China's Threat to Taiwan: A Strategy of Bluff
Startfor Global Intelligence Update
Summary:
China has taken to threatening Taiwan again, and people are asking what China will do. We have turned to the question of
what China can achieve against Taiwan. In our view, it is not militarily capable of mounting a serious threat. Weaknesses in China's navy and air force mean that Taiwan is capable of defending itself quite readily. If the U.S. goes to Taiwan's aid, which we think it will, China will suffer a massive defeat in attempting to take Taiwan. China knows it. Why is it mounting this challenge? Two reasons: First, to demonstrate Beijing's will against divisive forces inside of China; second, to create a sense of embattlement that justifies increased repression inside of China in the name of patriotism.
Analysis:
Tension between Beijing and Taipei has escalated to the point where Beijing is making military threats against Taiwan. Analysts generally have focused on what Beijing might choose to do. We think it is important to consider carefully what Beijing is actually capable of doing. Beijing's military options are more limited than its rhetoric, particularly if the United States is prepared to defend Taiwan. However, even if the United States were to abandon Taiwan and remain neutral in a Beijing-Taipei confrontation, it is our view that Beijing would face severe difficulties in mounting a serious threat against Taiwan.
Let us begin with the obvious. China is an enormous country with a large standing army. Taiwan is much smaller, an island separated from the mainland by the Taiwan Straits, which are less than 100 miles wide at the narrowest point. The western portion of Taiwan, the part facing China, is a relatively flat plain, while the eastern portion is more rugged. The island is several hundred miles long but less than one hundred miles wide. Thus, if the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) were able to cross the Taiwan Straits, they would find a terrain favorable to lodgment in the western half of the country, with harbors adequate for a build- up of men and materiel. This would allow for a campaign into the more rugged eastern portion; China could also isolate and conquer the capital of Taipei in the north. All of this is built around a huge "if" - if the PLA can mount a sustainable amphibious operation against Taiwan.
The geopolitics of the confrontation reflects, in some sense, the situation between Germany and Britain following the fall of France in 1940. If the Wehrmacht had been able to close with and engage the British army, they would certainly have defeated it. However, the Wehrmacht had to first cross the English Channel. No matter how powerful the Wehrmacht might have been, its strength was irrelevant to the prior task of forcing the channel. The Germans would have had to carry out an amphibious operation that would not only have to land troops on Britain's shore, but would also have to continue to supply and reinforce those troops. In order to do that, the Germans had to defeat the Royal Navy. Unable muster anywhere near the necessary naval forces to challenge the Royal Navy in the channel, the Germans attempted to first establish air superiority over the channel and southeastern England. The theory was that with air superiority over the Channel and the use of mines, the Royal Navy would be forced out of the Channel, opening the way for an invasion of Britain. The attempt to establish air superiority failed, which meant the basic theory was never tested. The Germans abandoned the effort to invade Britain, substituting instead a submarine-based naval blockade designed to cut off British supply lines to the empire and the United States. The new goal was to shatter Britain's economy and force it to capitulate. That attempt failed as well.
Stratfor already addressed last week the question of an amphibious operation by the PLA against Taiwan, in stratfor.com. If the United States were to side with Taiwan and send carrier battle groups to or near the Taiwan Straits, the Chinese would face the same problem the Germans faced with Britain. The Chinese navy would be unable to pose a direct challenge to combined U.S.-Taiwan naval forces. Its only option would be to try to establish air superiority over the Straits, posing an airborne threat against U.S.-Taiwan naval forces. This threat would drive them out of the Straits and allow Chinese amphibious forces to cross over. In short, China is in the same position as Germany in 1940. That is not a happy precedent for China.
China is not likely to achieve air superiority over the Taiwan Straits through a conventional air campaign. Taiwan currently has about 150 F-16s, over 250 F-15s, as well as 60 Mirage 2000s. These are backed up by four Hawkeye battle management platforms, used by the U.S. Navy for air-sea battle management. China's air force has larger numbers of aircraft, but none are as sophisticated as Taiwan's. Taiwan would win any battle for air superiority and would not require U.S. assistance, save possibly for the replacement of munitions. And even this may not be altogether necessary. Indeed, we could further argue that even if Taiwan naval forces were to face Chinese naval forces directly (without U.S. Naval assistance), Taiwan's naval forces, coupled with Taiwan's air force, would be sufficient to raise the risks of an attempted invasion enough to deter attack.
This leaves China with an unconventional option. To be more precise, China is left with a variation on the Luftwaffe strategy. Unable to invade until it achieves air superiority and unable to achieve air superiority using conventional aircraft, China could seek to suppress Taiwan's air defenses with cruise missile attacks on Taiwan's air fields. China could conduct a battle against Taiwan's air force, based on the following assumptions: It has developed cruise missiles with sufficient stealth to penetrate Taiwan air defenses; it has sufficient precision to strike targets as small as aircraft and command and communication nodes; it has sufficient explosive power to penetrate revetments; and it has sufficient numbers to be effective. The goal would be to render Taiwan's air forces inoperative by destroying the command, control and communications required for managing the air battle, while also destroying much of Taiwan's air force on the ground. Indeed, if China had anti-ship versions of such missiles, they could conduct a simultaneous campaign against Taiwan's navy.
There is every reason to believe that China has such missiles and in sufficient numbers to make a difference. Certainly, they have been working on such missiles for several years. But there is an inherent weakness in any over-the-horizon missile attack: intelligence. The foundation of U.S. cruise missile warfare has been superb intelligence. The Chinese clearly have reconnaissance satellites, but it is not clear that these satellites are sufficiently sophisticated to provide real time ntelligence. Human intelligence could fill in some of the gaps, but ultimately, launching missiles against aircraft on the ground requires extremely tight time-lines to succeed. The attacker must know what aircraft is where within the time frame of the missile strike in order to be effective. This is a missing link in any Chinese missile attack, and it is not one that is easy to solve quickly. Space control is the key to sea-lane control in the age of cruise missiles.
It appears that China does not have sufficient satellites nor sufficiently robust communications links that the United States could not shut down. The U.S. must have developed anti-satellite capabilities in the past decade, and the ability of the U.S. to jam communications is second to none. That means the satellite-to- ground station link and the ability of the ground stations to disseminate information can be rendered useless. At the very least, the Chinese will have to assume so. Even more important, China is vulnerable to counter-strike. The American ability to identify Chinese launch facilities through use of U.S. satellites and other means would permit rapid counter-strikes on Chinese launchers. Now, the Chinese have been acquiring Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which could be a useful substitute for satellites in this type of environment, save that the UAV is vulnerable to gunfire, jamming and, above all, mechanical failure. Were China to launch a missile based Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) campaign against Taiwan, they would quickly find themselves on the short end of the stick.
Thus, it appears to us that China cannot establish air superiority over the Straits even against Taiwan alone. If it has a mass of cruise missiles and reliable intelligence capabilities, then China could threaten Taiwan's air superiority with a concerted attack on its air fields. But even here, Taiwan could strike back at launchers with its air force and its own cruise missiles, assuming only that the United States were willing to share intelligence with Taiwan. If the United States becomes a combatant, China cannot succeed in invading Taiwan. If the United States merely provides Taiwan with real time intelligence, Taiwan can prevent China from achieving air superiority over the Straits.
This leaves us, using our 1940 scenario, with the final option: blockade. Here again, the air power factor comes into play. Using surface vessels close to Taiwan will not work. A deployment at a substantial distance from Taiwan would require a large number of surface vessels able to operate at great distances for an extended period of time. China's navy is primarily designed for coastal patrol. It has only a handful of destroyers and frigates, not nearly enough to conduct an extensive blockade. China has about five nuclear attack submarines and other conventional submarines, but Taiwan has some 18 anti-submarine warfare
destroyers and 12 ASW frigates. Moreover, submarines are a poor choice of weapons for a blockade with political overtones. They are better at sinking ships than stopping them. Presumably, China would be looking to keep third parties out of the war rather than bringing them into it. If China were forced to declare, as Germany was, unlimited submarine warfare, striking all vessels within a very large battle area, it would generate support for Taiwan. This is especially true since the number of submarines available to China is insufficient for the creation of an effective cordon sanitaire.
Therefore, it appears to us that China, whatever it might wish to do, is incapable of mounting an amphibious operation against Taiwan. It could, of course, choose to launch nuclear missiles against Taiwan, obliterating it. But given the economic value of Taiwan to China even in its current political role, and given China's insistence that Taiwan is part of China, using nuclear weapons would not seem to be in China's best interest. When the threat, however indeterminate, of a U.S. response is factored in, it seems unlikely that China will bombard Taiwan with nuclear tipped missiles. It is uncertain that China would not use conventionally armed missiles to make a political point, but we doubt they would use weapons of mass destruction.
Taiwan by itself is a formidable foe. However, it is our view that the United States will participate in the defense of Taiwan. Taiwan is an essential link in any American global strategy. While the United States toys with its appropriate role on the mainland of Eurasia, there remains a fixed assumption that U.S. maritime supremacy, which is the foundation of U.S. national security, must be maintained. In order to continue this strategy, the United States has historically worked to sustain a presence in the waters off of Asia. This archipelago strategy, forged with the turn-of- the-century seizure of the Philippines, assumes the United States must maintain a blocking position on the north-south trade routes of Asia. It is a shield strategy to block Asian powers from breaking into the central Pacific and a strike strategy in which nearby bases are available for operations against Asia.
This archipelago strategy matured fully after World War II in a line of maritime relationships stretching from the Aleutians through Japan and Okinawa, Taiwan and Philippines to Singapore. Because this strategy is currently in tatters, with unrest in Indonesia, poor defense relations with the Philippines, and growing unease in Japan over its dependency on the U.S., abandoning Taiwan would be strategically demented. It is the perfect trade route blocker, shield and sword. Given how little Taiwan needs from the United States to secure it against China, it is unthinkable that the U.S. would not provide it.
Strategy aside, politics dictates a defense of Taiwan. Clinton is on the defensive over China. Between campaign finance, spy scandals and a general sense that U.S. policy on China was poorly implemented, the current administration would be placed in an impossible position should China attack Taiwan. Regardless of its intent, the failure of the administration to come to Taiwan's aid would be read as confirmation of the worst charges of its critics. Having aided Kosovo, whose strategic interest to the United States was dubious, the failure to defend Taiwan, whose strategic importance is manifest, would be politically impossible for the Clinton administration. This means that while Taiwan is formidable, we would expect the United States to participate in its defense as well. And China knows all this.
In short, for all of China's bluster, we do not see China as having the military capability, at this time, to threaten Taiwan. In order to develop this capability, it would have to move its reconnaissance satellite program ahead by several generations and undertake a naval construction program of substantial proportions. China knows all of this perfectly well. It knows that it is not going to invade Taiwan and it is not going to blockade Taiwan. It may fire a missile or two at Taiwan, but even that is unlikely.
Then why is China carrying on so? There are two reasons. First, Beijing is desperately trying to assert its authority throughout the country. It is terribly afraid of Tibetan and Xinjiang separatist, religious sects and party splits. It must show itself to be strong on Taiwan, because domestic factions could construe any sign of hesitation as a sign of weakness. When one is truly weak, one cannot afford to show it. Second, China needs something to rivet the nation's attention, create a sense of embattlement and justify the current enclosure as western investors turn away. A crisis with Taiwan and the United States is, like "wag the dog" scenarios in the United States, exactly what China's leadership needs at this moment.
Therefore, while China knows it does not have the wherewithal to invade Taiwan, its own people don't know and, quite possibly, the public in Taiwan and the United States don't know. Perhaps even Taiwan's leadership might be rattled by Chinese bluster. We doubt that though. The declaration of statehood was not the act of nervous men. Indeed, Taiwan seems intent on capitalizing on tension (see [http://www.stratfor.com/asia/specialreports/special44.htm] for a discussion of this). In our view, the threats against Taiwan tell us more about the current status of politics inside of China and the insecurities of the men around Jiang Zemin, than they tell us about geopolitical confrontations with Taiwan.
It does point out the need for the United States to clarify its maritime policy in Asia. The Taiwan issue is an opportunity to reexamine U.S. strategic relations with the rest of the Asian archipelago. This includes its relations with the Philippines and Singapore and careful consideration of what chaos in Indonesia would mean to the United States. The unintended consequence of China's threats against Taiwan will, we think, be a redefinition of U.S. Asian maritime strategy, if not by this administration, then by the next. Unwittingly, China is generating the force that will compel the U.S. to think through its post-cold war naval strategy. |
