NOT SO FAST: INSIGHTS FROM A 1944 WAR PLAN HELP EXPLAIN WHY INVADING TAIWAN IS A COSTLY GAMBLE
BENJAMIN JENSENSEPTEMBER 8, 2022
COMMENTARYjensen
If you click on enough articles, watch television, or read testimony by military leaders, you might think an invasion of Taiwan is imminent. Think tank panels spring up daily discussing how Beijing is learning from Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Speculation abounds with worst-case scenarios imagining Xi Jinping using the West’s distraction in Ukraine to invade Taiwan.
While wargames and focusing attention on Taiwan’s real security challenges are important, the accompanying noise can be misleading and misses the hard reality of planning amphibious operations in the era of precision strike capabilities and information warfare. Here, historical cases illuminate some of the enduring challenges associated with invading Taiwan. While analogies are never perfect, recognizing patterns by cataloguing similarities and differences across cases helps identify key planning challenges.
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In 1944 U.S. military planners drafted a plan to invade Taiwan: Operation Causeway. The plan was ultimately rejected by senior leaders due to the high costs and risks relative to alternatives for advancing against Tokyo. Analyzing Causeway provides a historical baseline against which to assess the enduring challenges of joint forcible entry operations, particularly those executed from the sea. Put simply, crossing a contested sea only to fight on complex, canalizing terrain against a deliberate defense-in-depth makes amphibious assault in Taiwan a more complex operation than even the famed 1944 Operation Overlord — the D-Day landings. A mix of Taiwanese defense planning and the reality of modern battle network competition compound these challenges, making an invasion likely harder in 2022 than in 1944.
https://warontherocks.com/2022/09/not-so-fast-insights-from-a-1944-war-help-explain-why-invading-taiwan-is-a-costly-gamble/
