It is time for the United States to start playing offense in the Taiwan Strait. China’s People’s Liberation Army is demonstrating a developing capability to assault Taiwan while operating in ways that advance its preparations to do so and diminish Taipei’s capacity for self-defense.
These stepped-up military activities, along with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s apparent intention to settle the so-called “Taiwan question” during his tenure as China’s paramount leader, are changing the status quo in Asia’s once and future flashpoint. Between September 2020 and Aug. 1 of this year, a daily average of nearly three Chinese military aircraft crossed into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, an extraterritorial buffer in which Taiwanese forces monitor airborne threats, according to data released by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense and compiled by defense analysts Gerald Brown and Ben Lewis. Between Aug. 2, the day before House Speaker Nancy Pelosi landed in Taipei, and Nov. 21, that average jumped to nearly eight.
Crossings of the median line, which runs down the center of the Taiwan Strait, had been rare in the two decades preceding 2020. Now, they are routine. There has also been an apparent surge in Chinese naval activity around Taiwan since August. Taiwan’s armed forces track these activities while scrambling jets and deploying warships to shadow Chinese counterparts. The costs to Taiwan, especially to its air force, are substantial. Growing numbers of flight hours are borne by a relatively small fighter jet inventory, while a relatively small coterie of pilots faces impending exhaustion. Maintainers are keeping busy — perhaps in ways that enhance their proficiency but also in ways that force them to burn through precious spare parts.
China’s numerical advantage, meanwhile, allows the PLA to keep its pilots fresh and to avoid undue stress on airframes while it soaks up intelligence on Taiwanese force posture, electromagnetic spectrum emissions, and methods of operation. In establishing a regular, robust presence in the waters and skies around Taiwan, moreover, China seeks to create a new normal, inuring both Taiwan and the broader international community to Chinese military operations. Over time, this will have the effect of neutering international ire (such as it is) about Beijing’s bellicosity and enabling strategic surprise.
Moreover, if the PLA is constantly operating at a high tempo, one can never be sure when an island-landing exercise, for example, will turn into the real thing. Taiwan should and will remain primarily responsible for monitoring and responding to PLA activities. But it has limited options for adopting a more proactive posture, given relatively limited resources and a paramount need to mount, and to husband resources for, a sustained and more narrowly focused defense. Enter the United States.
Washington’s response to the PLA’s new normal in and near the Taiwan Strait has been muted. American naval vessels sail through the strait a few times each year; occasional military exercises in the Philippine Sea, to the east of Taiwan, draw Chinese attention; and American aircraft do appear to keep tabs on goings-on in the Taiwan Strait from time to time, though generally from outside the strait itself. The U.S. should aim to maneuver China into a much more responsive posture. Regular sorties of American military aircraft in the strait and along China’s coastline stretching north and south would force China to scramble its own fighters in response. Near-constant presence of American surface combatants and intelligence-gathering vessels in the strait, especially west of the median line, would soak up PLA naval, air, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance resources. In short, the U.S. should give China a taste of its own medicine: Distract it from its priorities vis-a-vis Taiwan and maneuver the PLA into dedicating resources, which Chinese leaders would prefer to use to pressure and coerce Taipei, to respond to American operations.
To enable such operations, Washington should reestablish Taiwan Defense Command, which stood from 1955 to 1979. It can be headquartered in Japan or Guam rather than in Taiwan itself and should be focused exclusively on monitoring and countering threats to the island democracy. At present, there is no organization within Indo-Pacific Command with such narrow responsibilities. At its height, Taiwan Defense Command had 19,000 troops under its command. Such a substantial allocation of manpower is not necessary now, but in time, it should have a dedicated force of ships, aircraft, and intelligence collection platforms with which to carry out its mission. In all likelihood, this will ultimately require larger defense budgets, budgets that prioritize capacity over capability, or far greater parsimony in global force deployment decisions.
For too long, China has had the initiative in the Taiwan Strait. It has changed the rules of the game, established a new normal, and put itself in an advantageous position vis-a-vis Taiwan and Taiwan’s partners. Washington should not continue to abide by this state of affairs blithely. The U.S. is uniquely capable of putting the PLA in an uncomfortable position, one with which it is now largely unfamiliar — the defensive.
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Michael Mazza is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at the Global Taiwan Institute.
