Seriously, go grab a gallon container and walk to the nearest water source. Fill that up and then walk back home. Now do that for 30 days straight and see how well that does to your morale and fatigue. That’s the price for not stock piling water.
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
- Thread starter pugachev_diver
- Start date
Sorry but this post doesnt make sense. China has its own timetable and strategic plan wrt Taiwan.
Whatever happens in Ukraine wont affect China's positioning on Taiwan unless the US massively f up in Ukraine.
What you are describing is a defensive strategy.
Such a strategy can achieve specific aims (such as, maybe allowing China to successfully invade Taiwan). In a general high intensity conflict, depending on the correlation of forces, a defensive strategy could even help to chip away at the enemy's forces until you have built up a sufficient force of your own to conduct a sweeping counter attack.
BUT -- it all depends on the existing correlation/balance of forces.
With the current balance of forces, for China to pursue what you are describing, sure they might be able to take Taiwan and they might be able to defend the mainland a little bit longer, but it means they are ceding any sort of operational or strategic initiative beyond China's immediate peripheries. I.e.: they will basically not be able to project power outside of the first island chain, if at that.
In other words, it becomes that war of attrition we've been talking about in the last half dozen pages, the war of attrition which I said China will not be able to win.
I want to offer an observation -- you seem very focused on the invasion of Taiwan as if it is a natural end point of a conflict. That is reasonable, and a Taiwan contingency is what this thread has been always about.
But I think you need to consider the actions afterwards.
The recovery of Taiwan means nothing if China is unable to:
1. Deter the US from intervening militarily, OR
2. Defeat the US intervention force to make them materially capable of conducting the intervention they wish to do
The bolded part is the issue. The PLA being able to "maintain that status for a few weeks or even months" isn't enough. The PLA needs the capability to do so indefinitely.
Sure, they can certainly create a relative safe passage for its amphibious forces to cross the strait for a brief period, but it means exposing many other aspects of the rest of China to become weaker and less well defended. The US will recognize that and conduct strikes against weakpoints or bypass them to strike targets in China's depths. Sure, China will try to conduct counter strikes against the US bases and carriers in the region, but you've just made China adopt a defensive stance so that they can focus on an invasion of Taiwan meaning that their ability to conduct offensive strikes will be greatly reduced. They'll have some IRBMs and some GLCMs, but conducting strikes over 1500km away will be much more difficult because large strike packages at that range will need large supporting air fleets as part of the mission for escort, EW/ECM and force multiplier reasons.
But lets say the PLA manage to defeat the vast majority of the ROC military's conventional forces on the island, because the PLA has been able to adopt a heavily defensive stance and concentrate defenses around Taiwan and the strait.
Then what?
Will the US simply give up and go home? Will they perhaps be too exhausted to continue fighting? Will their allies in the world shout down the US to just let it go, and that for the sake of global stability and the world economy, they should just accept Taiwan as a part of China?
No. IMO, those ideas are all wishful thinking and border on strategic delusions. Underestimating an opposition's resolve is always the best way of losing a competition or a war.
I think the only responsible way of thinking how the US will respond, is that the US is going to be willing to throw everything they have at China to try and defeat China's military forces to the greatest material extent that US military forces can allow.
In a previous post, number #1000, I wrote about the victory conditions of war:
"The victory conditions for a nation during a war can be generally defined in two ways:
1. Defeating the enemy's resolve to fight -- i.e.: the enemy may or may not have the material capabilities to continue a conflict, but due to morale, psychological, cultural, social reasons, they do not choose to continue to fight.
2. Defeating the enemy's capability to fight -- i.e.: the enemy may or may not have the morale/psychological/cultural/social reasons to continue to fight, but that regardless of whether they choose to continue to fight, due to the sheer loss/lack of material capabilities they have faced, they are unable to fight."
So, circling back to your question -- "is it possible for PLA to some how concentrate its ASW/AAW/ASuW capability to create a relatively safe passage for its amphibious forces to cross the strait, and resupply it as needed?"
My answer: sure it is possible. But such a strategy poses no way to defeat the US military's ability to continue to pursue a western pacific conflict against China under a state where the US possesses the resolve to continue a long duration high intensity conflict against China.
All of my points over the last few pages have been talking about the PLA of today/immediate future.
I am saying that the PLA will be too busy fighting for its life against the US military to be able to continue a sealift and airlift against Taiwan in any meaningful capacity. They just don't have the resources for it.
Sure, it might not be "politically viable" -- but once they recognize that trying to continue a sealift and airlift against Taiwan amidst a large scale US intervention against China, they will realize that continuing a Taiwan invasion will just accelerate the overall demise of the PLA as a whole.
Anything and everything is on the table once US resolve is there.
IMO you are thinking too simplistically here, because once the US gets involved in a major conflict in the western pacific, just because it starts with Taiwan, doesn't mean they will be satisfied with the PLA being removed from Taiwan.
I do not expect the US to demand an unconditional surrender from China.
But crippling terms of peace that are able to permanently prohibit China from possessing any sort of competitive civilian and weapons technology and industries are something that I consider to be quite plausible as US desires (not saying this is necessarily the US's end goal or that it is the only outcome).
Obviously something like that would only be possible at the end of a many multi-long year war of attrition. But remember, resolve.
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Disagree. The relation between Russia and China due to Ukraine will have an affect to a degree on the Strategy with Taiwan. The largest aspect will likely be logistics.
I disagree with your disagree. What effect will this be? You mean logistics wrt US logistics?
I don't see how Ukraine will have any material effect in Taiwan unless US does a massive mistake there. If this Ukraine thing happened in late 2020s then I would have agreed with you but now in 2022, its too early
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Looking to the future, I think with the recent huge expansion in facilities to construct SS(B)N, SSK, fighters and bombers, the ramp up in production of current models of aircraft, the recent surge in surface escort construction, 300+ ICBM silos, and the near term arrival of 003, H20, J35, 095/6 and other systems (some of which we don't know about, I'm sure), then it seems pretty clear that PRC IS aiming to match USA globally in the medium term, 2035-40 would be my guess. Of course there may also be some breakthrough technology that brings this date forward.
The Treaty of Versailles tried to keep Germany down after WW1.
But it only resulted in (some justifiable) resentment which Hitler exploited to become the democratically elected Chancellor of Germany.
And his main platform was the rectify the wrongs of First World War, resulting in the Second World War.
Such terms are even more unlikely to work with China, which is on another scale to Germany.
Of course, this is all based on the unlikely assumption that nuclear weapons haven't been used.
And in terms of resolve, I think we can safely say that China's resolve on Taiwan is far greater than which the US is willing to suffer for.
As I said, it isn't necessarily the end goal for the US nor is it the only outcome of a war of attrition.
Nor am I saying that such an outcome would bode well for the world in the very long term.
I was demonstrating that materially defeating an enemy's capability to wage war allows one to inflict more substantial and painful terms of peace.
If we look at US resolve to defend Taiwan, I think what happens in Ukraine could be very relevant.
From declassified historical documents from the Gorbachev days, we can see the Soviets were given multiple written assurances that there would be no NATO expansion eastwards. Yet NATO has ignored these pledges and Russia's protests on expansion into the former Soviet Bloc. After all, Russia was too weak to respond.
And put it this way, would the Soviets have contemplated withdrawing from Eastern Europe if they thought for a moment that NATO (their mortal enemy) was going to move in?
If you listen to Putin in recent interviews, Putin may have decided that NATO will just continue expanding into Ukraine unless something is done, and that this literally is a last stand to prevent a hostile military alliance establishing a firm base right next to Russia's core economic and industrial Motherland.
We also have Biden publicly saying that the US military will not intervene in Ukraine.
So at this point, it may well be that the only thing which will persuade Russia not to invade is a very public repudiation that NATO will ever expand in Ukraine. But that is simply bowing to the reality that allowing Ukraine to join NATO means that NATO now has an active war with Russia.
What happens next will have many lessons for overall Chinese strategy on Taiwan.
From declassified historical documents from the Gorbachev days, we can see the Soviets were given multiple written assurances that there would be no NATO expansion eastwards. Yet NATO has ignored these pledges and Russia's protests on expansion into the former Soviet Bloc. After all, Russia was too weak to respond.
And put it this way, would the Soviets have contemplated withdrawing from Eastern Europe if they thought for a moment that NATO (their mortal enemy) was going to move in?
If you listen to Putin in recent interviews, Putin may have decided that NATO will just continue expanding into Ukraine unless something is done, and that this literally is a last stand to prevent a hostile military alliance establishing a firm base right next to Russia's core economic and industrial Motherland.
We also have Biden publicly saying that the US military will not intervene in Ukraine.
So at this point, it may well be that the only thing which will persuade Russia not to invade is a very public repudiation that NATO will ever expand in Ukraine. But that is simply bowing to the reality that allowing Ukraine to join NATO means that NATO now has an active war with Russia.
What happens next will have many lessons for overall Chinese strategy on Taiwan.
You said whatever happens to Ukraine won’t have any material effect. If Russia invades and oil goes to $150 to 200 a barrel is that not going to have an material effect on the supply chain, manufacture, and the economy for several year? Will that not affect any short-mid term contingency plans over Taiwan?