The situation is becoming increasingly serious regarding China’s intentions towards Taiwan. Before the latest bankers start screaming that Taiwan has nothing to do with America, oh yes it does. To make any move on Taiwan, China will have to strike Japanese, Philippine and American sovereign territory. This means that Americans will die when China moves and mutual defense treaties with Japan and the Philippines are invoked. US law affirms the intent to defend Taiwan from aggression or coercion. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 and additional text in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023 and 2024 are filled with passages directing closer military involvement and support for Taiwan to build deterrence capabilities against China.
Yes, the southern border must be immediately secured, the Fentanyl stopped, and the Chinese special operators should be rounded up as the first and highest priority. But the reality is that, regardless of who sits in the White House, Chinese action on Taiwan would trigger American involvement. This is not mutually exclusive with respect to the behavior of a “Big Guy” who received bribes directly from China along with his son. It can happen that you defend Taiwan and accept bribes at the same time. We will have to address this wrongdoing in the US House and as soon as possible after the US elections in November this year.
Kinmen and Matsu
There are two small island groups on the front line for Taiwan; Kinmen and Matsu. They also include two of Taiwan’s 22 counties. Kinmen is closest to Communist China, with only about a mile separating the smaller islet from Communist China. Matsu is an archipelago of several islands, known as Lienchiang County with the nearest island about six miles from the mainland. These two island groups are where President Eisenhower drew the line with the Chinese Communist Party in the 1950s, implying that America would use nuclear weapons if the Chinese attempted to take them over. There were two cross-strait crises, in 1954/55 and 1958. 1958 ended when Taiwanese fighters achieved approximately 35 downs of People’s Liberation Army Air Force fighters with the loss of four aircraft. This included the first use of the famous Sidewinder air-to-air missile. Even today, the islands have large artillery pieces in protected positions, ready to bombard the mainland during a conflict.
Kinmen is the closer and more vulnerable of the two island groups. New air traffic procedures invoked by China after Taiwan’s elections in January 2024 push Chinese air traffic closer to Taiwan proper, which may cause problems and loss of reaction time for Taiwan’s military reinforcements. The very short gap of water can allow for an unannounced assault by a high-speed vessel along with a Chinese airliner, packed with special operators, declaring an “airborne emergency” to land and seize Kinmen Airport. An accident has just occurred among Chinese fishermen illegally fishing in Taiwanese territorial waters in Kinmen: two Chinese drowned after falling from their boat. The tense situation is still evolving, China’s use of an event like this as a pretext to show fake indignation and conduct a landing on Kinmen is possible. US Special Forces are now permanently based in Taiwan with some attacking on Kinmen.
Capture the Suao naval base
When predicting a landing in Taiwan, it is often assumed that the beaches on Taiwan’s west coast, facing China, are the most likely location. The west coast of Taiwan contains a relatively
flat coastal plain that is only about 10-20 miles wide until it reaches the mountains of central and eastern Taiwan. This thin, long western coastal plain is home to most of Taiwan’s 24 million people and the prized factories of the TSMC company, which meets most of the world’s demand for computer chips. There are a couple of problems with landing on this thin coastal strip. The landing means that wood chip plants would immediately come under fire from combat operations. Furthermore, once on the ground, the hills and mountains are where much of the Taiwanese military is held in bunker positions, to meet and defeat the early stages of any landing or air assault.
However, an alternative landfall point could be at the upper end of the island on the Pacific side. It is located in Yilan County and has Taiwan’s main naval base in Suao. A landing here might be a bit of a surprise with the expectation of a landing on the coast opposite China. The goal may not be to conquer the entire island, but to seize only a small part of the island and continue to reinforce this initial landing. Yilan is a short distance, through the hills, to Taipei. The Chinese foothold could be used as a threat to take over the entire island if the government does not capitulate, which would spare TSMC’s chip plants and their workforce. Suao also provides immediate access to the deepest water discharges of the Pacific Ocean, which China now does not have. Currently, Chinese submarines must transit through the relatively shallow coastal areas of China and the South China Sea before they can exploit the deeper waters of the wider Pacific Ocean.
Landing on the small chain of Philippine islands between Taiwan and the Main Philippine Islands
The U.S. and Philippine Balikatan 2023 exercises provided the opportunity for the announcement of four new base camps in the northern Philippines for the U.S. military and other allied countries. The gap between these bases and Taiwan is just over 200 miles, close enough for American missile units to launch long-range missiles to support Taiwan’s defense. This announcement and the initial occupation of these new camps are expanding to include airfields and naval installations. About halfway between the Philippines and Taiwan lies the small group of Philippine islands called the Basco Islands. US HIMARS and other missile units are present on these islands. Control of these islands endangers Chinese submarines attempting to transit to the wider and deeper Pacific Ocean.
A Chinese raid to seize the Basco Island group could downplay and limit the initial stages of the conflict with the United States and could be used to negotiate the withdrawal of U.S. support for Taiwan. U.S. base camps in Basco and northern Luzon are still in the nascent stages of preparation, so an early assault by China could catch these bases unprepared to launch missile strikes against invading Chinese forces.
The CCP’s displeasure with the outcome of Taiwan’s January elections is evident. There is a narrow window of time to have some form of landing and/or seizure of key land on the perimeter or small sections of Taiwan proper before the start of the tropical storm season in May 2024. The Chinese are eager to demonstrate some success before the storm. the season begins. The storm season normally lasts until October, but the Chinese want to avoid the biggest of all, Hurricane Trump in November.