A former top U.S. general is warning anew that a conflict between China and Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of the mainland and a “renegade” province, is now brewing and is closer than ever under the Biden administration.
As concerns over a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan grow, suspicions have emerged that Beijing may have played a role in damaging some of the island nation’s undersea internet cables this week, which is being viewed as another instance of deliberate harassment.
The disruption to Taiwan’s internet not only caused inconvenience to its inhabitants and visitors but also had serious implications for the country’s national security, Fox News reported.
While there is no conclusive proof that China deliberately cut the internet cables, the incident has drawn renewed attention to the potential impact of an attack on Taiwan, and whether the U.S. would have the means to prevent it, the report noted, adding:
U.S. war games involving a Chinese takeover of Taiwan generally involve a large-scale amphibious attack that would attempt to quickly and efficiently take the island and its international allies by surprise.
President Biden has said he will send troops to counter a Chinese land invasion, which would likely prompt responses from other regional U.S. allies and could make this form of assault costly and deadly for all parties involved.
But it has also prompted questions over whether the U.S. is capable of engaging with China in a traditional kinetic attack like the ongoing war in Ukraine.
“China does have a military advantage,” retired Gen. Jack Keane, a Fox News senior strategic analyst, told the network. “They have more ships, more airplanes, more offensive and defensive missiles than the United States has.”
Earlier this year, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conducted a war game simulation to determine the possible outcomes of an amphibious assault on Taiwan by China. The simulation revealed that the U.S. would likely exhaust its supply of long-range precision-guided missiles within a week, the network noted.
“The only advantage militarily that we have are our nuclear submarines,” Keane said, pointing out that even with that advantage, the U.S. still needed more of them.
Keane has argued that China is unlikely to carry out an assault on Taiwan using conventional warfare tactics. But U.S. defense officials believe that Chinese President Xi Jinping has slated such an assault for 2027.
“A more likely scenario would be a quarantine or a blockade of Taiwan where China would attempt to control the airspace, as well as the sea lanes, and gain control of it without firing a shot,” the retired four-star general said.
