The U.S. Should Divest Its Tanks

The best use of the M1 Abrams tanks currently in the U.S. military arsenal would be to give them away to Taiwan, South Korea, and Ukraine. We would not be able to get additional tanks to Taiwan in the event of an invasion by the People's Republic of China, or South Korea in the event of a North Korean invasion, in time to make a difference. Ukraine would welcome anything we can provide it.

Note that Australia is sending its M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

The M1 Abrams tank is also ill-suited for the conflicts we could conceivably fight, as the U.S. Marine Corps has already realized. The U.S. military is an expeditionary one. All of the near peer conflicts it would fight are overseas and it is very challenging to get its 70 ton plus mass to the front. They are too heavy to cross bridges, or to be carried on trains over rail bridges, in much of the world. They destroy roads and leave a clear trail of where they have been. They are noisy. They are the opposite of stealthy. They have poor situational awareness outside of a flat plain or desert.

The Ukraine War has shown how vulnerable they are to FPV drones and other modern anti-tank weapons despite their extremely heavy armor. Thousands upon thousands of tanks and heavy armored vehicles on each side have been defeated. 

Tanks very rarely destroy other tanks in modern warfare, greatly reducing the utility of their main guns. Their main guns have a shorter range than the anti-tank missiles and artillery rounds that can be used against them. 

They are slow at a peak speed on roads of 45 mph or so, and are slower off road (even though they are much more competitive in speed off road), and the experience of other modern wars have shown that off road warfare is very much the exception rather than the rule. They require an immense amount of fuel and mechanical support to keep running, and those support units generally can't go off road and lack the heavy armor of the tanks. 

They are too wide for urban warfare on narrow streets or in mountain passes or dense forests. Their limited angle of fire makes them ineffective against opponents on top of buildings. Drive a heavy tank into a building with a basement and it will fall into it.

It isn't that armored military vehicles are obsolete entirely. 

An armored vehicles is a formidable adversary to a force without anti-tank weapons that has only small arms. It can ignore the small arms with impunity, and if it has appropriate weapons to engage infantry and more lightly armored vehicles than other tanks (which doesn't require a heavy main tank gun), it can very effectively take on these adversaries. But armored vehicles only make sense in an environment where the force using them has air superiority, has taken out all enemy artillery within range, where the enemy doesn't have modern anti-tank weapons and is unable to place effective anti-tank mines or IEDs. 

There is a niche for armored military vehicles in those conditions, but a huge main gun with a couple of light machine guns added as after thoughts doesn't fill that niche. If one needs the power of a tank round now and then, it can be supplied with a missile or large recoilless rifle round, at a fraction of the weight.

If an adversary has anti-tank weapons or the adversary can attack with ground attack fighters or attack helicopters, the solution is not more armor beyond what is necessary to stop small arms, it is to use active defenses instead. This is a lesson which the U.S. Navy has already learned, but which the U.S. Army continues to ignore.

The Imperfect Case That The Army Is Too Light

An argument that the Army is too light gets some points right, but others deeply wrong. 

How can we have forgotten the terrible lessons of the early 2000s, when losses in Iraq and Afghanistan prompted a scramble to deploy up-armored HMMWVs and Mine Resistant Armor Protected Vehicles? Today’s Army, far lighter than the one that took such damage in so-called “low-intensity combat,” is ill-equipped to deter or contend with the likes of China or Russia.

Let’s take roll of the Army’s 31 active maneuver brigades. Eleven are heavy brigades equipped with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles—well-protected platforms suited to modern war.

Another six brigades are Stryker formations equipped with their eponymous lightly armored, wheeled infantry carriers. Originally called the “interim armored vehicle,” the Stryker was intended to serve only until the arrival of the Future Combat Systems, which imploded instead. From conception, Stryker units have suffered from doctrinal and conceptual confusion. Stryker units carry more dismounted troops than Bradley units, which are intended to fight primarily mounted. But they are infantry carriers, not infantry fighting vehicles. With poor off-road mobility, they are vulnerable to hand-held anti-armor systems, and their units have towed rather than self-propelled artillery. Repeated National Training Center rotations show they cannot survive when employed against armor.

The remaining 14 active maneuver brigades are light infantry formations, cheaper and easier to deploy but, realistically, unable to compete with today’s threat. Under current guidance, they go to war in “infantry squad vehicles”—essentially, unarmored dune buggies without heavy weapons.

Compounding the problem, the commanders of these light brigades have dramatically less firepower than they used to. The recent decision to eliminate the air cavalry squadron from the aviation brigade in Army divisions removes half of each division’s 48 AH-64E attack helicopters, a massive reduction in combat power. Only slightly less dangerous was the Army’s recent decision to deactivate the cavalry squadron in Stryker and light infantry brigades, with their many wheeled vehicles and heavy weapons. The same directive stripped light infantry battalions of their antiarmor/heavy weapons companies: mounted formations armed with automatic grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and heavy antitank systems. These actions removed much of the brigade’s available firepower.

Meanwhile, light artillery battalions still use the venerable M119 105mm towed howitzer, which has a lower rate of fire, shorter range, and weaker weapons effects than the 122mm and 152mm systems used by Russian and Chinese brigades. They are also slower to displace than self-propelled systems, making them far more vulnerable to counter-battery fire and drone attacks.

Promises to offset all these reductions with “Unmanned Systems and Ground/Air launched effects” raise serious questions, given the lack of specifics provided and DoD’s poor acquisition track record.

A quick look at adversary force structure illuminates the challenge. Russian maneuver brigades (tank, motor rifle, airborne/air assault, naval infantry) are remarkably similar. All include four maneuver battalions; three artillery battalions (both tubed and rocket); anti-tank, air defense and reconnaissance battalions; and an electronic warfare company. Chinese brigades have four maneuver battalions supported by strong artillery, air defense and EW units. U.S. brigades have three maneuver battalions, a single artillery battalion, and no dedicated anti-tank, air defense, or EW units. At higher echelons, adversary artillery, air defense and EW continues to outmatch U.S. capabilities, and both the Russian and Chinese militaries have evinced strong commitments to advance their drones and unmanned systems. Overall, their forces are clearly stronger, a dilemma only exacerbated by repeated moves to lighten or weaken U.S. ground forces.

What should the U.S. Army do? Several things: re-equip light brigades with protected, wheeled transport mounting heavy weapons, as before; restore their antiarmor companies; increase the density of Javelin anti-tank and Stinger air defense systems across light formations; replace towed light artillery with wheeled, 155mm systems like the French Caesar or German RCH-155; reverse the deactivation of divisional air cavalry squadrons; and arm divisional UH-60 assault helos with the Hellfire antitank missile system.

Stryker brigades should be converted into true heavy brigades, perhaps with reconditioned M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley fighting vehicles that are now in storage. Hundreds of earlier variants of the M1, M2, and M109 self-propelled howitzer are stored at Sierra Army Depot in Nevada. Should Stryker brigades be retained, they should include an armor battalion, similar to Russian motor rifle brigades. Heavy brigades should be upgraded with the M1A3 Main Battle Tank and M2A4 Infantry Fighting Vehicle as soon as possible.

Army divisions should field a general support 155mm artillery battalion in addition to the artillery battalions providing direct support to the maneuver brigades. All brigades and divisions should include air defense and electronic warfare units, as well as dedicated drone formations with trained operators at every echelon from company to division.

America has not fought a high-intensity war against heavy forces since the Gulf War, when it enjoyed crushing superiority in all domains. Today that superiority now longer exists.

Touted as a move away from a GWOT-focused Army to one more focused on “lethality” and better suited to the Indo-Pacific region, current changes in fact cut deeply into the Army’s ability to hit hard and mass combat power. An America optimized to fight in only one theater is an America content to be a regional but not a global power—a recipe for decline. In the real world, challenges erupt suddenly and unexpectedly (think December 1941, June 1950, October 1963, August 1990 and September 2001). True national security requires a flexible and adaptive Army trained and equipped for sustained, intense combat at the high end of the spectrum of conflict. This means mobility, protection and firepower in all Army formations.

In a word, light is not lethal. It’s time for a rethink.

From Defense One.

What does this analysis get right?

Sufficient armor to protect troops against small arms fire and IEDs does make sense. The “infantry squad vehicles”—essentially, unarmored dune buggies without heavy weapons, indeed don't make sense. They utterly unprotected against even rain or hail or dust or snow or children throwing rocks. They have no weapons of their own and don't have storage capacity to carry squad scale heavy weapons or medical supplies. And, they concentrate a whole squad in a tiny space where a single grenade or volley of automatic weapons fire or IED can kill all of them in one blow. It isn't particularly capable off-road (unlike, for example, the Humvee). The only thing that recommends an infantry squad vehicle at all is that it is faster than walking. Using that as the core model for 14 of 31 Army Brigades is indeed nuts. Maybe one or two brigades of them for paratrooper type deployments into very lightly armed theaters might make sense, but these are, indeed, far too light for almost any conceivable conflict. 

These units aren't even really heavy enough to take on civilian drug cartels (as President Trump has urged the Army to make a priority). U.S. police SWAT teams routinely use more armor and heavier weapons to take on tiny domestic drug dealing gangs in U.S. cities, and protesters without firearms, or a single violent boyfriend and husband or mass shooter with a handful of small arms none of which is more than 0.45 caliber.

Cutting close air support from helicopters with missiles doesn't make much sense either.

But, how can you think that the future of near peer ground warfare lies with heavy tracked tanks and infantry fighting vehicles after having seen how the Ukraine War has played out. The author of this piece forgets that the U.S. Army deliberate fielded few main battle tanks in Kosovo due to its mountains, and that it took many critical weeks to ship them by boat and train to the front in all of the conflicts in which the U.S. has been involved since the Gulf War, despite the fact that the pace of modern warfare has not gotten slower.

Strykers and MRAPs were adequate in the main U.S. wars since the 2000s, the firepower of the main M1 Abrams tank has not been very useful, tank v. tank warfare is basically no longer a thing, and guided missiles like anti-tank Javelin missiles, Hellfire missiles, and TOW missiles have all delivered much more firepower per pound, with greater precision, at equivalent or longer ranges than the main guns of tanks. Traditional tanks like the existing Abrams and traditional infantry fighting vehicles like the Bradley, have no air defenses and no anti-drone weapons, are challenging to operate in tight urban warfare and mountain warfare settings, and aren't particularly mine resistant.

Another lesson of the wars that the U.S. has fought in the last 25 years is that off-road capabilities, where tracked vehicles are a bit faster than off-road capable wheeled vehicles, are rarely used in practice. But the tracks vehicles slow down their entire units, and because they are profoundly less fuel efficient, require more, completely vulnerable fuel tanker trucks to be sent to supply them (and those tanker trucks can't go to the off-road places that the tracked vehicles can). In wars where the front lines are often ill-defined, this is a huge problem.

As for howitzers, either towed or self-propelled, tracked or wheeled, there are also problems. Their range is only 12-24 miles. They are very heavy relative to their firepower. And, they aren't very accurate, so its takes multiple rounds to destroy a target. Mortar systems are even worse in basically every respect. Guided missile systems like HIMARs, or like or Hellfire and Javelin and TOW missiles, produce equal or greater results, with much more accuracy, at longer ranges which enemy artillery can't reach.

We need a middle ground. Yes, Army units should have heavy and lethal weapons like grenade launchers/canons, heavy machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and anti-aircraft missiles. But, for just about anything more than 50mm rounds, guided missiles or handheld recoilless rifles (e.g. for breaching bunkers or fortifications) are superior to tank shells and artillery shells.

Also, yes, they should mostly have sufficient armor to protect against shrapnel and small arms fire, and provide force protection to resist land mines and IEDs. But trying to use heavy armor to protect military vehicles against dedicated anti-armor weapons is generally futile. In Ukraine, every single type of armored tank or infantry fighting vehicle, former Soviet and Western alike, has taken extremely heavy losses no matter how strong their armor was. Against these threats, the options are to either run and hide so as not to get hit, or to employ active defenses like Israel's Trophy system, or lasers, or ground based versions of the Navy's Phalanx close in weapons system, or electronic warfare tools that disrupt the guidance systems of cruise missiles and drones.

And, finally, except in extremely niche roles in very small numbers, wheeled vehicles are superior to tracked vehicles. They are lighter. They can still handle many off-road condition. They are much faster. And, they are much more fuel efficient.

A new off the shelf JTLV, which weighs about half of the original M2 Bradley (which means that you can deploy them in twice the numbers in the same time and with C-130 aircraft that can't transport a Bradley), has about the same fire power as the Bradley, and is similarly or more protective against forces without anti-armor weapons. Both are equally vulnerable to forces with anti-armor weapons. And, the JTLV is 50% faster and has a much lighter logistics trail (it needs much less fuel per mile than a tank or a tracked infantry fighting vehicle) and is cheaper. Yes, it carries fewer infantry to dismount, but this is made up for by allowing units to field twice as many of them.

Looking at how Strykers perform against armor is a straw man argument. Strykers aren't meant to primarily be tank destroyers, any more than it makes sense to send masses of dismounted infantry up against a machine gun nest for no cover. Their carried soldiers need anti-armor weapons (like the Javelin missile, or TOW missiles) that have a range longer than the range of a tank, or other systems to support them, like helicopters or drones armed with anti-tank weapons need to be deployed as tank destroyers.

Current U.S. military doctrine is based upon the assumption that U.S. forces will quickly gain air superiority, and will then use that air superiority to destroy enemy armor and artillery, before U.S. ground forces move in. Strykers aren't supposed to enter the field of battle until the armor, that they indeed don't fare well against head to head, are dispatched, and especially not a close range without at least anti-tank weapons for their dismounted infantry.

The Ukraine War, Houthi attacks on shipping, and recent clashes between Israel and Iran, however, have demonstrated that gaining air superiority and dominance may not be possible in every case, particularly against longer range guided missiles and one way armed drones. Traditional anti-aircraft weapons, meanwhile, are optimized against manned helicopters and fixed wing attack aircraft, not numerous cheap, deadline guided munitions that blur the line between armed drones and guided missiles. Against a "near peer" force, slow and heavy main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, with big, vulnerable logistics trains are targets and not assets.

The U.S. Army does need to increase air defenses and drone defenses across the force. And, the U.S. military should seriously consider switching out more vulnerable and slower attack helicopters as close air support providers, for more robust and faster dedicated close air support aircraft to replace the A-10, and drones, in addition to traditional fighter aircraft designed primarily for air to air combat, and bomber aircraft, at high altitudes, dropping "smart" bombs.

The U.S. Marine Corps has learned these lessons. It has ditched its tanks and howitzers, but kept integrated fixed wing fighter aircraft and armed helicopters to support them. 

The U.S. Army hasn't yet fully woken up to these realities and is still trying to fight World War II and the Korean War.

The Foreseeable Conflicts

It also bears noting that wars against China and Russia, which the author identified as the threats against which the U.S. Army needs to be prepared, are two very different things. 

Plausible Russian Scenarios

The Ukraine War has given us a sneak preview of what a war in Europe with Russia would look like. The Ukraine War also means that Russia's resources to fight a large scale conventional war will have been profoundly reduced. And, any plausible conflict with Russia would be fought not by the U.S. alone, but with all of its European NATO allies. 

Tanks have been destroyed at high rates by both sides in that conflict and their main guns have been very unimportant in that fight. 

Conventional howitzers received heavy use early on, because that is what was available to Russia and Ukraine at first. But now, 70%-80% of the damage is done with armed drones, missiles, snipers, and machine guns do a fair amount of the rest of the damage, and while artillery does still play a significant role in that conflict (because the supply of drones and guided missiles is more limited) it is steadily decreasing as artillery batteries are destroyed (the Russian's have lost more than two-thirds of their's so far and lose more almost every day), while supplies of drones are being replenished (since replacing lost howitzers is much more difficult). Further, artillery resources have not given either side enough of an edge to budget the current territorial front lines for years. 

And, if the U.S. and NATO, unlike Ukraine, were able to overwhelm and defeat Russian air defenses (which their guided munitions, satellite intelligence, stealth aircraft, and medium range artillery missiles would all help facilitate), Russia would be in a much worse position in terms of conventional warfare. Still, one might try to argue despite this for heavier U.S. Army forces.

Plausible Chinese Scenarios Don't Heavily Implicate The Army

In contrast, there is no sensible scenario in which U.S. forces invade any significant part of mainland China with a plan to hold it and rule it for any significant length of time.

The U.S. missions in the Indo-Pacific theater, vis-a-vis China, are to (1) protect Taiwan from being invaded, (2) protect the Philippines from maritime harassment or subjection by China, (3) to protect Hawaii, Alaska, and the U.S. territories in the Pacific (e.g. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) from invasion or embargoes, and (4) to protect Japan and South Korea and other allies in the region from Chinese attacks or intimidation.

A threatened invasion of Taiwan is the dominant concern among those possibilities. And, mostly, the U.S. role would to be employ the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. naval aviation, U.S. surface combatants with anti-ship missiles, U.S. attack submarines, and naval and air force resources from Japan, South Korea, and Australia, and possibly other U.S. and Taiwanese allies, to sink as many invading Chinese ships and destroy as many Chinese aircraft as possible, in support of Taiwanese forces on the ground, and to destroy the facilities on the coast of China from which those forces are deployed without occupying them on a medium or long term basis. 

The U.S. Marine Corps, based in places like Okinawa and Guam would play the leading role in reinforcing Taiwanese ground troops on the island of Formosa and nearby islands. In part, this is because the U.S. Army with the help of U.S. Air Force  and allied transport planes going into a contested airspace, and painfully slow U.S. Navy transport ships going into a contested maritime space, wouldn't be able to arrive in meaningful numbers in sufficient time to make a difference (especially their heavier forces which would have to come from South Korea, Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast of the mainland U.S.). 

And, invading Chinese forces that did manage to make it to Taiwan, would most likely be light infantry, because all or almost all of the ferries carrying heavy Chinese armor would likely be sunk by a barrage of air, sea, and land sources missiles, torpedos, and sea mines while crossing the 100 mile straight to Formosa from the Chinese mainland. U.S. special forces or Marines might briefly set foot on the Chinese mainland to destroy an airport or a port or a military base or to disrupt the supply chain of the Chinese forces, but they would most likely bug out as soon as their narrow and destructive mission was accomplished.

Taiwanese forces would be doing the heavy lifting to fight any Chinese forces that managed to cross the straight and in dealing with inbound Chinese missiles and armed drone with whatever anti-drone and anti-missile defenses they could muster. In any conflict where U.S. Army ground troops were doing more than just tipping the balance slightly in an evenly matched fight between invading PLA troops and Taiwanese defenders, their role would be a lost cause, and would need to happen in a matter of days, before PLA victory became a fait accompli. Artillery or tank duels between the U.S. Army and the PLA are highly unlikely.

All of which is to say that the Army's case that its forces need to be heavy armored forces to engage in a ground war with China doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. Even if the Army is able to secure the long range fires with a 1,000 mile range that it is seeking in defense procurement fights, that wouldn't matter. Hawaii is about 5,250 miles away from Taiwan. Alaska and the U.S. mainland are farther away. 

South Korea is about 830 miles away from Taiwan (about 28 hours or more by U.S. Navy transport ships once at sea through highly contested waters) and this distance would put it barely within striking distance with missiles with ranges almost three times as great as its current longest range option (which is in short supply). This is also too far for the Army to deliver its troops by helicopter without midair refueling in the face of very vigorous Chinese air defenses.

Okinawa, which has mostly Marines and Air Force and Navy personnel, is 400 miles away from Taiwan (which is still 13 hours away on an amphibious assault ship through hotly contested waters). Guam is about 2,750 miles from mainland China and has naval and air bases, but no meaningful Army or Marine Corps presence.

There are no U.S. military based on Taiwan itself, so it has almost no prepositioned troops or heavy military equipment there, and it doesn't have the depth of a relationship with local military forces that it does in Japan and South Korea either.

Plausible Scenarios Against North Korea

Really, the only plausible scenario in which U.S. Army forces would be engaged in ground combat with heavy opposing forces in Asia would be in North Korea, defending South Korea together with its own forces and with support from Japan and from other branches of the U.S. military. This would be a profoundly different kind of conflict than the conflicts against China or Russia that the author references.

North Korea may be armed to the hilt, but it is still a small country and its forces are hollow. And, it would be facing adversaries who had been planning for this moment for decades.

The Second Division of the U.S. Army, which is the main U.S. combat force stationed in South Korea (in addition to about 8,000 airmen), is divided between an artillery brigade with armored, tracked M270 multiple rocket launchers, and a combat aviation brigade with a mix of Apache AH-64 gunships, an assault regiment of troops deployed in UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, and a regiment of general support transport helicopters, as well as some larger reconnaissance and armed drones.

The Seventh Air Force stationed in South Korea consists of two fighter wings with three squadrons of F-16 fighter aircraft and one squadron of A-10 attack aircraft.

There are about 300 sailors at a U.S. naval base in Busan, which is about 4,860 miles from Hawaii (about 162 hours by naval transport ship, in addition to time to travel from Busan to the DMZ over land). So, it would take more than a week to get more U.S. Army soldiers and equipment to South Korea that could not be air lifted (although the Marines in Okinawa would be much closer, about 25 hours by ship to Busan plus addition time to the front over land).

There are about 100 Marines and about 100 special operations forces and 20 Space Force "guardians" at the Army base there (Camp Humphreys) that also houses the 20,000 U.S. Army soldiers who are not special forces, and the U.S. Air Force base with 8,000 airmen.

Camp Humphreys is 40 miles (64 km) south of the former base in Seoul and about 60 miles (97 km) from the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea. That puts the base about twice as far from North Korea as its predecessor, one of the main reasons for the move. While the new location moves the bulk of U.S. troops out of the range of North Korean artillery, the North Korean military has developed large caliber rockets and ballistic missiles, as well as a nuclear capability, capable of reaching Camp Humphreys.

Camp Humphreys is 143 miles from Busan Naval Base, which is less than three hours away for wheeled vehicles (or by train) and less than four hours away for tracked vehicles by road. It would take another hour to the DMZ for wheeled vehicles and another hour and twenty minutes for tracked vehicles by road. So, it would be a full seven days of travel from Hawaii to the front by sea, assuming that no detours were necessary to avoid attacks in contested maritime waters, and however long it took to load and unload the forces onto their sealift, to make sealift arrangements, and to decide to deploy them. 

The Marines from Okinawa make take a couple of day to arrive by sea with heavy equipment and reach the front.

The State Of The Chinese Military

An invasion of Taiwan may not be quite as imminent as recently feared. 

President Xi Jinping of China is believed to have ordered his armed forces to be prepared to invade Taiwan by 2027, if necessary, raising the specter of a catastrophic military conflict in the next few years that would almost inevitably draw in the United States.

But an ongoing purge by Mr. Xi of his top military ranks casts doubt on that deadline and, in the longer term, whether he can trust his generals to successfully wage war.

Over the past two years, two defense ministers and a host of senior People’s Liberation Army officers have been removed from their positions, including top leaders of the Rocket Force, which controls China’s nuclear weapons.

Heads continue to roll, including, according to recent reports, one of the highest-profile ousters yet: Gen. He Weidong, the country’s second-ranking officer, who reported directly to Mr. Xi and has been deeply involved in planning for a theoretical Taiwan invasion.

It is impossible to say for sure whether such dismissals are related to corruption — a stubborn and serious problem in the People’s Liberation Army — to ideological differences or to other reasons. But the tumult raises serious questions about the competence and reliability of Mr. Xi’s military commanders. This is likely to weaken his appetite for war, offering Taiwan and the United States time to strengthen their defenses.

There is no question that China’s military has come a long way. Once antiquated, it is now the world’s largest armed force and rivals the United States in air, naval and missile power. China’s military has been rehearsing an invasion or blockade of Taiwan for years — including exercises in early April — and is working out some of the challenges of transporting tens of thousands of troops across the Taiwan Strait.

But hardware and logistics alone don’t ensure victory. Military effectiveness depends heavily on battlefield leadership — experienced commanders able to make tough calls, quickly, in the fog of war. China has not fought a war since 1979, and today’s generation of Chinese officers, unlike their American and Russian counterparts, has no battlefield experience, a fact that Mr. Xi himself has lamented.

The deeper problem — underscored by the internal turmoil — is that Mr. Xi and the Chinese Communist Party may not even have a solid grip on their army.

Unlike the U.S. military, whose personnel swear an oath to the Constitution and are supposed to be apolitical, the People’s Liberation Army is the Chinese Communist Party’s army. Its officers swear allegiance to the party — of which they are members — and take their orders from Mr. Xi as head of the party and chairman of its powerful Central Military Commission. In theory, they should be under firm party control, but that’s not the case.

From the New York Times (Opinion page). 

Fleeting Thoughts From The Brink

So far, the worst case scenario in Trump 2.0 is being held at bay by federal judges, state attorneys' general, attorneys for civic groups like the ACLU, attorneys for unions, the main stream media, a smattering of private lawyers, and the financial markets. Harvard University, the Atlantic magazine, anonymous leakers in the federal government, a handful of members of Congress, consumer boycotters, street protesters, social media social justice warriors, rebellious federal workers and former federal workers, foreign diplomats, foreign heads of state, and Tesla vandals are making good showings in supporting roles. 

Most of the relief that courts have granted so far is preliminary, and has come only after significant harm has been done from wrongful conduct by the Trump Administration. Conservative intermediate federal appellate courts and the ultraconservative U.S. Supreme Court have the potential to undo many of these temporary wins. 

Some of the damage that is being done can't be remedied. Our reputation as a reliable and predictable trade partner is irrevocably damaged. Some U.S. exporters have been permanently replaced with non-U.S. exporters. The credit rating of the U.S. and the strength of the dollar has been damaged in the long run. Our credibility as an ally on national security matters will suffer for decades. Our credibility as a provider of high quality higher education to international students will suffer for many years past this administration. Our desirability as a tourist destination is damaged in the long term. Our status on the democracy and corruption indexes will be downgraded for a long time. Many long running scientific and medical research projects have been derailed beyond repair. The extent to which businesses, foreign and domestic, and private citizens, can expert the predictable application of the rule of law and stability in the legal environment has been shattered for decades to come. U.S. soft power abroad has been destroyed and we no longer have a reputation as a guardian of human rights. The objectives of all of our foreign aid programs have been undermined permanently. Our political system is now a model for what to avoid and not one to be emulated. The reputations of Americans abroad has been undermined. We will not, for the foreseeable future, have a country where it is safe for everyone to travel and live in every U.S. state destroying sixty years or so when that was the case. A consensus that anti-racism and anti-sexism is good is gone. A consensus that Nazis and the KKK are bad is gone. A consensus that empathy is a good thing is gone. We have lost scientists and other great minds and consciences to expatriation, many for good. We are no longer a nation with any significant core of shared values on either matters of substance or the political process.

The U.S. is weaker in foreign policy and military affairs than at any time since before World War II, if not further back. This puts Taiwan and the Philippines at risk. This puts Ukraine at risk. This puts Poland and Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia at risk. Greenland (and by association Denmark and NATO) are in Trump's crosshairs undermining that alliance. Panama is now a target and all goodwill there has been lost. Our long standing relations with Canada and Mexico have been shattered. The risk of a stronger China-Russia alliance has been heightened. We don't have the united front necessary to have leverage over Iran.

Israel isn't really at risk, but we are doing nothing to improve the deteriorating situation in Gaza which genocide or not, could lead to a lot of deaths because Gaza doesn't have the means to support the people who are currently residing there and they have no way to leave.

The one foreign policy/military agenda item upon which the U.S. has held firm from Biden to Trump is that the Houthis and their Red Sea vicinity piracy are receiving a firm U.S. military response.

Trump is literally pulling out of Africa entirely, closing embassies, ending aid programs, and in general, just walking away. And, while this was never a focus of U.S. foreign policy, this turns the continent over to China and ISIS.

Tesla, and Elon Musk's reputation and business empire, have suffered immense, quite possibly irrevocable blows from the combination of his political actions at DOGE destroying their reputation at home and abroad, and from the gross defects in the design and manufacturing of the Cybertruck including systemic odometer fraud. Major clients of Starlink have cancelled their contract for political reasons too. And spectacular SpaceX failures haven't helped either. There may also be securities fraud and suspicious transactions like its Canadian tax credit fraud, its related party transaction with X and xAI, and questions about a huge amount of missing money on Tesla's balance sheet. Musk's distracted attention from his multiple businesses hasn't helped them either.

Lockheed is going to lose F-35 contracts. Boeing has lost sales to China. U.S. farmers who export their products are losing. U.S. oil and gas producers are losing. Private retirement accounts are losing. The U.S. dollar is dramatically weaker. U.S. manufacturing companies are laying people off and being crippled from Apple to Johnny Walker.

The interest rate on the national debt has gone up with costs taxpayers money without providing anything in return. Food safety has been interrupted. Weather reporting has been impaired. Disease control is crippled and multiple epidemics are surging due to the quack leading the Health and Human Services Department. The military academies have been irrevocably impaired.

The Republicans in Congress have caved to almost all of even the worst excesses of Trump 2.0. They even approved insane and grossly under-qualified RFK, Jr. to Health and Human Services, as well as a host of other grossly unqualified candidates to positions where their mission it to undermine everything their agencies are charged with doing rather than faithfully executing the law. They have not stopped tariffs which were probably not authorized by law in the first place and violated the WTO treaties and the NAFTA 2.0 treaty. There have been a few attempted rebellions by small numbers of Republicans who have considerable power if they want it because the GOP majority in both the House and Senate are thin, but basically every time, they have backed down.

The end game remains uncertain. Where Trump's wrong has been acting by executive order, Congress could ratify or adopt his policies properly and by law, although he hasn't done that, in part, because he doesn't think that he can get clean support from the entire Republican caucus for his extreme measures. SCOTUS could undermine the judges who have stepped in to stop him. There is still a constitutional crisis pending over Trump's disregard of court orders related to his illegal Alien Enemies Act deportations among others. Trump could get bolder and could continue to ignore court orders without consequences. For now, Trump won't invoke the Insurrection Act, but we could have martial law and cancelled elections before it is over and he's claiming he may unconstitutionally seek a third term.

If we make it to a reasonably free and fair midterm election in 2026, it is possible that Republicans will be dramatically swept out of power as the consequences of Trump's damaging and unpopular policies becomes apparent, and that could save us. But, the core MAGA base of 35-40% of voters is largely holding fast, even as independents start to slide towards the Democrats, and there is no guarantee that the 2026 elections will be free and fair. Worst case scenario for the GOP, it could go into the wilderness for 60 years like it did after Herbert Hoover's failed tariffs.

Some of the most frightening parts of Trump's early moves have been his ability to gain GOP support to appoint utterly incompetent people to destroy the federal government, Trump's anti-DEI campaign that is evolving into straight up state supported racism and sexism and discrimination applied not just to the federal government but also to state and local schools, private colleges and universities, and private businesses, as well as esteemed and irreplaceable federal cultural institutions. His acts of retaliation against law firms, individuals, and others (even countries). His seeming ability to circumvent the Administrative Procedure Act, civil service protections, union collective bargaining agreements, Congressionally enacted protections for independent agencies, inspector generals, NEPA, duly enacted Congressional appropriations, the Office of Legal Counsel, JAG Corps, and fair minded constitution protecting senior military officers. He's compromised the limited independence of immigration judges. Many more decent people are just washing their hands and resigning rather than being a part of Trump's illegal agenda. 

Trump could order invasions of Greenland or the Panama Canal without Congressional support and get away with it, possibly even triggering a war with NATO. 

SCOTUS has done us no favors in overruling *Roe* with *Dobbs*, with over ruling *Chevron* deference to federal regulations, with deciding that Trump has broad immunity from criminal prosecution, with deciding contrary to clear constitutional language and precedent that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment isn't self-executing, with mealy mouthed responses to Trump's defiance of the law even when it has taken action, with its pro-gun nut jurisprudence on the Second Amendment, and in this time of tyranny, perhaps more than anything, its "unitary executive" jurisprudence.

If democracy does survive, the long standing two party structure of Republicans and Democrats seems likely to fall apart. The minority of reasonable conservatives in the GOP are leaving the party in favor of being independents or flooding the Democratic party tent with principled conservatives and libertarians. The Democratic party tent is getting spread to thin to be cohesive but for its current common enemy. If Trump alienates enough big business and establishment Republicans, the GOP could find it has no money to back it up. Progressives are falling for nihilism, convinced that Democrats are against them and not just lacking the power to secure what they want. The Republican Party of 2025 is a populist, far-right, basically neo-Nazi party. Its major screw ups in Trump 2.0 and violent swing to the right could leave it as a permanent minority party with a mish mash of everyone else trying to form coalitions to keep it out of power (which our current single member district plurality system makes challenging).

Looking at the big picture: What is the solution? Is the problem that we need better institutions? Is the problem that we need a one time reset to purge or undermine bad SCOTUS judges? Does the political culture need to change? Do we just need better politicians to run for the good causes seeing that they are needed and for Trump to die? Is the U.S. constitution resilient enough to weather this crisis? Would it be better if the U.S. constitution failed forcing a new regime from scratch since the corrections that are necessary can't be made through the ordinary means? Do we need more street politics?

What if we make it through this crisis but badly damaged in a way that sets us on a path to inevitable long term decline and degradation even though we avoid the worst case scenarios this time around? We are already a flawed democracy. Maybe will fall further down that scale, become a mere semi-democracy and more corrupt than we have become, experiencing nationwide the kind of decline that the rust belt and coal belt have seen so far.

Should the U.S. split up? Do red states realize how dependent they are on money from blue states? I sense that if red states went it alone that they wouldn't replace much of what the federal government provided and would instead just treat its poor and sick and weak worse, and would become more hateful. The blue states would be weaker for smaller scale, but would allow their prosperity to overcome it and would adopt new and better policies unrestrained by red state backwardness.

How far will women's rights, gay rights, trans rights, non-Christian rights retreat? How far will our isolation from the globe grow? How many immigrants will be purged? How will our national character wither?

One of the deep institutional flaws of the U.S. government that doesn't get talked about enough is that we have an inferior system of public law (the law regulating government) and also have government institutions that aren't good at basic functions like making major military purchases, carrying out major public works programs, and managing large numbers of public servants. This is one major reason for the bias against having government rather than the private sector carry out tasks in U.S. politics compared to many other countries, even when government is really better suited to the tasks in question, and it is a major reason that the U.S. has started to increasing lag relative to its developed world counterparts.

When I first learned that many countries put the prosecutor's office in the judicial branch rather than the executive branch, I was skeptical, thinking that this would make judges biased in favor of prosecutors. And, in countries like South Korea and Japan, that does happen. But, seeing Trump try to use the criminal justice system to persecute his political opponents, I can see the potential benefits to insulating prosecutors from partisan elected officials outside the executive branch (something that almost largely removes the need to have an awkward and flawed special prosecutor system to address criminal acts within the executive branch).

New Year's Eve Fears

I don't have high hopes for 2025.

* Trump.

* H5N1. Trump makes this a much, much more serious and more likely to be lethal risk. This is one mutation away from mass pandemic status and may be much more deadly than COVID-19.

* The war in Ukraine continues. It will be three years old in two months. Trump is eager to abandon Ukraine and please Russia. The rest of NATO will continue to support Ukraine. Russia's capacity to fight a conventional ground war has been dramatically degraded and its conventional naval forces have been revealed to be more vulnerable than widely believed beforehand. While Russia is incrementally gaining territory, longer range Ukrainian strikes and covert operations have put targets deep inside Russia's borders at risk. Russia continues to lose soldiers and hard to replace military equipment on a daily basis. Russia's economy is straining. It's secrets about how to conduct a war and its weaknesses have been broadcast to the world. Troops sent by North Korea to support it are getting slaughtered by the thousands.

* We will see what kind of regime emerges in Syria with the fall of Assad's regime.

* Israel's multi-front war with Iran and its proxies continues and it has indefinitely occupied some Syrian territory on its border in the wake of the fall of Assad's regime there.

* Gaza has been leveled.

Millions of Palestinians are still in Gaza because they have no way to go anywhere else. But this is unsustainable. It is basically impossible to make this a place that can sustain life for millions of people without mass deaths before this is done, and no one has the will and money to make that happen anyway.

At this point there are really only two possibilities: Either the number of deaths surges from a few tens of thousand to many hundreds of thousands or more, or many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are exiled indefinitely from Gaza, a burden that no one has been willing to accept in the necessary numbers. Still, my assumption is that sooner or later, hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza will be relocated, willingly or unwillingly. The West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan would be the most obvious places to move them, but there are endless possibilities. Iran, which created this problem by encouraging the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas is the country that should take in the people of Gaza, but it probably won't.

* The civil war in Sudan continues to be a shit show. Nobody even has more than a rough estimate of how many have died or been injured in the conflict. Neither side is good, but the side that is backed by the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide is worse and backed by Arab monarchies. There are no signs of short term improvement in this catastrophic war.

* Because Trump took office, a massive global trade war is imminent. It will drive up prices in the U.S. at the expense of U.S. consumers, and destroy the economy. It will do almost nothing to help U.S. companies.

* Trump's promise of mass deportations promises to destroy the U.S. economy (especially agriculture, construction, and hospitality), to be a humanitarian nightmare, and to test once again the rule of law in the U.S.

* Trump's threats of conquest directed at our allies poses a risk of war.

* Trump's extreme weakness, stupidity, and hostility towards China could encourage more warlike action by China against Taiwan and the Philippines. 

* Trump's promise to pardon the thousand plus people convicted or facing charged from January 6 will lead to a surge in right-wing terrorism in the U.S. and undermine democracy.

* Maybe, if we are lucky, Trump won't live to complete his term. He isn't young, he isn't healthy, he isn't careful, all of which could lead to his death from natural causes, and he seems to have advancing dementia as well. Also, lots of people would like to assassinate him and there were two serious attempts to do so in 2024 already. If Trump died from natural causes before January 20, 2025, this could save the United States as a country.

* We can expect a surplus of serious natural disasters and extreme weather in 2025 that will probably surpass 2024, due to global warming.

* We are close to the internal combustion engine/electric vehicle tipping point. If it isn't in 2025, it will happen soon, even though Trump's policies may delay it in the U.S.

* While the left and the middle of the American political spectrum agrees that health care in the U.S. needs sweeping reforms, if anything, the Trump administration will only make things worse.

* The political right in the U.S. is increasingly opposed to education and libraries at all levels. We've seen a preview with book banning efforts, anti-intellectual Florida mandates for educators, and the effective ruin of New College in Florida already. An all out attack on academia and education, which is particularly intense in red states, is likely to get worse during the Trump administration.

* It isn't at all clear what the future looks like for reproductive rights. Dobbs was a catastrophe, but referenda and courts in many states have clawed back some of the losses. Other states, like Texas, for example, are absolutely horrible, with the quality of women's healthcare generally destroyed.

* MAGA's efforts to scapegoat transgender people continues and is gaining ground. Fleeing red states and conservative controlled institutions look like the only options for now.

* MAGA has rekindled racism in the U.S. and made it more strident. This seems likely to continue.

* Right wing Christianity's hate and sexism seem likely to continue the exodus from Christianity which came to a brief pause.

* Tax cuts are likely to undermine infrastructure in the U.S.

* If the right's battle against Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other public benefit programs is successful, we are going to see tens of millions of new poor people struggling for survival (and sometimes failing). The Trump recession will make it even worse.

The U.S. Approach To A Hypothetical Invasion Of Taiwan

Size comparison

The United States military is acutely aware of the possibility that the People's Republic of China on the mainland (the PRC), might try to invade and conquer Taiwan, something that the PRC has repeated threatened to do, although a military conflict with between the Philippines and the PRC in which the U.S. might become embroiled seems more likely in the short term and has resulted in more incidents of low intensity warfare in the last two or three years. I've also explained, elsewhere, why the PRC's reliance on international trade in a wide variety of goods and services to support its economy makes an invasion of Taiwan a much more costly option for it, than a globally unpopular war would be for Russia, whose international exports are dominated by oil and gas, or North Korea, which is very isolated economically from the rest of the world. Further background is available below.

Indeed, the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is the single largest rhetorical justification used by the U.S. Navy, and to a lesser but still great extent by the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Air Force, for U.S. military expenditures.

The U.S. Strategy

The U.S. doesn't have any major military bases in Taiwan, unlike its military bases in Japan, South Korea, Hawaii, Alaska, three U.S. territories in the Pacific, and a smaller U.S. military base in the Philippines (which was once a much larger presence), presumably, in order to formally honor its "One China" policy.

But the U.S. has sold a lot of sophisticated U.S. military equipment to Taiwan, and together with its allies, can marshal considerable naval and air forces in the region.

Basically, the plan is for the U.S., Taiwan, and its allies to direct large numbers of anti-ship missiles and when the opponents are very close, Taiwanese artillery and allied naval gun shells at invading Chinese ships and boats, deployed from land, from surface ships at sea, from every manner of aircraft from long range stealth and conventional bombers, to carrier and land based fighter aircraft (some making the trip with the help of aerial refueling), to maritime patrol aircraft, to C-130 and C-17 military transport planes carrying missile launching cargo, to long range drones, to nuclear attack submarines, with the nuclear attack submarines also launching torpedoes. It would use U.S. satellites, high altitude spy planes, surveillance drones, and U.S. signals intelligence resources to identify targets (as well as any human intelligence resources within China available to the U.S. or its allies). Containerized anti-ship missile batteries will soon make it possible for cargo ships, amphibious transport ships, and merchant ships to also carry and deliver anti-ship missiles with ranges in the hundreds of miles.

Long range bombers, maritime patrol aircraft, C-17s, and fighter aircraft that use aerial refueling tankers, can travel thousands of miles and make the trip in about 12-13 hours from Hawaii. The trip from based in Japan or South Korea or Guam or American Samoa or the Northern Marina Islands would be shorter. Surface ships and submarines not already in the area can take several weeks to arrive, rendering them almost irrelevant in a fast developing naval battle, without a great deal of advance warning from satellites and other intelligence that she China mobilizing.

The aircraft and ships and ground batteries firing anti-ship missiles don't have to get particularly close. The aircraft can stay at high altitudes. Even the shortest range fighter and helicopter carried anti-ship missiles have a range of 18-20 miles. Most have ranges from 100 to 600 miles, and the aircraft can get just within range and turn around if the risk of air defenses is great. Modern torpedoes have a range of about 24 miles, although a longer range provides a target a greater opportunity to evade it.

The U.S. and its allies could deposit of small force of mostly light ground troops in the lead up to an invasion and during an invasion, but for the most part, Taiwan would have to rely on its own troops and reserves, and pre-placed equipment for its ground forces, to repel any Chinese troops that managed to cross the Taiwan strait by sea or by air.

The mission of Taiwan and its allies is easier. It need only destroy or mitigate the harm from incoming ships, aircraft, drones, missiles, and naval gun shells (the Taiwan strait is too wide for cannon artillery or all but the longest range artillery missiles on the mainland to cross) with a mix of anti-ship and anti-aircraft weapons. They don't need to board ships of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), and don't have to deliver troops or their equipment in an amphibious invasion. PLAN submarines are effective ways to deny access to the ships of Taiwan and its allies and merchant ships bound to Taiwan, but most are fairly short range coastal submarines that have almost no effectiveness against the aircraft of Taiwan and its allies, and pose only a manageable threat to surface warships of Taiwan and its allies that are not in the Taiwan strait or too close to the island of Formosa.

A carrier with F-35C fighter aircraft, for example, need only be close enough for its fighters to fly to the edge of their 700 (non-nautical) mile combat radius which in turn must be within 150 to 700 (non-nautical) miles of the target of their anti-ship missiles. So, the carrier can strike a ship in the Taiwan strait that is 850-1400 miles away from its, for example, from the vicinity of the Northern Marina Islands, or Tokyo, or South Korea, or the southern most islands of the Philippines. 

A carrier group at that distance would also have a decent chance of intercepting long range missiles bound towards it from mainland China, and the range of these anti-ship missiles is greater than all but the most potent anti-aircraft missiles in China's arsenal and would have to be timed to strike the aircraft delivering the missiles only just as the aircraft is about to launch its air to ground missiles or is just returning from doing so. And, of course, if an F-35 is hit by a Chinese anti-air missile, only one pilots life, at most, is lost, and there is a decent chance that the pilot could eject and be recovered by a search and rescue team. The number of Chinese ground troops killed every time a Chinese warship or worse yet, a Chinese troop carrying ship, is sunk, would be profoundly greater.

Certainly, Chinese troops that do manage to reach the Taiwanese shore by sea, or by helicopter or transport plane or as paratroops, as elite soldiers in an massive all volunteer military of professional Chinese soldiers are, on average, going to be better trained and more skilled soldiers, than Taiwanese ground troops at the vanguard of a massive but not terribly ready or elite reserve force. But the Taiwanese troops know their territory, have the support of the locals, have been training for this mission and this mission only, are fighting to protect their homes, and will locally outnumber the modest number of Chinese troops that manage to cross the strait at least at first, if the efforts to Taiwan and its allies to destroy incoming troop carrying ships and transport aircraft is reasonably successful.

Also, in an era of Chinese demographics where one child families are the norm, even in this nation of 1.4 billion people, the lives of young men serving as soldiers in the PRC's military are no longer cheap and expendable. And, China has not fought any actual hot conflict in which its any significant number of its soldiers and sailors have lost their lives in the living memory of the vast share of the Chinese people. They haven't had much of a chance to come to see these losses as a necessary price to meet its geopolitical objectives, which it has mostly achieved with trade, aid, and diplomacy.

For all of China's bluster, one can seriously doubt whether China really has the stomach to lose the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men, most of its navy, a substantial share of its air force, and many of its coastal military resources, when it can already extract much of what it wants Taiwan for economically as opposed to culturally or politically, through trade. 

China has nuclear weapons, but those too are less potent of a threat in a Taiwan invasion. Using on nuclear weapon on the island of Formosa pretty much defeats the purpose of conquering it and would make it an international pariah. But missile defenses are effective enough that ICBMs aimed to the U.S. or its allies might be completely or almost completely thwarted, with any successes threatening massive nuclear retaliation against it.

The Historical And Geopolitical Context And Background

The island of Formosa is about 100 miles from mainland China across the Taiwan Strait. 

A typical naval warship can make the trip in about four hours, a very fast one might make it in two or three hours. A helicopter or slower drone could make it in forty-five minutes or less. A subsonic missile or fighter jet or military transport plane can make the trip in ten to fifteen minutes. A supersonic jet fighter can make the trip in five minutes. A hypersonic missile can make the trip in less than two minutes.

The PRC claims the island of Formosa upon which Taiwan is situated is a rebel province which is part of its territory, along with the strait between Formosa and the mainland, despite the fact that the regime has never had any control or authority on the island, and the fact that no mainland Chinese regime has had any control or authority on the island since 1895. The modern Chinese state dates only to the revolution in China in 1911.

Meanwhile, Taiwan, even more laughably, claims to be the legitimate government in exile of mainland China, a territory it lost any remnant of authority or control over from its inception when its regime retreated there after losing the civil war in China that persisted from the end of World War II in 1945 which left a power vacuum there, until the victory of the Maoists and defeat of the Nationalists in 1949, 75 years ago. The Kuomintang party abandoned its claim to be the sole government of mainland China in 1991 in the same year that it ended "emergency rule".

Imperial China ruled the island of Formosa from 1662 when it ousted the Dutch and large numbers of people from mainland China migrated there, until 1895 when the island was conquered by the Japanese Empire. The Japanese ruled it for half a century until the end of World War II in 1945. 

After World War II, there was a civil war in China between the Maoist Communists and the Chinese Nationalist Party led by Chiang Kai-shek. The non-communist Chinese Nationalist Party eventually lost that civil war and relocated to the island of Formosa in a mass migration of its remaining loyalist in 1949 (the same year that the Maoist PRC regimes was declared by Chairman Mao), filling the post-World War II power vacuum caused by the collapse of Imperial Japan's rule there. The following year, in 1950, now 74 years ago, the PRC conquered Tibet.

Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan as a de facto dictator for twenty-six years until 1975, with U.S. backing against expansion of the Communist PRC as part of the Cold War, running the economy on a capitalist model.

The PRC claimed the island as its territory, even though no mainland Chinese government had ruled there since early 1895, and in 1971, after three-quarters of a century in mainland China had no control or authority there, and despite the fact that the PRC regime had never had control or authority there, in 1971, the U.N. recognized the PRC's claim to the island and expelled Taiwan from the U.N. The PRC terminated its diplomatic relationship with Taiwan in 1978. Today, following the U.N.'s lead, only 13 countries, including the U.S., have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. The PRC and Taiwan had their first formal talks with each other again in 2014, thirty-six years after breaking off diplomatic relations but have not reestablished diplomatic ties. Per the BBC link below:

Today, only 12 countries (plus the Vatican) officially recognise Taiwan. The US decision to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 was the turning point. And a richer, more powerful China exerts pressure so more countries do not recognise Taiwan or lend it support. But America remains the island's strongest ally, sells arms to it and has vowed to help in case of a Chinese attack.

The U.S., however, continued to be a strong ally to Taiwan and its military guaranteed its independence from the PRC, and under its influence, Taiwan eventually reformed itself, carrying out land reform to address the feudal era inequalities that led to the Maoist revolution on the mainland, instituting universal public education, modernizing its agricultural and industrial economies, and finally, step by step becoming a democracy. Martial law was lifted in 1987 after 38 years. Four years later in 1991, four decades of "emergency rule" was ended. And, five years after that in 1996, Taiwan had its first direct Presidential election, which the Kuomintang party, the successor to the original Chinese Nationalist Party that had controlled Taiwan for forty-seven years since 1949, won. 

The uncontested rule of Chiang Kai-shek's dominant Kuomintang party finally ended in the year 2000, when the leader of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won the Presidential election, only for the Kuomintang party to regain the Presidency from 2006 to 2016, when the Democratic Progressive Party regained the Presidency, in part, over concerns that the Kuomintang party was to friendly with China and might jeopardize Taiwan's independence. The Democratic Progressive Party still holds the Presidency today. China has gradually stepped up its saber rattling towards Taiwan since the Kuomintang Party lost the Presidency in 2016.

Taiwan is now a first world country with a high standard of living in an advanced stage of demographic transition of 23.6 million people (compared to about 1,400 million people in the PRC which is about 59 times a large). Taiwan's economy is best known for its advance computer chip manufacturing which is the global state of the art. Indeed, according to the BBC, "By one measure, a single Taiwanese company - the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or TSMC - has over half of the world's market."

Despite a lack of formal diplomatic relations, 21% of Taiwan's imports are from the PRC and 26% of its exports are to the PRC.

About 70% of the Taiwanese people are Han Chinese, another 25% or so are from another Southern mainland Chinese ethnicity, about 2-3% of the Taiwanese people are indigenous Formosans who speak sixteen different languages once of which is the ancestral language of the Austronesian family of languages spoken from Easter Island and Oceania, to Southeast Asia, to Madagascar, with a small percentage of people of other ancestries. Mandarin Chinese, and two other Chinese topolects (one of which has several dialects) are the predominant languages of Taiwan. But even Chinese languages like Mandarin which are present in both Taiwan and the mainland have developed distinct Taiwanese accents that are perhaps as distinct from their mainland counterparts as American and Canadian English dialects, in their spoken versions, in the non-logographic written versions of them, and in subtleties of meaning and pronunciation of their shared Chinese characters. 

Over the last thirty years or so, however, the people of Taiwan have increasingly come to identify themselves as Taiwanese, or as both Taiwanese and Chinese. About two-thirds identify as Taiwanese only. Almost a third identify as both, and only one or two percent now identify only as Chinese.

Taiwan's religious makeup reflects the pre-Maoist religious mix of China, with 42% adhering to Chinese folk religion (a close cousin of Japanese Shinto practice), 27% identifying primarily as Buddhist, 13% identifying as Daoist, 7% identifying with East Asian "new religions", 6% as Christian, and the remainder as non-religious agnostics, although these religious movements are not nearly so mutually exclusive as Western religious denominations and sects.

Taiwan controls a territory of about 13,900 square miles, while the PRC controls about 3.7 million square miles, which is about 2660 times as large.

Critically, the PRC of today is not the PRC of 1949. While the PRC doesn't adhere fully to the extreme version of capitalism found in the United States and has high levels of state involvement in the economy, its record economic growth for many decades has been made possible only through market based economic reforms, soft recognition of property and contract rights, and sufficient openness towards ideas from the world outside of China to allow it to gain the scientific and technological knowledge necessary for it to rapidly catch up to the developed world. 

The assimilation of Hong Kong into China has meant even more growing pains for both sides. 

China is still astoundingly authoritarian, but it is also not the raw, unpredictable cauldron of violence that it experienced in the 1970s during the Cultural Revolution. 

Despite being nominally communist, China has its fair share of billionaires and there is a great deal of overlap between its political elites and its economic elites. In other words, China's rules are also among the very wealthiest people in the entire country, which makes a return to an extremely leveling brand of communism that eats the rich unlike to recur there, even if it is quite a dangerous thing to be a billionaire or centi-millionaire in China that can lead to your untimely demise in a usually not officially acknowledged manner if the cross the wrong people or offend the sensibilities of leaders in the Chinese Communist Party.

So far, China has liberalized economically in a gradual manner, rather than all at once as the Soviet Union did in what turned out to be a chaotic and sudden mess that transformed the country from Soviet style communism or crony capitalism run by oligarchs in less than a quarter of a century, with intense societal and governmental pain along the way. This lesson schools Chinese Communist Party leaders to be cautious in their reforms, and had discouraged a relaxation of its authoritarian political model. 

But the expectations of continuous fast economic growth that they have developed for themselves puts pressure on them to adopt policies that work to continue that as much as possible and at some point, China's authoritarian rule will have to be relaxed to sustain that, particularly as China starts to have to rely on new innovations of its own, rather than copying proven global economic and technological models to achieve new economic growth. Also, non-economic freedom is, to some extent, one of the luxuries that people in economically prosperous societies crave and desire. The more affluent the Chinese people become, the more they are going to be willing to face significant personal risk and sacrifice and economic resources to escape authoritarian rule. And, there are enough wealthy Chinese people who have traveled abroad to less authoritarian counties, or who have access to less censored international media, that they can know that it is possible to leave in a freer and more democratic world (and the people of Hong Kong have demonstrated that this can work even for ethnically and culturally Chinese people), that it is an enjoyable and desirable intangible luxury to have, and that there are ways of achieving and sustaining it that they can learn and copy as they did less political foreign technologies. It isn't clear how smooth or rocky the path to that end will be, and in the near term, transitioning from China level authoritarianism to Singapore level authoritarianism, or something like it, may be an intermediate step. But it is hard to see a trajectory in which China becomes more insular and authoritarian, rather than less so, in over the next several decades.

This is all to say, then, that it an invasion of Taiwan can be discouraged for a sufficiently long period of time, that eventually mainland China may eventually catch up with Taiwan (which has only enjoyed more or less full democracy and social freedoms for thirty years or so itself), at which point a merger of the PRC and Taiwan might not be so problematic anymore.

Military Capabilities

Taiwan is quite militarized, with 169 thousand active duty military personnel, 1,657 thousand reserve troops, and a defense budget of $16.2 billion. But this is dwarfed by the PRC's 2,035 thousand active duty military personnel, 650 thousand reserve troops, and $242.4 billion USD defense budget. Taiwan has 26 surface warships of frigate class or larger and 4 military submarines and many smaller naval and coast guard vessels. China has 92 surface warships of frigate class or larger and 59 military submarines and many smaller naval and coast guard vessels and is expanding its fleet rapidly. Taiwan's air force has 405 jet fighters. China has more than 1,628 jet fighters. Taiwan has 650 tanks. China has 4,800 tanks.

Most of the information above is drawn from a BBC background piece and the 2024 World Almanac (hard copy).

Unlike the United States and Russia, which have large "blue sea Navies", China's ships rarely venture more than 400 miles from its Pacific Coast (although China has deployed as many as a dozen naval ships to suppress pirates in the Indian Ocean right up to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and has an ample merchant and fishing fleet that is sometimes pressed into paramilitary service), and Taiwan's navy stays even closer to home.