To Beat China’s Navy to the Punch, Defend Forward in Taiwan
Editor’s Note: this article is being republished with the permission of the Irregular Warfare Initiative as part of a republishing arrangement between IWI and SWJ. The original article was published on 11 February 2025 and is available here.
The US cannot keep pace with China’s exponential growth in naval power. Ship for ship, the People’s Liberation Army Navy outnumbers the US Navy, and this disparity will only grow with time. This makes conventional naval power an unreliable means by which the US could deter or combat Chinese maritime aggression. The most dangerous instance of such potential aggression is an attempt by China to seize control of Taiwan and the hostilities that would likely ensue between the US and China as a result.
Holding fast to an infeasible strategic approach is folly. A course correction is required and must use means available to the US today that can reliably deter China from launching a cross-strait attack against its democratic neighbor and preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific.
To deter China from invading Taiwan, the US must deploy and maintain a military force to bolster Taiwan with combat power sufficient to foil Chinese invasion plans. While this may seem highly escalatory, such a move would not cross actual Chinese red lines. Political acts that appear to support Taiwanese independence do yield volatile and aggressive Chinese reactions. In contrast, reports of US forces on Taiwan have resulted in no similarly aggressive response from China to date.
This asymmetric approach would undercut China’s naval strength, obviating China’s increasing ability to outclass US naval power. In this way, the US can leverage current and developing capabilities to provide a feasible strategy for the defense of Taiwan.
A Conventional Strategy to Deter Chinese Aggression is a Losing Proposition
The United States is losing the maritime competition with the People’s Republic of China—and it’s not postured to win it. With Chinese shipbuilding capacity and its expanding defense budget significantly outpacing that of the US, the People’s Liberation Army Navy now outnumbers the US in warfighting naval platforms with an ever-growing differential.
In contrast, US shipbuilding efforts have barely moved in a strategic direction favorable to the US military. The Secretary of the Navy under the Biden administration made herculean efforts to address the systemic obstacles plaguing the US shipbuilding industry, yet these problems still remain unresolved. It is likely that, absent the urgency of military duress, the problems will remain due to inertia. In the meantime, China will establish clear naval dominance within its adjacent seas, most notably the First Island Chain.
These problems converge on the most salient flashpoint between China and the US—a potential war initiated by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Bringing Taiwan under Chinese rule—by any means—remains a principal national security objective of China. Xi Jinping ordered his army to be militarily capable of achieving this goal by 2027. While there are some doubts that China will be ready on schedule, it continues to march towards that state of readiness.
The US remains on track to fall further behind, in relative and absolute terms. Recent wargames that explored a US-China war over Taiwan have had mixed results, but these games used models featuring a more balanced ratio of US naval forces relative to Chinese naval forces, a ratio now obviated by China’s most recent leap in naval power.
Moreover, the growing Chinese naval advantage makes China’s maritime reach more global in nature. This will only increase China’s ability to prevent the US from projecting and sustaining combat forces across the Pacific, forcing US naval forces into decisive battle areas across the First Island Chain and around Taiwan. This disrupts the US maritime strategy of projecting conventional power into theaters through command and control of the sea lines of communication throughout the operational areas. If the US continues to employ this principal theory of warfare, the US is increasingly likely to lose the opening phases of any such conflict with China.
A conventional US military strategy applied to this problem is a path to defeat. While China likely desires to take Taiwan through non-military means and avoid a direct conflict with the US, China will exploit its relative military advantage to accelerate gray zone operations and a salami slicing strategy that will deteriorate the US as a reliable security guarantor for its regional allies, while accelerating its pressure campaign against Taiwan. Without a new approach, China’s ability to compel Taiwan to bend its knee to Beijing becomes stronger, even if a war never occurs.
The Hybrid Threat of a Chinese Cross-Strait Invasion
If the US goal of preventing a military seizure of Taiwan is infeasible given current ways and means, the US must choose a different strategy. While a conventional approach of naval power projection is untenable for the desired end, an unconventional approach offers more hope.
Rather than waiting until hostilities have begun to project force into theater using a naval force that may be at a quantitative disadvantage, the US should position combat credible forces ‘left of bang’ before hostilities make such projection infeasible. A US military force deployed persistently to Taiwan, with combat power sufficient to cripple any attempted Chinese invasion, would give the US a more reliable means of preventing China from seizing Taiwan militarily.
This course of action is founded on core principles of naval operations. For the defense of Taiwan, one principle stands out among others: “The seat of purpose is on the land.” Fleet engagements are not fought for their own accord nor solely for the security of the seas, but are intimately tied to objectives and operations on land. In this case, Taiwan would not merely be the location of land-based tactical engagements, but also the political and strategic object over which the belligerents will be fighting.
In a cross-strait invasion, China would execute naval operations with an amphibious assault, then stabilization and expansion of lodgments, and finally the reinforcement and combat sustainment to defeat Taiwan ground forces. The US and Taiwan would conduct military operations to prevent the projection of Chinese forces across the Taiwan Strait and, failing that, isolate and destroy those forces that make it ashore. Should such a war become protracted and involve a meaningful establishment of Chinese presence on Taiwan, naval operations would support the liberation of Taiwan.
Irregular Forces and Asymmetric Deterrence Against China
This US force must be able to, in coordination with Taiwan’s military, blunt a Chinese invasion to the extent that an amphibious invasion would fail or delay long enough until US forces can fight across the Pacific and reinforce the sovereignty of Taiwan.
These forces must deploy counter-landing capabilities and any effects optimized to destroy Chinese surface and amphibious vessels, especially those that could embark and lift the amphibious combined-arms brigades of the People’s Liberation Army. This would include employment of anti-ship missiles, suicide drones, rapidly deployable naval mines, and other enablers that could turn the Taiwan Strait into a hellscape of destruction.
Notably, this would include those drones and munitions under development by the Replicator initiative. This would allow the force, likely small and unconventional in composition, to have effects exponentially greater than the sum of their parts, exacerbating the dangers of inherently risky amphibious operations.
These forces would not only focus on directly applying kinetic effects, but also on sensors allowing them to detect and transfer custody of targets to joint, allied, and partnered forces for prosecution.
Finally, this command should prioritize irregular warfare in its concept of employment to empower Taiwan as the lead military effort in its territorial defense and to capitalize on core competencies of irregular warfare across the phases of a Chinese invasion scenario.
This irregular approach could complicate the potential progression of a cross-strait attack with templated layers. The first layer would include small teams employing the sensors and munitions of the Replicator project, supporting Taiwanese counter-landing forces, with the intent of destroying Chinese amphibious forces crossing the strait. At the shoreline, US irregular forces would employ shallow-water mines and demolitions at ports, piers, beachheads, and other avenues of approach to sabotage a Chinese breakout. In the event of a Chinese breakout, such irregular forces could destroy key intersections in road networks to create bottlenecks, stymieing Chinese mobility. If China breaks out of a lodgment and pushes into Taiwan’s interior, irregular forces would employ the entire gamut of unconventional warfare, guerrilla warfare, civil affairs operations, psychological operations, and provide critical reports to a US higher headquarters in a denied environment, simultaneously coordinating and maintaining a protracted campaign against China until conventional US forces project power across the Pacific and support Taiwan once more.
The Strategic Value of US Special Operations Forces in Taiwan: Deterrence, Integration, and Escalation Management
Placing US forces in Taiwan offers a value proposition that cannot be achieved by merely giving these same capabilities to Taiwanese defense forces.
First, these forces could employ premier American weapon systems and most closely guarded capabilities to provide a strategic force multiplier and deterrent effect. While foreign military sales or transfer of equipment to Taiwan improve their domestic capabilities, they are restrained by legal limitations that keep the best materiel in US hands.
Similarly, US forces could deploy with commercial off the shelf equipment that cannot be fielded to Taiwan due to business limitations, such as Taiwan’s inability to secure Starlink terminals after negotiations collapsed.
Having a US force on station enables immediate immersion and connectivity with US kill-webs and networks, facilitating coordination that could otherwise not be achieved due to integration challenges between US and foreign sensor networks and communications systems.
The presence of US troops communicates to Taiwan that the US has skin in the game. This will reinforce morale, a willingness to fight, and mitigate capitulation in the shock of an attack or from the effects of Chinese narrative warfare, cognitive warfare and coercive pressure.
The physical presence of US troops in any state’s territory remains the most consistently reliable and significant contributor to deterring Chinese aggression. China must acknowledge that an attack on Taiwan is also an attack on US forces. This will transfer the escalation risk from the US, which it would assume if it came to Taiwan’s defense after hostilities began, back to China, which must account for escalation before it chooses to start a war of aggression.
Finally, it is critical that Chinese red lines are not misinterpreted. A compelling objection to the placement of a US military command in Taiwan is that it would be wildly escalatory, convincing China that it must attack. But this assumption does not accord with the facts. The reported operation of US military forces on Taiwan did not trip a Chinese red line nor precipitate an invasion. Credible overtures of Chinese military intervention are elicited, rather, by political acts that appear to acknowledge Taiwanese independence from China.
A US Military Command in Taiwan Can Sidestep Chinese Naval Dominance
China has surpassed the US in naval power. Under current conditions, it will expand that gap between US and Chinese naval capabilities, maintaining naval dominance in and around Taiwan. This makes a conventional strategy of attempting to deter and defeat a Chinese cross-strait attack on Taiwan principally through reactive application of US naval power infeasible. Aiming to do so after such an attack exacerbates the operational challenges to the US, making it highly unlikely the US could come out on top in the early stages of such a conflict.
Instead, the US can employ capabilities available now and deploy them to Taiwan today: a US military joint task force with combat power credible enough to foil Chinese invasion plans. With special operation capabilities nested within this force, it would offer substantial advantages that cannot be gained by merely provisioning materiel to Taiwanese defense forces. On the other hand, it offers the most proven deterrent effect, US forces stationed on foreign soil. While political recognition of Taiwan remains a red line for China, prior reports of US forces in Taiwan did not spark reaction from China. This option presents little risk of escalation, while asymmetrically bypassing China’s naval advantage. The placement of a US military command in Taiwan will deter a Chinese military attack on the island nation, stabilizing the region and securing US interests today.
