The probability of conflict between the United States and China
over Taiwan has diminished in recent years. The chief potential
flashpoint for war, a Taiwanese declaration of independence, has
become less likely as Taiwan's independence movement has waned and
economic ties with the mainland have strengthened. Should the
independence movement in Taiwan regain political momentum, however,
the potential for U.S. military intervention in the Taiwan Strait
would increase. Further, the perception of U.S. vulnerability in
the region could invite assertiveness. So, despite the fact that
armed conflict between the United States and China is in no one's
interest, China's burgeoning power requires that critical factor
sin U.S. plans for the defense of Taiwan be examined. This
collection of essays offers just such an examination. It looks at
China's growing strength, the strategies underlying U.S. plans for
military intervention in the Strait, U.S. vulnerabilities, and
options for how these vulnerabilities might be overcome through the
development of new technologies and strategies. The U.S. defense
commitment to Taiwan, thought tacit and conditional, has been a
long-standing strategic constant. America's ability to prevent the
invasion or coercion of Taiwan, however, is more variable. As the
Defense Department's most recent report to Congress on Chinese
military power indicates, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has
embarked on a concerted effort to modernize, with the goal of being
able to conduct (and counter) the sort of rapid, precise,
information-intensive operations of which the U.S. military is now
capable. Of particular concern in a Taiwan scenario is China's
growing ability to track, target, and destroy U.S. carrier strike
groups (CSGs), which are the fulcrum of American military strategy
in the region. The Defense Department reports that the PLA is
focused on targeting surface ships at long ranges, perhaps as far
as the "second island chain," east of Japan and as far south as
Guam. China is amassing the intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance (SR) and strike assets needed to conduct long-range
precision attacks. These growing capabilities are coupled with PLA
doctrine that emphasizes preemption and surprise attack; the
potential significance of this turn of thought was underscored by
China's January 2007 demonstration of antisatellite weapon. China's
growing capabilities demand that the United States carefully review
the evolving military balance in the western Pacific and consider
the implications for further strategy. Each essay addresses a key
part of the Taiwan intervention puzzle. The compilation moves from
an overview of U.S. strength and China's growing military abilities
(Gompert); to two pieces on China's present and future military
technology (Cheung) and personnel (Lo) resources; to an examination
of a particular threat to U.S. regional power, China's improving
ISR capabilities (Mulvenon); to a review of U.S. maritime
(McDevitt) and aerial (Shlapak) strengths and vulnerabilities; to a
piece on how some aerial vulnerabilities could be allayed with UAVs
(Libicki); to an analysis of U.S. options to better deter Chinese
aggression (Gompert and Long); to a forward-looking article on how
a new U.S. fleet architecture could change the balance of power in
a Taiwan Strait conflict (Johnson).
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