Well, I should have looked for the actual article that they were talking about instead of just posting that piece. Here it is. Of course it is a hypothetical. The kind of thing that military planners often engage in during peace time to prepare for war.
The War that Never Was?
Proceedings recently asked several frequent contributors how the next conflict might start. This essay is the first in the series.
By Admiral James A. Winnefeld, U.S. Navy (Retired), and Michael J. Morell
August 2020
Proceedings
Vol. 146/8/1,410
The beginning of major state-on-state conflict is almost always a surprise . . . at least to one of the two sides. The China–Taiwan conflict of early 2021 was no exception. The overlapping factors that brought it about now seem so obvious in retrospect. First, the convergence of Thucydides’ three sources of conflict—fear, honor, and interest—was unprecedented at the time. On top of this, Chinese recognition of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and leader Xi Jinping’s eagerness to solidify his re-election in 2023 made it almost inevitable.
Why Now?
Regarding “fear” as a source of the conflict, we always knew the Chinese Communist Party, as an authoritarian regime, harbored as its principal concern a loss of control over its own population. As the roller coaster year of 2020 dragged into its second half, a resurgence of COVID-19—this time scattered throughout the country and again initially covered up by the regime—began to cast real doubt among the Chinese population of the competence of the Party and its leader Xi Jinping. The crash of the Chinese economy, due partly to COVID and to secondary sanctions imposed by the United States on China’s banks after the crackdown in Hong Kong (itself the result of a U.S. administration wanting to look tough on China during an election campaign), only exacerbated Xi’s concerns. Watching protests break out and fully aware of the historical fragility of the so-called “Mandate from Heaven,” Xi began to look for an external cause to distract the population from its mounting anger and anxiety.
As for “honor,” we were always aware of China’s ambition to integrate what it viewed as the renegade province of Taiwan into the mainland People’s Republic. Early in his rule, Xi dispensed with the patience Deng Xiaoping expressed on this matter, making reunification a regular part of his political speeches. For its part, Taiwan’s leader Tsai Ing-wen, sensing Chinese political weakness stemming from internal stresses and feeling pressure from inside her Democratic Progressive Party to respond to Xi, began to extend her own rhetoric regarding independence into areas previously considered taboo. Without calling for outright independence, Tsai went so far as to say that with the loss of the “Hong Kong model,” reunification at any time in the future no longer seemed possible.
continues at usni.org |
