What if … "China Attacks Taiwan!" - military strategy forecasting

Parameters, Autumn, 2001 by Richard L. Russell

Likewise, the Chinese could undertake clandestine efforts to build up their sealift capacities. The manufacture of sea-going barges is hardly a technological achievement beyond their grasp. They could undertake efforts to substantially augment their sealift assets while taking care to keep the naval assets under massive nettings in isolated harbors away from main naval bases that attract the most attention from prying Western eyes.

The Chinese could also be increasing their production of ballistic missiles well beyond the scope assumed by the West. The importance that the Chinese attach to ballistic missiles in compensating for the inadequacies of their air force was evident in the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. Ballistic missile batteries--which were nearly impossible for the United States to detect in the open desert during the 1991 Gulf War--could easily be concealed in the rugged terrain along the extensive Chinese coastline.

China's Campaign

What might a campaign against Taiwan that uses these clandestinely developed military capabilities look like? The Chinese could seek to lull the Taiwanese and the Americans into a sense of political security to lessen the military preparations to defend the island. The Chinese might engage in a steady stream of diplomatic activity to portray an image of satisfaction with the status quo and a heavy political commitment to nurturing the political dialogue with Taiwan. As Handel observed from his study of strategic surprise, "The attacker takes care to maintain a facade of routine diplomacy, lulling diplomats of the intended victim into suppressing the military warning signals through optimistic political interpretations." [30] Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, for example, undertook such activities to lull the Israelis into a sense of security prior to the outset of the 1973 Middle East war. Similarly, the Chinese could surround cross-Strait visits and talks with great fanfare and publicly claim that these endea vors herald a new foundation for cross-Strait relations. In such an environment, few statesmen on Taiwan or in the United States would be calling for increased military vigilance.

In such a political atmosphere, the "routine" exercising of Chinese naval assets and increased air, air defense, and ground force activity might attract no exceptional attention. The Chinese have made Taiwan and the United States accustomed to seeing large-scale annual exercises over a period of several years. Increased Chinese military activity could be perceived by the outside world as normal. Politicians, moreover, could caution against any increased alert posture of Taiwanese and US forces, worrying that such measures would undermine the warming political and diplomatic activity the Chinese had demonstrated. In this hypothetical scenario, however, these military exercises would represent the movement of the Chinese military to a wartime footing and the foundation for a massive military assault on Taiwan.

The Chinese might judge that the initial stages of their military campaign should concentrate on Taiwan's center of gravity in its command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence system. The operational concept would be to destroy the Taiwanese military's central nervous system and cause the air, naval, and ground force limbs to go limp. The Chinese could fire massive "bolt out of the blue" surface-to-surface missile barrages to saturate areas in which critical Taiwanese civilian and military infrastructure is located. Barrages of hundreds of missiles would be required to compensate for missile inaccuracies. Targeted facilities could include service and command headquarters, civilian and military residences and offices, and government facilities. The Chinese might aim at toppling buildings to trap and kill as many civilian and military leaders as possible in one fell swoop. [31] Such missile barrages would represent a military effort to "decapitate" Taiwan's leadership and significantly erode T aiwan's ability to orchestrate defenses against the unfolding Chinese campaign.