Two weeks ago the Chinese said further delaying peaceful reunification will likely lead to an invasion of Taiwan and one week ago they said the will fire their (24) nuke ICBMs on the U.S. should we attempt to militarily intervene. I have read elsewhere that the present day Chicom military is unlikely to defeat the Taiwanese military (who haven’t fought in 50 years). It doesn’t seem like the Chinese feel that way.
So, will they invade? Can they succeed? Will we intervene? Is the heat being turned up now in order to get it done before Clinton leaves office?
I doubt Mainland China will be stupid enough to use their nuclear capabilities against the U.S… They’ve gotta know that our retaliatory capacity would turn their entire country into one big glow-in-the-dark parking lot.
Perhaps Mainland China’s military leaders are getting tired of sitting on their collective tuckuses, and are looking for an excuse to rattle a saber.
It seems like the Chinese pull this same stunt every time Taiwan has an election, hoping that the propaganda will strike fear into the voters and usher in a kinder, more communist brand of democracy. It does look like the rhetoric has stepped up a notch or three this time out, what with the overt threat of a nuclear strike and all.
I’m given to understand that mainland China basically considers Taiwan to be little more than an American Military Base parked just offshore, and it’s hard to argue with their paranoia in this regard.
Invasion seems unlikely for a variety of reasons, not the least of them being that America would indeed intervene. My opinion is that China would ultimately prevail should war break out in the Taiwan Straight area, but I notice that a disproportionate amount of their military strength seems to be concentrating in the northeast, which seems to indicate that they have bigger fish to fry. (China has a long memory, and they owe Japan an historical debt that will not carry any gratitude.)
The Pacific rim is it’s own look-out, but the nuclear threat might have been taken more seriously had they made it tactical – nobody really believes China has the missle technology to hit anything at all, let alone the mainland U.S. Of course, we’ve been wrong before.
Dr. Watson
“The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.”
I think they’re just blowing off steam. And if they have any sense at all, they’re not going to nuke the US, because we can retaliate a hundredfold.
No. They haven’t the amphibious lift capacity to pull off a significant opposed landing, nor the capacity for clear air or sea superiority in the straight. Most of their a/c have very short legs. They could, however, make life rather unpleasant for Taiwan.
I dunno. Taiwan is an important ally of the US, but there are also reasons we don’t want to piss China off too much. Hard to predict.
I recall hearing that there is some sort of defense treaty between the US and Taiwan, but I’m not sure what it says.
Their (Chicom’s) line of thought seems to be that they believe, come D-Day, they can probably secure themselves on the island before we can muster force in theater. They then will (they think) be strong enough to inflict sufficient casualties on our first arriving forces that we will lack the will to carry forward with a full scale effort and will withdraw before they need to toss nukes. Of import to their calculations is the belief that initial casualties will birth a Vietnam-era like peace movement in this country that will prevent sufficient support for a war effort. Another factor of note is their indifference to (or, acceptance of) high casualties amongst their own.
That view, of course, hinges on their ability to overwhelm the indigenous military. I’ve seen pieces written that claim the Chicoms are not presently able to do so, but it’s hard to really say anything definitive about two military entities that don’t have much of a battle record to speak of. After all, on paper, the French were considered the military powerhouse of Europe on the eve of WWII, but they were ineffective against the Nazis.
They’ll have to build some boats, first. It’s a long swim!
My data is a bit old (1997), but it says the PLAN has exactly 9 amphibious landing craft. That’s enough for one, maybe two light infantry divisions, which Taiwan should be able to handle well enough. Taiwan has something like 12 well trained divisions. And it needs to be considered also that those ships have to survive long enough to reach Taiwan (which has some anti-ship assets of its own), and that China has essentially no experience conducting opposed amphibious landings, which can generate horrific losses.
You can never really predict what will happen in such situations of course - like you say, the paper version doesn’t always tell the story. But force projection wouldn’t seem to be the PLAN’s forte just yet. Another 15, 20 years, that could change though. They’re working on it. In the meantime, I think the best they can do is mount a level of harassment - missile attacks across the straight, harassment of shipping, and so on. But that does not an invasion make.
Anyway, I think they’re just trying to influence politics more than make a serious threat.
The Chinese Communists are frightened of the prospect of an opposition politician being elected in Taiwan. Although the ruling Nationalists are their enemies of old, the mainland Chinese leaders loathe the opposition Democratic Progressive Party even more deeply, since this party has historically advocated independence for Taiwan. The Nationalists still play lip service to the idea of reunification with the mainland, so they still represent the lesser evil for the Chinese.
Now that Jiang Zemin and company have trumpeted the return of Taiwan as their next great objective (after recovering Hong Kong and Macao), they should be truly frightened by the idea of the island slipping away well and for good. Remember Sen. Joe Macarthy and “who lost China” in the 50s? That would be nothing compared to “who lost Taiwan”–with the losers of the debate probably being assured a bullet in the back of the head.
China might not use nuclear weapons against the mainland US, but what about a carrier group of our out in the pacific?
If we moved naval assets close and China nuked them, do you really think Americans would support launching an all out nuclear attack against China?
I do not think America COULD intervene at this point. Right now we have trops in 50 differnet countries, it would be a stretch to maintain a serious defense of Taiwan.
You can thank Clinton for allowing this situation to deteriorate to this point. The ambiguity of our response and the weakness of our military has led to their aggresivness.
I noticed this quote in the Insight Magazine article linked to in the OP:
I find it suspicious that a decidedly slanted magazine somehow managed to obtain a copy of a document that the mainstream news sources didn’t. Does this document appear in any other news paper/webpage? Does a little rag like Insight Magazine really have the inside scoop on a big issue that has evaded CNN, the Associated Press, the Network news companies, USA Today, and all the other big-clout news sources?
Or did somebody make this document up, and Insight Magazine swallowed their hoax?
Not really possible. Ballistic missiles don’t generally have the ability to engage moving targets. The CBG can go a very long ways in the time it takes for an IRBM to be targeted and show up somewhere, and I wouldn’t really wanna bet on the US not retaliating in kind. Maybe it wouldn’t, but maybe it would. If you were China, would you wanna take that bet? At the very least, I expect we’d sink their entire navy if they pulled a stunt like that.
Through all of this I did not hear anyone voice the biggest reason why a conflict as described will NEVER happen: Taiwan is a HUGE investor in China, and the two economies are linked, just like Hong Kong. My guess is-the Chinese will tell Taiwan: “you agree to be called a province of China” Then we will leave you alone.
One thing the Chinese are is pragmatic-no reason to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
I don’t claim to be a nuclear stategist, but I don’t think you have to aim nuclear weapons all that much. You just sort of lob it over in that direction
I don’t have any top secret studies to back up my position, but check out this really cool blast mapper to understand how wide the destruction is. Gotta Love The Net
Well, I think it’s not quite that simple :-). And you do need to aim them, fairly accurately if you’re shooting at a hardened target.
Rest assured that the matter has been studied quite extensively and it is considered impractical - maybe not theoretically impossible, but certainly not one of the more likely ways to sink a ship. There are a lot of problems with it. In wartime, or even in tense peacetime situations, one doesn’t know where the CBG even is, because its in EMCON. The ocean is a big place, and knowing “it’s in this particular 500x500mile square” doesn’t help you any with targeting. Second, IRBMs are very slow weapons delivery systems, requiring both flight time, and often, significant targeting and/or fueling time, and a ship is a mobile target that can easily move much farther than the kill radius of the weapon in that amount of time.
Most people have a vastly overestimated idea of the effectiveness of nuclear weapons against hardened targets, and a ship has the ability to “button up” and withstand quite a lot of punishment. It’s not a soft target like a building that can easily be knocked down by a little bit of overpressure. The navy has a pretty good idea, from actual experimentation, just how susceptible ships (and exposed/nonexposed crew) are to nuclear weapons of various sizes detonated at various heights above or below surface. IIRC, the “mission kill” radius is typically less than a thousand yards for a moderate sized nuclear weapon (depending on the aspect angle of the ship to the blast), and that’s mostly damage to soft things like sensors and whatever isn’t tied down on deck, not literally sinking the ship, for which you’d want to get within a few hundred yards (with an IRBM who’s CEP could itself be over a hundred yards). The Saratoga back in the 40’s, with no crew doing damage control, and configured for flight ops, survived one 20 Kt airburst just hundreds of yards from the ship (off the bow, so it wasn’t capsized) in a state the Navy thought they could have combat ready again within hours. It was sunk by a subsequent underwater blast through hull leakage, but it took hours and damage control might have saved it.
Then you have to consider too that such an action would incur a real risk of nuclear retaliation - is that cost worth the chance of killing one or two ships in a widely spaced CBG, and generating massive public outrage when a few thousand sailors come home only to die of radiation effects, when we have other carrier groups? I think anybody would need some serious brass ones to consider that as a good idea.
BTW…they were using 1 and 25 megaton weapons on the other site.
Here is the quote from the 25 megaton blast:
I know those ships are super strong, but I sure wouldn’t want to be within several miles of a blast no matter what boat I was in
You really don’t have any serious arguement from me, I no nothing about nuclear blasts, and I’m not going to try and pretend otherwise. The political and military response might be something I would be willing to explore, but not the actual feasibility of the attempt.
I think the American public would be very frightened if China did this. Assuming that missles dod not fly back and forth in the first couple of hours, I think the general response would be to get America out of the conflict.
Nobody would support a nuclear war over Taiwan.
That is when things like THIS become more relevant.
And we can hope sane heads prevail and nothing like that ever comes close to happening.
Personally, I feel the bigger nuclear risk is not so much in the major nuclear powers going at it, as a terrorist group or some pissant dictator somewhere getting their hands on one.
I think egkelly hit it spot on. I had a conversation not long ago with a fellow student who is from the PRC, and he said essentially the same things. The up-and-coming politicians in the PRC recognize the advantages of free market economy, and would consider the reunion with Taiwan a great boon. In the meantime, it’s just a province of misguided people who need to be encouraged (strongly) to return to the fold.
Suppose China has a nuclear weapon that is so powerful that it can destroy any ships within a few hundred miles of ground zero. Do you really think that they’ll detonate it off the coast of China? Can you imagine the fallout that would cause in China?
I see several different scenarios: China takes over Taiwan, doesn’t use any nukes against the US.
Even if they manage to do this, and repel the US + allies counterattack, there’s no way they would be able to seriously hurt mainland US without using nukes. The US would quickly establish air and sea superiority in the Pacific, which means that China will lose all use of their oceans and airspace. Among other things, that means that shipping between China and Taiwan would become impossible, making China’s taking of Taiwan a Pyrrhic victory. The result would be very similar to the situation in Europe following the fall of France to Hitler: we would not be able to launch an invasion of China, but we sure could make their life hell.
China decides to go all out, launches nuclear attack on US
The most they could possibly hope for would be for both countries to be decimated, which would be a rather silly thing to do.
The last time China threatened to invade Taiwan, Clinton moved a carrier group between China and Taiwan and told the Chinese the United States would oppose any move against Taiwan. What was ambiguous or weak about that? Not being regular listeners of Rush, the Chinese apparently took this as a clear and strong response and backed off.
As for the threat of nuclear attack, if it’s true, I’d guess it was intended for American consumption. The Chinese may believe they can quickly overrun Taiwan and Americans will be afraid to response in the face of a nuclear threat. I think the Chinese are wrong on both counts. Unfortunately, most wars are caused by just this type of miscalculation.
Little Nemo…We are so close, and yet so far.
When you say this:
It is not all that far from this:
Considering all the money thie Chinese have poured into Clinton’s pockets (and Gore’s) I think it is fair to name them as responsible for the ambiguity.
