BY PETER HARRIS

It is a truism within military history that the outcomes of conflicts have been decisively affected, among other factors, by the terrain and climate in which the conflict occurred. Two of the reasons Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union survived Napoleon and Hitler’s offensives respectively is because of the enormous size of Russian and Soviet territory which was impossible to subdue and the logistical horrors of the Russian winter. Sometimes, however, military leaders have gained the advantage of surprise by defying the landscape. During the Third Punic War (149-146 BC), Hannibal shocked the Romans by bringing his troops and elephants through the treacherous Alps rather than take the predictable sea crossing from Carthage to Italy.

Coming forward to 2024, and we find that the sea conditions and terrain of a much-disputed island would make invasion of it difficult. The island in question is Taiwan and it is China, which sees the island as Chinese, which threatens to invade. Therefore, for the past two decades, China has been developing military means of subduing the island such as increasing the size of its navy and air force and developing long-range missiles. But would a Chinese invasion of Taiwan be feasible when considering Taiwan’s geographical advantages? And if an invasion were feasible, would it not come at too great a cost to China in terms of casualties and the loss of materiel if the well-armed Taiwanese exploit their landscape and weather, and are assisted by their powerful allies?

The sea that separates Taiwan from China is the Taiwan Strait. It is ninety miles wide and is very choppy. It has two monsoon seasons and is often afflicted by extreme weather events. This means that China only has a window of a few months a year to mount a seaborne invasion. China’s assembling of a large invasion force on its east coast would be detected quickly by Taiwanese and American intelligence. China therefore cannot mount a surprise assault on Taiwan. It would require a huge fleet of ships to transport the thousands of troops necessary to subdue Taiwanese resistance, occupy the island and hold it against Taiwanese guerrilla warfare. As Chinese ships advance on Taiwan, the Taiwanese will be able to target them with their missile defence batteries lined along the coast and then subject Chinese troops to fire as they disembark. Though China will control the air because of its larger air force, the lessons of the Normandy D Day Landings reveal that though the Allies had control of the air too, well dug in German defences were still able to inflict large casualties. 

If we assume that China’s troops make it across the Strait, they face a second significant problem: Taiwan has few deep-water ports that can accommodate large numbers of troops and the large ships needed to transport them. Its west coast is shallow water that extends from its beaches. If the Chinese assault comes from the west, the Chinese navy will have to keep its ships anchored far from the beaches, thus making them targets for Taiwan’s missiles and artillery. Taiwan’s east coast is lined by very steep cliffs which are hard to scale. Unlike the Germans in June 1944 who did not know exactly where the Allies would strike from the range of options they had along the French coastline, the Taiwanese can concentrate their defences around a small number of landing sites and target Chinese troops as they try to break out of these bottlenecks. Potential landing sites have also been made defensible through the laying of mines and anti-landing spikes and the deployment of mobile missile launchers to provide support at places of need. The defenders also have the option of destroying their major ports to prevent the Chinese from exploiting them.

In the event of China establishing a beachhead, its military, if it is to subdue the whole island, will have to overcome Taiwanese troops positioned among Taiwan’s mountains that can reach over twelve thousand feet. Dislodging defenders from mountain redoubts is extremely hard as the armies of Italy and the Austrian Empire discovered during their Alpine campaign of World War One.

Capturing Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, will be a key objective in China’s control of the island. That objective will also be extremely challenging as its location favours the defenders. There are few routes into the city which is ringed by mountains in which defenders can take up concealed positions and pour lethal fire down onto their Chinese adversaries. The Taiwanese also have the option of destroying Taipei’s port and detonating the tunnels and highways leading into the city.

Once inside Taipei, the Chinese will be faced with the nerve-wracking and costly prospect of urban warfare in which every street and building will have to be fought for. The same scenario will play out in other Taiwanese cities.

Having said that climate and terrain are decisive sometimes in the outcome of military action, such factors only count if the population that has come under attack is determined to resist and exploit those advantages. Having seen the Chinese government’s behaviour towards its own citizens such as the Uighurs and towards the people of Hong Kong, and having elected a pro-independence president, it can safely be assumed that the Taiwanese will fight bitterly for their sovereignty. There is no good reason to conclude that Taiwan’s population will think otherwise in the coming years.

There are other considerations to be made concerning the likelihood of a Chinese invasion. China, like Russia, shows little sensitivity to the number of casualties it sustains in conflict. Unlike democracies where human rights are honoured, albeit imperfectly, dictatorships such as the Chinese Communist Party have no sense of the inherent sanctity of human life. Mao Tse-tung believed that nuclear war was an option because as his nation was so populous, it was likely that a few Chinese, which no doubt included himself, would survive whereas no American would. That in his apocalyptic mind constituted a Chinese victory. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the Chinese overwhelmed heavily armed UN positions using human wave tactics at great cost in casualties. It is possible that Beijing would be prepared to sustain huge casualties for the sake of absorbing Taiwan and that the defensibility of Taiwan would be no deterrent.

Another relevant issue is the attitude of Taiwan’s allies, the most important of which is the United States. The US is committed to maintaining Taiwan’s democratic independence and regularly sends its warships to the region as a reminder to the Taiwanese and the Chinese of its commitment. In the event of a Chinese invasion, the US and other nations committed to the restraint of China within the region, such as Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines, would join the conflict and render the invasion even more difficult, even impossible. Such a response would also make impossible a Chinese attempt to blockade and starve Taiwan into surrender.

Within present conditions and as a purely military and strategic question, it looks as if a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would most likely fail. However, as rough sea conditions in the Taiwan Strait and the island’s topography will not change, what will make an invasion feasible is if the Taiwanese cease to be pro-independence and the US for whatever reason decides not to stand with Taiwan. The first factor is unlikely to happen but there is a real possibility that the second will become reality. Donald Trump, who has stated with his customary petulance that he would encourage Russia to attack a NATO state that is not meeting its minimum defence spending obligation, may well take an isolationist view of Taiwan if he is elected president, even though Taiwan does spend highly on its military. For the time being, Chinese threats of invasion will remain bluster. But Beijing will be watching America’s election closely and if Trump takes control, will begin to push its luck over Taiwan more brazenly to test Washington’s mettle. What response China gets will be decisive in provoking it to war or to remaining in a stand-off. A Chinese annexation of Taiwan would be a disaster for the balance of economic power in the Far East and an encouragement to other states, most notably Russia, which are pursuing annexationist policies. It is time for America to elect a president who can hold allies to account over their military spending without emboldening tyrants with reckless declarations. It is time too for America’s allies to finance properly their armed forces and cease giving succour to isolationist forces in the US that might leave Taiwan undeservedly exposed.     

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020). Republished by kind permission of The New Conservative.