‘China Is Gearing Up to Attack Taiwan and Has Many Options for How that Would Work’
January 25, 2021
WASHINGTON, D.C.— Over the weekend, China sent eight nuclear-capable bombers and four fighter jets into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), part of a pattern of Chinese provocations that could at any moment become the spearhead for a war against Taiwan.
China and Taiwan expert and Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow Stephen Bryen has released an emergency analysis of this urgent national security crisis unfolding in real time.
“Any attack by China, limited or not, directly impacts regional stability and could result in a decoupling of the United States from East Asia, or worse,” Bryen writes. He also contends that neither the U.S., Taiwan nor Japan is prepared to respond other than by improvisation.
Bryen notes that the Trump administration succeeded in finally opening U.S. military and diplomatic eyes to the urgency of the threat from China and warns against shutting them again:
“Now the new Biden administration has a decision to make: Biden can continue the Trump policy and enhance it or revert to the older Obama policy of squeezing Taiwan. The Chinese clampdown on pro-democracy interests in Hong Kong has made the Taiwanese people afraid that they will meet the same fate.”
To address these growing threats to Taiwan from China, Bryen makes these urgent policy recommendations for the Biden administration:
- The U.S. Department of Defense Must establish a Joint Military Command for the Defense of Japan and Taiwan with a mandate to organize a fully coordinated capability to respond to Chinese invasion threats.
- Improvements in air defenses, aircraft and standoff weapons to assure the survivability of Taiwan’s air bases and U.S. and Japanese airbases and to retain a strong capability to stop any Chinese aggression.
Click here to read the full report, “Stopping China from Invading Taiwan,” by Senior Fellow Stephen Bryen.
To interview a Center for Security Policy representative, contact Media@HamiltonStrategies.com, Nick DiFazio, 610.584.1096, ext. 104, or Deborah Hamilton, ext. 102.
