Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy in East Asia at King’s College London, delivered a presentation yesterday evening in Taipei, during which he spoke about the chances of China invading Taiwan in the next few years. Patalano, who specializes in maritime strategy and doctrine, pointed at the common perception of island invasions as requiring large numbers of warships and troops storming expansive coastal areas. But that is not how he thinks China would try to take over Taiwan.
He started his argument by stating that Xi Jinping’s dream of the “National Rejuvenation of the Chinese People” is in direct correlation to Taiwan’s status, concluding: “Reunification of Taiwan is a real objective, and an objective that needs to be fulfilled by 2049, because that’s when we know the rejuvenation of China’s people will be coming to term.” Thus, while other analysts believe 2027 would be the year that China can be expected to invade Taiwan, Patalano thinks 2049 would be a more realistic target.
A full-out invasion of Taiwan would entail extreme risks. “A military operation big enough to achieve the invasion of Taiwan would mean preparing for a regional-scale war. There’s no way you can do it on the cheap, no way you can do it without destroying everything in Okinawa,” Patalano said. Such a theoretical invasion would create a “domino effect” that would lead to the U.S. and its allies getting involved, a fact that other analysts have warned could lead to an incredibly destructive global war that would reach into space. “So my point is, when you start to look at the details of a full-scale military invasion, it will very unlikely stay a localized conflict,” he added.
The blockade option
To avoid starting a global war, Patalano said China would be looking at three other options. The first would be a blockade of Taiwan. However, he noted that a blockade is legally considered a type of warfare, and would therefore be seen as an act of war, which would bring the risk of escalation without achieving a quick result. China would therefore be more prone to scale such a blockade back to something similar but less warlike, such as a “naval quarantine operation” around Taiwan. Such an operation would be easier to do, but the Ukraine experience has shown that similar operations by Russia against Ukraine-bound shipping has shown that the shipping industry can find ways to adapt to find a way around the enemy’s actions.
Such quarantine operations would be more annoying than anything else, but would have the effect of putting ongoing pressure on the minds of Taiwan’s people. “The idea would be to make Taiwan’s people start asking if all the trouble is really worth it,” Patalano said. However, he added that such an option would require too much time and “does not provide the type of solution that if you’re on a deadline would help you achieve it.”
The ‘bloody nose’ option
The second option, which Patalano considers more likely, is “picking off offshore islands that are under Taiwan’s control — not including Taiwan’s Penghu islands — this is not that hard to do, militarily speaking.” While such an action would be relatively easy, it does carry a medium level of risk, “because things can go wrong unexpectedly,” he said. “This [option] might have a stronger impact, because psychologically and politically it sends a signal that Taiwan is not safe.”
Patalano rated this option as more likely than most. He acknowledged that such an action might cause some reputational damage for China, but he believes China has shown that it does not care much about reputational damage. This option would depend on how China thinks Taiwan’s people would respond to having their frontline islands picked off. Would it harden their resolve or cause them to despair?
Patalano is not sure if there’s a clear understanding in China. “Communications are bad right now. China is not connecting with the outside world,” he said. “Two years of COVID has considerably depleted China’s capacity to assess the outside world. Outside researchers who had to stop visiting China during COVID are going back now. They consistently say it’s a very different environment now. There’s no communication. That impacts their capacity to assess and overcome their own biases.” He added that “even if some can, who is going to tell the big boss that unpopular truth? ‘Not my job!’ is how it goes.”
The ‘storming of Taipei’ option
Patalano then described the third option: “One other scenario that is also very likely, particularly in a situation where you have the right cocktail of a high level of tension with the U.S.,” and a U.S. president who is unclear about what his reactions would be, “I think this could lead to what I call ‘the storming of Taipei.’” This year’s Han Kuang exercises by the Taiwan military, Patalano noted, were partly “about testing the requirement for what would be a short sharp action to take out [Taiwan’s] command and control function, take out the presidency, leave the military rudderless, and then install something that the Russians were trying to do in the first stages of the Ukraine invasion, when the Russians initially pointed everything at Kiev.”
He said “the geography of Taiwan lends itself to a situation where, if you take out the military and political center — you are [at] a standstill.” Such a “short sharp action” would represent the highest risk but could achieve “the strongest impact long term.” For China this would have the advantage of “you achieve your objective … you paid your price but it allowed you to remain underneath the threshold of that major regional war. And above all, everybody who [is] sitting on a fence is going to have to ask themselves, am I going to get off this fence? Because there’s no comeback if you do so.”
Patalano did not say what such a “short sharp action to take out Taiwan’s command and control function” would look like. But he did say the lessons of the Ukraine war do not necessarily apply to China’s thinking and calculations, which is why he thinks “options two and three are more likely within the 2049 timeframe.” He warned that China has become very good at “shaping the political narrative” of its actions. So, even if China does enact quarantines, or seize islands, or storm Taipei, “they will always make it look like they were forced to do it in reaction to something.”
Image: Office of the President, Republic of China (Taiwan), CC BY 2.0
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