Certainly, focusing on one point is what I suggested, and this is an important node that much of the operational logic rests on.
I'm not the one suggesting military escalation can only end in nuclear engagement. The entirity of the plan I put forward rests on the fact, historically supported, that it can. My criticism is with the idea your side of the argument is putting forward that the US would be willing to escalate to an existential war to the knife immediately over a fairly minor prod, when victory might be achieved at much lower cost and risk.
One of your prior posts linked willingness to engage in drastic escalation to Moscow not being glassed.
Further, a trade blockade isn't immediately escalating to war to the knife. You aren't killing people immediately, arguably it's completely non-violent.
What it does do, is make it so that if the behavior which is being punished continues, then the cost paid continually escalates, because of the blockade. Generally such blockades are instituted with a clear message; 'this goes on until you pull out.'
A blockade is also a much lower cost or risk than entering the war directly. The US doesn't need to shed blood to enforce a blockade, especially if Indonesia, Malaysia, etc, sign on, which they almost certainly would.
In this case, the US is not being attacked, so we can eliminate Japan and the War on Terror. Those were also conflicts where we did not fear any potential escalation, while in China there are lines we do want to not cross. As has been the case in our previous conflicts with China, and as we can see in the current war with Russia, we are very concerned and cautious about escalating to a point where nukes might be used, and will generally try to win in a limited, conventional fight if possible. Escalating to a general WWIII would also likely be undesirable. For example China declaring war on Ukraine with Russia to provide direct military aid and the Korean War restarting would likely be escalations America would prefer to avoid.
Engaging in an economic blockade is less escalatory than committing to actually join the fighting.
That's part of why I raised the possibility.
The Iran example is the kind of limited war which would be a political success of the operation, even if a military failure. That is an example of what this kind of operation would aim to achieve, though obviously with more military success. If America does get directly militarily involved, which is likely but not guarenteed, the aim is to keep it a limited conventional war, like Korea, Vietnam, or the Falklands, rather than a total, unlimited war to the knife, where China stands to lose much. America would also stand to lose much however, so that's leverage to manage American escalation to manageable levels.
America getting directly involved makes it almost impossible to have it be a meaningfully limited conventional war. Keeping it from going nuclear is a different question, but if the US gets involved, things are going to escalate hard and fast.
China loses if the US sinks their landing ships, and/or shoots down their air lift. The US's primary support options for Taiwan, especially in defending outlying islands, where we have
very little incentive to land US troops, are going to be sending carrier aircraft and/or subs, along with tanker-fueled aircraft from Okinawa.
In order to help with aircraft, the US would then need to enter China's long-range AA envelope. If they're going to do that, they're going to act to
destroy said long-range AA envelope, doing absolutely anything else is suicidally stupid. This would mean large-scale bombing of very expensive military installations, with very expensive stealthed missiles designed for this explicit purpose.
Hundreds to low thousands of casualties, tens to hundreds of millions of equipment destroyed.
Then the Chinese airforce launches to contest the USAF and USN in the air, and hundreds of millions to
billions in equipment is destroyed. Casualty rates would likely be much lower, given modern fighter aircraft are all 1 or 2 seaters, though I have no idea how likely successful ejection rates would be in such circumstances.
Ultimately, what this results in, is either the majority of the PLAAF getting shot down, or the J-20 miraculously performs to the hype and large portions of both air force are shot down. The Chinese would still lose on attrition, because we have a *lot* more F-22's and F-35's than they have J-20's, and only one or two of their other aircraft even have a *chance* at fighting effectively against those.
End result, is that southeastern China gets completely stripped of almost all of its air defenses, and if the CCP keep doubling down, they could end up with practically their entire air force shot down. If their entire air force is shot down, China has literally pre-emptively lost any larger-scale conventional war with the USA, as after a few dozen more very expensive anti-AA missiles are used, we can start bombing their military infrastructure with increasing impunity, using less expensive munitions to wipe out their less-capable AA until they have nothing left.
There's the outlier case of the USA responding exclusively with submarines, which I won't rule out if a Democrat is in the White House, because it's a stupidly minimalist thing to do by itself, but it is a less-escalatory option.
Korea an Vietnam however show you can fight contained wars. Korea and Vietnam would probably be successes of the strategy, though minor ones. Much greater success would be getting a repeat of the 1958 Straight crisis, except with China winning, of course.
North Korea and North Vietnam were both militarily crushed. It was only the fact that two other, much larger nations, would have (or in Korea
did) involve themselves if the US pushed hard enough, that kept those wars from being able to actually end in defeat for the communists.
There is no larger nation for China to go to. Russia is busy humiliating itself in Ukraine, and the kind of 'we'll throw bodies at the problem until we win' tactics that won them a blood-soaked draw in Korea aren't going to work anymore with modern cluster and precision munitions.
Not really. Losing the 1958 Straight crisis didn't collapse China. Is the assumption that modern China is weaker than China under Mao? That seems implicit in the argument. Neither have any of the previous Stait crisises where China decided it was not worth escalating and carrying out their implicit threats. The 1
997 strait crisis ended up being counter productive and resulted in two Chinese officers getting themselves executed. However, some generals losing their heads is not an existential threat to Communist China.
It's not a question of whether current China is weaker, it's a question of whether
the CCP's grip on power is stronger or weaker. The CCP is suffering a legitimacy crisis as their economy falters, and desperation for something to quell domestic unrest is likely what would push them to attack Taiwan in the first place.
If the CCP is desperate enough to engage in such an attack to try to make themselves look stronger by finally defeating their ancestral rivals, how likely are they to accept a defeat?
Same reason Ukraine didn't start shelling and try to invade Russia in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. Invading Russia then would have been counter productive: Ukraine basically didn't have an Army, foreign support for war with Russia wasn't there, and the little green men was obscuring enough that blame for escalating the war would be put on Ukraine. Invading Russia in 2014 would not have rallied support to Ukraine, given a general caus Belli to Russia, and since they didn't have enough military might to crush rebels with AKs at that point, and there was still a divided political situation domestically, would have resulted in at least losing more territory to the rebels, and quite likely with Russia overthrowing the newly established government.
And even now Ukraine is fairly careful not to attack into Russia itself too much and hasn't tried any full scale invasions. Because it would be counter productive, or at the very least is perceived as counter productive. Much of the same logic would apply in Taiwan, with local twists. Neither China or Taiwan benefit from having their cities shelled, and would likely prefer to resolve the conflict without that occurring, if possible. Both benefit from their trade not being blockaded. They did it in 1958, they can probably do it again.
This is ignoring so many important factors.
1. Ukraine is now hitting useful targets in Russia every chance they get. They've started hitting targets on the far sides of the Urals!
2. Ukraine in 2014 is very different than Taiwan right now. Ukraine was caught off-guard, in no small part because it was the recent political upheaval that resulted in the 'seccessions' and ultimate Russian invasion.
3. Ukraine is part of Europe. Aside from Poland, the larger and more militarily capable nations in Europe have delusions about things like the 'End of History.' SE Asia/Oceania nations have no such delusions, and while until 2014 Russia was largely seen as a threat that had been in decline since 1989, China has been a visibly rising threat for about as long, and has a long and ugly history with most of those nations.
4. Ukraine has to deal with more than half of its border being with Russia, and another chunk of it being a Russian client state. Taiwan is an island nation, with open access to the high seas, and neighbors who don't want China setting a precedent of military expansion right at hand.
5. Taiwan doesn't need, or want, to indiscriminantly shell Chinese cities. Shelling the military bases invasions are being launched out of is a lot more productive.
In the end, you have to argue why current Taiwan, from a weaker position, would be more gung ho than 1950s Military Dictatorship Taiwan, and modern China is less capable than 1950s Maoist China. And why dynamics that have regularly played out in many conflicts since WWII, including several wars between the US and China, are different.
Why is a war like Vietnam, Korea, the Falklands, or Ukraine, happening now, not possible, well, now?
Vietnam, Korea, and Ukraine, are all wars where one nation with a direct land border invaded the other. They are also wars where the initial invading force got their asses kicked, and it was only massive amounts of support from other nations kept them in the fight, and in the case of Vietnam, traitorous Democrats refusing the support promised the South Vietnamese, that allowed the North Vietnamese to win.
China has no USSR to prop it up, and a notoriously corrupt and incompetent military. The CCP has only ever actually
won two wars; one with Tibet, by absurdly overmatching a non-militarized nation, and with the Nationalist Chinese, by leaving them to fight the Imperial Japanese basically solo for years, then making their move after the Japanese pulled out,
and traitors in the US state department convinced the US to stop supporting them, while the USSR continued supporting the Maoists.
The Falklands is completely different from the other three examples, and also from the China-Taiwan situation. It is hard to describe all the differences, but I'll hit a few key notes:
1. The invasion of the Falklands was a surprise. The PLA achieving surprise against the Taiwanese is extremely unlikely, and against any except Wuciou island, practically impossible except through sabotage.
2. The population of the Falklands was measured in the thousands, Taiwan is just under 24 million.
3. The Falklands were completely rolled over before the British were able to respond, and it took weeks to launch their response. There are USN Carrier groups on standing station in the area of Taiwan, and Okinawa can have a response force in the area in less than an hour.
4. It's the information age. Just as media from Ukraine has been all over the place, if the Chinese attack any of Taiwan's islands, it'll be breaking news across the world within the hour. Additionally, the like of Starlink means it's practically impossible for China to try to just shut down communications in and out.
As a conclusion to this post, I'm going to again emphasize
the relative role of blockading.
TL;DR: Engaging in a blockade of Chinese trade is a non-lethal, low apparent-escalation option, but puts increasingly ruinous costs onto the CCP if they don't back down and withdraw from Taiwanese territory. It is in almost all ways preferable to actually jumping into the war if the CCP try your incremental-escalation strategy, but
will break the CCP if they don't back down, and
they would have to be the first to fire shots to even try to stop it.