Chinese President Xi Jinping has made reunification with Taiwan one of his most important foreign policy goals.
If he was actually able to pull it off, he would be a national hero in China. But there is a huge problem standing in his way. The moment that China invades Taiwan, a war with the United States will begin. Xi Jinping understands this very well, and so if an invasion of Taiwan is going to happen it must take place at a moment that is favorable to the Chinese. Many would argue that we will be in such a window of opportunity for about the next year and a half. Right now, the U.S. and other western nations are pouring vast amounts of military resources into the conflict in Ukraine. As a result, they are ill-prepared to militarily confront a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In addition, Xi Jinping knows that Joe Biden would not use nuclear weapons if the Chinese move against Taiwan. It would be a conventional war, and such a scenario would greatly favor China. But if the Chinese wait until after the next presidential election in the United States, Donald Trump or another Republican could be in the White House, and the risk of sparking a nuclear conflict would go up substantially.
So if Xi Jinping wants to make a move, the clock is ticking.
And over the past few weeks, he has made statements that certainly suggest that he intends to get China prepared for a coming war with the United States. The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…
At a top-level meeting focused on national security on May 30, the Chinese leader said, “We must be prepared for worst-case and extreme scenarios, and be ready to withstand the major test of high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms.” A week later, Xi extended that concept to the economic arena. While inspecting an industrial park in Inner Mongolia, Xi said efforts to build up the domestic market are aimed at “ensuring normal operation of the national economy under extreme circumstances.”
The foreign policy experts that the Journal interviewed for their story clearly understood that Xi was referring to war.
And the only reason the Chinese would be fighting a major war any time soon is if they launch an invasion of Taiwan.
Over the past week, China has continued to send large numbers of military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defense zone…
Taiwan’s air force scrambled into action on Sunday after spotting 10 Chinese warplanes crossing the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait, as the island’s defence ministry said four Chinese warships also carried out combat patrols. This is the second time in less than a week that Taiwan has reported renewed Chinese military activity, after 37 Chinese military aircraft on Thursday flew into the island’s air defence zone, some of which then flew into the western Pacific.
They are probing Taiwan’s defenses.
The are looking for weak spots and they are testing to see how the Taiwanese would respond to certain scenarios.
But every time the Chinese send planes and ships toward Taiwan, it will only make tensions in the region even worse.
Of course the U.S. has certainly not helped matters by sending more troops to the island…
In February, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen said American and Taiwan military forces will cooperate “even more closely” and plan to “bolster military exchanges.” At the time, CNN reported that between 20 and 40 American Marines were routinely based on the island, largely for security operations around America’s unofficial diplomatic outpost. In April, the Taiwan News reported that America had increased its presence to about 200 troops, according to The Defense Post.
We are repeating the same pattern that we witnessed just before the Russians invaded Ukraine.
The Biden administration just keeps taking steps to aggravate China, and the Chinese just keep taking steps to aggravate the Biden administration.
If we aren’t very careful, at some point the Chinese will be pushed over the edge.
Are we almost there now?
A major British news source is telling us that the Biden administration has actually been developing plans for “the evacuation of Americans living in Taiwan”…
The US government is reported to be currently organising the evacuation of Americans living in Taiwan. According to themessanger.com, a senior US intelligence person who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to disclose the strategy, reported this evacuation planning has been ongoing for at least six months and has significantly increased over the last few months.
If an evacuation happens, that will be a very clear sign that war is imminent.
So let us hope that an evacuation does not happen any time soon.
If a war with China does erupt, many Americans will assume that the U.S. will win.
But the truth is that literally dozens of war games that our leaders have conducted in recent years have all shown that we would lose such a conflict, and that includes a war game that was just held in April…
The war began in the early morning hours with a massive bombardment — China’s version of “shock and awe.” Chinese planes and rockets swiftly destroyed most of Taiwan’s navy and air force as the People’s Liberation army and navy mounted a massive amphibious assault across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait. Having taken seriously President Joe Biden’s pledge to defend the island, Beijing also struck pre-emptively at U.S. and allied air bases and ships in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. managed to even the odds for a time by deploying more sophisticated submarines as well as B-21 and B-2 stealth bombers to get inside China’s air defense zones, but Washington ran out of key munitions in a matter of days and saw its network access severed. The United States and its main ally, Japan, lost thousands of servicemembers, dozens of ships, and hundreds of aircraft. Taiwan’s economy was devastated. And as a protracted siege ensued, the U.S. was much slower to rebuild, taking years to replace ships as it reckoned with how shriveled its industrial base had become compared to China’s. The Chinese “just ran rings around us,” said former Joint Chiefs Vice Chair Gen. John Hyten in one after-action report. “They knew exactly what we were going to do before we did it.”
Once China invades Taiwan, we will be at war with the Chinese.
As long as the war doesn’t go nuclear, the Chinese know that they would have the advantage.
And our leaders know that the Chinese would have the advantage.
But Joe Biden is not going to start lobbing nukes at the Chinese mainland in order to keep them out of Taiwan.
That just isn’t going to happen.
So there is a window of opportunity for Chinese President Xi Jinping to do something that he desperately wants to do.
Until the next presidential election in the United States he has a chance to grab Taiwan, but for all of our sakes let us hope that he chooses not to go that route.