Military exercises are underway in Taiwan, timed to match publicly Chinese drills for an eventual invasion of the island.
Taiwanese fighter jets practiced landing on a highway that was temporarily closed to traffic early Wednesday, a rare drill to prepare pilots for the possible bombing of air bases by China, officials said.The island has not held such an exercise in 26 years, and it comes as China conducts war games that Beijing's state-controlled media have said are practice for a long-threatened attack on Taiwan.
Using the highway as a runway is part of Taiwan's series of annual war games, called the Hankuang, or Chinese Glory, said Defense Ministry spokesman Huang Shuey-sheng. Two French-made Mirage jets practiced landing, refueling, reloading and taking off on the road, he said.
One popular war scenario has China destroying Taiwan's air strips with short-range missiles and bombers. To deal with such a loss, the Taiwanese have designated several sections of highway as emergency runways.
On Tuesday, Taiwan's military urged the public not to worry about the large-scale military exercises China is holding this month on Dongshan Island, off China's southern coast. The military dismissed them as routine annual drills.
But China's state-controlled media have warned that one purpose of the drills was to discourage Taiwan from seeking formal independence. Some Taiwanese especially younger residents oppose unification with China.
A recent English-language article on the People's Daily Online Web site reported that the drills were a warning to "Taiwan Independence elements" that the Chinese military "is capable and confident in settling the Taiwan issue by military force."
(In case you didn't notice, China's Jiang Zemin recently warned that China plans to "recover" Taiwan by 2020.)
A recent STRATFOR analysis showcases strategic concerns that China may take advantage of our military focus on the Middle East. In their eyes, the recent visit to Beijing by Condoleeza Rice was about firefighting.
With the United States involved in a global war against Islamist jihadists, the last thing it needs at the moment is a crisis with a regional great power. For the past three years, the tendency of these great powers -- France and Germany included -- has been to give the United States a wide berth, confining conflict to rhetoric. But for the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks, there are signs that a crisis in relations between the United States and a regional great power, China, might be developing. The crisis might be prevented, or perhaps it will not actually rise to the level of a serious confrontation. But there is a new cloud on the horizon, and it needs to be taken seriously.Posted by Alan at July 21, 2004 08:46 PMthe correlation of forces has moved in favor of China of late. Several significant military improvements -- particularly concerning naval forces -- have been achieved: Russia has delivered two Sovremenny-class destroyers -- the Fuzhou and Hangzhou, which the Chinese refer to as "aircraft carrier killers." Since the United States is the only country in the neighborhood with aircraft carriers, that fact should be taken seriously. Two additional Sovremennys are on order, and all of them are armed with the SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship missiles -- among the best in the world.
China also has produced a new type of attack submarine that U.S. defense and intelligence officials say their agencies had not realized was under construction. The submarine appears to be a hybrid of Chinese and Russian technology. It was spotted for the first time several weeks ago and has been designated by the Pentagon as the first Yuan class of submarine. A photograph of the completed submarine in the water at China's Wuhan shipyard was posted on a Chinese Internet site this week and -- according to the Washington Times -- was confirmed by a defense official as the new Yuan class.
This means two things. First, the Chinese intended for the United States to know about the new submarine. Second, U.S. intelligence estimates about China are questionable. The Bush administration has to be asking this: If the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency didn't know about the Yuan-class submarines until the Chinese posted pictures on the Internet, what else did they not know about? Just how much better are the Chinese than U.S. officials think? That was the effect Beijing wanted to have, and it succeeded.
The last thing the Bush administration needs now is a raging crisis with China. It would make the administration appear even less competent in its foreign policy management than it already does -- at a time when the war is creating real gaps in U.S. military capability. It is very hard to imagine that Washington has any reason, strategic or political, to want a crisis with China. Rice did not go to China to start a fire, but to put one out.
It follows from this that the administration is picking up intelligence that China wants a confrontation. Chinese leaders certainly have a reason to create a crisis, and the current military situation gives them a real opening that they would be foolish not to take advantage of. The timing is right. New equipment has not yet been integrated into Taiwan's arsenal, but China has deployed key weapons. The United States is not well positioned to support Taiwan indefinitely, but China can keep this up indefinitely, and has political reasons to do so.
We do not believe China is in a position to mount an amphibious assault. Its navy is not ready for such a task, and Taiwan is no pushover. However, a major crisis in the Taiwan Straits would set the stage for redefining Beijing-Taipei relations at a time when the United States has limited resources and an interest in bringing the crisis to a quick solution. It follows from this that Washington would try to appear as bellicose as possible with Beijing, trying to convince leaders there that the United States is ready for anything. Of course, the United States is not ready for anything, and the Chinese know it.
No matter how Washington postures, those carriers might be needed at any time in the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea -- or even in the Mediterranean, if something happens in North Africa or Syria. The last thing the United States wants is to tie down its carriers in the Taiwan Straits. Which means that the Chinese are setting up a very tough negotiation. They have not yet defined what they want, but the United States is going to be hard-pressed to avoid paying the price for what it cannot afford: another crisis at the other end of Eurasia.
Indeed, as U.S. forces are stretched thinner and thinner in the jihadist war, other major regional powers will be thoughtfully considering the outcome of China's probe. The United States cannot afford to be weak, but it lacks the resources to be strong. That demands extremely creative diplomacy -- also known as the art of the bluff.