Richard D. Fisher On Taiwan: Surviving The Next Four Years

For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), ​​successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory.

But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger.

As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies.

One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions under its 2015 Strategic Support Force service, breaking it into three new “arms” under the CCP’s Central Military Commission (CMC) to better achieve regional military and global hegemonic goals.

The new PLA Information Support Force (PLAISF) will concentrate on building and strengthening digital networks, essential for more effective joint-force operations by the PLA’s air, missile, naval, and amphibious/airborne forces, building toward global power projection and the invasion of Taiwan.

Superior networks are also essential for achieving increasing Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven autonomous joint-force unmanned systems operations, while this new arm will justify greater investments in AI, advanced computer technology and digital security.

Advances by the PLAISF are essential to the success of its two “sister arms.” The PLA Cyberspace Force (PLACSF) will allow greater PLA investment in dominating global digital networks via cyber offensive and defensive operations, focused against Taiwan and globally, expanding cyber espionage, the ability to attack military and civil electronic infrastructure and exploiting digital media to advance the global political-economic ambitions of the CCP.

Advanced network and cyber capabilities will be expanded and exploited by the new PLA Aerospace Force (PLAASF), reflecting internal PLA debates of the early 2000s in which the PLA Air Force (PLAAF), the satellite and manned space controlling former General Equipment Department (GED ) of the CMC, and the Second Artillery missile force vied for control of the “Space Force.”

It is likely that the PLAASF will bank on PLAAF programs for stratospheric hypersonic and subsonic vehicles needed to dominate “Near Space” just below Low Earth Orbit (LEO), when combined with GED-era satellite, manned space, and space combat systems, could dominate LEO, Cis-Lunar Space, the Moon and beyond.

The increasing dominance sought by these three new PLA arms, in turn, will better enable a second new trend of CCP-led and funded global proxy warfare — which is designed to enable an invasion of Taiwan and then global military dominance.

Information dominance, cyber superiority, and space control will better enable the CCP: assist ally Russia to win new wars aimed at Europe; help ally North Korea’s quest to destroy South Korea and Japan; and help ally Iran to destroy Israel — all disruptive regional steps that build toward the CCP’s strategic goals of global hegemony.

In early 2024 the CCP is demonstrating its ability to fund and arm the ambitions of two proxies; the US Biden Administration is increasingly alarmed that Chinese components are enabling greater Russian weapons production and accelerating Vladimir Putin’s military depredations against Ukraine, a brutal war that could spread to Moldova, Poland, and the Baltic States.

Second, CCP economic and military technology support allows Iran’s radical Mullah regime, via the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), to build proxy Hezbollah into a 100,000 rocket force aimed at Israel, give medium range missiles to Houthi proxies in Yemen , some already fired at Israel, and provide training and funding for the horrific October 7, 2023 HAMAS attack against Israel.

CCP proxy warfare has been building toward proxy nuclear warfare since the 1970s when the US and others failed to halt the CCP’s nuclear weapon and missile technology transfers to Pakistan — which now is credited with about 200 nuclear weapons and has its multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle ( MIRV) nuclear warhead Ababeel medium range ballistic missile.

The CCP has incurred no price for turning North Korean into a proxy intercontinental nuclear threat, assisting their 15,000 kilometer range Hwasong-17 and solid fuel Hwasong-18 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, which by the early 2030s could have enough MIRV nuclear warheads to decapitate a US nuclear force which remains the same size as in 2024.

In addition, North Korea’s likely Chinese-designed 10 kiloton Hwasan-31 tactical nuclear warhead will arm at least seven North Korean ballistic and cruise missile systems, which could be sold to Iran and others falling into CCP envelopment such as Venezuela, Algeria, South Africa and Brazil.

CCP proxies will be further emboldened to consider tactical nuclear warfare by the deterrent umbrella of increasing PLA and Russian strategic and regional nuclear forces; today the PLA may have massive theater nuclear superiority as the US credits it with 1,000 nuclear capable theater missiles, and is building up to 1,000 or more strategic nuclear warheads by 2030.

Russia’s loud and recurrent nuclear threats, backed by an estimated arsenal of 2,000 to 10,000 theater nuclear weapons, since early 2022 helped deter a decisive Biden Administration response to its invasion of Ukraine.

Furthermore, US fears of a wider Middle East war, with a soon-to-be nuclear-armed Iran, in part prompted Biden Administration pressure on Israel to limit its retaliation against Iran’s unprecedented April 14 attack with 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drone missiles.

For its new military assistance for Russia, in addition to its decades of assistance for Iran and North Korea, it is very likely that the CCP fully expects that Russia, Iran and North Korea will duly contribute to the CCP’s war against Taiwan.

China’s and Russia’s current military pressures from just two wars highlight a third trend: the inability so far of the United States and its allies to surge all-around military production sufficient to halt one Russian war against Ukraine, that exposes the glaring US and allied abilities to actually mobilize, deploy, and fight against the potential for China and Russia to conduct near simultaneous wars and proxy wars in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

As part of its strategy to invade Taiwan, the CCP wants to overwhelm Washington with other wars that divert its military forces and exhaust its military supplies and production capacity, reducing US forces available for assisting the defense of Taiwan — which in turn will be overwhelmed by the PLA’s large arsenals of missiles, strike aircraft, space combat systems, information/cyber dominance and increasing long range unmanned systems.

Confronting these trends also requires confronting current illusions in Washington and Taipei.

First it is necessary to acknowledge that short of actual shooting, the CCP is at war with the United States, Taiwan, and most other democracies.

Such an acknowledgment should prompt policies of mobilization: far greater military spending; policies that criminalize the CCP to limit its foreign espionage and influence-building; policies that decrease trade with China to reduce economic dependence and espionage; and most essential, policies that better equip Chinese citizens to pursue regime change.

In both Washington and Taipei, it is necessary to admit the insufficiency of trying to convince Taiwan to abandon long range weapons and stress asymmetric/anti-invasion capabilities, with the guarantee of US military intervention to defeat longer range threats.

Taiwan may have to fight relatively alone for a lengthy period, meaning the US should of course be helping to arm Taiwan with better anti-invasion capabilities, but also longer-range interdiction capabilities like more submarines, more F-16 strike fighters, force- multiplying aerial tankers, less expensive 1,500km range cruise missiles, and 3,000km range intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) to strike back against Russia and North Korea.

Encouraging current trends in Japan and the Philippines in cooperating with Washington to prepare for a PLA attack and for a Taiwan War should evolve toward joint exercises and then preparations to re-invade or rescue Taiwan from a CCP-PLA invasion.

New arrangements facilitating greater cooperation, like the Australia-United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) agreement and the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the US), should yield a new formal or informal defense arrangement which pools surveillance and military support between Japan , South Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, India, Australia and the US.

Finally the US must reverse the refusal of the Biden Administration to build a varied and robust theater nuclear arsenal to match the nuclear escalation architecture of Russia, China, and North Korea.

The failure to do so could force Washington into a less desirable option: as a price for preserving its alliances, helping key allies like Japan, South Korea, Australia and perhaps others to obtain a minimum nuclear capability to deter Chinese, Russian, and North Korean nuclear attack.

It is certainly possible for Taiwan, the US, Japan, and the Philippines to deter a CCP war against Taiwan over the next four years, but there is also an urgent requirement to pursue a war-like mobilization to have any chance of sustaining that deterrence .

Richard D. Fisher, Jr. is a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.