The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank based in Washington, D.C., has developed a wargame for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and ran it 24 times.
The results of the wargame showed that the U.S., Taiwan, and Japan would likely be able to defend against the invasion, but only under certain conditions and by relying on certain key capabilities. However, this defense would come at a high cost, with the U.S. and its allies suffering significant losses in terms of ships, aircraft, and personnel, and Taiwan’s economy being devastated.
Some of the key conditions that were identified as necessary for the successful defense of Taiwan include:
- Taiwanese forces must be able to hold their ground and contain any Chinese beachhead in order to effectively defend Taiwan. This can be achieved by strengthening Taiwanese ground forces and improving their combined arms training.
- The “Ukraine model” of relying on the overland flow of equipment and supplies cannot be applied to Taiwan as China can easily isolate the island. Instead, Taiwan must start the war with all the resources it needs, and the U.S. must be prepared to engage in direct combat early in the war.
- Maintaining strong diplomatic and military ties with Japan is crucial as the U.S. will need access to bases in Japan in order to effectively participate in the defense of Taiwan.
- The U.S. should prioritize increasing its arsenal of long-range anti-ship cruise missiles and upgrading existing missiles with anti-ship capabilities in order to rapidly and effectively strike the Chinese fleet from outside the Chinese defensive zone.
Additionally, the U.S. global position would be damaged for many years. China would also suffer heavy losses, and failure to occupy Taiwan could potentially destabilize Chinese Communist Party rule.
To gain a deeper understanding of the operational dynamics of such an invasion, the CSIS project used historical data and operations research to create a transparent and analytically based model. By running a “base scenario” and various excursion cases, the project was able to explore the effects of varying assumptions on the outcome of the invasion. The results of these iterations are depicted in a Taiwan Invasion Scorecard, which shows the success or failure of the invasion under different conditions.
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