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#Chinese blockade of #Taiwan would likely fail, a direct military invasion would be extremely difficult, Pentagon official says Ely Ratner, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security Affairs, said a blockade would give Taiwan’s allies time to mobilize resources for Taiwan.
“It would likely not succeed, and it would be a huge risk of escalation for the PRC, where it would likely have to consider whether or not it was willing to ultimately start attacking commercial maritime vessels,” Ratner told the House Armed Services Committee, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
Army Major General Joseph McGee, vice director for strategy, plans and policy of the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, said a blockade was also not very likely given the challenges involved.
“I think it is an option but probably not a highly likely option, when you start looking at the military options – much easier to talk about a blockade than actually do a blockade,” McGee told lawmakers.
China staged war games around Taiwan in August of last year and again in April, and its forces operate around the island almost daily.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said last week in its biennial report that China was bolstering its air power along the coast facing Taiwan with a permanent deployment of new fighters and drones at expanded air bases.
Still, McGee also said China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), would be hard pressed to carry out frontal, amphibious invasion of the island. That is not something it could do in a surprise attack either, he said.
“They would have to mass tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of troops on the eastern coast and that would be a clear signal,” McGee said.
He added flatly: “There is absolutely nothing easy about a PLA invasion of Taiwan.”
“They would also encounter an island that has very few beaches, where you could land craft on mountainous terrain, and a population that we believe that would be willing to fight so there is absolutely nothing easy about a PLA invasion of Taiwan,” he said.
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Modern War Institute
Every Taiwan Citizen a Resistance Member: Preparing for a Chinese Occupation
Lumpy Lumbaca | 09.14.23
Deterrence has failed. The People’s Liberation Army has invaded and occupied Taiwan. Just like Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, some questioned whether Xi Jinping would go through with it. Many experts incorrectly predicted that an invasion would be too costly for China’s already shrinking economy given the inevitable global backlash. But autocrats have their own logic and reasons that are often not understood by others. Rational actor theory is just theory, and Westerners have never fully unlocked China’s long-term, grand strategy playbook. The Chinese occupation force is on every street corner, in every government office, at all sea ports, in the telecommunications centers, and literally sleeping in the homes of the people of Taiwan. The crackdowns in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong are nothing compared to Xi’s ruthlessness unleashed in his attempt to bring the island under his control. Deterrence has failed. Taiwan has fallen.
This is a scenario the world may see on the news tomorrow, or in a year. Luckily, Taiwan and its supporters have today to prepare for the invasion and—if defense fails—the occupation. Much has been written about what the Taiwan or American or Japanese or any other conventional fighting forces around the globe should do before, during, or after the invasion, and there are likely well-established military plans in place for a war against China over Taiwan. Moreover, America’s arming and training of the Taiwan military increases significantly each year, as it should. But those initiatives are almost entirely focused on the island nation’s military. There is another element at play, one that offers Taiwan important advantages if it is properly incorporated into defense planning: Taiwan’s people, the civilians who will be forced to choose between compliance with or resistance against China’s occupation—the Taiwan students, truck drivers, tech entrepreneurs, private business owners, accountants, civil servants, CEOs, mayors, and the like. Today is the opportunity to prepare the civil population for their contribution to a resistance tomorrow—a resistance that will be necessary for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to ultimately realize that subjugation, oppression, and faux unification following invasion are all impossible in the face of a trained and organized populace.
There are many lessons to be learned from Putin’s war in Ukraine. One of them is when there is a threat of invasion and occupation—as is the case in Taiwan—it’s best to prepare civilians to resist before the first shot is fired. In Ukraine, this was largely not done before Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas region in 2014. But Ukraine’s response to the aggression involved a large-scale mobilization of civil society. Volunteers traveled east to fight. Nongovernmental organizations emerged to procure equipment and send it to the front lines—from night-vision devices to body armor to vehicles. Specialty organizations like the Ukraine Crisis Media Center emerged organically to promote Ukraine’s cause and rapidly respond to Russian propaganda. So when Russian forces launched their full-scale invasion in 2022, the groundwork for resistance was in place. There are admittedly countless differences between the situations in Ukraine and Taiwan. Nevertheless, it seems rather clear that now is a better time to train, organize, resource, and empower any willing citizens in Taiwan to resist potential occupation by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) should deterrence fail.
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weehingthong 