A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would likely be doomed if the United States defended the island, a US think tank said on Monday, but insisted on the devastating costs US forces would incur.
Military experts, assembled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies for a war drill, noted that each party directly involved in such a conflict – the United States, China, Taiwan and Japan – would suffer “enormous” losses.
“We came to two conclusions,” said Eric Heginbotham, a security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“First, in most cases, China has little chance of succeeding in achieving its operational goals or occupying Taipei,” the capital of Taiwan. “Second, the cost of the war would be high for everyone involved, and certainly for the United States.”
Washington’s decisive involvement
The simulation tested 24 different scenarios, each involving Chinese attempts to take Taiwan by force by 2026. The degree of US involvement would be key: without US help to defend Taiwan, the Chinese military would conquer the island in three months or less.
The simulation assumed that the invasion would begin with a Chinese bombardment that would destroy most of Taiwan’s naval and air forces in a matter of hours. The Chinese Navy would encircle Taiwan and send a landing party of thousands of troops across the Taiwan Strait.
According to the scenario described as most likely by the experts who participated in the simulation, the Taiwanese military would force the invaders to bog down along the coast.
“Chinese attacks on Japanese bases and American surface ships are not game changers: Taiwan remains autonomous,” the scenario describes.
For Matthew Cancian, from the Naval War College, a research institute of the United States Navy, crucial variables would determine the degree of success of an invasion: the degree of determination of Taiwan to repel an invasion, but also the authorization given or not. by Japan to the United States to launch counterattacks from their bases on Japanese soil.
Without this, “US intervention would not be enough to preserve Taiwan’s autonomy,” says Matthew Cancian. The simulation also raised some unknowns, including whether the United States would risk nuclear conflict by attacking China directly.
Source: BFM TV
