Positioning for success: Avoiding a pyrrhic victory over Taiwan

As China’s economic power has continued to grow, translating to increased global and regional clout backed by an increasingly capable and power projection-focused military, the tensions across the Taiwan Strait have continued to deteriorate. 

While these tensions have largely been limited to verbose and confrontational language and increased, probing penetrations of Taiwanese air and maritime identification zones, many leading thinkers across the strategic and defence planning community anticipate a direct confrontation by the end of the 2020s. 

The most prominent proponent of planning for this concerning contingency, former US Indo-Pacific Commander, Admiral Philip Davidson, articulates the concerns and sets the scene for the challenges facing both the United States and its regional partners, including Australia, saying: “I believe the next six years is going to be a very worrying time for Taiwan, the US, Japan, and all of East Asia.”  

Admiral Davidson’s well documented concern is further reinforced by Jessica Drun, a non-resident fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, added, “Though I’m not convinced that Beijing has depleted all the options in its toolkit short of a full-out invasion, my concern is that, with the increasing regularity of incursions into Taiwan’s [air space], there is a higher risk of an accident or a miscalculation – one that could compel, or be used by Chinese leadership to justify, further military escalation.”     

Recognising the importance of planning for this potential contingency, the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published 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. 

In the first part of this series we unpacked the ‘base scenario’ for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026, developed by CSIS and detailed the allied ‘conditions’ for success in light of growing concerns about the capacity of the United States to respond decisively while maintaining it’s global responsibilities. 

Concerningly for the US-led world order, the scale of US and allied losses in any confrontation over Taiwan raises the question of whether the costs associated are worth it for the US. The CSIS explains this, stating, “Victory is not everything. The United States might win a pyrrhic victory, suffering more in the long run than the “defeated” Chinese. Furthermore, the perception of high costs might undermine deterrence: if China believes that the United States would be unwilling to bear the high costs of defending Taiwan, then China might risk an invasion.”    

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Recommendations for avoiding a ‘pyrrhic’ victory 

In order to limit the costs associated with a victory, CSIS outlines a series of recommendations designed to help the US and its allies, namely Japan and Taiwan in this instance limit the materiel and human costs of responding. 

Critically, the CSIS recommendations focus on limiting the impact to the credibility and impact on the US capacity to maintain global peace and security as it has done since the end of the Second World War. 

The CSIS breaks down the factors into three individual subsections designed to avoid a pyrrhic victory: politics and strategy, doctrine and posture; and weapons and platforms. 

Politics and strategy: The CSIS articulates and identifies the importance of a clear strategy and consistent political and public support for both the United States and its allies: 

• Clarify war plan assumptions - There is a seeming gap between war plans, which assume pre-war deployments to Taiwan and neutral countries, and political realities.
• Do not plan on striking the mainland - The National Command Authority might withhold permission because of the grave risks of escalation with a nuclear power.
• Recognise the need to continue operations in the face of heavy casualties - In three weeks, CSIS predicts the United States will suffer about half as many casualties as it did in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Move Taiwanese air and naval forces toward asymmetry - Despite rhetoric about adopting a “porcupine strategy,” Taiwan still spends most of its defense budget on expensive ships and aircraft that China will quickly destroy.   

Doctrine and posture: US warfighting doctrine and the globally dispersed posture has afforded the US and its allies an unprecedented amount of tactical and strategic flexibility since the end of the Cold War, however, the recent decades of uncontested freedom now has a dramatic impact on the survivability of the US and allied forces:

• Fortify and expand air bases in Japan and Guam - Dispersion and hardening dilute the effects of missile attacks.
• Revise US Air Force doctrine and restructure procurement to increase aircraft survivability on the ground - Ninety per cent of aircraft losses occurred on the ground.
• Do not plan on overflying the Chinese mainland - Chinese air defense is too strong, the targets take a long time to produce operational results, and the air missions around Taiwan take priority.
• Recognise the limitations of Marine Littoral Regiments and Army Multi-Domain Task Forces and cap their numbers - These units are designed to counter China and do provide some value, but political and operational difficulties put limits on their utility.
• Avoid crisis deployments that create vulnerabilities - Military doctrine calls for forward deployments to enhance deterrence during a crisis, but these forces make tempting targets.

Weapons and platforms: The US and its allies have long enjoyed a qualitative edge over adversaries, across the domains, but especially in low observable aircraft, precision-guided munitions and interconnected platforms, China’s increased economic power and wealth, combined with decades of industrial espionage have started to close the gap between the two sides. 

• Shift to smaller, more survivable ships and develop rescue mechanisms to deal with crippled ships and multiple sinkings - Surface ships are extremely vulnerable, with the United States typically losing two carriers and 10 to 20 large surface combatants in wargame iterations. 
• Prioritise submarines and other undersea platforms - Submarines were able to enter the Chinese defensive zone and wreak havoc with the Chinese fleet, but numbers were inadequate.
• Continue development and fielding of hypersonic weapons but recognise that they are niche weapons - Their high-cost limits inventories, so they lack the volume needed to counter the immense numbers of Chinese air and naval platforms.
• Prioritise sustainment of the bomber fleet over fighters - The range, missile standoff distance, and high carrying capacity of bombers presented the People’s Liberation Army with daunting challenges.
• Produce more, cheaper fighters and balance the acquisition of stealth aircraft with production of non-stealth aircraft - With so many aircraft lost early in the conflict, the Air Force risks running out of fighter/attack aircraft and becoming a secondary player in the conflict unless it has a large enough force to sustain the losses.

Lessons for Australia’s future defence planning? 

Concerningly for Australia and other regional partners that depend on the US strategic umbrella for ongoing security, such significant losses would present major challenges for global security. While CSIS predicts significant losses for the People’s Liberation Army, diminishing its capacity, a globally weakened US would also present dramatic challenges for Australia’s strategic policy makers.    

There is a growing realisation that both the United States and allies like Australia will need to get the balance of its military and national capabilities just right, not just to support the US as part of a larger joint task force, but to ensure that the Australian Defence Force can continue to operate independently and complete its core mission reliably and responsively. 

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