The Penultimate Hour
#85
The DoD has only a single full planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) cycle left before 2027. As exhaustively caveated by ourselves and others, this does not mean that the CCP plans on attacking Taiwan in ‘27. But given the DoD’s litany of near-term capability gaps, it cannot be ruled out. What can be done to make a difference in the short term?
1. Go Nuclear
The US is able to station tactical nuclear capabilities on or near Taiwan. Options include sub-launched ballistic missiles armed with W76-2 low yield warheads or the future SLCM-N.
POTUS would promise that in the event of a PLA assault on Taiwan, the US would certainly launch these weapons into the strait, not directly hitting PRC territory, but freezing the conflict in place. This tactical capability would be disconnected from the larger American strategic nuclear response.
The PRC does not currently possess sufficient nuclear forces to pose a countervailing threat to the US. Such a US guarantee would instill major doubt into the CCP’s decision making out to 2030, at which point Beijing’s nuclear breakout may give CCP decision makers more options to make credible nuclear counter threats.
The ideal nuclear weapon would be:
1) Overt: Discussed in public forums in order to credibly communicate Washington’s capability.
2) Tactical: A system not intended to affect the strategic nuclear warfighting balance between Washington, Beijing, and Moscow.
3) Short-Ranged: This forces the delivery platform to loiter in theater.
4) Theater-Based: Allows US allies and partners to know the US is forced to keep assets in theater which do not have the range to be employed in different theaters once crisis strikes.
5) Low Yield: Small airbusting nuclear weapons limit the munitions effect, allowing for a lower threshold for use.
6) Precision: The weapon must be precise enough for counter-force targeting within an electromagnetically denied environment. It cannot deviate from its intended target area and accidentally impact over PRC soil.
7) Prompt: The weapon must be highly responsive to national command authority and capable of achieving effects within narrow windows of time and decision.
8) Reversible: Once the weapon is launched, it must be possible to recall and/or disarm the weapon, thereby further lowering national command authority’s threshold for use.
Kyle Balzer and Dan Blumenthal have also argued for the return of a regionally based nuclear option to the Western Pacific. You can listen or read their arguments here.
2. Embrace Unconventional Coercion
In the China debate there is much discussion of conventional forces and limited discussion of nuclear capabilities. There is a gap surrounding unconventional coercion.
If appropriately resourced and authorized, US SOF have the capability to affect social stability within the PRC, a CCP critical vulnerability. In the Politburo’s eyes, no other concern rises above the safety and security of itself.
In terms of optics, while these actions are wildly threatening to Beijing, they have the advantage of seeming non-threatening to a Western and American audience. These include 1) extending Starlink coverage, 2) working deeply with PRC border nations, and 3) arming Taiwan civilians.
1) Extending Starlink (or a similar capability) coverage over continental PRC with unfettered access to the internet would assure communications for SOF elements, unconventional forces, and dissidents operating along PRC’s borders and within the country.
More importantly, it would give PRC citizens easy and free access to uncensored information. This would destroy the Ministry of Propaganda’s stranglehold on the narrative. Simultaneously, it would allow PRC citizens to communicate with the outside world, including discussion of the CCP’s abuses.
2) While Russia and North Korea are unlikely to cooperate, the US has the opportunity to form relationships with all the other countries that make up the PRC’s land border. In the event of hostilities, it is possible that some of these nations would want to balance against PRC adventurism.
3) As observed in Ukraine, a robust territorial defense force was critical in blunting the initial Russian advance. During the recent Zelenskyy-Fridman interview, the President of Ukraine explained:
“(00:42:43) We distributed weapons to people, that’s how it was. Trucks came and simply distributed weapons to people so that they could defend the capital, to ordinary people just on the street, to ordinary people who understood that if the Russians entered a city, then we would have the same thing that’s happening in other cities per the information we received.”
In the wake of the Russian invasion, Ukraine also reformed domestic firearm laws. It would have been far more effective if the Ukrainians had taken these measures before the war. From War on the Rocks:
“[...] territorial defense units should be trained and equipped to conduct fire team, squad, and platoon-sized combat operations. Units should have access to, and volunteers should have training on the use of, small arms, “technicals” (non-standard tactical vehicles), anti-armor rockets (e.g., Next Generation Light Anti-tank Weapons and Javelins), improvised explosive devices, portable air defense systems (e.g., Stingers), and field medical care kits. Given the success that Ukrainian units have had using relatively inexpensive loitering drones against Russian convoys, Taiwan should also consider equipping territorial defense units with [drones]. Generators and satellite communications assets are also essential [.] Territorial defense units should also be able to broadcast their operations — and Chinese atrocities — even after the island has been occupied.”
US SOF has significant untapped potential to deter against an invasion of Taiwan and compel the CCP to off ramp after initiation of a military campaign.
3. Mutual Defense Treaty & Recognition
Both Beijing and Moscow are quite careful in dealing with peripheral countries that have obtained security guarantees from the United States. This helps to explain why Putin’s proximate targets are Georgia and Ukraine, not Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania.
Beijing takes a similar tack, pursuing aggressive but non-kinetic and cautious behavior in engaging the Philippines at sea.
Signing a mutual defense treaty (MDT) with Taiwan would communicate to Beijing that a war over the island’s status would not be easy. There would be no “rapid victory in two weeks” scenario, as Putin mistakenly planned for.
Such an action has the ability to cast serious doubt onto CCP and PLA decision makers’ confidence in launching a military campaign out to 2030. To cement Beijing’s perceptions, Washington can take extra steps to extend forms of recognition to Taiwan.
This would include opening an embassy, hosting normal and regular political interaction, basing troops under a new status of forces agreement (SOFA), and encouraging US allies to do the same. As Mike Pompeo stated in 2022:
“It became very clear to me that one of the central features of making sure that Taiwan has the capacity to defend itself is the world recognizing what we all know to be true […] there’s a simple truth: [Taiwan] is not part of China. That if it became part of China this wouldn’t be reunification, this would be an aggressive action that destroyed the sovereignty of an independent country. And for an awfully long time the West has moved away from this, under coercive threats from the Chinese Communist Party, and no leaders in the West have been prepared to say the simple fact—which is that this is an independent sovereign nation and we ought to help it protect its own sovereignty. I think it is time that the United States do so.”