There have been some interesting comments, both here and at Instpundit, on my Taiwan invading Taiwan scenarios piece.
First up, some commenters wondered if China would just nuke Taiwan rather than risk the uncertainties of a massive amphibious invasion. That’s never going to happen for the same reason you don’t torch a car you’re planning on stealing. China wants Taiwan not only as a symbol of its own power and territorial unity, but also for its wealth and technological leadership. A Taipei reduced to glowing rubble not only defeats that goal, but would encourage South Korea and Japan (and maybe even Vietnam and the Philippines) to start producing their own nuclear weapons, and might even prod atherosclerotic transnational bureaucracies to actually spring into action to sanction China on a variety of fronts. There are few upsides and an incredible number of downsides to China nuking Taiwan.
Second, as commenter Old Paratrooper noted, this year China launched only its second amphibious assault ship:
The Chinese Navy has now launched a second large amphibious assault ship engineered to carry weapons, helicopters, troops and landing craft into war, a move which further changes international power dynamics by strengthening China’s ability to launch expeditionary maritime attacks.
The ship is described at the second Type 075 Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD), somewhat analogous to the U.S. WASP-class. This Chinese amphibious assault ship reportedly displaces as much as 30,000 tons and is able to carry as many as 28 helicopters, a report from Naval News states. The report adds that the new People’s Liberation Army Navy LHD is likely powered by a diesel engine with 9,000kW, four Close In Weapons Systems and HQ-10 surface-to-air missiles. The new ship’s “aim is likely to increase the “vertical” amphibious assault capability with the very mountainous East Coast of Taiwan in mind,” the Naval News report writes.
The addition of more LHDs certainly increases China’s maritime attack power, making it a formidable threat along the Taiwanese coastline. Photos of the ship show well-deck in back, capable of launching ship-to-shore transport craft similar to the U.S. Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion or newer Ship-to-Shore Connector. Such a configuration makes it appear somewhat similar to U.S. Navy WASP-class which, unlike the first two ships of the America-class, also operates with a well-deck from which to launch large-scale amphibious assaults.
Wikipedia says a third ship of this type is under construction.
Three ships isn’t going to get a Taiwanese invasion done, no matter how advanced, even assuming all the helicopters and landing ships make it to shore. (They wouldn’t.) However, China also has has some 70 other Type 071 through 074 amphibious assault ships in it’s inventory, plus some 200 or so small landing craft, slightly larger than the ones that hit Omaha Beach, some almost 50 years old, many with hovercraft designs. (They have some even older, Soviet-derived crap, that I doubt they’d try to use unless they were really desperate.)
For comparison, the U.S. Navy used over 500 ships during the invasion of Iwo Jima, an island of 8 square miles, as opposed to Taiwan’s 973.
Maybe Chinese planning calls for a massive “set everything moving straight across the straits at once” push, which would explain why only April and October are suitable, because the smaller and older craft simply wouldn’t make it in rougher seas. Such a plan would also only work with massive air superiority over the strait, else they’re asking for a repeat of The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, only with a lot more target and precision munitions.
Finally, over on Instapundit, user bigfire pointed out that the ChiComs shelled the outpost island of Kinmen (AKA Quemoy) for months. The result? The islanders use the steel from the bombs to make excellent knives:
Tags: China, Communism, Foreign Policy, Military, nuclear weapons, Taiwan, video
What if their target isn’t Taiwan, but Vietnam by land and sea?
Yeah…I don’t buy it either. The ROC (sorry, not calling them “Taiwan”) has a pretty robust sub and air force, both of which would have to be obliterated before the ChiComs would have any chance. And let’s not forget we’re talking about a 100-mile-plus wide body of water.
In 1940, Hitler couldn’t figure out a way to get his army across a 20-mile strait without all his boyos going straight to the bottom courtesy of the RAF and the RN. And the ChiComs are going to attack across a body of water five times as wide? Uh-huh…
Pretty much every analysis I’ve seen says that to take the ROC defenders out of play, it’s either gonna have to be nukes or a conventional bombardment that will be its equivalent in destructiveness.
[…] Person & Co. (BattleSwarm Blog) shill (and here) for the US Foreign Policy Establishment (FPE). The US FPE, always stupid but cunning, is drumming […]
Person and Co. shill for the US Foreign Policy Establishment (FPE). The US FPE, always stupid but cunning, are (strikethrough)drumming up hysteria to the effect that China is about to invade Taiwan(end strikethrough) mounting information operations to gin up American public support for their next endless war of appeasement, with China, who can keep FPE rice bowls filled almost indefinitely.
“drumming up hysteria to the effect that China is about to invade Taiwan”
hysteria? the chinese too seem eager to participate in drumming up this “hysteria”. the threat appears quite real.
“What if their target isn’t Taiwan, but Vietnam”
like afghanistan, vietnam isn’t worth the cost of holding it, thus no-one ever holds onto it.
As benighted Marxisants, Hsi & Co. are likely unaware of demographic “tides in the affairs of men”. Per Vilfredo Pareto and others, “Fathers create, sons manage, grandsons default to zero”– just as the first three 24-year U.S. generations lasted 72 years from 1788 to 1860, so Lenin’s murderous Soviet regime in Russia compassed 72 years from 1919 to 1991; and given Mao’s mainland takeover in late 1949, his fructifying ChiCom heirs are due for generational comeuppance about 2022.
This ineluctable regression –a late-cycle “advance to the rear”– is not a power-political motif amenable to who-whom diktat, but a deep-seated socio-cultural phenomenon discernible throughout Western history. Diffusely evident in ethno-tribal contexts from Aztecs to Mongols, Pharaonic Egypt, dynastic lumpenschisters from Inja’s sunny clime to Far Cathay, reigning satraps are always last to know.
On this basis, the time-frame for overt Han Chinese hegemonial aggression is no more than 18 – 36 years, to c. 2058 at very latest. Beyond that interval, Earth’s post-Holocene era –skewed by the 1,500-year Younger Dryas “cold shock”, that interstadial epoch ended 12,500 + 3,500 – 14,400 = AD 1350, with the onset of a 500-year Little Ice Age– faces cyclical 102-kiloyear Pleistocene glaciations, impelling en masse off-Earth migrations more radically transformative than anything since Cro-Magnon evolutionary times.