CSIS wargames reveal bloody nose ‘win’ for allies over Taiwan

It is the confrontation that the world and the Indo-Pacific in particular hopes never happens, a direct and open conflict between the United States and its allies and China over the small, island nation of Taiwan in the far-flung western Pacific.

With growing antagonism and sabre rattling from Beijing seeking to solve its “Taiwan problem” reinforced by growing speculation from leading US defence leaders like former Commander, US Indo-Pacific Commander, Admiral Phillip Davidson testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee, “Taiwan is clearly one of their [Beijing’s] ambitions before then. And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six years.” 

This ominous warning heralds a more concerning impact for the global order, should a conflict break out of Taiwan, with ADM Davidson further adding, “I worry that they’re [Beijing] accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order, which they’ve long said that they want to do that by 2050. I’m worried about them moving that target closer.”

Through the Cold War-era policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ the United States has managed to keep the tensions across the Taiwan Strait from spiraling out control, in spite of various periods of flare up, such as the Taiwan Strait Crisis in the mid-90s, however now this strategy appears to be 

While it was long believed that any potential conflict would be a foregone conclusion given the utter multidomain dominance of the post-Cold War world by the United States, it now appears as though any potential conflict would have a dramatically different outcome.

The Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) has conducted a series of new wargames identifying a series of outcomes following a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and a subsequent US-led, allied response with startling and concerning results. 

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Setting the scene

In taking a radically new approach to the wargaming process to previous attempts, which the CSIS details accordingly, stating “Previous unclassified analyses either focus on one aspect of an invasion, are not rigorously structured, or do not focus on military operations. Classified wargames are not transparent to the public. Without a suitable analysis, public debate will remain unanchored. 

The CSIS established a ‘base scenario’ which detailed: “this CSIS project designed a wargame using historical data and operations research to model a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan in 2026. Some rules were designed using analogies with past military operations; for example, the Chinese amphibious lift was based on analysis of Normandy, Okinawa, and the Falklands. 

“Other rules were based on theoretical weapons performance data, such as determining the number of ballistic missiles required to cover an airport. Most rules combined these two methods. In this way, the results of combat in the wargame were determined by analytically based rules instead of by personal judgment. The same set of rules applied to the first iteration and to the last iteration, ensuring consistency.”

In order to ensure accuracy and a to test a variety of variables, CSIS ran that base scenario three times, with a variety of excursion cases then “explored” to assess the effects of varying assumptions – this resulted in twenty-four ‘iterations’ of the wargame, mapping what CSIS describes as the ‘contours’ of the conflict and, concerningly for allied planned, “produced a coherent and rigorously derived picture of a major threat facing the United States.”

Identifying the allied conditions for success

As with testing any hypothesis, conducting such wargames also needs to identify clear conditions for what constitutes success in the face of increasingly complex equations, involving hundreds, if not thousands of individual components and increasingly complex data sets. 

Accordingly, CSIS analysis identified four necessary conditions to defeat any potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan:

• Taiwanese forces must hold the line: Given the volume of Chinese troops and the concentration of hostile fire, some beach heads will be successful, accordingly, Taiwanese ground forces must be capable of containing any beachhead that is established. 

• There is no ‘Ukraine model’ for Taiwan: As highlighted recently by US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, the capacity of the US to directly support Ukraine with materiel would have been severely impacted had it still be engaged in Afghanistan – accordingly, the US must assist Taiwan in peacetime to build up the necessary capability to deter and hinder Chinese aggression. 

• The US must be able to use key bases in Japan for combat operations: Key Japanese bases serve as a linchpin to any potential US response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan given their proximity to the combat zone, accordingly in order to guarantee persistent US combat capability, the bases must be open to US combat operations. 

• The US must be able to strike the Chinese fleet rapidly and en masse from outside the Chinese defensive zone: In order to achieve the saturation of deployed Chinese defenses, the US and allies need to recapitalize and modernize their existing missile stocks with a range of longer-range, smarter, and faster anti-ship cruise missiles as a top procurement priority.   

Some good, some bad, some disastrous 

In identifying the potential for a “major threat” facing the United States should it intervene in defence of Taiwan, CSIS details the core basis for the proposed invasion:

“The invasion always starts the same way: an opening bombardment destroys most of Taiwan’s navy and air force in the first hours of hostilities. Augmented by a powerful rocket force, the Chinese navy

encircles Taiwan and interdicts any attempts to get ships and aircraft to the besieged island. Tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers cross the strait in a mix of military amphibious craft and civilian roll-on, roll-off ships, while air assault and airborne troops land behind the beachheads.”

However, based on a US-led intervention to respond to Chinese aggression, CSIS outlines some concerning outcomes for both parties, with key platforms and manpower knocked out either temporarily or permanently, radically reshaping both the regional and global balance of power. 

CSIS details, that while “U.S. submarines, bombers, and fighter/attack aircraft, often reinforced by Japan Self-Defense Forces, rapidly cripple the Chinese amphibious fleet. China’s strikes on Japanese bases and U.S. surface ships cannot change the result: Taiwan remains autonomous.”

As a result of the US intervention, CSIS states that this defence of Taiwan comes at a significant material and manpower cost, stating, “The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships (two carriers and between 10-20 large surface combatants), hundreds of aircraft (90 per cent of which are destroyed on the ground), and thousands of servicemembers. Such losses would damage the U.S. global position for many years. 

“While Taiwan’s military is unbroken, it is severely degraded and left to defend a damaged economy on an island without electricity and basic services. China also suffers heavily. Its navy is in shambles, the core of its amphibious forces is broken, and tens of thousands of soldiers are prisoners of war.”

In the second part of this short analysis series we will take a closer look at CSIS’s analysis and its proposals to prevent the US and its key Indo-Pacific allies for enduring a pyrrhic victory in the defence of Taiwan and how these recommendations can help inform the outcomes of Australia’s upcoming Defence Strategic Review. 

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