Chinese premier Xi has said on several occasions that reclaiming Taiwan ought not to be left to future generations, implying that he feels the need to reclaim the island during his own generation, and perhaps even during his own term in office. That has raised again the question of whether the US would actively defend Taiwan if the Chinese attempted an invasion. And President Biden, perhaps inadvertently, has muddied the waters even more recently by asserting, in answer to a direct question, that yes, the US would defend Taiwan. That departs for the “strategic ambiguity” policy the US has followed for decades, and although his handlers in the White House tried to walk back his assertion, it has opened up the question again.
Strategically it would be difficult for the US to defend Taiwan against an invasion from China. The logistics are against it. China is only 100 miles from Taiwan, while the nearest major US base (Guam) is almost 3000 miles away. It would take weeks, if not months, to assemble a significant US military force to defend or retake the island. The military has wargamed such a defense repeatedly, and the unofficial word is that in 18 wargames, the US prevailed not once.
That’s not to say that a Chinse invasion of Taiwan would be easy for them. Amphibious landings are exceeding difficult, and the Chinese have no experience with them. Taiwan has spent a lot of time and money making itself a difficult target, and we have sold them lots of advanced equipment to help with that. A Chinese invasion, though probably ultimately successful, would probably incur very high casualties, not only among the invasion forces but in the nearby Chinese ports supporting the invasion fleet.
But there is a broader strategic picture that has to be considered. Taiwan is important to the US for at least two reasons. First, it is part of the “first island chain” that contains and controls China’s access to the sea, so it plays a vital part in the current US strategy to maintain the South China Sea as a free transport corridor for about 40% of the world’s goods. Second, Taiwan is the source of our most advanced microchips, without which the US economy and military would be in big trouble.
So while the US might have trouble providing direct military help to a beleaguered Taiwan, it would have no trouble at all cutting China off from its major oil supplies in the Middle East, or much of its food imports, or the exports to the West, principally the US, that account for a significant portion of its GDP.
Consider just energy. China in peacetime needs to import about 10.5 million barrels a day (about 8 supertankers a day) just to keep the lights on and the factories running. In wartime it would need much more. Almost all of that comes thousands of miles away from the Middle East along sea routs dominated by the US and it allies. Stop or sink a couple of tankers and that flow ends.
Or consider the Chinese economy, about 20% of which is accounted for by exports. Cut that off and the economy is in deep trouble, even worse trouble than it is in already.
So yes, China could probably retake Taiwan by force, but the cost would be very, very high. Whatever ideological pronouncements the Chinese may make for domestic or foreign consumption, the Chinese tend to be pretty pragmatic, and I would guess that they would look at the cost/benefit ratio and decide that while continuing to threaten invasion might serve a strategic purpose, actually attempting an invasion would cost them more than a victory was worth.
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