China to strike US bases in Indo-Pacific, aircraft carriers in war over Taiwan
Every Pentagon war game has shown the PLA beating America with its biggest arsenal of longest-range missiles
Aninda Dey
June 19, 2022 19:59:18 IST
The sabre-rattling and muscle-flexing between the People’s Republic of China and the United States over Taiwan reached boiling point in the last few weeks.
After US President Joe Biden said in Japan on 23 May that America would militarily intervene if China tries to annex the island country by force, a furious Beijing shot back within hours warning America to be “cautious in words and deeds” and asking it to “earnestly follow the ‘One China principle”.
The White House immediately denied any change in its ‘Once China’ policy — i.e. that the Republic of China, or Taiwan, is part of China — in another denial of Biden’s oft-repeated gaffes on military intervention on Taiwan’s behalf, including the one made during a CNN town hall in October 2021.
The very next day, while Biden was attending a Quad summit in Tokyo, four Chinese and two Russian strategic bombers, Xian H-6s and Tu-95s, and an Il-20 electronic intelligence aircraft conducted a joint patrol over the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan for several hours in a show of strength.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has often said that Beijing could use military force for an “unavoidable” reunification with Taiwan, whose “independence is a reversal of history and a dead-end road”.
Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe reiterated Xi’s stand during a meeting with his US counterpart Lloyd Austin at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on 10 June. Warning the US defence secretary that China would “not hesitate to start a war”, he said, “Taiwan is China’s Taiwan… If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese Army will definitely not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost.” In an aggressive speech delivered to the summit on 12 June, Wei repeated China’s determination to “fight to the very end” to stop Taiwanese independence.
PLA has transformed by learning from US wars
Though the possibility of a Chinese attack on Taiwan and an American counterattack is remote for now, notwithstanding Biden’s gaffes or statements on Taiwan, the US will think several times before engaging with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Though the Taiwan Relations Act, 1959, states that the US shall “maintain the capacity” to resist any “resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardise the security or social or economic system of the people of Taiwan”, military intervention by America against China would be agonisingly long and catastrophic for the region.
“Neither Beijing nor Washington is likely to have the upper hand after the first week of the conflict, suggesting that it would eventually become a protracted conflict,” according to Washington DC-based think tank Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), which partnered with US lawmakers, former Pentagon officials and China experts in organising a 2027 hypothetical war game in April.
Raising the possibility of Beijing using nukes, the CNAS warned: “The war game demonstrated how quickly the conflict may escalate with China and the United States crossing red lines.”
By the time the Russia-Ukraine War gets over, Beijing would have gained sufficient knowledge from the military mistakes of Moscow, its logistical nightmare and lack of coordination in the initial phase of the war, how to prevent them and plan a fool-proof attack on Taiwan — like it did after the two Iraq wars.
Why Russia has been unable to defeat Ukraine despite gaining enough combat experience in Georgia, Chechnya, Syria and Crimea will be a valuable lesson for China. In fact, according to reports, Chinese military experts are discussing the reasons for the initial Russian setbacks and offering suggestions.
https://www.firstpost.com/opinion/china-to-strike-us-bases-in-indo-pacific-aircraft-carriers-in-war-over-taiwan-10812481.html