The ammunition is running low, casualties are immense, medicine and other critical supplies haven’t come for weeks, and a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland is imminent.
It’s a dramatic scenario, more closely resembling a Hollywood drama than any war the United States has actually fought in the past half-century. It’s nevertheless what many expect a war between the United States and communist China could look like this decade.
Both the United States and China are investing record-breaking sums in building up their military capabilities. Leadership on both sides increasingly appear to consider such a conflict as inevitable, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
Preparing for what would be history’s most ambitious amphibious assault is not the same as actually doing it. But should the worst occur, the Biden administration or its successor will have to decide either to join the fray or to let Taiwan stand on its own and fight for its freedom.
Before U.S. leadership decides on that, however, it must answer another, more foundational question: Can the United States win a war with China?
‘The Window of Maximum Danger’
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) is more invested in the new cold war between the United States and China than most.Tasked with leading Congress’s new House Select Committee on Strategic Competition with the CCP, Gallagher is one of the few movers and shakers in the legislative branch directly engaged in developing an action plan to defend the American people, economy, and values from CCP aggression.
For him, Russia’s ongoing conquest of Ukraine, and the United States’ failure to deter it, contain all the lessons necessary to prepare for what comes next in Taiwan.
“If we don’t learn the right lessons from the failure of deterrence in Ukraine, authoritarian aggression and the CCP’s malign influence will spread to the Indo-Pacific, and our new cold war with the Chinese Communist Party could quickly become hot,” Gallagher told The Epoch Times.
“To prevent this, we have to act with a sense of urgency and do everything we can to deter a CCP invasion of Taiwan.”
That plan is much the same as it has been since 1979, when the United States passed the Taiwan Relations Act and agreed to provide the island with the arms necessary to maintain its self-defense.
The strategic landscape 44 years ago was something altogether different, however, and the number of weapons and systems that Taiwan now requires to hold the CCP at bay is immense.
The way Gallagher sees it, neither Taiwan nor the United States is prepared for the possibility of war with China.
Gallagher is careful now to avoid similar doomspeak, but when asked whether he still agreed with that assessment, he said that his optimism for the United States’ performance in a war with China is limited.
“If the Chinese Communist Party invaded Taiwan today, we would not be well-positioned to defend our friend, our interests, or American values in the Indo-Pacific,” Gallagher said.
The United States must choose, he said, to arm Taiwan to the teeth now or come to Taiwan’s aid at a much greater cost later.
Either way, the choices the United States makes now, he said, will largely determine the conditions of victory and defeat at a later date. To that end, Congress must unite to arm Taiwan and systematically counter the CCP’s malign influence at every opportunity.
“We are in the window of maximum danger, and if we are going to ensure that it’s the U.S.—not the CCP—writing the rules of the 21st century, we need to unite in overwhelming bipartisan fashion to combat CCP aggression,” Gallagher said.
Preventing Nuclear ‘Armageddon’
Although the phrase “maximum danger” is superlative, it may still fall short of impressing the seriousness of the CCP’s growing nuclear arsenal and the role that it will play in any conflict.Such capabilities would put the United States at grave risk in a war and would present a decision-making dynamic among both militaries unseen since the Cold War.
Retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding knows something about PLA decision making.
His career has taken him to China on more than one occasion, including a stint as a defense attaché in Beijing, where he negotiated with PLA officers on critical events and established contours for managing strategic competition.
When asked whether the United States could win a war against China over the future of Taiwan, Spalding answered clearly and simply: “No. The Chinese have too many weapons, and they are too close to home.
“The U.S. could not muster enough combat power to stop China.”
The United States’ ability to project power across 3,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean is sorely lacking, he said.
Sustaining a full combat force in the region while being threatened by the PLA’s missile and rocket forces, to say nothing of its navy, would risk nuclear escalation at every moment.
Simply put, the United States would be outmanned and outgunned by China in any Indo-Pacific conflict. Strategic nuclear weapons in such a scenario become the United States’ clearest advantage—and the world’s clearest threat.
Spalding, understandably, views the use of nuclear weapons as a no-win scenario. Still, he does consider the strengthening of the U.S. nuclear deterrent an essential element in stopping China from extending its aggression beyond Taiwan.
“The only weapons that would enable us to balance the conventional military might of China are nuclear weapons,” he said. “These would give the U.S. a fighting chance but would be devastating for the U.S., China, and the world.
“Nevertheless, the surest way to war is to appear weak. This is why it is imperative that the U.S. project power. Today, the only way is with nuclear weapons. We don’t have time for anything else.”
To that end, Spalding said the United States will need to immediately start transitioning critical supply chains, including pharmaceuticals and technological resources, out of China. Leaving the delivery of such items to China is a surefire way to lose any war.
“There is no time, but nevertheless, the U.S. needs to rebuild its industrial base now while we still have some level of control,” Spalding said.
He also said that there could be deaths at home and on the front lines because the United States would be stuck trying to create new supply chains for critical resources even as current supply chains through China were destroyed.
Embedded in Spalding’s view is a certain duality present among many today. On the one hand, he believes that a CCP invasion is inevitable. On the other, he believes that U.S. aid to Taiwan in such a war should fall short of military intervention, which he said would risk a nuclear holocaust.
“[The CCP] will invade at a time of their choosing,” Spalding said. “We have to prepare for the inevitable help the Taiwanese people will need.
“If America is attacked, it will fight. That said, I believe China will not attack the U.S. directly for fear of a wider war that consumes the CCP. This and America’s nuclear weapons will prevent Armageddon if we show strength.”
Defense Industrial Base ‘Not Adequately Prepared’ for War With China
Provided the United States did come to the defense of Taiwan, however, and provided it could adequately deter the PLA from launching nuclear missiles, victory would still be far from assured.Beyond the logistical issue of supplying the front lines—that is, the problem of actually getting munitions across the Pacific—the United States simply doesn’t have the stockpiles required to conduct anything other than a brief, perhaps weeks-long campaign in the Pacific.
Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said during a March 30 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the United States’ support for Ukraine is rapidly depleting its own munitions stockpiles and that it will be years before replacement is possible.
“One of the most important things we have learned from Ukraine is the need for a more robust defense industrial base,” Wormuth said.
To that end, Wormuth said that the Army is spending $1.5 billion on surging production of new munitions and depots to create an “organic supply base.”
“Some of the machining tools that are needed to open up new production lines are just very large, complex machines themselves that take time to fabricate and time to install,” Wormuth said.
To be sure, not all of the munitions that the United States is currently hemorrhaging in Ukraine would necessarily be useful in a fight for Taiwan.
The 155-mm rounds used by many artillery systems in Ukraine, for example, would lose their preeminence to long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASMs).
But here again, the United States is simply not prepared for war.
“In a major regional conflict—such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait—the U.S. use of munitions would likely exceed the current stockpiles of the U.S. Department of Defense ... leading to a problem of ‘empty bins,’” the report states.
“The problem is the U.S. has such low stockpiles for those [LRASMs] that in our war games, in multiple iterations of the wargame, we run out [of LRASMs] in less than a week virtually every time,” report author Seth Jones said in an associated video.
“We cannot fight in that case in protracted war because we don’t have sufficient supply of munitions.”
Assistant Secretary of the Army Douglas Bush spoke on the issue during a March 3 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“The broader joint view is, of course, that a fight with China will be very much a precision munitions fight,” Bush said.
To overcome that gap in manufacturing ability, he said, the U.S. Army is funneling money to private corporations to effectively subsidize precision munitions production. Supply chains are no less complicated for those entities, however, and are likewise expected to take years to become functional.
A World at War
The risk that a war for Taiwan morphs into a catastrophic nuclear conflict or else depletes the United States’ arsenal of vital munitions and leaves it enfeebled in the western Pacific appear to be high.But what if they could be overcome?
Sam Kessler is a national security and geopolitical risk analyst for North Star Support Group, an international risk advisory firm. He said victory is possible in such a scenario, but only narrowly.
Kessler said that the war would need to be fought and won quickly to prevent nuclear escalation, retain the nation’s stockpiles, and ensure the global economy doesn’t spiral into nothingness as the world’s two largest economies duke it out.
To do that, he said, the United States needs the support of its allies to stem the outward flow of manpower and matériel.
“Although the U.S. has significant, powerful capabilities at its disposal, a potential war over the defense of Taiwan would need to be fought and won within a short time frame,” Kessler said.
“If there is a war between the U.S. and China, the U.S. needs to have its longstanding allies involved and committed under a unified banner.”
To that end, Kessler said that the need for allies will be most prevalent in securing global supply chains, bolstering the U.S. economy, and providing critical, nonmilitary defense and security support in domains such as space and cyber.
“The risk is a long, drawn-out conflict that depletes both manpower and resources over a period that won’t be so easily replaced in a world where supply chains, logistics, and manufacturing outlets are being reevaluated and restructured to meet changing realities,” he said.
“After all, a potential war will not just be about direct fighting on the shores of Taiwan but also in other domains of warfare that greatly impact U.S. standing and power projection at home and abroad, which can also potentially impact its global partners and allies.”
Because of the technological and economic interconnectivity of the world, he said, most nations would become involved in such a war one way or another, regardless of whether they sought to remain neutral.
Kessler, therefore, suggested the creation of a multilateral coalition of the willing, not unlike the one deployed in the Gulf War.
On this point, there is one critical problem. Because the United States would be entering a war of its own volition, it wouldn’t be entitled to the benefits of NATO’s collective defense clause.
Thus, although regional allies such as Japan and Australia could well join the fight, the United States’ European partners would likely be absent in the actual fighting.
To shore up the United States’ position then, Kessler said that the nation needs to start turning up its diplomacy efforts now, in order to ensure it receives security aid and other benefits from its partners in the war.
“Sooner or later, they would likely end up being in situations where their hands are forced to declare a position on the matter,” Kessler said. “Whether war occurs or not, the U.S. needs full assurance from its longstanding partners and allies that they have their support and vice versa.
“To make this happen requires aggressive and proactive diplomacy as well as presenting a strong and rational case for creating a coalition of the willing.”
Here again, though, the United States isn’t the only one with allies.
Though the CCP regime doesn’t formally engage in NATO-style alliances, it does have a string of partners across the globe who would be willing to either engage in direct support of its war effort or otherwise pursue their own destabilizing interests with the United States distracted.
“Alliances and partnerships are crucial to both China and the U.S but each implements them differently,” Kessler said.
“The CCP recognizes partners in the form of client states that could play a role in helping destabilize American leadership in the international system, while spearheading a multipolar system that they can lead and project influence themselves.”
The result of the CCP’s push for multipolarity is that its own partners could initiate destabilizing conflicts of their own.
And the problem isn’t limited to East Asia.
Iran could initiate further hostilities against U.S. forces in Syria or even invade neighboring Iraq. Russia, meanwhile, could extend its hostilities from Ukraine to Moldova, or otherwise provide direct military support to China. Brazil, Nicaragua, and South Africa could all capitalize on the event to increase their ties with China and Russia while avoiding engaging in hostilities themselves.
The result would be a world at war if not a world war outright.
“Each of these nations are skilled in the distraction game, and a war effort in defense of Taiwan would present them with a unique opportunity to attempt at catching the U.S. off guard to gain a victory or prize out of it,” Kessler said.
“The likelihood of such regional conflicts erupting in these areas is very high.”
He said he believes that the extent to which each nation takes advantage of a U.S.–China war will be dependent on not only their relationship with China, but also their own capabilities, goals, and political-economic realities.
Although war might suit Russia, for example, smaller economic partners such as South Africa and Brazil would be more likely to engage in increased trade or sanctions-busting.
US Should Hedge Its Bets
But what if we’re getting it all wrong? What if Taiwan is not the next global catastrophe waiting to happen, and the United States can fight and win but doesn’t even need to?Such is the perspective of former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.
For Miller, the military decision-making apparatus is prone to see only what it wants to see. Everything looks like a nail to a hammer, the old saying goes.
“I know the one thing we will get wrong is, we will mispredict the next major conflict,” Miller said during an April 4 talk with the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
“That’s the only thing I know.”
On that note, Miller said that he worries the United States is overestimating the capabilities and expertise of the Chinese communist regime in the same way it did those of Russia before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Far from being a peer military competitor, Miller suggested, the CCP could be deploying a strategy similar to the one used by the United States to defeat the Soviet Union without overt conflict during the Cold War.
By fooling the United States into believing that war is constantly imminent, the CCP could actually be goading the United States into destroying its own economy through excessive investments in major military platforms, Miller said.
“I think they’re goading us, and we’re just taking it [at face value],” Miller said.
As such, Miller said that the threat to Taiwan’s continued de facto independence is a reality, but that the United States could be playing into the CCP’s plans by heavily investing in ultra-expensive and easily targetable systems such as fighter jets and aircraft carriers.
Miller pointed instead to the four elements of national power: diplomacy, information, military, and economics.
To obtain victory against the Chinese regime, and to preserve greater liberty across the world, he said, the best path forward for the United States is to better leverage the nonmilitary elements of national power.
“I believe with the Chinese threat, the way to approach that is a very subtle and indirect approach ... irregular warfare,” Miller said.
“Let’s go ahead and use a little more ... diplomacy, information, and economics, and let’s go ahead and back off on the military for a little while, because we have time. If we’re wrong, we can spin things up.”
When asked by The Epoch Times what advice he had for directing the nation’s military development, given that a future war with China was as of yet unwritten, Miller said that the best course of action was to hedge the nation’s bets.
“If you’re a business person and you’re in an unpredictable business climate, what do you do? You hedge,” Miller said.
“We can’t go all in on any one thing. We need to have a wide range of capabilities.”
To simultaneously avoid the disaster of war in Asia and defeat the regime, he said, the best weapon in the U.S. arsenal is the truth about the CCP.
By shining an unflinching light on the atrocities committed by the regime every day, and by ensuring that those atrocities are seen and understood by the Chinese people, the regime will crumble to internal pressures.
“My belief is that authoritarian, totalitarian governments fear one thing: popular discontent and popular uprising,“ he said. ”The thing that they fear most is not fleets of aircraft carriers, tanks, or expeditionary logistics. They fear information. And that’s one of the key components of irregular warfare.
“Just tell the truth. It will work through it.”
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