Given Taiwan’s geostrategic location as first in a chain of islands, if the self-governed island falls into the hands of China, America will no longer be able to project power in Asia, according to James Carafano, director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies.
“The independence of Taiwan is a vital interest for the United States,” he said.
According to the expert, the best measure for America to help Taiwan defend against the mainland is by keeping free and open traffic in the Taiwan straits.
“So the United States has to, and should, exercise the ability to defend air and sea space. That’s the biggest contribution that the United States can make,” he opined.
“If China controlled all the waters between Taiwan and the coast of China, then the Chinese could sneak their submarines out, their diesel submarines, out of port, and hide them there, and we couldn’t get at them because we couldn’t conduct what’s called anti-submarine warfare.”
He added that “putting American troops on the ground in Taiwan actually isn’t, wouldn’t really be, militarily significant.”
Equilibrium in Military Might
Carafano pointed out that the CCP’s fighting power might be limited since it has not been involved in any big combat for a long time.“China hasn’t fought an armed conflict on a large scale since its war with Vietnam, which was many decades ago. This is a military that’s untested in combat,” he said.
“It’s a military that is still, in part, transitioning from being primarily about providing domestic security and strategic deterrence, to being able to deploy and fight at an operational level.”
Thus, it is still unclear how the regime would handle the fighting in long distance and long campaigns should it move to invade the island.
“[In the case of] the long distance [fight], for example, between the mainland and Taiwan in multi-domain, which means air, sea, space, land, and under the sea, and in long campaigns, which require logistics, like moving supplies, or anything else, the Chinese have not done this for a very, very long time. So their military is, in a sense, untested,” he stressed.
Carafano further took note of the regime’s quantitative advantage over the United States should there be armed conflict in the Indo-Pacific.
Even though the United States does have more global military capability than China, he noted, America remains a global power with global interests and global responsibilities.
Meanwhile, China, from a military perspective, is still a regional power, he said.
“So China can concentrate all its military capability in the Indo-Pacific, in the first island chain, the United States can’t do that,” he said.
“Fighting in the Indo-Pacific is not just their only theater of war, it’s a home game. For us. it’s an away game,” the expert said.
When it comes to the military might of the two powers, “there’s some equilibrium or some imbalance or uncertainty, in the military capabilities,” he said.
“And so could the Chinese launch a major campaign and think with confidence that they could overcome the United States today. I would say no,” Carafano noted.
