PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency

solarz said:

Theoretically, the US should have been the best prepared to handle a pandemic. We all saw how that played out.

Also theoretically, COVID was supposed to be the "Chernobyl" moment for China. After all, a highly infectious disease spreads right in the middle of a massive annual migration in one of the most densely populated countries in the world? How is that not a recipe for disaster?

What you're doing is the equivalent of seeing the above and assuming that was all there was to the story.

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Bltizo said:

I think I'm actually quite up to date with PLA capabilities, thank you very much.

I absolutely believe that during the early stages of a conflict against the US, the PLA may be capable of inflicting significant casualties to US air bases in the region and perhaps even neutralizing one or two carriers along with their requisite naval escorts as well, depending of course on the deployment strategies each side uses. (Of course, the PLA will also sustain losses in such an operation)
That is often the condition for "loss" for the US.

However, to the best of my knowledge there have been no US conflict modelling that assumes US willingness to conduct a war of attrition over many years whereby the US is willing to redeploy its global forces to the western pacific and where the US is willing to continue a multi-year long war against China.

To me, that is an unacceptable blind spot in these conflict modellings, and the above circumstances, is the scenario I have been consistently describing over the last week or so.




You just said it yourself -- short of nuclear escalation.
The PLA simply has no capability to inflict conventional retaliation against US population/economic/industrial centers (and more importantly for this discussion, US military production centers) in the continental US, in the way that the US can do against Chinese centers on the Chinese mainland.

Of course, if one wants to consider the idea of the PLA holding the homelands of US regional allies to risk using conventional capabilities (like Japan or South Korea) then sure, that is an option, but that will merely end up exhausting PLA air and naval power and munitions reserves even more so.


That is why this exercise is important -- so that people can start to recognize the nature of the issue and projections for necessary capabilities to meet every rung of the escalation ladder can happen.


If people are uncomfortable with the idea of China losing a war of attrition against the US where the US is capable of redeploying its full global military to the western pacific during the course of a multi-year long conflict, and where the US has population and domestic resolve, then the next logical step should be to consider "what material capabilities does the PLA require to prevent this from happening".

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SampanViking said:

Sounds like you guys are going well beyond a Taiwan scenario.
Yes it is a weakness that we all look at the situation and say: Can China retake Taiwan in the face of US opposition?
Most of us are of the opinion that yes China can.
But few of us (myself included) says: "ok what happens then? Does the fighting stop as its game over or does it simply move onto a new front?
I cannot believe that nobody in the PLA has asked, "ok we take Taiwan but the US refuses to make peace, what do we do then?
Personally I think a large part of the answer will be that numerous contingencies will exist and they will pick ones that reflect how well or not, the PLA forces perform in the taking of the Island.

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emblem21 said:

If the USA is so capable of this war of attrition then why on earth is the nation struggling against Russia right now and also how come the situation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have not yield the kind of one side results other then basically wasting time and resources and ultimately smearing the name of the USA as an incompetent nutcase that seems to have a hard one for bombing civilians for no other reason then yeah we are basically dumb. Also, you are making the assumption that all these war games of the USA agonist Taiwan yield no other results then the USA losing back is none existent and thus the USA as a nation of its overall parts can simply magically deploy is full might (of which I fight extremely questionable given the fact that the USA right now is struggling to fix their so called best destroyer ship the zumwalt from all there rust problems along with the f-35 problems that are causing major issues all over the place in regards to their overall usability) and defeat China without China planning accordingly along with Russia because in such a senario of a so called victory, Russia be next on the chopping lock because the USA has proven to still be a genocidal nation that wants both Russia and China under there feet.
The USA has already shown that they will go to extreme lengths to anger Russia into a fight in Ukraine so they can appear the hero along with all the abuses hurled against Russia for the pace 5 decades, if the USA does withdraw all its available forces to face China, don’t you think that Russia will use its time to I don’t know, strike the east coast of the USA, wipe out all the us based in Central Asia and the Middle East, cripple the dollar by negotiating with the Middle East to cut off all flow for resources to the USA, aid China due to the USA due to the fact that the USA is willing to go to war over a land that is not even remotely close to USA territory,
Also note that these failures in the South China Sea, the sub marine and f-35 are no accidents, if these things happened either because the USA is incompetent or China got the ability to wipe usa forces with tech that unless you are working within the Chinese government would have easily kept hidden from the world (I mean all that tach they shown in the last few years in regards to advancements must yield military tech that none of up are aware of. If the USA is incompetent enough to get into these kinds of situation, then the likelihood of the USA being ability to deploy is full force is very low given that the USA ability to restock its military capabilities with their homeland infrastructure on the verge of breaking down is going to make a war of attrition very hard, not to mention well the USA needs China to stabilise its economical hell hole, not risk getting cut off from all its goods and other essentials in the event of a stupid war that the USA will start to make themselves look good. The moral of the usa hinges on its ability to buy goods for cheap and the event that inflation skyrockets to the point where 100 dollars equals on piece of bread, no one is going to care about a war over seas when their children are going to starve to death right in fro of them. Also, if China does have the technology require to basically force the USA navy away from the South China Sea seemingly by turning the GPS off and well cause these accidents then still yield no really explanation other then to hide this incident from the media as much as humanly possible, well I can see why the USA is trying to basically push other nations into joining them which really, not many other of these neighbors really would want a piece of China as well because really, they will be taking the brought of Chinas missiles while the USA sits back and sprouts bullcrap like they did during the migrant crisis in Europe from the conflicts in the Middle East. Really, you would have to be a complete nut not to see how many SEA nations wouldn’t want to be bombed in the likelihood of such a scenario day is going to start because the USA has that much of a hard on for bombing the civilians of other nations that they cannot see the views of others and how it affects them.
The USA doesn’t have years to deploy their full might in the western pacific because main nations like Iran, Russia, North Korea, and all other nations that the USA has victimized are going to react and also the economic fragility in the USA is going to really harm their ability to raise funds for such a war and no printing dollars doesn’t mean anything because if the USA loses its world reserve status due to all the abuses of it, well the ability to purchase the necessary resources to block able and force China into submission is simply impossible to purchase because the USA is in such a debt ridden situation that any disruption to its operations to is supply chain on that magnitude is simply going to rip the very foundations of the nation apart and China will obviously use this as an option by dumping all of its treasuries and cutting off all trade with the USA as an initial act to facilitate this crash. The USA simply will not have any ability to do anything with the majority of the nation cannot purchase their own food nor their own necessities if such a scenario happens.
Hence your scenario of the USA being able to focus its full might on China is simply well unbelievable in a climate that well, just attempting to do so will cut the usa from so much of the resources needed to basically function along with the enemies of the USA not using there resources to cut the USA off from the Middle East and all the other resources needed to function and well get some much needed payback on the usa. You would have to be utterly crazy to think that Russia isn’t going to take the opportunity to get some much needed payback against the USA for all the harm they have done and the USA trying to focus its full power to face China (which given its current issues will be all but a necessity) shouldn’t be consider as a winning move for the USA but a critical error that have the potential to sink the USA into the dirt for good because it will open up the east flank for Russia and other nations to strike them at the seat of their power. Don’t think that the USA can focus their power against China without consequences because the situation that the USA is in is not good in the slightest and the USA has many enemies that are just waiting to take revenge while their so called Allie’s would increasingly benefit from the USA not be in in the picture such as the whole Nordstrom 2 situation and cannot be counted on to sacrifice themselves just for americas sake

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Bltizo said:

Not quite. There are very few if any US/western media outlets that even consider the idea of the US waging a war of attrition (or total war, to include the term that james has specified) against China, and more often than not, western media bemoans the fact that their previous massive overwhelming military advantage against China is eroding thanks to the PLA's modernization.

But what they do not specify is that they only talk about the US's military advantage being eroded in their permanently deployed western pacific forces, not in terms of global US military forces and their ability to be redeployed during a longer term war.


In other words, everything I've described isn't a story resulting from media reports or commentary.
This is my own assessment of the prerequisite capabilities the PLA should aim for so as to be capable of at least fight a war against the US military in a manner where they are able to achieve China's geopolitical objectives, while considering the full range of realistic force dispositions and strategic opposition that China may face.


Let me be clear -- if a war happened today, and if the US lacked the political/societal resolve to fight a longer term war, and if the US was not willing to redeploy their forces from the rest of the world to the western pacific, then there is a very real prospect that the PLA may be capable of attaining a victory by badly mauling/degrading existing US pacific forces (including a few carriers). The PLA itself would likely sustain significant losses, but lack of US resolve and lack of US willingness to commit their global forces against China would allow the PLA to clinch a victory and be able to successfully continue with its invasion of Taiwan and to hold it.
This would be the best outcome for the PLA.

But I cannot imagine the Chinese leadership would very comfortable with those two assumptions (lack of US resolve, and US unwillingness to redeploy global forces) being the prerequisites of a favourable outcome for the PLA.
The responsible and prudent assessment and force projection to assure a favourable outcome for the PLA categorically must assume plentiful US resolve and US willingness to redeploy its global forces against China as part of a multi-year long war of attrition/total war, and to develop and procure their military forces into the future as close as possible to be capable of attaining a favourable outcome under those circumstances.

(Addendum -- if it wasn't obvious, I am operating on the basis that the "total war" term describes all manners of war short of circumstances where nukes are used)

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Bltizo said:

Paragraph breaks and commas, I recommend them.
It kind of looks like a copypasta.

I did make an effort to read your post however, and I have two major replies:

1. A high intensity air-naval conflict (which is the kind of war a major conflict between China and the US would be) is the sort of war that the US excels most at and lacks the "boots on the ground" element that various US deployments in the middle east and even Europe have (if the US were to actually fight against Russia).
2. China is the biggest and most capable geopolitical competitor the US has faced in decades, if not forever, and the US recognizes this. In a conflict, the prospect of the US being willing to forgo some of their geopolitical interests in other parts of the world to be capable of putting down China as a geopolitical competitor in a long term manner, may well prove to be an attractive if not prudent decision to make.

.... one other element that I want to add, is that as part of a US-China conflict, the PLA would likely be able to inflict significant losses against the US military, in a manner that the US military has not sustained for decades if not longer, and certainly nothing like the losses the US sustained in Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria etc.
I am not confident that the losses suffered by the US military will be sufficient to dissuade the US government and public from further engaging itself in a war with China, and I suspect the result will be a self righteous rally around the flag effect galvanizing the US against China even more so (irrespective of the fact that the US military is fighting a war on China's doorstep on the otherside of the world and irrespective of the likely Chinese govt to govt warnings that they would've made prior to US intervention).

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solarz said:

The US has neither the political resolve nor the economic capability to wage a protracted war on China's doorsteps.

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sinophilia said:

This is how countries lose wars. Why would you just assume either of these things with such immense confidence? Do you have any specific discussion to provide for the scenarios outlined by Bltizo? You know, actual discussion of Chinese and US military capabilities? Instead you are falling prey to exactly the kind of arrogant and incompetent thinking he was correctly saying that everyone should avoid.

Perhaps exercising a modicum of humility when speaking to people who clearly have vastly more knowledge than you is in order?

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