How the US & China Are Preparing to Fight Total War

The United States and Taiwan have always had a complicated relationship. Taiwan's official name is Republic of China or Roc. The government that was initially established in 1912 throughout mainland China following the collapse of the Imperial Ching Dynasty. The Republic of China was later one of the United States' main allies during World War II fought the Japanese in the Asia-Pacific theater, but following the conclusion of that war, the Chinese nationalist government of The Roc resumed almost completely immediately their long civil war against the Chinese communists. In 1949, the communists had emerged victorious in mainland China and proclaimed the People's Republic of China or the People's Republic of China, but the nationalist government of The Roc continued to survive and fled the mainland to Taiwan, where they have remained since both governments, The Roc and The People's Republic of China never agreed to any kind of formal peace treaty and have remained officially at war with each other ever since, and both sides continue to officially claim on paper to be the sole legal government of all of China ever since, meaning that the Chinese Civil War never really ended in any official capacity and has remained frozen for the 74 years of history that have followed since 1949, the United States was among the first countries in the world to recognize the government of the Republic of China when it was first established in mainland China in 1912 and after.

Since the withdrawal to Taiwan in 1949, the United States continued to recognize the Republic of China as the sole legitimate government of all of China for decades and in order to deter the communist People's Republic of China on the mainland from ever launching an invasion of Taiwan. to defeat the Republic of China once and for all. The entire US provided economic and military aid to the ROC government and the ROC welcomed thousands of US troops to its own bases on the island, which peaked in 1958, when Nearly 20,000 American troops were stationed on the island and they were not just American troops.

In Taiwan, the US Air Force activated an entire air division headquartered in Taiwan, while the US even deployed some of its own nuclear weapons to the island, and in 1955, the US They even signed a mutual defense pact with the Republic of China promising to intervene. militarily on their behalf if the PRC ever launched a crusader invasion that would firmly deter the PRC from considering such an invasion for decades; in fact, the ROC itself on Taiwan was still determined to claim mainland Chinese territory by force throughout the Cold War. The United States invaded mainland China on multiple occasions throughout the 1950s and 1960s;

The closest it came was in the early 1960s, when in the midst of the Great Chinese Famine that killed tens of millions on the mainland in the People's Republic of China's first nuclear weapons test in 1964. The Nationalist government of The ROC believed there was enough instability within the mainland to launch its own Crusader invasion and hoped that millions of disillusioned mainland Chinese would end up siding with it. The ROC mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops for this operation and requested that they lead us. supported the invasion of the mainland on multiple occasions, but constant American refusals forced them to reconsider and then, in 1965, three Roc Navy ships were intercepted by the People's Liberation Army Navy and sunk by torpedoes, killing nearly 300 members. of Roc Navy personnel, which convinced the ROC. military that were not as prepared for a cross-mainland invasion as they had previously thought, all invasion plans were shelved and then in the 1970s the geopolitical situation of the ROC began to change dramatically, at which time the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union The two largest communist states in the world were having a massive

fight

in 1969, the Chinese and the Soviets were literally on the brink of war due to a series of border disputes and clashes in the Soviet Far East in which hundreds of soldiers were killed and wounded and the United States began to sense an opportunity that Washington strategically chose to begin changing its recognition from the Nationalist Roc in Taiwan as the only legitimate government of China to the communist People's Republic of China on the mainland to win over the much larger PRC as an opposing ally to the PRC.

Soviet Union and to achieve this it became necessary for the United States to begin reducing its evident military support for the Republic in Taiwan. By 1974, the United States had removed all of its nuclear weapons from Taiwan and In 1979, the United States had removed all of its nuclear weapons. its troops and equipment from the island, as well as the direct US military presence in Taiwan, ended and then, for the first time in 1979, the United States cut off its official diplomatic recognition of The Roc as the government of China and formally recognized the People's Republic of China as the government of China.

Instead, China also meant that in 1980 the United States had revoked its mutual defense treaty with the ROC and Washington also stopped providing economic and military aid to its government, but unofficial connections between the ROC and the United States They remained deprived of free military aid during the The Republic of China went on to directly buy weapons and AR weapons from us and the US government was more than happy to continue selling them from 1955 to 1980. The official US position on a The People's Republic of China's invasion of Taiwan was very clear: the US would intervene militarily to stop it, but after 1980, the official US position changed to a policy of deliberate strategic ambiguity.

The United States would never publicly commit to defending Taiwan from invasion, but it would also never publicly commit to not defending Taiwan from invasion. There has never been another formal defense treaty between the United States. and the US since the repeal of the original in 1980 and for decades throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, this US policy of strategic ambiguity was still enough to deter the PRC from ever considering launching an invasion as a mere possibility for the vastly superior US military to continue intervening was enough to make the relatively weaker People's Liberation Army reconsider its decision.

Between 1995 and 1996, the People's Republic of China fired missiles in all these areas north of Taiwan and conducted military exercises in all these areas of the Taiwan Strait, and the US military responded. By sending two separate carrier battle groups across the Taiwan Strait in a major show of force to the PRC and a show of support for The Roc, the PRC decided to back down, but as the economy of China began to expand dramatically in scale since the 2000s, it did as well. In 1996, during the so-called third consecutive Taiwan crisis, the PRC's annual military spending was only $14.3 billion, compared to the US military's annual budget at the time of around $288 billion. 20 times the size of the military budget of the People's Republic of China at that time, but from then until now, just 27 years later, the military budget of the People's Republic of China has multiplied by more than 20 to reach more than 20,293 thousand billion dollars per year, which is currently equivalent to approximately one-third of the United States budget. military spending, compared to only about one-twentieth in 1996, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the final resolution of the land border dispute between Russia by treaty in 2003, the entire northern flank of the PRC was he returned safely and a period of relatively friendly relations began. with Russia has since emerged, freeing the PRC to focus largely on its long-standing unresolved maritime disputes with its neighbors, rather than its claims to the Sen Kaku or Dau Islands which are currently administered by Japan, its unilateral claims to the entire South China Sea. through its so-called n-h line that directly clashes with the UN-recognized ezs of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunai and, most pressing of all, its decades-long demands that the Republic of Taiwan finally surrender and submit to Beijing to end the Chinese Civil War once and for all.

To enable everyone to better enforce these maritime claims, the People's Republic of China spent the late 2000s investing its defense spending in rapidly building up its Naval Force, the People's Liberation Army Navy, or PL, into a Navy. world class by

total

number of surface vessels which has since evolved to become the largest. Navy of the world with a fleet of approximately 350 surface ships and submarines, the pl has designed and built three of its own modern aircraft carriers, dozens of conventional and nuclear-powered submarines and has built airfields and naval fields on the islands of the South China Sea , all while increasing its rhetoric that Taiwan must be reunified with the mainland again by any means necessary and this is why, since the 2010s, the United States has been pursuing its pivot strategy towards Asia, which has involved reducing its military commitments in the Middle East and Afghanistan. reorient almost everything towards East Asia with the goal of deterring the PRC from ever launching this invasion of Taiwan, for which it appears to be

preparing

even for the long-standing policy of US strategic ambiguity regarding an invasion of Taiwan by part of the People's Republic of China appears to be declining. with Joe Biden, the current president of the United States, publicly declaring at least four separate times since taking office that the United States will directly intervene militarily if Beijing decides to invade and backing up his words on almost everything the US foreign government does.

The policies that the establishment and the military are making right now around the world are being made explicitly to counter what the PRC is doing to prepare for their invasion and almost everything the PRC is doing is equally designed to counter everything the United States is doing. A new cold war is here and both Beijing and Washington are

preparing

to wage a catastrophic war over the final fate of Taiwan and the future of China that could end up happening before the end of this decade. It's a war that neither Beijing nor Washington really want, but it's a war they're both preparing to

fight

anyway, and here's how they're both preparing to fight it for the U.S.

The biggest difficulty of all in militarily confronting China for Taiwan will be overcoming the tyranny of distance, the distance from the US west coast to the Taiwan Strait stretches more than 6,000 miles across the vast, empty Pacific Ocean, while mainland China is less than 100 miles from Taiwan, so the People's Republic of China will be able to concentrate its entire military machinery on the singular objective of taking Taiwan. With all of its bases and logistics operating within the same theater, while the United States simply will not have this same geographic advantage to compensate for that, the United States has long adopted a geographic strategy to confront the PRC known as the first and second island chain, the first.

The island chain theoretically begins within South Korea, well, it's not an island in a geographical sense. South Korea still effectively functions as an island anyway due to its completely closed border to the north with North Korea, so nothing is ever allowed to travel through. The US maintained a very large troop presence in South Korea since the Cold War to deter the North Koreans from launching an invasion and also to have troops near China and Taiwan. The US military currently operates several bases across the country with approximately 22,000

total

troops present, including two US Air Force bases at Osan and Kunan on South Korea's west coast on the Yellow Sea. , immediately opposite China, both of which have dozens of F-16 fighters based on them that are easily within range of flashpoints.

In the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, in addition, the South Korean government has recently made clear that it will ask the United States to return American nuclear weapons to the country, as well as something that the United States withdrew from Korea of the South in 1991 at the end of the last cold war, which will probably return soon spreading from South Korea, the next component of theAmerica's first island chain passes through Japan, where the United States has maintained a very significant military presence since the end of the world. World War II today in 2023 at any given time there are around 50,000 US troops deployed to Japan at dozens of different bases across the country, now representing the largest overseas deployment of US troops anywhere in the world, the largest concentration of American forces in Japan today.

However, it is not located within the main Japanese islands, but on the relatively small Japanese island of Okanawa, which is one of the most militarized islands in the world after World War II. The United States directly ruled Okanawa and all the other small islands of Ryuk Island. chain until they were returned to Japan in 1972 and Okanawa in particular was essentially built as a huge US aircraft carrier unusable in the Pacific less than 400m away from Taiwan; Even today, approximately 25% of the entire territory of Okanawa is covered by the US military. bases and there are about 26,000 U.S. troops deployed on the island, more than all U.S. troops in South Korea and a little more than half of all U.S. troops deployed in Japan.

Okanawa is also the site of the largest U.S. Air Force and largest active base in all of East Asia Caden Air Base, which also houses the U.S. Air Force's 18th Wing, the largest active fighter wing in the entire Air Force, home to bombers, helicopters, reconnaissance craft and fighters, including new cutting-edge F-35s that are constantly being moved to base to replace older F-15s, as Caden is only 500 miles away from Taiwan. The bases are easily within range of fighters and bombers to launch strikes to intercept advancing Chinese ships and aircraft during an invasion scenario and together.

With US forces and other bases in South Korea, they can easily cooperate to fight for air superiority over the narrow Korea Strait and ideally prevent Chinese warships from breaking out and expanding the war in the Sea of ​​Japan. In addition, the United States also maintains its only permanently deployed carrier strike group based in Yokosuka, Japan's Tokyo Bay, Carrier Strike Group Five, whose flagship is the USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered super aircraft carrier. Nimit class that can carry 90 fixed wing aircraft and helicopters accompanying the Ronald Reagan and the strike gr five aircraft carrier in Yokosuka, there are three additional derogate class cruisers and seven arlay bur class destroyers making it the strike group of largest aircraft carrier in the US Navy currently in service and which is naturally very close to the Ryuku island chain in Taiwan, while the first island chain continues southwest from Okanawa through the others small Japanese islands of Mohima Tarama Ishaka Takomi and Yonaguni, the latter of which is less than 70 miles from Taiwan, all of these islands are small and remote from the rest of Japan, but are becoming significantly more strategically valuable as all the lies They begin to focus on Taiwan, including the Japanese, in 2022 amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine and fear.

In the face of growing strategic moves by China and North Korea in East Asia, the Japanese government announced an unprecedented plan to remilitarize and expand its defense spending to levels not seen since World War II. The Japanese Defense Ministry has now requested a budget of almost $53 billion by 202. 24, which will put the Japanese self-defense forces on par with France's defense spending in its national security strategy report of 2022, Japan clearly identified China as its biggest strategic challenge, consequently Japan is investing its new enhanced defense spending on anti-ship. and anti-aircraft missile radar systems and newer, more advanced fighters and ships, and part of this remilitarization focuses on increasing the presence of the Japanese self-defense forces in the southern Ryuku Islands, which stretch from Anwa to Yonaguni, transforming them into small Japanese fortresses.

Japan They began militarizing these small islands in 2016, when they built a small outpost on Yonaguni Island with only 160 soldiers to carry out coastal surveillance. In 2019, the Japanese built two more bases at Mohima and further north at Amami Oshima, both armed with air and surface emergencies to deliver missiles and now, in 2023, the Japanese are deploying 570 troops at Ishigaki along with more surface-to-air and surface-to-ship missiles, with even more discussions on extending even more surface-to-air and surface-to-ship missiles and troops to yonaguni. Furthermore, unlike Joe Biden's repeated strong statements about US support for Taiwan's sovereignty, no Japanese government official has publicly stated that Tokyo would also provide military aid to Taiwan if a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and the United States occurs.

United decides to intervene. It's easy to see how the Japanese could end up being dragged into this anyway, especially if Chinese attacks on US military targets in Okanawa occurred on sovereign Japanese territory, if Tokyo and Washington cooperated together to stop China's Invasion Fleet, then their main objective would be to block moving down the ryq island chain and deny the pl the ability to exit the East China Sea and flank Taiwan's critical east coast from the north. The east coast of Taiwan is of utmost importance to the Republic and the Americans during this possible invasion. scenario because Taiwan is geographically divided into two halves separated by a huge chain of towering mountains that run through the interior of the island, the western side of Taiwan is wider, flatter and is directly exposed across Taiwan directly to the Chinese mainland , making it the most obvious target for the Most of the PRC's invasion fleet will head to the eastern side of Taiwan.

Between the ocean and the mountains it is much narrower and more surrounded by rugged mountainous terrain that separates it from the west and is opposite the Chinese mainland, meaning that the east will serve as the main rear of the People's Republic of China. base of operations during an invasion scenario and will be the last line of defense where allied troops who decide to intervene militarily can land to help turn the tide of battle, as the Americans and Japanese did when they denied the People's Republic of China Any ability to outflank Taiwan from the north or south and attack this vital rear base in eastern Taiwan is therefore of utmost importance to US military planners: the northern component of the first island chain consists of all US military assets in South Korea, Japan and Okanawa, along with those in Japan.

The military assets in the southern Ryuku Islands are therefore designed as the northern Pinsir of Taiwan's external defense. It restricts China's flexibility of movement during an invasion scenario to attack Taiwan's east coast from the north and limits them to attacking in a more direct and predictable manner. frontal assault on Taiwan's most exposed west coast, just opposite mainland China, but in theory that still leaves the possibility of the pl moving south and outflanking Taiwan's critical east coast anyway via the Bosi Channel largest that separates Taiwan from the northern island of the Philippines. from Luzon but of course the US is also preparing extensively for this situation, with the next component of its first island chain strategy, the southern Pinsir, coming from the Philippines.

The US and the Philippines, like the US and Japan, have a long and complicated history. The United States directly sees the Philippines from Spain back in 1898 and transformed them into a colony that lasted for decades until the end of World War II in 1946, but even after the Philippines gained independence, the United States continued to maintain a huge military presence in the whole country. For decades later, throughout the Cold War, just as they did in Japan and also in Taiwan itself, for a time the most important US military bases in the country that remained were an Air Force Base at the air base of Clark and a naval base in Subic Bay, which were literally the largest American military installations overseas during much of the Cold War due to their strategic location near Vietnam and the Taiwan Strait.

Dozens of American ships and submarines were present in Subic Bay for decades, but then in 1991, two separate events occurred in the Soviet Union. began to disintegrate and with it the Cold War was coming to an end and in the same year Mount Pinatubo just 20 miles from Subic Bay and just 9 miles from Clark Air Base exploded in the second largest volcanic eruption of all In the 20th century with a force that was eight times greater than the eruption of Mount St. Helens, the eruption virtually completely destroyed Clark Air Base and buried Subic Bay under a foot of ash, causing enormously extensive damage.

Before that eruption, the United States was negotiating with the Philippine government to renew its lease with Clark. and Subic Bay for $850 million a year, but after the eruption killed Clark and severely damaged the Subic stock market, the United States reduced the offer to just $250 million a year to renew the lease that The Philippines rejected. Clark was evacuated and returned to the Philippines in 1991, while Subic Bay was dismantled and returned to the Philippines also the following year, in 1992, and with this the US military presence in the Philippines ended for the first time in almost a century, marking also the first time since the 16th century that foreigners were not allowed.

If military forces were present in the Philippines for the next two decades, there would still be no US military presence in the Philippines until the geopolitical events of the 2010s eventually brought them back in the early 2010s. China began to impose its n-h line. Across the South China Sea much more aggressively, they began building military posts on small islands within the exclusive economic zone claimed by the Philippines and claimed all of the Spratley Islands and rugged fisheries that the Philippines also claimed. Chinese warships began patrolling the area. and sometimes firing water cannons at Philippine fishing boats and ordering them to leave the area, the result is that the Philippines began to feel threatened by China's maritime expansionism in the South China Sea right on their doorstep, so they decided to start improve its security relationship with the United States again, so in 2014, the Obama administration in the Philippines signed a 10-year pact known as the enhanced defense cooperation agreement that finally allowed the United States to return a large military presence. stopover to the Philippines, once again five Philippine military bases in the country were opened to joint control with the US military and US troops began stationing there in 2016, after a 24-year absence.

US military bases have returned to the Philippines again with more to follow in 2023. The Philippines and the US announced the creation of four additional joint Philippine-US military bases in the country under the original terms of the enhanced cooperation agreement in defense matters, which will bring the total number of US military bases in the Philippines to at least nine. I say at least because there are even more Discussions taking place right now between the Philippines and the US to reactivate the former Cold War-era US naval base in Subic Bay are again not officially happening still. At the time of this video's production, the Philippine Navy reoccupied a portion of the base near the end of 2022, while the rest of the port was acquired by a US private equity company, if the As the US Navy returns to Subic Bay again, it would serve as an ideal deep-water port for some of the United States' advanced nuclear submarine fleets to be stationed just a few hundred miles away. far from the Bosi Channel that separates Taiwan from the northern Philippine island of Luzon, but even if the US Navy doesn't, just look at the map of the Philippines' nine joint military bases with the US that have already been officially agreed upon since 2014, two of the five bases previously agreed upon in 2014 were on the northern island of Luzon and three of the four bases recently announced in 2023 are also concentrated on the same northern island, regardless of Whether US naval forces also return to Subic Bay or not, this will already place a very high concentration of troopsAmericans inside Luzon, very close to Taiwan's southern flank, in March 2022 it was revealed that American F-22 fighter jets were being deployed to the Philippines for the first time. in Luzan will be able to fly rapidly during a Taiwan invasion scenario to attack advancing Chinese warships and aircraft, while we deploy the High Sea rocket artillery systems on land located within the northern tip of Luzon will have the range to attack everywhere within the bosi. channel between Luzon and Taiwan, whose objective will obviously be to block the PL advance from passing through the Bosi channel and outflanking the vulnerable and critical east coast of Taiwan, attacking through the Bashi channel will be a main war objective of Beijing during the invasion. not only to flank the east coast of Taiwan, but also to attempt to capture the extremely important Taiwanese port city of Kaung Kaung, which is by far the largest port in Taiwan and which alone accounts for 62% of Taiwan's total cargo volume.

The volume of oil seizing Kaung early on would deny the ROC Defenders the ability to import large quantities of supplies, fuel resources, and reinforcements and allow the PLA to use it instead. to continue funneling more supplies and fuel from its own troops to the island. The American High Mars located at the northern tip of Luzon would be almost within range of attacking the area around Kaung to attack approaching PL landing ships or to deliberately destroy the port facilities themselves if they fell into PL hands, Considering US military strategy as a whole, defending Taiwan during an invasion scenario means that this Northern Pinsir with its bases in South Korea, Japan and Japan's Ryu island chain will block any pl ability to advance from the coasts of China towards the Sea of ​​Japan or towards the Philippine Sea, where they could be. capable of flanking Taiwan's critical east coast from the northern direction, while the southern Pinsir with US military bases in the Philippines is designed to simultaneously deny the PLA any ability to advance through the Bashi Channel and flank Taiwan's east coast from direction south, the combined intention is to deny China flexibility of movement during any invasion scenario and force it to choose a single option: a predictable frontal amphibious assault on Taiwan's well-defended and prepared western beaches, while the eastern coast remains relatively stable and safe for a short time. enough for outside help to arrive and begin to turn the tide, but the first US island chain strategy does not end in the Philippines, it continues even further down, to another island, the smallest of the entire strategy, but probably the largest. criticism of all.

Singapore, the United States also has a joint naval base here which they share with the Singapore Navy and which has the capacity to host a US aircraft carrier with its accompanying destroyers during a war scenario with China. The US naval presence in Singapore gives it the capability. to almost immediately take advantage of China's biggest Achilles' heel blockage, the Malaka Strait, a small 1- and 2-mile-wide strip of water through which a whopping 60% of all the oil China currently consumes passes. on its journey from the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Preventing any of these tiners from passing through the strait would immediately eliminate 60% of China's entire oil supply, immediately forcing Beijing to make difficult decisions once its oil reserves begin to run out.

Would billions of Chinese citizens be forced to ration oil in To commit more of their dramatically reduced supply to the invasion and war effort, if their military machine eventually ran out of oil and the invasion failed, as a result, which would end The long-term impact on the Chinese economy being the immediate destruction of most of its oil supply is not a pleasant thought for Beijing and is not yet the end of the US island chain strategy. Behind the first island chain is what American military planners like to call the second island chain. which focuses mainly on small American territories in the Mariana Islands and especially Guam.

Guam may be a small island - it is less than 30 miles long and only about four miles wide at its narrowest point - but it is very densely populated and is home to almost 170,000 people. one of the most important bases of the US military, approximately one third of the entire territory of the islands is directly owned by the US Department of Defense, with around 8,000 US troops stationed there with a large number of Fighter missile bombers and, more importantly, five of the most advanced in the United States. nuclear power to attack submarines and, unlike the most advanced US operating bases in South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Singapore, Guam is actually a fully sovereign territory of the United States and functions as the largest and most unsinkable aircraft carrier of the US Army in the Western Pacific.

Logistics center to support all the more forward operating US bases in the first island chain, but there is an even larger rear base that is used even more by the US military behind Guam in Hawaii. Pearl Harbor is on the island of Aahu, near Honolulu, and is the headquarters. of the US Pacific Fleet, around 40,000 more US troops are stationed on the island and, more importantly, 17 other US advanced nuclear attack submarines are also based here, representing approximately a third of all US nuclear attack submarines worldwide, even further back in the US. On the West Coast are the US naval bases at Kitsap Washington and San Diego, California, the which host one and four nimit-class nuclear-powered super aircraft carriers, respectively.

However, the Kitap base is possibly more important than San Diego because it is one of only two bases where the US places nuclear-armed strategic ballistic missile submarines, eight of these nuclear-armed strategic submarines have its base in Kitsap, along with two more nuclear-powered conventional ballistic missile submarines and five more nuclear-powered attack submarines, and in addition to Guam Pearl Harbor Kit Saap and potentially Subic Bay in the Philippines again, the US is working actively to create another nuclear submarine base in the Pacific and in Australia in 2021. The governments of Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States announced an unprecedented security pact. between them they called Aus an anagram of Australia, the United Kingdom and the US.

Before this treaty, the United States had never before shared its top secret nuclear submarine technology with another country, apart from the United Kingdom in 1958, for the first time. since then, the Aus. The pact will see the US and UK share their top-secret nuclear submarine technology with the Australians to help them develop their own nuclear submarines. As part of the terms of the package, the Western Australian city of Perth will become host to the next major nuclear submarine base. In the Indo Pacific, American and British nuclear submarines will be stationed in Perth until Australia purchases a set of five modern nuclear submarines from the United States to station there themselves and then eventually develop their own domestic nuclear submarine program by 2050, but The Australians pact has been extremely controversial within Australian domestic politics.

Australia's acceptance of the deal necessarily meant that the Australian government also had to suddenly and without warning cancel a previous nuclear submarine deal they had made with France that was valued at e56 billion, resulting in a understandably outraged French government which recalled its ambassadors from both Australia and the United States over the incident; Furthermore, the new agreement with Aus is estimated to cost the Australian government up to $368 billion over the next few years until 2050, an extremely high amount of money. which many Australians believe could be better spent on more domestic domestic affairs at home, but it is not just the new submarine base that is creating the Aus pact, it is also creating a major new US Air Force base. in the far north of Australia, Tindle, where the United States will be allowed to park up to six of its B52 strategic bombers in these strategic bombers that are capable of carrying nuclear weapons and have an operational range of 14,200 kilometers without needing to refuel fuel, which places all of China's most populated regions within its territory. ranging from Tindle along with nuclear armed submarines in Kitsap in Washington and the possible return of US nuclear missiles to South Korea, this represents the complete nuclear triad that the United States presents to China within the Indo Pacific with potentially land-based missiles soon .

South Korean sea missiles from KITP submarines and Tindle aerial bombs. One of the United States' biggest concerns about fighting a war with China over Taiwan will be China's increasingly advanced anti-access area denial or A2 D2 DF 21A capability. The missile has a range of 1,770 kilometers, while its DF 26 missile has a range of 4,000 kilometers. These missiles have dramatically increased China's so-called area of ​​engagement, the area where Chinese conventional missiles can reliably strike enemy targets from the first day of the war. The Hudson Institute estimated in 2022 that China could concentrate up to 11 kilotons of conventional explosive missiles on Taiwan's largest city from there, further from mainland China.

China's conventional missile strike capability declines but remains relatively strong during the first and second. island chains with the capacity to even attack US targets as far away as Guam, with approximately 2 kilotons of explosive power in a day, these capabilities make US surface ships and especially aircraft carriers operating within the Commitment Zone area China are highly vulnerable to attacks and sinkings everywhere. the first and second island chains, which is why the US military's growing approach to countering China has relied less on synchronizable aircraft carriers and more on nearby unsinkable islands on which they can station military assets like Okawa, the southern Ryuku Islands, Luzon in the Philippines and also Guam, in addition to nuclear-powered underwater submarines that can remain below the surface for years and are invulnerable to China's A2 D2 capabilities and airborne missiles, aircraft carriers and other surface ships Americans would likely stay far away from Taiwan and far away from China's missiles, preferring to stay further back within the second island chain, providing air cover to the Guav, blocking Chinese maritime trade, and only briefly sailing in and out of the area of China's zone of engagement to attack Chinese ships and aircraft infrequently if China decided to launch an invasion. of Taiwan in the United States decided to respond militarily.

US Marines armed with anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapons would likely move quickly to position themselves on all of Japan's southern Ryuku Islands and all of the smaller northern Philippine islands within the Bosi Channel that extends to the small Yummi Island, which is less than 90 miles from Taiwan, their objectives would be to hold their islands at all costs and destroy any Chinese warships and warplanes that attempt to pass through them to flank Taiwan in the east, purchasing the ROC. The defenders on the island will have enough time until we and probably Japanese reinforcements can reach the east coast of Taiwan.

American planes taking off from bases in South Korea. Japan and the Philippines would immediately attempt to achieve air superiority throughout Taiwan. US naval assets in Singapore would likely move to cut off China's critical oil import route, while the numerous US nuclear attack submarines in the area would stealthily depart from their bases in Kitsap Hawaii Guam Perth and potentially Subic Bay To achieve multiple objectives, they would seek to plug all the narrow maritime choke points found along the Indonesian archipelago to deny China the ability to divert any of its oil imports from Mala, while others would patrol like sharks around the other maritime choke points around the Philippines and within the Bashi Channel between Lison and Taiwan and between all the Ryuku of Japan. islands and within the Korea Strait, everyone isthey would give kill orders to immediately attack and sink any PL warship attempting to storm into the Sea of ​​Japan, Philippine Sea or anywhere in the Indo Pacific in general to contain the war strictly around China itself.

All this on the immediate coast, while the US strategic nuclear Triad in the Indo-Pacific Theater with assets and Kitsap and Tindle and probably soon South Korea remain on alert for any possible escalation of the war from Beyond Taiwan throughout the conflict. The Specter of a Nuclear war that broke out between the United States and the People's Republic of China would remain permanently in the background. Never before in human history have two major military powers with nuclear weapons gone to war against each other. The People's Republic of China today wields a nuclear arsenal estimated at around 400 Total War warheads. 2023, including at least several dozen ICBMs, such as the DF 5B, that can strike anywhere in the world outside of South America, including anywhere in the continental US, by the end of the 2020s expects the PRC's nuclear arsenal to increase further to around one billion in total.

Warheads still much smaller than the US nuclear weapons arsenal, but also the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world; There will be many capable of annihilating the United States and ensuring mutually assured destruction between Beijing and Washington if one is ever tempted to use them in the conflict in which both Beijing and Washington possess such an apocalyptic capacity to annihilate each other with nuclear weapons, Many theorists believe that neither the People's Republic of China nor the United States would ever dare to attack each other's continental territories, not even with conventional weapons, which would imply that the war would be limited to strictly maritime matters.

In an air amphibious assault immediately around Taiwan and across the numerous seas and islands of the Indo-Pacific, the United States maintains that all of its recent extensive military preparations around China are designed to deter the PRC from attempting an armed invasion of Taiwan. First of all, but from Beijing's perspective, all of the US preparations certainly look extremely aggressive and probably feel more like the US is trying to contain them. I mean, just look at the map flipped from your perspective, your entire coastline is surrounded by US military bases now, which during a war. Not only will it severely restrict their ability to sail anywhere in the Greater Pacific, it will also severely restrict their ability to import critical things they need from abroad, such as microchips for oil, gas, and even food.

China could quite easily be subjected to a total maritime blockade by everyone. of US and allied forces in the first and second island chains, so there are some who fear that, rather than deterring the PRC from launching an invasion of Taiwan, the entire extensive US military posture in the area is encouraging the People's Republic of China to launch its invasion sooner. Instead of doing it later, if you were in charge of China, wouldn't it make some sense if you were determined to take Taiwan no matter what and at least consider launching your invasion of Taiwan before the United States and the allied forces around you become even stronger before?

The AA security pact comes to fruition with US nuclear submarines present in Peru and US strategic bombers present in Tindle before the recently announced US military bases are established in the Philippines and before the US Navy can potentially return again to Subic Bay before Japan can do so completely. militarize your southern ryuku islands and before American nuclear weapons return to South Korea and before Taiwan buys more capable weapons from the Americans, the more the United States prepares for this war with China that it is trying so desperately to avoid , the more you will risk pressing. China has decided to launch war over Taiwan first before it is too late to do so and China of course has its own ideas on how to respond to the United States and still manage to emerge victorious in Taiwan, naturally, on the same day. .

Obviously, the PRC would prefer to take control of Taiwan without having to fire a shot, and there are multiple steps Beijing can take before a full-blown invasion occurs: they can try to meddle politically on the island and wait for the return of the more pro-countries. The reunification Quang party will come to power in the next presidential election in January 2024, but the Quang have been absent from power in the ROC since 2016, while the more pro-Taiwan independence People's Democratic Party, or DPP, has been in power since then if the PDP wins the elections. elections in January 2024 again and it appears that political meddling within Taiwan is not working as expected, then Beijing may take more limited actions, the so-called Gray Zone, to first test the international community's resolve in Taiwan before committing to option one of large scale invasion.

One of these options would be to invade and take over the Men relatives, first a small group of islands home to 127,000 people and governed as a county of The Roc that are 187 km from the main island of Taiwan, but only 5 km off the coast of the mainland. The attack by the PRC mainland and the capture of PRC relatives could serve as a dress rehearsal by the PRC for a later full-scale invasion of the PRC and Taiwan. After all, the United States would really risk a cataclysmic war with China simply over petty relatives. very similar in some ways to Russia's more limited invasion of Ukraine in 2014, when they quickly took control of Crimea and Sevastopol, justifying very little Western intervention beyond a few limited economic sanctions and obviously precipitating the invasion of Ukraine. large scale of Ukraine by Russia 8 years later, in 2022.

China is currently watching very closely how the West continues to react to the developments of the Russian invasion of Ukraine if the West's resolve ultimately falters on Ukraine and stops. sending aid and then Ukraine collapsing sends a clear message to Beijing about how long they might have to wait for the West to similarly capitulate on Taiwan, and thus capturing its relatives could serve as the PRC's version of Russia's early seizure of Crimea and then beyond. While there is an option to initiate a limited or partial blockade of Taiwan, the PRC could declare around Taiwan and target the island's biggest Achilles tendon, healing its critical over-reliance on energy.

Imports As seen, Taiwan imports the overwhelming majority of its energy resources from abroad to the tune of 97% of the energy it consumes, including virtually all of its oil, liquefied natural gas or LNG, and coal. Many of these imports come from other countries that are relatively friendly to the ROC, such as Australia, which in 20121 provided 55%. of Taiwan's coal imports and 32% of its fuel imports along with the United States, which provided another 9% of Taiwan's LNG imports and plans to expand those imports further, but many more foreign energy suppliers from Taiwan is not as solidly friendly and committed to Russia as it has previously shown a clear willingness to weaponize its energy. resources against Europe during the war in Ukraine, while Russia becomes increasingly dependent on China, at the same time after the collapse of Russia's energy market in Europe, China has emerged as the new largest market for Russia to sell its vast energy resources and consequently, Russia sells many more energy resources to China than to Taiwan, if Beijing were to give Moscow an ultimatum to choose between them, it is clear that the Russians would end up choosing China and would stop their deliveries to Taiwan and the Chinese might not stop there.

Qatar provides around 25% of Taiwan's LG imports, while Indonesia provides around 24% of Taiwan's coal imports and additionally 6% of its LG imports Qatar sells significantly more of its LG to China than to Taiwan. Indonesia has received billions of dollars in investments through China's Belt and Road Initiative and also sells significantly more raw materials to China than to Taiwan and neither Qatar nor Indonesia have yet agreed to join any of the financial sanctions. of the West against Russia. Therefore, China could use a combination of carrots and sticks. convince these three countries to at least remain neutral or even operate with the hypothetical Chinese blockade of Taiwan, which will induce significant pressures on Taiwan's energy security and ability to obtain energy and will further test the resolve of the United States without going completely to the Invasion option and then of course if all of these previous options fail to bring Taiwan under the control of the PRC, there is the Full Scale Invasion option.

The People's Republic of China is well aware that this option will be one of the most difficult military operations ever carried out in the world. story will involve the largest amphibious opera operation in history since the D-Day Landings in Normandy during World War II, requiring the use of thousands of ships, aircraft and missiles to achieve it. It is estimated that China will need to commit between 300,000 and 1 million. troops or even more to The Invasion to have any hope of victory and gathering such a massive invasion force with all its accompanying ships and transport equipment on the western side of the Taiwan Strait will be impossible to hide from the American spy satellites that operate above, who will quickly begin sounding the alarm about the impending invasion, just as they began to do in the months leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The PRC's a2d 2 missile capabilities on the mainland are designed to fill the skies with Chinese missiles that will sustain US Navy Marines. and the Air Force along with all its allies far enough away from Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait to keep the invasion route open and secure for as long as possible. The PRC will need this because they need to win the invasion of Taiwan as quickly as possible to have the best chance of success, ideally within days or weeks at most, if they fail to quickly take the island and the war becomes a protracted conflict like the one in Ukraine, the more likely it will lose to the United States. intervention and potentially Japanese, Australian and UK intervention, as well as the longer China's maritime trade and imports of critical raw materials such as oil and gas are blocked, the greater the instability will be within China, not to mention From the accumulation of casualties and humiliations from not being able to take Taiwan quickly, the PRC will desperately want to win as quickly as possible and therefore, as it begins to decide to launch the invasion, Beijing will probably have to make the most consequential decision it will probably They will have to take in their entire story, regardless of whether they want to or not.

They will launch the invasion with or without a preemptive first strike against US military assets in the Western Pacific, if they decide not to do so and launch their invasion without attacking the US first, it stands to reason that there may be a chance, without no matter how small it is. that the United States has been lying all this time and will not actually respond militarily and then if the United States reacts militarily, China could try to claim that it was the United States that shot first during what they will inevitably refer to as an internal Chinese matter. where the PRC was simply trying to subdue a rebellious province but of course without first attacking the US military assets surrounding it, guaranteeing that the US military will be at full power and better able to restrain and defeat the China's Invasion Force quickly and that there is the second, significantly riskier option, the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century.

The PRC's conventional ballistic and cruise missiles easily have range from mainland China to strike US military targets in South Korea and Okanawa in the Philippines and even Guam first before launching the invasion of Taiwan. The PRC could fire hundreds and hundreds of these missiles in a surprise attack on all of these nearby US military bases and facilities in an attempt to preemptively neutralize the US military's initial ability to quickly respond to theinvasion within the first and second island chains, which would then ideally allow the PRC to launch their cross-invasion of Taiwan quickly and with less opposition at first, allowing them to, hopefully, from their perspective, take control of the entire the island quickly and then shelter there from the US retaliatory attacks that inevitably follow.

Next, this option is inherently the riskier of the two because, on the one hand, it would virtually guarantee a ferocious US response on the scale of the war against Japan in the 1940s; It would also mean that China would be widely perceived as a massive country. warmonger on the global stage by clearly firing the first shots China might also have difficulty taking Taiwan as quickly as they expected, leading to this eventual fierce rival of the United States, they would probably sound defeated anyway, furthermore, the US military People's Republic of China is still untested and lacks real experience in EXP, as the last war the country fought in was the invasion of Vietnam in 1979, which was almost 4,112 decades ago.

The US military now has very recent experience in actual combat by comparison, albeit of a type that would be very different from the amphibious warfare that would likely unfold around Taiwan, and in addition to launching the main assault on Taiwan, it would also would wage a fierce battle in the South China Sea, which the PRC claims largely entirely as Chinese territorial waters backed by China's claims to the small Spratly Islands and the many artificial islands it has built and which are full of PRC military assets, including naval and air bases and radar stations, make the PRC so aggressive in its claims to the South China Sea and its militarized island building within.

This is because during a Taiwan invasion scenario they want to be able to adequately project power towards Singapore and the US naval base in Changi there so they can open the Malaka Strait and maintain their critical oil and LG imports from the Persian Gulf. The flow that flows through him to keep his economy and his War Machine running. Almost every foreign policy decision and action the PRC makes has to do with overcoming this critical vulnerability that they know the US Navy will exploit during a war; That's partly why the PLA was opened. their first overseas military base in history in Djibouti and why they are potentially looking to acquire more bases in the future in Gavar and Pakistan and Hanta in Sri Lanka and in Myanmar's Coco Islands, all of which has so far not been substantiated but it could always happen in the future China's relentless drive to carry out its Belt and Road initiative is primarily focused on overcoming dependence on its oil and gas imports coming through Mala and reducing the risk that a US naval blockade there and throughout Indonesia cripples its energy imports from China's support for Russia in the Persian Gulf and the transformation of the Russian state into a kind of vassal state of China since the invasion of Ukraine have been designed to lead Russian oil and gas to China via land pipelines and the Northern sea route for lG to reach China. reduce Beijing's overdependence on Malaka China has tirelessly sought investments in other nearby oil and gas-rich countries, such as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, to build more Overland pipelines that bring oil and gas to China in a safer and more reliable way than the United States and his allies.

It does not intercept as easily as maritime imports arriving through Malaka and that is why China has also tirelessly sought and supported the regimes of countries strategically located around it that can transport oil and gas from the Persian Gulf to China before those imports even reach Malaka. Countries such as Pakistan, in which China has invested tens of billions of dollars to create the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, are building a vast network of highways and railways to connect the Pakistani deep-water port of Guar with the province. Shen Jong's western China, through which the Chinese will eventually be able to import large quantities of oil from the Persian Gulf without having to rely on those imports through the vulnerable Mala Strait and, even more important than Pakistan, there is also Myanmar, where between 2013 and 2017 China invested billions of dollars to build Myanmar's crucial C oil and gas pipelines, a pair of twin oil and gas pipelines that start at the deepwater port of Kiaku in the Bay of Bengal and run almost 500 miles across the country to K Ming in the Chinese province of Yanan.

Since these are actual pipelines and not roads or railways like in Pakistan, the Sino Myanmar pipeline allows China to import large volumes of oil and gas directly from the Persian Gulf without those resources having to pass through the blockable Mala Strait, making it a vital component. of China's energy security and its ability to confront the United States during a war over Taiwan, it is also the reason why China is so supportive of the extremely authoritarian military regime in Myanmar known as the totau in 20121, the Tau army in Myanmar He launched an infamous kudatah that overthrew the civilians. elected government in the country forever immortalized by this viral clip you've probably seen of this woman dancing while the coup plotters behind her are busy actively overthrowing the government after that coup.

Myanmar has fallen into one of the most violent and devastating civil wars. which the 21st century has seen and become the only failed state in Southeast Asia; Since then, the entire country has become more of a geographical expression than a true united country with a complicated patchwork of dozens of competing rebel factions, all vying for control and influence. against each other and against the increasingly repressive and authoritarian central government now ruled by the Totau military, the undemocratic military regime has also since become one of the most heavily sanctioned and isolated regimes in the world, which has pushed them every increasingly into the orbit of Countries like China and Russia with no country in the Western world now willing to help the military regime of Myanmar.

China now has great leverage in the country to further expand its pipelines and continue to reduce its imports of oil and gas coming through Malaka and potentially put pressure on them. to allow the PLA to finally establish an overseas military base in the Coco Islands, as well as near Malaka on the western side of the Strait, as Chinese and Russian military vehicles and aircraft have been frequently seen serving Totau's army in their complicated war against the many rebel factions they now reject it and Beijing needs the military too much to win the civil war in the country because they need to continue maintaining their ability to continue importing oil and gas through the pipelines from China and Myanmar to continue reducing its over-reliance on energy imports arriving through the Malaka Strait to be in a better position to eventually launch its invasion of Taiwan if the top falls and a new regime hostile to Beijing emerges from the chaotic Civil War; instead, they could choose to shut down Myanmar's system.

Pipelines go down when under pressure coming from the United States and therefore the ultimate outcome of the ongoing Civil War in Myanmar has direct implications on China's ability to eventually seize Taiwan and the United States' ability to counter that invasion, but of course the Myanmar Civil War itself is a very complicated and dark issue that has resulted in the deaths of dozens of people. of thousands of people in the country alone since it began in 2021 and has become one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 21st century, but just before it began, between 2016 and 2019, the total military regime that now mainly rules the country further perpetrated one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 21st century.

Larger-scale genocides against the Rohinga people in Myanmar's western Rahan state, resulting in incredible levels of human suffering rarely seen since the 20th century and the largest refugee crisis seen in Asia since the Vietnam War. The complicated and massive internal conflict that still plagues Myanmar is therefore one of the darkest chapters in the entire history of the 21st century so far and is directly related to everything you hear me talk about throughout this entire video, but unfortunately due to the inherently violent, controversial, and recent nature of discussing one of the largest genocides and ongoing wars taking place anywhere in the world, if I were to make a video covering it all here on YouTube, it would almost certainly it would be demonetized and age-restricted, which would ultimately mean that YouTube's algorithm would never and probably never would promote it.

Check it out, that's why instead of uploading it here on YouTube, I created another full video to go along with this one in my ongoing modern conflict series that's about the same length as this video you just watched and that covers the entire course of history and explanation of the ongoing Civil War. The war in Myanmar and the associated genocide of the Renja people and I uploaded it directly to Nebula and this is just one of over two dozen exclusive full-length real-life documentaries about Lord that you can only find on Nebula in My General Modern Conflict Series which can only be found there because of all its darker and more controversial material.

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