When you see some odd essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, a cornerstone of the foreign policy establishment, you may wonder “Is this supposed to be a policy trial balloon?”
This month, Foreign Affairs ran a piece speculating on the possibility of a long U.S. war with China after any Taiwan landings have been defeated: “How War in Taiwan Ends” by Zack Cooper. It lacks specifics that would invite closer analysis and contains many assertions that should be handled as propositions.
Assertions
For instance:
● After a failed invasion, “Chinese leaders might reason that they have less to lose by continuing the fight.”
Which communist leaders would those be? Who among them will survive a decision taken to invade before eliminating all uncertainty about the result? Defeat would show such bad judgement as to trigger a massive political crisis. No failed invasion can be hidden or spun, and the U.S. would dominate the information space to amplify Beijing’s every failure.
● “A conflict over Taiwan could eventually become a contest of wills—which Beijing believes it could win.”
An unstable government, publicly defeated and humiliated…where and how is that government going to find political will? In what sense and by what means could it still win? And win what?
● “Chinese leaders might demonize Taiwan and the United States to rally public support.”
Might? This statement refers to events after a failed invasion, as if the regime had overlooked generating public support in the first place.
A clue to Mr. Cooper’s optimism about Beijing’s resilience is in his book published this February, Tides of Fortune: The Rise and Decline of Great Militaries. It appears to be a study of historical cycles; and, looking at communist China as a case study, he projects a strong upward trend. Cooper believes Red China “is going to get stronger and stronger and stronger.”
This is a politics-free prediction, ignoring intra-party conflict and public discontent. It also ignores the regime’s walking away from large economic problems—real estate collapsing, bank solvency declining, unemployment rising.
Xi Jinping is running a fragile coalition ruling over a restless public. A big enough blunder could endanger Party rule altogether. This is a restraining factor that tends to preclude a decision to invade Taiwan and a near guarantee of penalty if an attempted invasion fails.
Defeat and revolution
If we want to cite historical cycles, let’s remember the turns from military defeat to revolution: Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, not to mention Axis Eastern Europe, helped along by Stalin after World War II.
Parts of Cooper’s article bring to mind the failed doctrines of limited escalation of the Vietnam War. “To bring the conflict to a close, the United States would need to credibly threaten punishment.”
This is confusing. Under the author’s scenario, both parties would already be at war and punishing each other every day. Do we threaten to mine the harbors, or take down the grid?
“Threats of punishment must be high enough to persuade Beijing to end a conflict in which it is deeply invested but low enough to avoid provoking unacceptable escalation, such as nuclear use. Finding this middle ground would not be an easy task.” By the way, Cooper attributes this formula to the Rand Corporation. It’s a golden oldie greatest hit heard in Vietnam and it has not yet worked in Russia versus Ukraine.
Speaking of that conflict, Cooper considers that “Russia has suffered terrible losses in the war, but Putin appears to have calculated that the costs of continuing are lower than the costs of admitting defeat.” In other words, per his own thinking, Ukraine has defeated Russia.
This misjudges on such a scale as to throw into question Cooper’s ability to make other strategic judgements.
Low and high
Would a defeated Red China continue unconventional warfare and hit-and-run attacks? Perhaps, if the regime could survive the shock of defeat, which is unlikely if we read the domestic situation there correctly. But our author is not addressing low-intensity war. He sees continuation as taking the form of full-scale conventional warfare:
Ideally, the prospect of a failed invasion of Taiwan would deter China, but Chinese leaders might perceive several incentives for protracting a war following an initial loss. First, China’s industrial capacity far outstrips that of the United States, so it could recapitalize its forces more rapidly. Over the last three decades, China has undergone a massive military buildup.
A failed invasion would so wreck Beijing’s military stockpiles, its trained manpower, its economy and its political legitimacy, that there would be very little left to fight with and few accessible targets that could offer them even tactical victories.
Cooper says, “If the United States is to deter China, it will have to persuade Chinese leaders that Washington has a strategy not only for the early stages of a conflict but also for the end stage of a war.”
Actually, the communists need only understand that a major military power will oppose any invasion. For the Party, a failed invasion would be catastrophic on such a scale that no regime would risk it. And there is no disparity in forces such as to guarantee success against the United States.
Someone observed that the political payoff for Beijing lies in threatening use of force against Taipei, not in using it. True and likely to remain true. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
