Investing

China's Peace Disease Changes Everything With Taiwan

Austin Smith

Published: July 4, 2024 10:17 pm

Michael Muir discusses the potential conflict in Taiwan, drawing lessons from the Ukraine war. He emphasizes the importance of leadership and combat experience, noting China’s lack of recent military engagement. He also highlights the challenges of an amphibious assault on Taiwan, given its geography and prepared defenses, and raises questions about American intervention.

Transcript:

Michael, I’d love to turn our attention towards Taiwan.

You know, everybody has looked at the conflict in Ukraine as sort of, you know, the opening act to a potential conflict in Taiwan.

And everybody’s trying to understand how this conflict maybe changes that potential theater of war, both the timeline and the mechanics of it and the different tactics.

So after what we’ve learned in Ukraine, which is almost, it’s almost like the war of autonomy and everybody’s watching the, both the naval and aerial drone dynamics play out.

How does that potentially change a potential Taiwan conflict?

Well, I think what we see with Ukraine, especially in the opening weeks and months of the war, is that a gigantic numerical and firepower advantage can be squandered with poor leadership.

So what we saw in Ukraine was the anticipated swift victory did not materialize because the Russian forces were so badly led.

And that leads to a grinding war of attrition.

And Ukraine in its position was able to receive a lot of support in the early part of the war from some of its neighbors.

So Poland was able to provide a lot of Cold War era tech, which maybe isn’t cutting edge, but they were used to it and they were able to use it right away.

With the Taiwan scenario, we see another problem with the Chinese military, which they themselves recognize, and they call it the peace disease, because China hasn’t been at war with anyone in almost half a century, 1979 being the last time, and that was only four weeks, brief border skirmish of Vietnam.

So they’re unproven, and I don’t think that can be overlooked.

Combat experience is utterly vital. There’s so many historical examples of that.

We can go back to World War II, and we can look at the Spanish Civil War.

The Condor Legion of the German Air Force gained a huge amount of vital combat experience that was basically the sort of the birthplace of Blitzkrieg.

They found the coordination between air power and land forces was proven in Spain.

And then you have Britain and France who didn’t fight in Spain, and they were still trying to redo World War I and World War II, and they found they were way behind eventually, you know, managing to catch up.

But the point is combat experience is utterly vital for the efficiency of the military.

You can come up with the greatest battle plan ever devised in the comfort of, you know, your own government.

But then when it actually comes to testing it out, you’ll find that almost immediately it doesn’t work and you have to adjust it.

So doctrine, military doctrine has to be a living document. It has to be something that adjusts with real time experience.

So China simply does not have that.

They are believed to have the capability in terms of landing craft, in terms of aircraft, drones, et cetera, by around twenty, twenty seven.

Now, the general opinion from the literature I’ve read, certainly, is that the window of opportunity is 2027 to 2031.

Like a lot of the world, China’s facing demographic challenges, which may mean it’s going to be difficult to fill the ranks of its military after that period.

So that’s kind of their window of opportunity, first of all.

I love this point. I think it recalls sort of the Mike Tyson quote, right?

Everyone has a plan until someone punches them in the face.

So you can have a wonderful battle strategy, you can be well equipped, but unless you are battle tested, you’re out there in the arena or the theater of war, that is really what you need to count on.

And everybody’s looking at the Ukraine conflict and trying to draw tactical or equipment-based theories about Taiwan.

But what you’re saying is actually there’s this huge missing piece we need to talk about, which is the leadership. It’s the human element and the peace disease.

Couldn’t that also be said of Taiwan though, right?

Isn’t it also true that, you know, we have an unproven military on one side, you know, it was an aggressor and then an unproven defender on the other side.

So in that situation, do they neutralize or is that sort of does that become a it’s an it’s an anyone guess situation?

Well, there’s another aspect to a potential Taiwan conflict that we have to point out is that it would be an amphibious landing which is one of the most difficult military operations to carry out.

We all think of D-Day, but there are so many other less famous amphibious assaults that went horribly wrong.

Even in World War II, the Allies landed in the Dieppe raid, and that was a complete disaster.

So it just goes to show that, again, that’s with battle-hardened forces. They were just trying to launch a raid, and it was a complete debacle.

So it’s very difficult to do.

And Taiwan itself, if we just forget everything about weapons just for a minute and just look at the geography of this island, one side is essentially all cliffs.

There’s no landing there.

And then the few beaches, Taiwan knows exactly where China can and cannot land.

So there’s no element of surprise here.

Also, there’s only a set number of months in the year you can even attempt an amphibious landing.

So Taiwan will have a rough idea of where they’re going to land, when they’re going to do it, and they’re going to be able to prepare accordingly.

And then when they actually land, Taiwan has a lot of cliffs, a lot of dense jungles, and, of course, a lot of urban environments.

Now, the other question we have to ask ourselves, since China’s main goal is reunification as they see it, they’re not going to want to level Taipei.

All right. And urban fighting is the most difficult of all.

The traditional sort of ratio is the attackers need a three to one superiority over the defenders in an urban environment. It’s more like seven to one.

Taipei is gigantic.

So I think the first problem China is going to face is just landing at all, even with and again, because they’re thinking, what do we want peace to look like? That might limit their options.

Of course, then if things do escalate, they might not have the same qualms about maybe hesitating from damaging things.

And the US has begun sending aid to Taiwan. But the question is, is it enough to deter them? Perhaps not.

But yeah, Taiwan’s military isn’t terribly large, but they do have a huge number of trained reservists so they can call upon.

The People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese army, the estimate is they’re going to need about two million soldiers to carry out, which would make it, of course, the largest amphibious assault ever carried out in history.

They have the numbers. They have the capability. But do they have the know-how? That remains to be seen.

And of course, that scenario doesn’t take into account any possible American intervention. And that is the great unknown.