Lawfare Daily: Wargaming a Chinese Blockade of Taiwan

[Intro]

Mark Cancian: If the Chinese are harassing the Taiwanese and the Taiwanese used their military they can thwart the Chinese intent. In fact, that can sink a lot of Chinese Coast Guard and militia ships.

Dan Byman: It is the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Daniel Byman, the foreign policy editor of Lawfare with Mark Cancian, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Mark Cancian: It's important to recognize that a conflict over Taiwan would affect every person on the planet because of the disruption of international trade, because of disruption of particularly chip manufacturing. Every nation would feel the effects.

Dan Byman: Today we're talking about Dr. Cancian's new report on the Chinese blockade of Taiwan.

[Main Podcast]

Let me start with the blockade part of that title. Why should we be considering blockade as opposed to a more traditional all-out invasion as a major strategic concern?

Mark Cancian: You have to think about the possibilities along a spectrum. At the lowest end, there's what people call gray area competition. This is below actual kinetic competition, harassment, that sort of thing. Then you move up to blockades and then invasion, and then at the high end, maybe nuclear.

We've done projects looking at other elements here. We wanted to look at blockade though, because when we ran invasion war games many people said, blockade might be more likely. So we didn't disagree but the dynamics were different. So we developed this separate project to look at a blockade.

And a particular reason to look at a blockade is that China appears to be practicing for a blockade. They've conducted exercises where their naval and air forces surround Taiwan, where they fire missiles around Taiwan. So many people look at this and say that they are preparing for a blockade.

Dan Byman: Mark, this report has gotten a lot of attention. I'm hoping our listeners will have time to read it, but can you briefly summarize the big takeaways from your report?

Mark Cancian: Yeah, there are five big takeaways from the report, and the first one is bad things happen. In other words, although we don't predict that a conflict will occur, the Chinese rhetoric and military buildup make that a possibility. And the example we use is that if we heard that tomorrow the Chinese were preparing conflict with Taiwan, no one would hit their forehead and say, wow, didn't see that coming. No, everybody would say, we've been talking about that for years.

The second thing is that Taiwan can put up a stiff fight but they cannot fight China alone. The disparity in military capability is just too great. They need the United States.

The third thing is that there's no Ukraine strategy that will work with Taiwan. In other words, with Ukraine, the United States and NATO and other countries have been able to supply Ukraine continuously through the war. Russia has tried to interdict those supply lines, but has been unable to do that. With Taiwan, it's very different, very difficult to get supplies and munitions to Taiwan once the war begins. Very difficult to get the right kinds of supplies there. So a strategy whereby the U.S. doesn't participate directly but supplies Taiwan would not be successful.

The fourth item is that successful intervention is possible. Losses will be very high in these convoy battles, potentially losing hundreds of cargo ships. But the United States can keep Taiwan supplied, so it remains an autonomous and democratic entity.

And finally, preparations reduce risk and increase deterrence. In other words, we can do things now–we, the Taiwanese, and the Japanese–can do things now that will increased deterrence by showing China that we are ready, but also enhance war fighting if it comes to that.

Dan Byman: What could China get out of a blockade in contrast to an invasion that, from its point of view, achieves its objectives, yet presumably avoids an all out war?

Mark Cancian: That's it. Many people look at blockade as a possibly a low risk, low cost way for China to impose its will on Taiwan. The notion also is that China could stop at any time, pull back if it decided that it needed to do that. Others see blockade as a potential precursor to an invasion to soften up Taiwan.

Now in our war games we found that none of these are really true. That is that very often the costs on a blockade are high. There's a lot of potential for escalation and it's not a very good prelude to invasion because China has warned everybody that it is doing something very aggressive. And therefore the region and the United States can prepare.

Dan Byman: So you mentioned that this was a war game and this is where your results come from. Let's step back a little bit and for our listeners who are not familiar with the use of war games to understand different strategic risks and operational outcomes, talk us through how you can use a war game to look at a potential blockade of Taiwan.

Mark Cancian: Well war games are very good for capturing competitive situations because you have two sides who are competing against each other. It's not a computer model where everything is determined from the beginning. We did 26 iterations of the game in a variety of scenarios. And it was important to do a large number because that captures better, spectrum of possibilities and provides a stronger foundation for making policy recommendations.

If you only run a game once or twice it's very educational for the people who are involved, but not a solid foundation for analysis because you are looking at one particular scenario with one particular set of players and one strategy. So it was important to do a wide variety of games. And we structured the war games for blockade in a couple of ways.

First, we developed three modules that we used in all of the different scenarios. There was one that analyzed ship availability when cargo ships would become available. There was another that looked at combat results at different levels of intensity. And then the final one looked at Taiwan, its economy and society and what the effect of reductions in imports might be.

26 scenarios, we divided into two pieces. One piece we structured by levels of escalation. That is from on the Chinese side, for example, from boarding and seizing vessels at the low end all the way up to full scale conflict. For the United States and Taiwan from Taiwan, taking a very restrained attitude then the United States coming in all the way up again to full scale conflict.

We did 21 of those and then we did five, what we call free play, where the two sides could come in and set whatever level of escalation they wanted so they could start at a low level and that escalate up and that captured the dynamics of escalation, whereas the former captured what happens at a single level of escalation.

Dan Byman: Let's talk about some of those effects on Taiwan. So the blockade is launched, and what happens in many of your iterations of this war game? What happens on the Taiwanese side?

Mark Cancian: we can divide the results into two categories. Is Taiwan alone? That is, if Taiwan is facing China, it has. Built up inventories, particularly of energy and food. Turns out that food is not a major constraint, energy is.

And they also have air and naval forces, and they can fight some convoys through a Chinese blockade, but eventually they're overwhelmed. So without U.S. support the Taiwanese cannot hold out for more than a couple of weeks.

If the United States becomes involved, then you end up with these huge convoy battles as the United States forms up convoys notionally in Japan and then pushes them through to Taiwan, often losing many cargo ships. But ultimately in most cases, being able to keep the Taiwanese supplied, particularly 'cause they have that buffer on the front end, in the middle of the conflict that, the electricity and imports go down, but generally they re, they recover as more convoys get through.

Dan Byman: When we think about blockade, you, as you said earlier, one of the purposes might be to avoid all out war and China could step back at any time if it decides for whatever reason this isn't working out the way it anticipates. Talk to me about escalation. When you're talking about effects on Taiwan, you said a bunch of cargo ships got sunk if the U.S. is effectively trying to break the blockade, how do escalation dynamics play out for both sides

Mark Cancian: Typically one side or the other will escalate if it believes it is failing at a lower level of escalation. In other words, if the Chinese are harassing the Taiwanese and the Taiwanese use their military they can thwart the Chinese intent. In fact, that can sink a lot of Chinese Coast Guard and militia ships. And then in response, very often the Chinese player will then bring in its military, which will then take on the Taiwanese. Taiwan then puts out a plea to the United States that they can't hold out on the own anymore. The United States maybe comes in and that's the escalation dynamic that you frequently see.

So an interesting thing we did see also was that very often the two sides or one side would try to signal to the other using various actions. And what we found is that those signals were often misunderstood. In other words, the one side might think it's signaling restraint while the other side sees a preparation for a larger attack.

Dan Byman: Can you gimme an example of that because that's a really important finding to me?

Mark Cancian: One side maybe Taiwan would attack ships off the coast, maybe Chinese ships off the coast, but not in harbor. And their thinking was, alright, we're signaling that we are allowing their homeland to be a sanctuary and they should do the same for us.

But what the Chinese see is the Taiwanese striking very close to home, you know, maybe their next step is to strike vessels in port. And what we took away from that was that these signals needed to be accompanied by something verbal, some explanation that very often they were not enough on their own to be understood.

Dan Byman: Let me switch gears and ask you a little bit about some of the legal ramifications of what has been going on. As you have this blockade scenario, how does international law, how does U.S. law, how does all that play into the decision making?

Mark Cancian: Yeah, this is a very unusual situation and I'll give an overview. I'm not a lawyer, so I will, leave the details and the subtleties to the lawyers. But the basic tension will be that China regards Taiwan as a renegade province. So it will argue that internal Chinese law applies and that this is a law enforcement action, not a situation in international relations.

The United States is going to be in a difficult position because it has agreed that there is one China. We have One China policy, and therefore it's not arguing that Taiwan is a separate entity. Now, the Taiwan Relations Act, which was passed right after this change in policy does say that any reunification should be done peacefully and with the consent of the Taiwanese people.

But it's going to be awkward. The United States is going to have to frame this conflict as a disruption of international peace and a threat to international norms by using military force against an entity that doesn't want to be included. Looking maybe Ukraine, except that Ukraine was recognized as a sovereign country, whereas Taiwan generally is not. China will be trying to frame this, of course, as an internal matter that other people should not be involved with.

Dan Byman: Let's widen the aperture a little bit beyond Taiwan. So when we talk about blockade, how does this affect global trade and how does this affect the broader region?

Mark Cancian: It's important to recognize that a conflict over Taiwan would affect every person on the planet because of the disruption of international trade, because of disruption of particularly chip manufacturing. Every nation would feel the effects, maybe not immediately, maybe over time, but this would affect everybody.

The U.S. would likely be trying to put together a broad diplomatic support. It's unlikely that many countries will be willing to participate militarily but they might support some sort of sanctions and calls for ceasefire. The United States will also need to emphasize that both it and Taiwan are committed to maintaining autonomous Taiwan. Otherwise, other countries might put pressure on Taiwan to submit in order to get the international economy going again. And many countries might be willing to sacrifice Taiwan for that purpose. So the United States's gonna have to be clear putting pressure on Taiwan is not gonna resolve the situation.

Another thing is that chip production could continue for some period of time because chips don't require a lot of imports. They can continue as long as they get priority on electricity and water. And in our modeling, we did give them that priority cut off other sectors of the national economy, metal work, for example, in construction in order to focus on chips. So that is available as a bargaining lever.

Dan Byman: When we start to go outside Taiwan which countries in the region are the most important in a blockade scenario from a US point of view?

Mark Cancian: From the U.S. point of view, Japan is absolutely critical, and this was true in all of our three projects, that is invasion with nuclear weapons, and now blockade. And the reason is that the United States has so many bases in Japan that it's vital that the United States be able to use them.

At the high levels of conflict this is important because U.S. fighter aircraft are very short legged, F-35s, F-22s, F-15s. They can't operate from Guam, for example. It's just too far away to conduct repeated sorties over Taiwan. They have to conduct these missions from close in. The United States has an Air Force on Okinawa, which is only a couple of hundred miles away called Kadena.

And then several bases on mainland Japan. There's Iwakuni that's not very far away, and several others, and those are absolutely vital. If the United States doesn't have access to them, then it can't use its fighter aircraft in which it is invested hundreds of billions of dollars. It can fight using combers, which can be stationed outside of the Chinese defensive zone. And when coupled with long range missiles, but often that's not enough to overcome the Chinese military capabilities. So Japan is absolutely critical.

The Philippines can be helpful. They don't have the extensive bases that Japan does, and they also have said they don't wanna get involved in a conflict over Taiwan. The United States does have access to nine bases on the Philippines. Those are aimed mostly at the South China Sea, where there's tension between the Philippines and China. That's what the Philippines has in mind. Not having the United States use its territory to strike Chinese forces around Taiwan.

It's important finally to point out that there's a tension between U.S. trade Policy and U.S. national security policy. Our trade policy is being very harsh with our allies in the region around the world, including Japan. But Japan is absolutely critical if we are going to defend Taiwan and the Department of Defense in its internal guidance, apparently has noted, identified Taiwan as the key scenario for which it's going to prepare war fighting capabilities.

So on the one hand we say this is absolutely key. On the other hand, we are hurting the Japanese with our trade policy. And you know that tension needs to be resolved.

Dan Byman: Yeah. Consistency is not our foreign policy strong point I would say. This is the third study you mentioned. You did a traditional invasion scenario and invasion with nuclear weapons. When we're thinking about blockade versus those other scenarios, how do the lessons differ? What are the results that wouldn't be true in the other scenarios or are less true?

Mark Cancian: The major tension between the blockade scenarios and for example, the invasion scenarios revolves around the structure of the Taiwanese armed forces.

If you go back to 1949 when the Kuomintang left mainland China moved over to Taiwan, over the years they built a military that was balanced the way the conventional militaries are balanced. That is, they had an air force, they had a Navy and they had an Army. And that was fine up until about 2000 because the Chinese were very weak at sea and very weak in the air. So Taiwan could compete with China in those areas.

However, by, in the late 1990s and into the two thousands, China began this immense military buildup, and Taiwan could no longer compete. So there's a, a strategy that many people have dis have discussed called porcupine strategy for Taiwan. And that says, move away from these traditional capabilities like jet aircraft and ships because they're so vulnerable to this immense Chinese military machine. And instead, focus on making Taiwan a porcupine. In other words, emphasize systems like ground-based, anti-ship missiles, ground-based air defense, mines the kinds of things that would make it very difficult for China to invade successfully.

The tension is that in the blockade scenarios up to the high end, it is useful having Taiwan be able to field jet aircraft and ships because they help escort convoys and bring in this, this economic lifeline. So when we did the invasion game, we were very focused on porcupine, which many people have talked about including on Taiwan. But we came to recognize that there was a role for these other forces also.

Dan Byman: So one of the purposes of war games is to learn lessons, and one hopes that if it's convincing lessons that policymakers will make changes. So in order to prepare for the potential for blockade, what recommendations would you make for Taiwan? What should they be doing differently compared with their current policies?

Mark Cancian: There are several things that we recommend for Taiwan. Most of which Taiwan is aware of and some of which they've already begun work on.

The first one is energy resilience. In every study of blockade of Taiwan comes to the conclusion that energy is the key weakness. It's not food. When people talk about blockades. They first think about food, population's starving. That's not the major constraint because first Taiwan produces some food on its own. They have large inventories because they're aware of this possibility. And you don't need to get a whole lot of imports in to feed the population.

So food is not the problem, it's energy. Taiwan has enough energy, enough natural gas to last about two weeks. Coal goes out about seven weeks. Oil goes out much further into sort of 20ish weeks. The Taiwanese have consciously built up reserves of each of these to provide a buffer, and that buffer is very useful because it buys time. It buys time for Taiwan to a reorient its society and get its population ready. It buys time for the United States and other countries to maybe build a diplomatic or even a military coalition. So that's very valuable.

One problem is that Taiwan is implementing a green energy initiative. It's closing down its nuclear power plants and moving away from coal, and for environmental reasons that very sensible. The problem is that undermines resilience. Because natural gas is much harder to store than coal, for example. Coal's very easy to store, it's very easy to add inventories and nuclear, of course, is always available, you don't need any imports. As they move towards this green energy initiative their ability to resist declines substantially.

And one of our recommendations is to keep the nuclear power plants going. There's one that they are just shutting down. Our recommendation is keep it going. And two move directly to renewables rather than go through this intermediate step of natural gas. Renewables are great in a blockade, but right now of course, they're much too small a contributor to overall energy.

Another area is merchant ships and developing the authorities to get access to merchant ships in an emergency. Taiwan has a large merchant Navy under its own flag. They have even more ships that they own, but are on under other flags and in a crisis they will need to have, get access to those other ships and also maybe build a reserve of ships that they can call on.

Because in most blockade sit situations, and we hypothesize in this one, what happens is that there's a two step process of getting cargo to the target country. The first step goes to some neutral port and the second step goes into the target country and this is where the danger lies. In the case of Taiwan, we hypothesize that this neutral port is in Japan. Cargoes are transhipped onto ships that will run the blockade and take the risks that do that.

We saw the same thing in the U.S. Civil War. Ports in Cuba and The Bahamas acted as staging areas for the Confederacy. They put the cargoes onto the blockade runners, which were inefficient as cargo ships, but were fast and able to run the blockade. So we have the same dynamic here. But you have to get access to those ships relatively quickly, particularly natural gas tankers because Taiwan is dependent on that.

And the final thing is hardening the electrical system because China would likely attack that system. And although it can be repaired, that takes time and it would be Taiwan would be much stronger position if it hardened the system and also had the ability to rapidly repair it.

Dan Byman: The United States, as you said, has put Taiwan front and center of its national security policy. Thinking about blockade as opposed to defending Taiwan from an invasion, what steps should the United States be doing either in conjunction with Taiwan or on its own?

Mark Cancian: There are two big steps. One is to expand our reserve fleet.

Right now we have a relatively large reserve fleet. It's called the National Defense Reserve Fleet. There's a portion of it called the ready reserve fleet that's more ready. And we also have contracts with shippers whereby the United States can take their ships in an emergency. We recommend expanding that because the number of ships you need is a very large partic and then particularly including natural gas, because again, that is a critical shortage on Taiwan.

The second part is, renewing the Navy's skills on convoys. This has always been a Navy mission and it's never disappeared. But since the end of the Cold War, it has become much less important because the United States has had dominance at sea. In a situation where we're trying to supply Taiwan, there are going to be these immense convoy battles in the United States needs to rebuild those skills on operating convoys.

And the final thing that comes out of our invasion game and was one of the big findings and somewhat surprising, is that the United States needs to harden its bases in the Western Pacific particularly building hardened shelters because the Chinese will attack those with its missiles and in our games, the United States would lose hundreds of aircraft on the ground to these missile attacks.

Dan Byman: The last thing I wanna discuss with you is the idea of off ramps. That we have this blockade scenario, it's costly for China as well as for Taiwan. The United States is involved and is either at risk of significant losses or quite realistically has taken significant losses. Are there ways to build in or think about off ramps that are likely to succeed? I have a follow up, which is about their dangers, but let's, I just wanna discuss how it might work before we go down that road.

Mark Cancian: Yeah. Because we're dealing with two great powers with nuclear weapons total victory is not going to be possible. The war is gonna end with some sort of off ramp. The question is, what off ramp will that be? And it's very difficult to come up with a good solution in the middle of a war.

So what we recommend is thinking about off-ramps ahead of time, particularly ways to structure off-ramps that would allow the Chinese to back down without being humiliated, but also without giving up any vital U.S. or Taiwanese interests.

And it's interesting to note that Taiwan is like Ukraine in that neither of them wants to give up sovereign territory. Now, that's not really a surprise, but when we had Taiwanese representatives play the game as Taiwan, they were adamant that they were not gonna give up any territory. Whereas, U.S. negotiators, were often willing to be more flexible there. So yeah, having these discussions ahead of time is critical rather than trying to do it when missiles are flying and people are dying.

Dan Byman: So how do you do that in a way without kind of surrendering your hand in advance, right? If you are trying to be open to off ramps and thinking about that, is that a vulnerability that's gonna undermine deterrence if China knows that the United States might in some ways back down or at least be willing to make compromises.

Mark Cancian: You know, it's a great question. I think that the answer is no, depending on what we're looking at. That is, if we're looking at ways, compromises that do give up vital interest for Taiwan or the United States, then yes that's going to be a vulnerability.

But if we're doing this intellectual work, particularly outside the government, think tanks and, maybe the FFRDCs, the United States can build up a corpus of work and potential options, that it doesn't have to adopt. These are studies that, CSIS or Rand or someone has developed and therefore, the United States doesn't have to feel responsible for them. And maybe the therefore the, the deny that they would be deniable to the the Chinese. But it is attention.

Dan Byman: Mark Cancian, thank you very much for joining us.

Mark Cancian: Thanks for having me on the show.

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