BLUF:
[National Interest] The final question is whether the Americans know what the full cost of sliding to a great power war with a nuclear rival entails, especially over a territory barely miles from Chinese coastal missile batteries. Most Americans are neither aware of how civilization-destroying even a limited nuclear war can be. To give an example, the total casualties of the War on Terror for twenty years, including the 9/11 attacks, were around 12,000 dead and several thousand injured. The number of people dead if a carrier group is sunk in the first hour of a full-contact fight will be more. And that’s not even half a day of fighting, in one specific domain. Not to mention, air force and missile attacks, or God forbid a nuclear showdown. Are Americans willing to go to war for Taiwan, and risk such numbers of casualties?
Ultimately, however, the bigger challenge will not be about facing China in a nuclear showdown. As the brief India-China border clash in the Himalayas (with spiked clubs and hatchets) showed, most great powers now know the risk of a nuclear showdown and are, therefore, gearing up for premodern conflicts below the threshold of war. Same Roman legionnaire tactics are now being seen in the Polish-Belarus-Ukrainian border to defend Europe from weaponized mass migration, a problem that is not just limited to Europe. A far more existential question is whether the Western force structure is ready for such a grey-zone conflict. The answer, given the current American trends, might not be satisfactory. |