nuclear superpower enemies and risking the lives of tens of millions of Americans and our nation’s very existence best serves U.S. national security interests. Furthermore, U.S. policymakers made a strategic mistake in expanding NATO into eastern Europe in the late 1990s and subsequently into the former Soviet republic of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as the United States and its allies do not have sufficient military capability to defend its Eastern European members against potential Russian aggression. Last month, Stephen Philip Kramer, a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, expounded upon NATO’s inability to credibly defend its frontline NATO members from Russian aggression.
Taiwan says it needs to be alert to ‘over the top’ military activities by China
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan needs to be on alert for China’s “over the top” military activities, the premier said on Tuesday, after a record 56 Chinese aircraft here flew into Taiwan’s air defence zone, while the president said the island would do what it took to defend itself.
Taiwan has reported 148 Chinese air force planes in the southern and southwestern part of its air defence zone over a four day period beginning on Friday, the same day China marked a key patriotic holiday, National Day.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory, which should be taken by force if necessary. Taiwan says it is an independent country and will defend its freedoms and democracy, blaming China for the tensions.
The tensions are being viewed with increasing concern by the international community. Japan and Australia on Tuesday urged the two to talk, while the United States said it has been “conveying clear messages” after what it described as destabilising activities by China.
Taiwan calls China’s repeated nearby military activities “grey zone” warfare, designed to both wear out Taiwan’s forces by making them repeatedly scramble, and also to test Taiwan’s responses.
“Taiwan must be on alert. China is more and more over the top,” Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters in Taipei. “The world has also seen China’s repeated violations of regional peace and pressure on Taiwan.”
Taiwan needs to “strengthen itself” and come together as one, he added.
“Only then will countries that want to annex Taiwan not dare to easily resort to force. Only when we help ourselves can others help us.”
The Chinese aircraft have not been flying in Taiwan’s air space, but its air defence identification zone or ADIZ, a broader area Taiwan monitors and patrols that acts to give it more time to respond to any threats.
FILE PHOTO: Chinese and Taiwanese national flags are displayed alongside military airplanes in this illustration taken April 9, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has made modernising the armed forces a priority, focusing on the use of new, mobile weapons to make any attack by China as costly as possible, turning Taiwan into a “porcupine”.
In an article for the U.S. magazine Foreign Affairs here released on Tuesday, Tsai said Taiwan falling to China would trigger “catastrophic” consequences for peace in Asia.
Taiwan does not seek military confrontation, Tsai said, “but if its democracy and way of life are threatened, Taiwan will do whatever it takes to defend itself.”
JAPAN, AUSTRALIA CONCERN
The United States, Taiwan’s main military supplier, has its “rock-solid” commitment to Taiwan.
China has blamed the United States for the tensions due to its arms sales and support for the island.
In a sign of the fraught atmosphere, a security source confirmed reports in Taiwanese media that a Chinese pilot responded to a radio warning to fly away on Sunday with an expletive.
China’s Defence Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
Japan also weighed in on Tuesday, saying it was watching the situation closely and hoped Taiwan and China could resolve their differences through talks.
“Japan believes that it is crucial for the situation surrounding Taiwan to be peaceful and stable,” Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said in Tokyo.
“Additionally, instead of simply monitoring the situation, we hope to weigh the various possible scenarios that may arise to consider what options we have, as well as the preparations we must make.”
The Japanese, U.S., British, Dutch, Canadian and New Zealand navies held joint drills near Okinawa over the weekend, including U.S. and British aircraft carriers.
Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs said it too was concerned by China’s increased air incursions.
“Resolution of differences over Taiwan and other regional issues must be achieved peacefully through dialogue and without the threat or use of force or coercion,” it said.
Taiwan has lived under the threat of invasion since the defeated Republic of China government fled to the island in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists. No peace treaty or armistice has ever been signed.
Taiwanese people are well used to China’s threats and there has been no sign of panic on the island because of the stepped up military activity, nor undermining of investor confidence on the stock market.