Taiwan: Would War be viable?

[PLATO]

Originally posted by GePap
2. China would not want NK to have nukes.

How do you know? If you get your client to nuke your enemies then you have plausible deniability. I would not put this beyond the Chinese political thought process.

[PLATO]

Here is the Cato Institute's Executive summary of their brief on the China-Taiwan military situation as of February 2003:

The China-Taiwan Military Balance:
Implications for the United States
by Ivan Eland

Ivan Eland is director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute and author of Putting "Defense" Back into U.S. Defense Policy: Rethinking U.S. Security in the Post–Cold War World.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Executive Summary

China's economy is four times the size of Taiwan's and apparently growing at a faster rate; that economic disparity between China and Taiwan could eventually lead to a military disparity as well. Nonetheless, even an informal U.S. security guarantee for Taiwan against nuclear-armed China is ill-advised. Taiwan is not strategically essential to America's national security. Moreover, China has significant incentives to avoid attacking Taiwan. Perhaps the most crucial is that hostile behavior toward Taiwan would jeopardize China's increasing economic linkage with the United States and other key countries.

Taiwan has several military advantages that it could exploit. First, Taiwan could use a "porcupine" strategy to deter China— Taiwan does not need to be able to win a conflict with a more powerful China; it needs only to inflict unacceptable damage on Chinese forces. Second, Taiwan would have the advantage of defending an island against an amphibious attack—an attack that is extremely hard to execute successfully. Prospects for a successful defense are enhanced because China would be unlikely to have strategic surprise; air or naval supremacy; or sufficient landing forces, fleet air defense, or naval gunfire support. Third, because of current Taiwanese naval superiority (including anti-submarine warfare capabilities) and deficiencies in Chinese fleet air defense and command and control, even a partial Chinese naval blockade would be difficult to carry out. Fourth, Chinese missile strikes on Taiwan could be countered with enhanced passive defenses and retaliatory strikes on the Chinese homeland by the superior Taiwanese air force.

Rather than provide an informal security guarantee to Taiwan, the United States should sell that nation more arms to defend itself. President Bush has authorized the sale of more weapons, but Taiwan needs to spend more on its own defenses and actually buy the needed weapons.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-074es.html

Taiwan seems to be formidable in its own right and it is not at all assured that a PRC attack would be successful even without US intervention.

[GePap]

Originally posted by PLATO


How do you know? If you get your client to nuke your enemies then you have plausible deniability. I would not put this beyond the Chinese political thought process.

And then you would trully be paranoid. NK nukes anyone offensively, and the country will be destroyed- hence China not only has to worry about refugees streaming on its border, plus whatever fallout comes its way, but then a unified Korea....all the things it does NOt want.

You know what, couldn't the Spviets have done the same thing? Let one of their puppet regimes get nukes, nuke the west, then deny responsiblity? The soviets had East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and BUlgaria as puppets- most if not all those states had the money and technical knowhow to make nukes- why was it then that only the USSR in the whole warsaw pact had nukes? Cause it was of no use for the Soviets to let thier puppets have nukes.

Yet again, the best evidence against the arguement that NK is a puppet is what is currently going on. On the NK side itself, why would NK need nukes? Does not the puppet have several hundred Chinese nukes to back it?

[GePap]

Originally posted by PLATO

Taiwan seems to be formidable in its own right and it is not at all assured that a PRC attack would be successful even without US intervention.

Invading Taiwan would be one if not the hardest amphibious assaults ever attempted. The Chiense have to cross 100 miles plus of open ocean and then attack an Island with limited possible landing sites- its not like you can hit anywhere on the coast of an island as mountainous as Taiwan.

China is a couple of decades from having a fair chance of doing it on its own. The point is, China can scare people away from taiwan, and try to besiege them that way.

Oh, and China's economy is more than four times Taiwan- they are using GDP, not PPP numbers.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap
See, the problem is, you are still wrong, andf you are wrong because you incorrectly equate one thing with another. You just stated that China has reasons to prop NK up- I agree. Then you state that this must make NK a puppet. That is were your logic falls apart. Just because China does something in its OWN interests does not mean that NK has to do what China tells them.

So we agree that China has an interest in NK not imploding but disagree over NK being a puppet. I've pointed out how China provides a life line of just about everything and without that lifeline Pyongyang goes belly up and you're sole piece of reasoning has being that Pyongyang has nukes so it must be independent.

That fact remains the north needs China to survive and China finds it convent & ideologically is still married to it's cold war ally. China has simply decided that NK having nukes isn't a good enough reason to pull the trigger and end North Korea. I'm sure the Chinese big wigs don't like NK having nukes but they're more afraid of a unified Korea which is allied to the US and Japan. I'm not big on semantics so if you don't want to call North Korea a client state of China then you don't have to but please admite that China has an extreme amount of leverage and can decide to end Kim's regime simply by cutting off the flow of energy, fod, and raw materials.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap
And then you would trully be paranoid. NK nukes anyone offensively, and the country will be destroyed- hence China not only has to worry about refugees streaming on its border, plus whatever fallout comes its way, but then a unified Korea....all the things it does NOt want.

If China wanted a NK without nuclear arms then all it has to do is agree to the four party talks and tell NK that the life line ends unless they give up their nukes. At that point NK has no choice. However, the Chinese don't do this so they must feel the alternative is worse then NK having nukes.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by GePap


And then you would trully be paranoid.

About Chinese long term ambitions? You betcha!

The question is: Why aren't you?

They certainly are doing everything they can to prepare for a war with the US and I don't recall us threatening them.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I'm not big on semantics so if you don't want to call North Korea a client state of China then you don't have to but please admite that China has an extreme amount of leverage and can decide to end Kim's regime simply by cutting off the flow of energy, fod, and raw materials.

Semantics matter. As for cutting the regime off, yes, China can make NK's life unbearable. BUt what does China gain from that? Not having acted sooner, China is stuck now with a nulcear NK, and if it were to take concrete actions to make Kim behave throught economic strangulation, who knows what Kim would do, but whatever he did, China would have a problem on its border.

[GePap]

Originally posted by PLATO
They certainly are doing everything they can to prepare for a war with the US and I don't recall us threatening them.

Lets see:

Number of US troops in the Pacifc? 100,000 plus. Number of Chinese troops anywhere near the US? 0.
The US sells arms to what China terms a wayward province, even thought we acknowledge China's territorial claim. How curious.
Percentage of total world military spending done by the US? 49%.
Which state runs spy planes just outside the other's territory? You know, I have missed those Chinese spy planes over Catalina Island....

China is modernizing its military- OH MY GOD! HOW DARE CHINA BUY WEAPONS NOT 1970'S VINTAGE! ITS OBVIOUS THEY INTEND TO CONQUER THE WORLD BY TRYING TO GET A MODERN MILITARY!!!!


The difference is that I don;t see the Chinese "gearing up for war with the US". Any state wants a modern, capable military. China has a large but backwards one. Now they have the money to have a modern one. They are supposed to NOT modernize, to make the US feel safer??? Since when is that their priority?

Also, China has made its intentions with regard to Taiwan clear for 50 years. Have you ever asked yourself Plato, what the Chinese think of a foreign power stating openly that they will come to defend what you view as a separatist province 10,000 miles away form their home, and 100 from yours? What business of the US is that?

So there are cvountless reasons why I am not paranoid about Chinese intentions. A basic willingness to understand the Chinese position helps immensely. Try it one day.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

Gepap makes some valid points.

[Drake Tungsten]

Impossible...

[Whoha]

Originally posted by GePap


Actually, China has a LOT of trouble doing so- if it were as you claimed, how could NK refugees climb into foreign embassies in Beijing? Estimates are that there are at least 100,000 illegal NKI refugees on the chinese side of the border. Why China would have an easier time than the US patrolling a long, mountanous border, I don't understand.

Oh, and NK is Not a client of China. If it were, it would have no nukes. The evidence is pretty obvious and clear.

The US is hindered not by want of resources, but of politics. The Chinese problem if that they have very little control of the rural areas where those people are stashed away. China has however moved troops to the border, doesn't have any idiots fighting against that locally.

Britain,France,et all have nukes, and they could have been considered US client states could they not?

Originally posted by GePap
Number of Chinese troops anywhere near the US? 0.

Actually the Chinese have a bunch of peace keepers deployed in Haiti, have effective control of the Panama Canal, and are going through latin America making deals with like minded locals left and right, like this charmer:
"Da Silva and Hu set up a China-Brazil coordinating committee chaired by Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi and Brazilian Vice President Jose Alencar. In the joint communique released at the end of the summit, Brazil agreed that Taiwan and Tibet are inseparable parts of China and stated its opposition to any unilateral action aimed at separating Taiwan from China. The two sides agreed never to politicalize the human rights issue in world affairs, leaving it to each state to do as it wished internally to crush dissent. Beijing expressed its appreciation for Brazil's support in the United Nations convention on human rights– a forum that has made a mockery of the term. :

http://www.tradealert.us/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=1168

http://www.tradealert.us/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=1246

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by techumseh
China should be unified. It's time to end the civil war. One way or another.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by SpencerH
The military situation is analogous to western europe in the 70's. American and allied forces could slow or stop an invasion for a while but without nukes (which is a completely unrealistic threat in this case) we could not stop the eventual Chinese 'takeover' of Taiwan.

Uh, if we stepped in, China would never even touch the beach.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sava
If China and the US are destined to fight WW3 against each other, I sure wish it would be over something more important than TAIWAN.

Yeah, well, if Germany's going to take Alsace and Lorraine, you wouldn't think the death of Prince Ferdinand would set them off...