Taiwan Contingency 台湾有事

choi

(1) Brad Lendon and Ivan Watson (reporters), China Has the Power to Take Taiwan, But It Would Cost an Extremely Bloody Price. CNN, June 1, 2022.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/31/a ... l-hnk-ml/index.html

Quote:

(a) "Many analysts say an invasion of Taiwan would be more dangerous and complex than the Allied D-Day landings in France in World War II. US government documents put the number of killed, injured and missing from both sides during the almost three-month-long Normandy campaign at almost half a million troops.

"And the civilian carnage could be far, far worse. [This paragraph obviously hints civilian carnage in Taiwan, not in China, because the next paragraph talks about Taiwan (China never mentioned in this aspect).]

"Taiwan's population of 24 million people is packed into dense urban areas like the capital Taipei, with an average of 9,575 people per square kilometer. Compare that to Mariupol, Ukraine -- devastated in the war with Russia -- and with an average of 2,690 people per square kilometer.

(b) " 'With a potential defending force of 450,000 Taiwanese today ... China would need over 1.2 million soldiers (out of a total active force of more than 2 million) that would have to be transported in many thousands of ships,' Howard Ullman, a former US Navy officer and professor at the US Naval War College, wrote in a February essay for the Atlantic Council [This CNN report supplies a link to the essay which is (2) below].

"He estimated such an operation would take weeks [so, not days]  * * *

(c) "Others are more confident in the US carriers.

Rear Adm Jeffery Anderson, the commander of the US Navy's Carrier Strike Group Three centered on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln [Nimitz-class; commissioned 1989; in active service; home port  San Diego, California], recently told CNN his ships are more than ready to deal with the kind of [Ukrainian Neptune] missiles that sank the Moskva.

" 'One thing I do know about our US ships is they're extremely survivable. Not only are they lethal, but they are extremely survivable,' he said.

(d) " * * * it is not only Chinese forces that might be handicapped by a lack of experience. Taiwan's troops have also not been tested, and depending on the scenario, there are holes in even the US' experience. As [Thomas] Shugart[, a former US Navy submarine captain and now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security,] put it: 'There is not a single US naval officer who has sunk another ship in combat [Honestly, in my view, there is no naval officer alive in the whole world who has. See Note (c)].'

Note:
(a) For "Allied D-Day landings in France in World War II. US government documents put the number of killed, injured and missing from both sides during the almost three-month-long Normandy campaign"

Operation Overlord
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord
(6 June – 30 August 1944; table; "Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy * * * by the morning of 25 August Paris was liberated [so Paris expedition was deemed part of Battle of Normandy]. * * * The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers")
(b) English dictionary:
* Moskva (proper name; etymology: transliteration of Russian): "Moscow"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Moskva
(c) Battle of the Coral Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Coral_Sea
(May 4-8, 1842 0a month before Battle of Midway (June 4-7)]; "the battle is historically significant as the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged each other and the first in which the opposing ships neither sighted nor fired directly upon one another")
occurred at Coral Sea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Sea

choi

(2) Harlan Ullman, Reality Check #10: China Will Not Invade Taiwan. Atlantic Council, Feb 18, 2022.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/ ... -not-invade-taiwan/

Quote:

(a) "The definitive document on what size force would be required to seize Taiwan in a full-out landing was drafted by the US military in the late stages of World War II in the Pacific. In 1944, Operation Causeway was the US plan for retaking Formosa, as it was then called, from 30,000 starving Japanese soldiers. The planned invasion force was double the size of Operation Overlord, the Normandy landing: 400,000 soldiers and marines deployed on 4,000 ships. With a potential defending force of 450,000 Taiwanese today, using the traditional three-to-one ratio of attackers to defenders taught at war colleges, China would need to deploy over 1.2 million soldiers (out of a total active force of over 2 million). Many thousands of ships would be required to land all those forces, and doing so would take weeks. How many occupation forces would be required to pacify the Taiwanese? Surely the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq are not lost on the PLA leadership.

(b) "Taiwan is only 100 miles off the Chinese coast. With China's DF-21 and other missiles with ranges of 1,500-2,000 miles, a reinforcing naval force [to aid Taiwan] would come under fire for at least two or more day's steaming before reaching the combat area. They would also have to avoid submarine and other maritime threats. The same problem applies to aviation units that would enter China's air defense zones.

"To complicate this matter of reinforcement and coming to Taiwan’s defense, some polls show that Americans are more worried about a Chinese invasion than are the Taiwanese. Defending a friend is more difficult when that friend is less preoccupied or concerned with the threat than US citizens are. The United States cannot be successful in defending Taiwan if it [this 'it' and the next refers to US, rather than Taiwan] regards the Chinese threat as more dangerous than the country it intends to protect

"Finally, fixating on an unlikely scenario, no matter how compelling it sounds, skews US resources and force levels. An expeditionary force designed to protect Taiwan may not fit more relevant roles such as supporting formal treaty allies, responding to other contingencies, and influencing China by force dispositions—especially if there is no appetite to invade in the first place. It was no accident that Napoleon and Hitler failed to cross the 25-mile wide English Channel!

(c) "Misunderstanding an adversary in developing a strategy leads to failure, or worse. Hitler thought Russia would fold in 1941.  The Japanese thought Pearl Harbor would force an American capitulation. Gen. Douglas MacArthur did not believe the Chinese would intervene in Korea as his forces raced toward the Yalu River in late 1950.  Washington believed it could bomb North Vietnam into submission, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraqis could easily takeover governing their country after Saddam Hussein had been overthrown.

(d) "What is the solution? [which is sectional heading] * * * 2 Learn how to win wars, not just battles. No matter how much effort is placed on developing policy and strategy, successive US administrations have ignored the following contradiction: The US military has become adept at winning battles, but the United States has become adept at losing wars. This must change. US policymakers and strategists should take account of the failures of the last several decades and incorporate these lessons into discussions of what a war with China would entail and how it might end.

"3 US strategy to address the threat to Taiwan must change. * * * Rather than persisting with an offensive-minded approach based on costly and vulnerable platforms, US and Taiwanese planners must adopt a Porcupine Defense and its Pacific variant, a Mobile Maritime Defense, to keep China’s military within the first island chain * * * Such a strategy would greatly complicate any future bid by China to take the island by force. But can Taiwan be convinced to undertake this approach? Taiwan has chosen to buy systems to attack China. This is a mistake. Taiwan will never have the capacity to deter a Chinese assault by threat of retaliation ['offensive-minded' and 'Taiwan has chosen to buy systems to attack China' hints at Taiwan's military brass mulling landing in mainland China should China invade first]. However, at lower cost, this Porcupine capability can be bought.

Note:
(a) Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013 (by Oxford University Press).
(i)
(A) The Northern Irish surname (of English origin) Harlan is "altered form of Harland."
(B) The English (mainly northeastern) surname Harland is "name from any of various minor places (including perhaps some now lost) named from Old English har gray, hara hare, or hær rock, tumulus + land tract of land, estate, cultivated land, notably Harland in Kirkbymoorside."

As you might have guessed correctly by now, hare and land in Modern English descended from Old English, so did gray or grey (from Old English grǣg).
(ii)
(A) The German surname Ullman is "a pet form of Ullrich."
(B) The German surname Ulrich is "from the personal [given] name Ulrich, Old High German Odalric, composed of the elements odal inherited property, fortune + ric power."
(b) Atlantic Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council  
(1961- ; a think tank favoring Atlanticism and based in Washington, DC)