July 28, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, Ryan Vest and Sheena Chestnut Greitens are joined by Jon Caverley, an esteemed national security and China scholar, to discuss his article, "So What? Reassessing the Military Implications of Chinese Control of Taiwan," featured in Volume 8, Issue 3 of TNSR. Jon, a professor of strategic and operational research at the United States Naval War College, shares his insights on the military ramifications of a Chinese-controlled Taiwan and its strategic importance. This enlightening discussion explores the operational balance of power in the Pacific, the role of space-based capabilities, and the broader implications for U.S. defense strategy. Join us for a detailed analysis of this pivotal issue.
Read the article: https://tnsr.org/2025/06/so-what-reassessing-the-military-implications-of-chinese-control-of-taiwan/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ryan Vest (00:04):
Welcome to "Horns of A Dilemma," the podcast of the
Texas National Security Review.
I'm Ryan Vest, executive editorof TNSR, and I'm here with our
editor-in-chief, Sheena Chestnut Greitens.
We're pleased to have joining us todaya distinguished national security and
China scholar, Jon Caverley, authorof "So What? Reassessing the Military
Implications of Chinese Controlof Taiwan," which is featured in
(00:27):
Volume 8, Issue 3 of the journal.
Jon is a professor of strategicand operational research and
interim press director at theUnited States Naval War College.
Both the articles and Jon's discussionstoday represent his views and do not
represent that of the United StatesNaval War College, Navy, or government.
Jon, welcome to "Horns of a Dilemma."It's great to have you on the show.
Jonathan Caverley (00:46):
It's great to be here seeing you and Sheena,
especially you, Ryan, my oldshipmate from the Naval War College.
It's nice to be working with you guys.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (00:53):
So Jon, we're really delighted to have you
joining us today on the podcast.
I wanted to just open by askingyou a little bit about the
backstory behind this article.
You start with kind of a provocativequestion, which is, "So what if China
takes Taiwan?" And so, I wanted to justinvite you to tell us a little bit about
how you came to write the analysis thatturned into this article with TNSR.
Jonathan Caverley (01:17):
Yeah.
Thanks for the question.
I'll try to keep it short.
It's a lengthy journey.
I started out in this business asa international relations theorist,
and then I was fortunate to get thisposition at the Naval War College where
I do war applied operational research.
In particular, I work on the futurefleet, what should the United States
Navy invest in now in order to havethe fleet it needs 30 years from now?
(01:41):
Because ship building takessuch a long time and technology
is changing so quickly.
And so, for the first time in mycareer, I was really getting down into
the operational and tactical levels ofsecurity studies in a way I never had
before, and it really made me think aboutwhat is this relationship between sort
of operational analytical side of thecoin and then kind of the more strategic
(02:05):
sort of hypothesis theoretical testingthat we do in international relations.
And as I was thinking about that, justkind of the discourse of what to do about
Taiwan, was kind of rising in temperature.
And as I say in the article, there's alot of plausible reasons to defend Taiwan.
(02:27):
I don't go into the political oreconomic or moral reasons for that.
I worked for the United States Navy,so really I help admirals come up
with the best professional militaryadvice to civilian leadership.
And so I really stuck to the military caseand it really seemed like a disconnect
that at the same time the balanceof military power is really shifting
unfavorably for Taiwan, and less clearly,but certainly plausibly between the United
(02:52):
States and the People's Republic of China.
There was this increased emphasison Taiwan as this pivotal military
asset whose possession or autonomyreally affects the entire balance of
power in the Pacific, and sometimespeople say around the world.
That's a really big claim.
That requires a lot of analysis, andmuch of it has to be open source.
(03:18):
It has to be at a high level of strategicthinking, because I think that's what
a journal like TNSR and War CollegeReview, that's what we're supposed to do.
We're supposed to bring issues at avery high level so that academics and
policy makers can make big decisions.
And so I started thinking about thatand just doing some sort of open
source analysis based on some reallyexcellent work that's already gone
(03:41):
before me to create this article thatI was proud to publish with you guys.
Ryan Vest (03:45):
That's great, Jon.
know, you talk in the article abouthow control of Taiwan would make
less difference than maybe a lotof people think in the broader
operational balance in the region.
Could you walk us through the argument andwhat you think your operational assessment
gets right, that others might have missed?
Jonathan Caverley (04:01):
Yeah, so one of the things that's really important
and I think is under appreciated,in both policy but also academic
circles, is the need for comparison.
That's how humans learn.
I often tell admirals intabletop exercises, it's
like going to the eye doctor.
Is it better like thisor better like that?
Right?
You really can only talk aboutsomething making a difference if you
(04:24):
have two things to compare it to.
And so, one of the things I was seeing iswe just weren't comparing a PRC-controlled
Taiwan to the baseline of the status quothat we're currently working against.
And then it gets a little ironic,because when we think of the assets
that China is developing, in partto take Taiwan militarily, if it has
(04:50):
to, these are things that they'redoing independent of Taiwan, right?
So the ability to push the United StatesNaval forces far outside the first
island chain, maybe even the secondisland chain, which I'm happy to talk
about in the discussion, right, that'sa prerequisite for taking Taiwan.
They need that in order to take Taiwan.
It doesn't go the other way.
If you take Taiwan, it doesn'tnecessarily mean you need that to push
(05:13):
the United States Navy out of the way.
And that's the big kind of move I madewith your help, and the referee's help,
was creating a baseline of the status quoof what is the power projection and anti
access threat that China poses to theUnited States and its partners and allies.
And then, how does that changeonce you introduce, systematically,
(05:36):
a non-autonomous Taiwan?
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (05:37):
So let me ask you a little bit about
the comparisons that are atthe heart of the analysis here.
You might be the first person, bythe way, that I've ever heard compare
kill chains to an eye appointment.
So the next time I have to go getmy vision checked, I'm going to
be thinking about this article.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Jonathan Caverley (05:55):
Well, since you do it once a year at least, that's good.
You'll be thinking about my article.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (05:58):
It's been more than a year, but sure.
It'll definitely be in mymind the next time I go in.
So you run four different killchain scenarios in the piece, right?
You walk us through four differentscenarios to test China's
ability to threaten the USmilitary presence in the Pacific.
And so, can you talk a littlebit about why this is helpful for
(06:20):
understanding Taiwan's operational value?
And could you kind of explain thelinks, the find, fix, finish way
that you break down the kill chain?
Really this is getting into kindof the core comparative exercise
that's at the heart of the analysis.
Can you walk us through that andhelp readers understand what these
comparisons are and what they tellus about Taiwan's military value?
Jonathan Caverley (06:43):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I'll try and answer it in two sections.
One is sort of the method and then oneis the actual substance of the analysis.
When you're writing a piece like this, andthis is the first really operational, open
source piece I've ever written— it took mea long time to write and I learned so much
doing it —is, really, injecting theoryinto a very complicated scenario, right?
(07:06):
War is the most complicatedactivity you can imagine.
We don't know what war lookslike until it actually happens.
Ukraine is a great example of this.
But what you have to do as humans, wehave to use theory in order to organize
the complexity of something tractablethat we can make a decision about, right?
So if you had, you know, an eye chartthat looks like an Escher drawing, right?
(07:29):
That's not gonna work.
You need an eye chart that actuallyis just a few letters that you're
familiar with, and then you can gobetter like this or better like that.
And so what I tried to do was take themany, many different ways we think of
the chain of tasks you have to get toin order to decide you have to attack
something, to actually attackingsomething, to assessing whether it was
(07:50):
successful or not, and then re-attacking.
How to distill that into something thatis simple enough that you can make that
eye chart comparison and yet capture themost important elements of that decision.
And hopefully, because, you know, I'ma political scientist, I want to be
cited and replicated, hopefully thiskind of approach, this simplified
(08:10):
approach, this theoretical approach willbe useful to other areas of inquiry.
And so, you know, after talking tocolleagues and after reading a great
deal and reading stuff by Talmadge andGreen and Steve Biddle, we came up with
this idea of the kill chain, right,and three links in the kill chain.
So three discrete tasks that you have toaccomplish if you're actually going to
(08:32):
have a military effect on an opposition.
And so, the first two are find and fix.
These are kind of sensing and tracking,so they're fairly distinct tasks.
It was theoretically useful to breakthe sensing part of a kill chain into
two components because many thingsthat are good at finding— which is
(08:54):
getting a sense that a target is outthere, maybe a bearing, maybe a rough
range — a sense that's good for thatis not necessarily optimized for the
fixing, which is really getting a veryaccurate, real time position and a
track that you can actually leverage aweapon for the third link in the kill
(09:17):
chain, which is the finish, right?
And that's bringing a weapon— itcould be kinetic, it could be non
kinetic— to bear on the target inorder to take it out of operation.
So it could be sinking a carrier, butit could also be just preventing it
from accomplishing its mission (09:30):
what the military calls a mission kill.
And so by dividing those three things up,it actually helped me organize various
capabilities that people associate withthe current People's Liberation Army,
and then what people are suggestingwould be added by PRC control of Taiwan.
And then you just look down the logic andit becomes a pretty simple theory, right?
It's (09:52):
every single component is necessary, but not sufficient.
If you can finish something but youhave no idea where the target is,
it's not useful to you, and whileknowing where the threat is, is sort
of useful in conflict and competition.
Really, if you're trying to actuallyengage with the enemy, you actually need a
weapon that can reach the target in time.
(10:13):
And so then I basically startedtrying to look at which capabilities
mattered the most, and I went to alot of previous work that's been done.
And then to answer kind of thesecond part of my answer to your
question, Sheena, is I had startedout by looking at Taiwan, right?
So Taiwan was sort of theindependent variable, right?
(10:33):
Do I have Taiwan?
Do I not have Taiwan?
And as I thought about the status quoand as I started reading deeply these
arguments for the military value ofTaiwan, it was very clear that the
assumption about the availabilityof space really mattered, right?
We often think of the United Statesmilitary being completely dependent on
space for our kind of exquisite sensingand weapons engagement capability.
(10:57):
And that's certainly the case to acertain degree, but China's heavily
reliant on space, especially forthese ballistic missiles: the carrier
killers, these Guam-killer missilesthat we hear a lot about, that we see
in the China Military Power Report.
And so I realized that while most ofthe previous work had had space as an
(11:17):
assumption— so either all space goesaway because of anti-satellite warfare,
or everyone has space so we justassume that everyone has this ability
to use space for whatever they want,sometimes it's something in between
—you have to make that a variable.
So ultimately I have four scenariosbecause now I have two variables, right?
I have the possession of Taiwanand the different assets you can
(11:38):
put on Taiwan, that's one variable.
And then the second variableis whether space is available.
And this has a massive effect on theranges and the relative value of the
capability that China currently possesses.
And one of the nice things aboutthe article and working with
TNSR is working with your team.
We developed maps that actually makethis very clear and that's as clear
(12:02):
an eye chart as we can possibly get.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (12:04):
Yeah, I thought the maps were very
effective at conveying that visually.
So for anybody listening woulddefinitely commend the maps.
They're very helpful in just givingthat visual illustration of what
the delta is and isn't, and that'san important part of the argument.
All right, I'll stop.
Ryan, back over to you.
So Jon, I'd like to go a little
Ryan Vest (12:24):
bit further down this rabbit hole.
You talk a lot about space andspace-based capabilities as a critical
enabler for China in this model.
I was wondering, what did you findwhen you compared China's kill chain
performance with and without space?
And why is space so decisive?
Jonathan Caverley (12:39):
Well, so again, it gets down to the kill chain
model and the fact that everythingis necessary but not sufficient.
So we spend an awful lot of time talkingabout, and rightly so, these ballistic
missiles that China currently possesses.
Not to mention the fairly long rangecruise missiles that could be air
launched from its bomber fleet, which isgrowing and becoming more sophisticated.
(13:03):
But again, that's not enough, right?
You have to have the ability to find—knowwhere the target is—and fix— to assign a
target quality track —so that by the timethe missile gets to its target, which can
be several thousand nautical miles, thetarget is still sufficiently known, the
location's sufficiently known that youcan actually bring the weapon to bear.
(13:26):
And so basically when you startsystematically looking at the ways that
China can use sensors to detect, forthe sake of discussion now, an aircraft
carrier, United States aircraft carrier,the collection of satellites that it
clearly possesses that is all — I've madesure to only use US government sources
(13:48):
or US government authorized or endorsedsources for discussing signs of things
like Chinese space capability—they havea combination of satellites, both optical
and electronic intercept to reallyhave a very persistent coverage of the
entire theater in a way that airborneradars, long range radars that are in
(14:10):
the hinterlands of China, mainland China,they don't have that ability to both
precisely fix and also find at long range.
So once you remove, if you magicallyremove all of China's space capability,
you are then reduced to a muchtighter range ring where you can
actually bring your weapons to bear.
(14:31):
And the seminal work on this is Biddleand Oelrich in International Security,
which I use heavily, which basically saidabout 600 kilometers from the coastline
is where you are likely to be able tohave a good find and fix pair of links
in order to bring a weapon to bear.
So you're now shrinking your weaponsengagement zone from several thousand
kilometers to 600 kilometers.
(14:53):
And then once you factor in the way Taiwanbecomes implicated in this is that we
have to understand Taiwan is basicallyright off the mainland of China, and
mainland China's coast is vast, right?
So in terms of providing that additionalsensing from airborne assets on
Taiwan, it's extremely modest, right?
(15:15):
It's just a couple hundred kilometersand you know, the article has
tables and it also has the mapsthat kind of make this very clear.
And so that's the intersection.
So Taiwan allows more short rangemunitions to be put to bear, so it bumps
out the range so you can put kind ofshorter range, less expensive missiles and
(15:36):
use that to push off aircraft carriers.
But in terms of sensing it actuallydoesn't have much of an effect at all, and
that just makes it very clear that spacehas a vastly bigger effect on the entire
kill chain because of this necessary butnot sufficient, element of find and fix.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (15:52):
So if I could ask a follow up question on that, I'm
actually gonna read a line from thearticle and ask you about it so that I
make sure I get the wording exactly right.
"Given the scale and sophisticationof this satellite program, China's
satellite program, it seems likely thatshort of large scale anti-satellite
warfare, China enjoys a persistentability to find and fix moving targets,
(16:13):
meaning US or allied targets and partnertargets, in the Western Pacific."
So what assumptions are you making inthe piece, if any, about the United
States' willingness or likelihoodof engaging in anti-satellite
warfare in the event of some kindof military operation around Taiwan.
Jonathan Caverley: That's a great question. (16:33):
undefined
So I can answer that in two ways.
First is, I try not to make anassumption about political decisions,
given that I feel I'm here to makethe best professional military case
for or against possession of Taiwan.
(16:54):
I have an employer asthe United States Navy.
And so that's why I'm more comfortabletalking of it as a variable that, let's
say a fleet commander or a Chief ofNaval Operations can tell the civilian
leadership, okay, "Well here's whatit's gonna look like if you engage in
anti-satellite warfare. Here's whatit's gonna look like if you don't engage
(17:15):
in anti-satellite warfare, that's yourdecision boss. You figure it out." It's
really important to make that a variable.
But then I also kind of did wantto critically look at sort of
the logic behind when it wouldbe militarily valuable to attack
either country's satellite network.
(17:35):
And that's where you just kind of lookat military doctrine, especially PRC
military doctrine and some of the analysesthat makes the case, especially for
the subsurface threat emanating fromTaiwan, actually requires a very discreet
amount of satellite sensing ability.
So China can't have the ability tofind a target, but it has enough
(18:01):
satellite capability to fix the target,and because of that, it's this weird
rheostat that you need in order toget the Goldilocks scenario just
right, that submarines actually matteras a threat to aircraft carriers.
And so then you start walking downthe logic chain, like how do you get
a medium Chinese satellite capability.
(18:21):
And it requires restraint by the UnitedStates, which you could plausibly say
that there are a lot of reasons why theUnited States would be very hesitant
to attack China's satellite network.
It would result inmassive economic losses.
It would result in massive damage tomany satellites, not just the military
ones, and would set a quite importantprecedent for the future of warfare.
(18:46):
But when you actually read Chinesedoctrine, and Sheena, I'll defer to
you as one of the great experts onthis, it seems pretty clear that China
cannot conceive of a scenario when itis fighting an existential conflict
against the United States, where itdoesn't go after what it considers
the key enabler for American powerprojection, which is space capability.
(19:11):
And so then you have to assume, well,China has to refrain from doing that
because it'd be very implausible toknow when China will start attacking
American space capability and theUnited States wouldn't reciprocate.
That's how I would probably analyze that.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (19:25):
Thanks.
I think that's a really helpful answer todraw out that the analysis really tries
to present options and their probableconsequences or possible consequences.
So the decision makers who are facedwith the decision, or hopefully not
faced with the decision, but if theyever are, have the best tools to
understand the potential consequencesof the choice they're about to make.
(19:46):
And I think to me, that's one ofthe real values of the approach
that you take in the article.
But that actually leads me into aquestion I wanted to ask you about
that's a little bit outside thespecific scope of this piece in TNSR.
And that was just a question aboutwhat have you learned from writing
this piece about what academic oropen source modeling can contribute
(20:08):
to these important debates?
And you know, I guess the flip side ofthat is kind of how do you right size
the role or think about the role ofacademic open source analysis, and maybe
where can it go wrong, or what shouldwe not be trying to do or infer from it?
Jonathan Caverley (20:24):
This is a great question.
It is one that I'm onlybeginning to wrestle with.
I think it is going to be a centralquestion for the profession of
security studies going forward.
And so, given TNSR's position in thefirmament of IR, I'd really like to
know what you guys think as well.
Let me start out withthe first principles.
(20:46):
The first principle is, it isfundamentally important that
academics critically examine policystatements and policy plans and
policy assumptions about war.
Okay?
This is a fundamental aspect ofthe marketplace of ideas that
(21:07):
academics have to be involved in.
And we have tons of examples, let'sjust say from the Cold War, right,
where the military says, "Trust me,we have access to exquisite sensitive
information that I can't tell you, andwe have access to analytical abilities
(21:27):
that are far surpass your wildest dreams.
So when we say this is the case, you'rejust going to have to believe us.
And time and time again,the military's wrong.
Some of it, it can be malicious, right?
Militaries are organizationsand they defend themselves.
And politicians do what politicians do.
Some is just, it's really hardto think about future war, right?
(21:48):
This is a thing that wejust don't understand.
Again, Ukraine is a great example.
And so one of my fundamental messages tomany of my colleagues, especially junior
colleagues, is it's really importantto start thinking about the operational
assumptions and how you can criticallyevaluate them going forward, because
(22:09):
we are talking about a really dangerousworld we live in right now where large
countries with nuclear weapons arekind of getting in each others' grills.
Now, having said that, what'sthe best way to do that, right?
And there does have to bea division of labor, right?
We have to kind of do what we're bestat, and working at a place like the
(22:30):
Naval War College, where I work withserving military officers, but I'm a
political scientist, we see when wework with military officers, even very
senior military officers, it's very hardto get them to move up from tactical
to operational to strategic, right?
And really one of the things Ithink political science should do
(22:51):
is actually start with the strategicand maybe go down to the operational.
And that's for two reasons.
First of all, inside the military,you're just not going to see
a lot of strategic analysis.
And that's for both kind of bureaucraticreasons, right— we're trying to
justify what kind of ship we'regonna buy, generals and combatant
commanders have to decide how toactually fight the war, right— and
(23:12):
it's also civil military, right?
It is not the military's place toreally talk at the strategic level
and start making value judgements.
And so that's the division oflabor that academics have to have.
And that's the realm of theory, right?
And that's the realm of simplificationas I was talking before.
And so when I encourage my colleagues todive into the operational, get familiar
(23:37):
the operational aspects of our business,I think we have to avoid the temptation
that we have, in contemporary politicalscience especially, of what Mearsheimer
and Walt famously called hypothesistesting— where you actually, let's just
take the cliche of a data set, right,you have a data set of militarized
disputes, and then you find a new factor,let's call it in my first book, capital
(24:01):
labor ratio of the military —and thenyou say, well, capital labor ratio
correlates to the following things in war.
And therefore you write a wholebook based on that little finding.
That's not our strength, right?
Getting at the particular, getting atthat little independent variable is not
something we have, as academics, havean advantage over, over at the military.
(24:22):
And so I actually think instead ofgetting down into the weeds of one
little model about, you know, underwatersound propagation, or how does a radar,
a certain type of radar wavelengthbounce against the ionosphere— that's
important details, that's importantanecdotes to support your case— but
you really have to talk about thebig picture, the big moving parts.
And that's kind of where I seeacademic approaches to operations
(24:45):
and modeling really taking place.
And my inspiration is the big debateduring the Cold War in the pages of
International Security between peoplelike John Mearsheimer and Barry Posen
and, uh, people like Cohen, who ismuch more in tune with what the United
States military was thinking at thetime about the battle over Fulda Gap.
So if you look at the debates over that,which I encourage all our listeners
(25:05):
to do, you'll learn a lot about kindof what the division of labor should
be between academics and policy.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (25:11):
There's this common quote that a nation that has too
big a gap between its soldiers and itsscholars will have its thinking done by
cowards and its fighting done by fools.
And so one of the things we want isnot for the discipline of security
studies to all turn into members ofthe military, but to have an informed
dialogue where each side understandsthe perspectives of the other, and
(25:34):
you can have a constructive exchange.
So that's part of what we're tryingto do, but I think also speaks more
broadly to the role of security studiesin the US civil military arrangement.
Jonathan Caverley (25:45):
Oh, Sheena, you're absolutely right.
And I think that's actually somethingthat I try to do at the Review and
you're doing relatively successfullyat TNSR is, it's not that we want
academics and military officers toresemble themselves or do the same thing.
It is more what is the familiarizationwith both cultures; how can we learn to
(26:09):
leverage the strengths of both professionsin order to make better policy?
I think that quote is perfect.
Jon, I'd like
Ryan Vest (26:16):
to follow that thought up a little bit more.
Something you make very clear in thearticle and that we probably would be
remiss if we didn't hit on a littlebit more as we discuss this: you talk
about how your article doesn't assessTaiwan's broader strategic value, its
economy, its democracy, the symbolicimportance, but given your findings
that Taiwan's operational value tothe military is relatively modest, how
(26:40):
should that recalibrate the way that USofficials talk about Taiwan's importance
and shape decisions about how far theUS should be willing to go to defend it?
Jonathan Caverley (26:48):
Okay, that's key question.
Again, I really try to focuson the strategic effects
of operational art, right?
How do I help my bosses provide the bestmilitary advice to political leadership?
And so let's imagine, and I thinkI'm right, let's imagine I'm correct
that Taiwan actually doesn't have anoperational impact either way for the
(27:10):
balance of military power in the theater.
And then the question is, I'm notrecommending how one should feel
about whether the United Statesshould defend Taiwan against military
coercion, but knowing that operationalkind of insignificance, I do think,
if you decide to defend Taiwan, howthe defendant is impacted, right?
(27:34):
And so I'd go at that ata couple different ways.
One thing I have experienced over the pastfew years working on this topic is, you
know, when you look at the day to day, youdon't feel like we're learning much and,
you can get frustrated with the speed ofpolicy, but over time you do see learning.
And it seems like a much clearer casethat any conflict with China— any military
(27:59):
conflict, whether it's over Taiwanor South China Sea or something else,
right— it's not gonna be short and sharp.
Right?
When it comes to sort of large scalewars between great powers, these
things tend to develop over time andthey tend to become wars of attrition.
And there's some really good workdone by people like Josh Rovner and
then the people at CSIS and cSPA—the think-tank world — on what does
(28:22):
a prolonged conflict actually entail?
And so one way I try to think aboutit is, you don't wanna destroy
the operational balance betweenthe United States and China.
I try to think about theoperational balance, right?
And so, if the United States doesn'tdefend Taiwan, then our allies around
(28:42):
the region are going to start thinkingour reassurance is not credible.
Now, that can be disputed, butthat's not the point of this article.
Right?
But if you think about credibility,like the ability to actually
execute your military operationsalso matters for credibility.
And so if you have a Taiwan that'sautonomous after you defend it, but
(29:03):
the entire seventh fleet is at thebottom of the ocean, and you have a
Chinese maritime industrial base thathas, it's something like 200, 250
times larger than the United States is,that is not going to be reassuring to
places like Japan and the Philippines.
So then the trick is if you wannadefend Taiwan, you can't do it at a
way that makes the United States lessable to compete with China in a longer,
(29:29):
more prolonged conflict or a widerconflict— what we call in the Cold
War, the horizontal escalation problem.
And so one of the cases I try to makeis, rather than optimizing the United
States for one military scenario,especially when it comes to the
Navy, because the Navy is sort ofyour Swiss Army knife of day-to-day
(29:52):
political military operations, you canactually do your best to help Taiwan
defend itself with American support.
And there's lots of work being doneon this from INDOPACOM, to people
like Steve Biddle and Eugene Goltzand Ben Friedman, this idea of
creating a porcupine of Taiwan.
This is a very famous article producedby my colleague in the Naval War
(30:14):
College, Bill Murray, a long time ago.
You can do that and make the invasionof Taiwan as hard a problem as
possible for the People's Republicof China, right, while giving more
operating space and more missionspace for the United States military
for this longer wider competition.
So, there's a logic often used todescribe the importance of Taiwan.
(30:39):
It's called the cork in the bottletheory: this idea that once the PRC has
possession of Taiwan, it breaks up thisthing called the first island chain,
and all of a sudden all these powerof objection forces can swarm out into
the Pacific and start wreaking havoc.
I talk about that in the article, butthere's actually what some people call
the psychological cork in the bottletheory, which is the idea that if
(30:59):
China is obsessively optimizing thePeople's Liberation Army for this very
specific task, which is a cross straitinvasion or an airborne invasion of
Taiwan, right, it can't be focused onthe other things, which we would care
about for a wider or longer conflict.
And so the way I would put it is, wecould build a military and a concept
(31:22):
of operations that makes the invasionof Taiwan the pacing threat for China,
which is very much in the UnitedStates' interest, but not making
it the pacing threat for the UnitedStates and its allies— allowing the
United States and allies to focuson that broader, wider conflict.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (31:38):
I have a couple of questions that come out of that.
I did want to loop back because I wasgoing to ask you about this idea, this
logic of Taiwan as the cork in the bottle,because you say pretty explicitly in the
article as you've just covered that youthink that's not the right way to think
about Taiwan's role in the Indo-Pacific.
But there's a second logic, a submarinetender logic that you talk about,
(31:59):
that you also say isn't quite right.
And so can you tell us a littlebit about what's wrong with those
mental models of Taiwan's value?
And then I have another question about thepacing scenario that I'll loop back to.
Jonathan Caverley (32:10):
Terrific.
Well, there's a coupleways to come at that.
I will start with two concepts that arereally important and then I'll give you a
one word answer to your question, Sheena.
If you can think of two big missionsfor any military in this theater,
one is called denial, right?
And one is called powerprojection, or we would lump in
sea control in with denial as well.
(32:30):
So the ability to deny the UnitedStates carrier strike group to
operate in a operationally relevantspace for a Taiwan or for a theater
wide conflict, that's denial.
So some people would argue that Taiwanactually helps extend the People's
(32:50):
Republic of China's ability to denyspace, air, and sea to the United States.
And then the other one, which is thecork in the bottle argument, is this
idea that Taiwan enables the flowingof forces for China to project power,
the amphibious, strategic bombing,aircraft carriers to actually create
(33:11):
military diplomatic effects outsideof the first island chain, right?
And so, you know, it's important tounderstand these are two different
missions and they're subtly different.
But to answer your question (33:20):
what is it about this logic that has changed?
It's missiles, right?
So almost all the discourse aboutthe importance of Taiwan is actually
dates from the 1940s and 1950s, right?
The last time the Pacific wastruly relevant militarily.
The last time the defense of Formosa—now Taiwan — was really important.
(33:42):
And you have these three distinct logics.
These are the cork in the bottle,which is Admiral Ernie King's phrase.
And that's the abilityfor power projection.
And then the other two are more focusedon the ability of China to deny—
in World War II it's Japan —to denythe operation of American forces far
from the continental United States.
And this is from MacArthur's veryfamous phrase, which is repeated over
(34:05):
and over again— he was great for theone-liners — this idea of Taiwan as the
unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarinetender: so the idea that you could
locate both air assets on the island andthen undersea assets from the island.
And what matters is when your ability todeny or project power was based on the
(34:27):
range of an un-refueled aircraft, whichwas the case in the 1940s and 1950s,
then this island really matters, right?
What has changed since then is thisadvent of long range missiles and
sensing, which once you are no longerworried about kind of the radius of an
un-refuelable aircraft as your primarymeans of projecting military effects or
(34:51):
denying operation to your enemy, right,then one particular geographic point like
an island doesn't matter as much, right?
So the idea that the extra range thisprovides your aircraft is pretty minimal.
And also the extra range it provides foryour submarines is also pretty modest.
And I spent a lot of time talking aboutthe undersea aspect of Taiwan in the
(35:15):
possession of the People's Republic ofChina because ultimately the undersea
campaign for the larger competitionfor the Pacific is going to be the
most important aspect in terms ofmilitary competition, at least for the
next, I'd say generational weapons.
Right now, the United States hasan enormous undersea advantage.
(35:37):
If you go to my colleagues at theChina Maritime Studies Institute at
the Naval War College, my colleagueRyan Martinson just published an
excellent analysis of some translatedwork that looked at the Chinese own
assessments of its undersea disadvantage.
And so this idea that Taiwan isactually quite well located because
it's on the continental shelf, right?
(35:59):
So it looks out at deep water fromits east coast and there are some
things you can locate on the eastcoast if you could actually militarize
it and build ports there that aremuch bigger than what exists now.
You can actually create some militaryeffects in the larger Pacific.
And what I did was I actually just lookedat the numbers based on open source
(36:20):
modeling that previous scholars have used.
And while it is true that Chinacould locate submarines on its east
coast, it's still not that difficultto detect them and then to prosecute
them to make the number of missilesor torpedoes that can be thrown into
(36:42):
the fight militarily significantcompared to kind of the other modes of
attack that are available to the PRC.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (36:48):
So you mentioned a few minutes ago this idea that the
United States should consider tryingto make Taiwan the pacing scenario
for China, but not necessarily be thepacing scenario for the United States.
And you know, I've read for several yearsnow across successive administrations,
the idea of China as the pacingchallenge, Taiwan is the pacing scenario.
(37:11):
And then even more recently, somereporting from the Washington Post on
some interim national defense strategicguidance from the administration that
talks about a faits accomplis attackon Taiwan as the pacing scenario.
So sort of one subset of scenarios thatwe could have with respect to Taiwan.
So not to take that necessarily at facevalue or to ask you to comment on that,
(37:33):
but I've written in Lawfare and a coupleother places about the concern that in
a security environment as complex asthe Indo-Pacific, overly narrowing the
pacing scenario— Yeah, policymakers haveto prioritize; we have to prioritize
how we think about defense, investments,planning, et cetera— but there is a
concern that historically great powershave often ended up fighting wars
(37:56):
other than the one they planned for.
And so there's this concern aboutoverly narrowing pacing scenarios.
And I think your piece, it sounded likefrom what you said earlier, that you
had some thoughts about how to approachjust in general from this analysis.
Like you've learned some things thattell us a little bit about how we might
(38:16):
wanna approach this question of theDOD's pacing scenario and how we think
about the Taiwan problem in that context.
Do you have any thoughts or any insightsthat this article brought to you that you
think would be helpful for policymakersto know or to have in their back
pocket as they're making these plansand thinking through these problems?
Jonathan Caverley (38:33):
When I started talking about the pacing scenario,
that was actually driven, notreally by current administrative
policy— whether it's Biden or Trump
— but it's this idea of, what is the thingthat you base your military around?
And in the article I quote a formersecretary of defense for INDOPACOM in the
first Trump administration who basicallysays, Taiwan's the Fulda Gap, right?
(38:57):
And for those of you who remember the ColdWar, the Fulda Gap was this point in the
middle of Germany that was kind of thepivot around which we thought the entire
ground campaign between the Warsaw Pactand NATO was going to revolve around.
And it focused planningon solving that problem.
And that's the classicexample of the pacing threat.
Another classic example of a pacingthreat would be kind of France's
(39:19):
response to the potential invasion fromGermany, which is the Maginot Line,
and as Sheena, you just noted thatthat didn't work out so well either.
So there's risk in choosing your pacingthreat, but I also wanna say I'm very
sympathetic to the need for a pacingscenario and a pacing threat, because
the Department of Defense has tofocus a very complicated enterprise of
(39:43):
combatant commands services, who allhave their own independent analytical
capability, all independent bureaucraticincentives, and you have to create
something that everyone agrees on.
So you can decide whether to buystealth bombers or aircraft carriers
or a certain type of missile ora certain type of satellite, and
we all have to agree on that.
And so the pacing threat is veryconsequential, very important.
(40:06):
And if I am, let's just say that tacticsfrom the previous administration and
the Navy starts saying, you know what?
I don't think Taiwan should be thepacing scenario because, you know, we
have to do all these other missions,I think you know what, the Navy just
wants to keep its carriers and so nowit's changing rules of the game, right?
So I want to point out to listenersthat like pacings scenarios
(40:29):
are really important, right?
But you have to really thinkthrough the consequences and then
how much of the effort you wantto focus on that pacing scenario.
And so what I argue in this article is,if you look at the range of conflict
between the pacing threat, which isChina, and the possible missions that
(40:50):
the United States military would haveto conduct in a military conflict
against China— which is of course whatwe have to do if we wanna deter China
from doing certain things— the invasionof Taiwan is really important, right?
But it's also very specific, right?
And so the more you focus on thatone pacing scenario, the less you're
going to work on the other, whichI think are much more plausible and
(41:10):
much more important set of scenariosthat you have to prepare against.
And so I think there's two ways to thinkabout a pacing scenario as I talked to
you, Sheena, and your question reallymade me think a little harder about this.
One is, what is thepacing scenario, right?
And then the second one is, howimportant is the pacing scenario, right?
Is it a hundred percent of your effort?
(41:31):
Is it 80% of your effort?
That's probably just as importanta decision as identifying
what the actual scenario is.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (41:38):
Thanks.
I think that's a really helpful wayto think about it, and it gets back
to this idea that these are decisionsultimately that rest with the president
and with their national security team.
And so the role of scholarship inthat case is to try to give them
as informed sense of the risks andtrade-offs of the different options
in front of them as we possibly can.
These are questions we think a lot anddiscuss a lot amongst ourselves at TNSR.
(42:02):
So it's great to hear yourperspective informed by the
varied experience you've had.
Thanks for sharing that with us.
Ryan Vest (42:08):
Thanks for joining us on "Horns of a Dilemma" from the
Texas National Security Review.
Our
guest today has beenJon Caverley, author of
the article, "So What? Reassessing the Military Implications
of Chinese Control of Taiwan," which asalways can be accessed for free on our
website, TNSR.org.
Jon, thank you very much
for joining us today.
If you enjoyed this episode,be sure to subscribe and leave
(42:28):
a review wherever you listen.
We love hearing from you.
You can find more of our work at TNSR.org.
Today's episode was produced byTNSR Digital and Technical Manager,
Jordan Morning, and made possibleby the University of Texas.
This is Ryan Vest andSheena Chestnut Greitens.
Thank you for listening
Welcome to "Horns of A Dilemma," the podcast of the
Texas National Security Review.
I'm Ryan Vest, executive editorof TNSR, and I'm here with our
editor-in-chief, Sheena Chestnut Greitens.
We're pleased to have joining us todaya distinguished national security and
China scholar, Jon Caverley, authorof "So What? Reassessing the Military
Implications of Chinese Controlof Taiwan," which is featured in
(00:27):
Volume 8, Issue 3 of the journal.
Jon is a professor of strategicand operational research and
interim press director at theUnited States Naval War College.
Both the articles and Jon's discussionstoday represent his views and do not
represent that of the United StatesNaval War College, Navy, or government.
Jon, welcome to "Horns of a Dilemma."It's great to have you on the show.
Jonathan Caverley (00:46):
It's great to be here seeing you and Sheena,
especially you, Ryan, my oldshipmate from the Naval War College.
It's nice to be working with you guys.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (00:53):
So Jon, we're really delighted to have you
joining us today on the podcast.
I wanted to just open by askingyou a little bit about the
backstory behind this article.
You start with kind of a provocativequestion, which is, "So what if China
takes Taiwan?" And so, I wanted to justinvite you to tell us a little bit about
how you came to write the analysis thatturned into this article with TNSR.
Jonathan Caverley (01:17):
Yeah.
Thanks for the question.
I'll try to keep it short.
It's a lengthy journey.
I started out in this business asa international relations theorist,
and then I was fortunate to get thisposition at the Naval War College where
I do war applied operational research.
In particular, I work on the futurefleet, what should the United States
Navy invest in now in order to havethe fleet it needs 30 years from now?
(01:41):
Because ship building takessuch a long time and technology
is changing so quickly.
And so, for the first time in mycareer, I was really getting down into
the operational and tactical levels ofsecurity studies in a way I never had
before, and it really made me think aboutwhat is this relationship between sort
of operational analytical side of thecoin and then kind of the more strategic
(02:05):
sort of hypothesis theoretical testingthat we do in international relations.
And as I was thinking about that, justkind of the discourse of what to do about
Taiwan, was kind of rising in temperature.
And as I say in the article, there's alot of plausible reasons to defend Taiwan.
(02:27):
I don't go into the political oreconomic or moral reasons for that.
I worked for the United States Navy,so really I help admirals come up
with the best professional militaryadvice to civilian leadership.
And so I really stuck to the military caseand it really seemed like a disconnect
that at the same time the balanceof military power is really shifting
unfavorably for Taiwan, and less clearly,but certainly plausibly between the United
(02:52):
States and the People's Republic of China.
There was this increased emphasison Taiwan as this pivotal military
asset whose possession or autonomyreally affects the entire balance of
power in the Pacific, and sometimespeople say around the world.
That's a really big claim.
That requires a lot of analysis, andmuch of it has to be open source.
(03:18):
It has to be at a high level of strategicthinking, because I think that's what
a journal like TNSR and War CollegeReview, that's what we're supposed to do.
We're supposed to bring issues at avery high level so that academics and
policy makers can make big decisions.
And so I started thinking about thatand just doing some sort of open
source analysis based on some reallyexcellent work that's already gone
(03:41):
before me to create this article thatI was proud to publish with you guys.
Ryan Vest (03:45):
That's great, Jon.
know, you talk in the article abouthow control of Taiwan would make
less difference than maybe a lotof people think in the broader
operational balance in the region.
Could you walk us through the argument andwhat you think your operational assessment
gets right, that others might have missed?
Jonathan Caverley (04:01):
Yeah, so one of the things that's really important
and I think is under appreciated,in both policy but also academic
circles, is the need for comparison.
That's how humans learn.
I often tell admirals intabletop exercises, it's
like going to the eye doctor.
Is it better like thisor better like that?
Right?
You really can only talk aboutsomething making a difference if you
(04:24):
have two things to compare it to.
And so, one of the things I was seeing iswe just weren't comparing a PRC-controlled
Taiwan to the baseline of the status quothat we're currently working against.
And then it gets a little ironic,because when we think of the assets
that China is developing, in partto take Taiwan militarily, if it has
(04:50):
to, these are things that they'redoing independent of Taiwan, right?
So the ability to push the United StatesNaval forces far outside the first
island chain, maybe even the secondisland chain, which I'm happy to talk
about in the discussion, right, that'sa prerequisite for taking Taiwan.
They need that in order to take Taiwan.
It doesn't go the other way.
If you take Taiwan, it doesn'tnecessarily mean you need that to push
(05:13):
the United States Navy out of the way.
And that's the big kind of move I madewith your help, and the referee's help,
was creating a baseline of the status quoof what is the power projection and anti
access threat that China poses to theUnited States and its partners and allies.
And then, how does that changeonce you introduce, systematically,
(05:36):
a non-autonomous Taiwan?
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (05:37):
So let me ask you a little bit about
the comparisons that are atthe heart of the analysis here.
You might be the first person, bythe way, that I've ever heard compare
kill chains to an eye appointment.
So the next time I have to go getmy vision checked, I'm going to
be thinking about this article.
Thank you.
Thank you for that.
Jonathan Caverley (05:55):
Well, since you do it once a year at least, that's good.
You'll be thinking about my article.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (05:58):
It's been more than a year, but sure.
It'll definitely be in mymind the next time I go in.
So you run four different killchain scenarios in the piece, right?
You walk us through four differentscenarios to test China's
ability to threaten the USmilitary presence in the Pacific.
And so, can you talk a littlebit about why this is helpful for
(06:20):
understanding Taiwan's operational value?
And could you kind of explain thelinks, the find, fix, finish way
that you break down the kill chain?
Really this is getting into kindof the core comparative exercise
that's at the heart of the analysis.
Can you walk us through that andhelp readers understand what these
comparisons are and what they tellus about Taiwan's military value?
Jonathan Caverley (06:43):
Yeah, it's a great question.
I'll try and answer it in two sections.
One is sort of the method and then oneis the actual substance of the analysis.
When you're writing a piece like this, andthis is the first really operational, open
source piece I've ever written— it took mea long time to write and I learned so much
doing it —is, really, injecting theoryinto a very complicated scenario, right?
(07:06):
War is the most complicatedactivity you can imagine.
We don't know what war lookslike until it actually happens.
Ukraine is a great example of this.
But what you have to do as humans, wehave to use theory in order to organize
the complexity of something tractablethat we can make a decision about, right?
So if you had, you know, an eye chartthat looks like an Escher drawing, right?
(07:29):
That's not gonna work.
You need an eye chart that actuallyis just a few letters that you're
familiar with, and then you can gobetter like this or better like that.
And so what I tried to do was take themany, many different ways we think of
the chain of tasks you have to get toin order to decide you have to attack
something, to actually attackingsomething, to assessing whether it was
(07:50):
successful or not, and then re-attacking.
How to distill that into something thatis simple enough that you can make that
eye chart comparison and yet capture themost important elements of that decision.
And hopefully, because, you know, I'ma political scientist, I want to be
cited and replicated, hopefully thiskind of approach, this simplified
(08:10):
approach, this theoretical approach willbe useful to other areas of inquiry.
And so, you know, after talking tocolleagues and after reading a great
deal and reading stuff by Talmadge andGreen and Steve Biddle, we came up with
this idea of the kill chain, right,and three links in the kill chain.
So three discrete tasks that you have toaccomplish if you're actually going to
(08:32):
have a military effect on an opposition.
And so, the first two are find and fix.
These are kind of sensing and tracking,so they're fairly distinct tasks.
It was theoretically useful to breakthe sensing part of a kill chain into
two components because many thingsthat are good at finding— which is
(08:54):
getting a sense that a target is outthere, maybe a bearing, maybe a rough
range — a sense that's good for thatis not necessarily optimized for the
fixing, which is really getting a veryaccurate, real time position and a
track that you can actually leverage aweapon for the third link in the kill
(09:17):
chain, which is the finish, right?
And that's bringing a weapon— itcould be kinetic, it could be non
kinetic— to bear on the target inorder to take it out of operation.
So it could be sinking a carrier, butit could also be just preventing it
from accomplishing its mission (09:30):
what the military calls a mission kill.
And so by dividing those three things up,it actually helped me organize various
capabilities that people associate withthe current People's Liberation Army,
and then what people are suggestingwould be added by PRC control of Taiwan.
And then you just look down the logic andit becomes a pretty simple theory, right?
It's (09:52):
every single component is necessary, but not sufficient.
If you can finish something but youhave no idea where the target is,
it's not useful to you, and whileknowing where the threat is, is sort
of useful in conflict and competition.
Really, if you're trying to actuallyengage with the enemy, you actually need a
weapon that can reach the target in time.
(10:13):
And so then I basically startedtrying to look at which capabilities
mattered the most, and I went to alot of previous work that's been done.
And then to answer kind of thesecond part of my answer to your
question, Sheena, is I had startedout by looking at Taiwan, right?
So Taiwan was sort of theindependent variable, right?
(10:33):
Do I have Taiwan?
Do I not have Taiwan?
And as I thought about the status quoand as I started reading deeply these
arguments for the military value ofTaiwan, it was very clear that the
assumption about the availabilityof space really mattered, right?
We often think of the United Statesmilitary being completely dependent on
space for our kind of exquisite sensingand weapons engagement capability.
(10:57):
And that's certainly the case to acertain degree, but China's heavily
reliant on space, especially forthese ballistic missiles: the carrier
killers, these Guam-killer missilesthat we hear a lot about, that we see
in the China Military Power Report.
And so I realized that while most ofthe previous work had had space as an
(11:17):
assumption— so either all space goesaway because of anti-satellite warfare,
or everyone has space so we justassume that everyone has this ability
to use space for whatever they want,sometimes it's something in between
—you have to make that a variable.
So ultimately I have four scenariosbecause now I have two variables, right?
I have the possession of Taiwanand the different assets you can
(11:38):
put on Taiwan, that's one variable.
And then the second variableis whether space is available.
And this has a massive effect on theranges and the relative value of the
capability that China currently possesses.
And one of the nice things aboutthe article and working with
TNSR is working with your team.
We developed maps that actually makethis very clear and that's as clear
(12:02):
an eye chart as we can possibly get.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (12:04):
Yeah, I thought the maps were very
effective at conveying that visually.
So for anybody listening woulddefinitely commend the maps.
They're very helpful in just givingthat visual illustration of what
the delta is and isn't, and that'san important part of the argument.
All right, I'll stop.
Ryan, back over to you.
So Jon, I'd like to go a little
Ryan Vest (12:24):
bit further down this rabbit hole.
You talk a lot about space andspace-based capabilities as a critical
enabler for China in this model.
I was wondering, what did you findwhen you compared China's kill chain
performance with and without space?
And why is space so decisive?
Jonathan Caverley (12:39):
Well, so again, it gets down to the kill chain
model and the fact that everythingis necessary but not sufficient.
So we spend an awful lot of time talkingabout, and rightly so, these ballistic
missiles that China currently possesses.
Not to mention the fairly long rangecruise missiles that could be air
launched from its bomber fleet, which isgrowing and becoming more sophisticated.
(13:03):
But again, that's not enough, right?
You have to have the ability to find—knowwhere the target is—and fix— to assign a
target quality track —so that by the timethe missile gets to its target, which can
be several thousand nautical miles, thetarget is still sufficiently known, the
location's sufficiently known that youcan actually bring the weapon to bear.
(13:26):
And so basically when you startsystematically looking at the ways that
China can use sensors to detect, forthe sake of discussion now, an aircraft
carrier, United States aircraft carrier,the collection of satellites that it
clearly possesses that is all — I've madesure to only use US government sources
(13:48):
or US government authorized or endorsedsources for discussing signs of things
like Chinese space capability—they havea combination of satellites, both optical
and electronic intercept to reallyhave a very persistent coverage of the
entire theater in a way that airborneradars, long range radars that are in
(14:10):
the hinterlands of China, mainland China,they don't have that ability to both
precisely fix and also find at long range.
So once you remove, if you magicallyremove all of China's space capability,
you are then reduced to a muchtighter range ring where you can
actually bring your weapons to bear.
(14:31):
And the seminal work on this is Biddleand Oelrich in International Security,
which I use heavily, which basically saidabout 600 kilometers from the coastline
is where you are likely to be able tohave a good find and fix pair of links
in order to bring a weapon to bear.
So you're now shrinking your weaponsengagement zone from several thousand
kilometers to 600 kilometers.
(14:53):
And then once you factor in the way Taiwanbecomes implicated in this is that we
have to understand Taiwan is basicallyright off the mainland of China, and
mainland China's coast is vast, right?
So in terms of providing that additionalsensing from airborne assets on
Taiwan, it's extremely modest, right?
(15:15):
It's just a couple hundred kilometersand you know, the article has
tables and it also has the mapsthat kind of make this very clear.
And so that's the intersection.
So Taiwan allows more short rangemunitions to be put to bear, so it bumps
out the range so you can put kind ofshorter range, less expensive missiles and
(15:36):
use that to push off aircraft carriers.
But in terms of sensing it actuallydoesn't have much of an effect at all, and
that just makes it very clear that spacehas a vastly bigger effect on the entire
kill chain because of this necessary butnot sufficient, element of find and fix.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (15:52):
So if I could ask a follow up question on that, I'm
actually gonna read a line from thearticle and ask you about it so that I
make sure I get the wording exactly right.
"Given the scale and sophisticationof this satellite program, China's
satellite program, it seems likely thatshort of large scale anti-satellite
warfare, China enjoys a persistentability to find and fix moving targets,
(16:13):
meaning US or allied targets and partnertargets, in the Western Pacific."
So what assumptions are you making inthe piece, if any, about the United
States' willingness or likelihoodof engaging in anti-satellite
warfare in the event of some kindof military operation around Taiwan.
Jonathan Caverley: That's a great question. (16:33):
undefined
So I can answer that in two ways.
First is, I try not to make anassumption about political decisions,
given that I feel I'm here to makethe best professional military case
for or against possession of Taiwan.
(16:54):
I have an employer asthe United States Navy.
And so that's why I'm more comfortabletalking of it as a variable that, let's
say a fleet commander or a Chief ofNaval Operations can tell the civilian
leadership, okay, "Well here's whatit's gonna look like if you engage in
anti-satellite warfare. Here's whatit's gonna look like if you don't engage
(17:15):
in anti-satellite warfare, that's yourdecision boss. You figure it out." It's
really important to make that a variable.
But then I also kind of did wantto critically look at sort of
the logic behind when it wouldbe militarily valuable to attack
either country's satellite network.
(17:35):
And that's where you just kind of lookat military doctrine, especially PRC
military doctrine and some of the analysesthat makes the case, especially for
the subsurface threat emanating fromTaiwan, actually requires a very discreet
amount of satellite sensing ability.
So China can't have the ability tofind a target, but it has enough
(18:01):
satellite capability to fix the target,and because of that, it's this weird
rheostat that you need in order toget the Goldilocks scenario just
right, that submarines actually matteras a threat to aircraft carriers.
And so then you start walking downthe logic chain, like how do you get
a medium Chinese satellite capability.
(18:21):
And it requires restraint by the UnitedStates, which you could plausibly say
that there are a lot of reasons why theUnited States would be very hesitant
to attack China's satellite network.
It would result inmassive economic losses.
It would result in massive damage tomany satellites, not just the military
ones, and would set a quite importantprecedent for the future of warfare.
(18:46):
But when you actually read Chinesedoctrine, and Sheena, I'll defer to
you as one of the great experts onthis, it seems pretty clear that China
cannot conceive of a scenario when itis fighting an existential conflict
against the United States, where itdoesn't go after what it considers
the key enabler for American powerprojection, which is space capability.
(19:11):
And so then you have to assume, well,China has to refrain from doing that
because it'd be very implausible toknow when China will start attacking
American space capability and theUnited States wouldn't reciprocate.
That's how I would probably analyze that.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (19:25):
Thanks.
I think that's a really helpful answer todraw out that the analysis really tries
to present options and their probableconsequences or possible consequences.
So the decision makers who are facedwith the decision, or hopefully not
faced with the decision, but if theyever are, have the best tools to
understand the potential consequencesof the choice they're about to make.
(19:46):
And I think to me, that's one ofthe real values of the approach
that you take in the article.
But that actually leads me into aquestion I wanted to ask you about
that's a little bit outside thespecific scope of this piece in TNSR.
And that was just a question aboutwhat have you learned from writing
this piece about what academic oropen source modeling can contribute
(20:08):
to these important debates?
And you know, I guess the flip side ofthat is kind of how do you right size
the role or think about the role ofacademic open source analysis, and maybe
where can it go wrong, or what shouldwe not be trying to do or infer from it?
Jonathan Caverley (20:24):
This is a great question.
It is one that I'm onlybeginning to wrestle with.
I think it is going to be a centralquestion for the profession of
security studies going forward.
And so, given TNSR's position in thefirmament of IR, I'd really like to
know what you guys think as well.
Let me start out withthe first principles.
(20:46):
The first principle is, it isfundamentally important that
academics critically examine policystatements and policy plans and
policy assumptions about war.
Okay?
This is a fundamental aspect ofthe marketplace of ideas that
(21:07):
academics have to be involved in.
And we have tons of examples, let'sjust say from the Cold War, right,
where the military says, "Trust me,we have access to exquisite sensitive
information that I can't tell you, andwe have access to analytical abilities
(21:27):
that are far surpass your wildest dreams.
So when we say this is the case, you'rejust going to have to believe us.
And time and time again,the military's wrong.
Some of it, it can be malicious, right?
Militaries are organizationsand they defend themselves.
And politicians do what politicians do.
Some is just, it's really hardto think about future war, right?
(21:48):
This is a thing that wejust don't understand.
Again, Ukraine is a great example.
And so one of my fundamental messages tomany of my colleagues, especially junior
colleagues, is it's really importantto start thinking about the operational
assumptions and how you can criticallyevaluate them going forward, because
(22:09):
we are talking about a really dangerousworld we live in right now where large
countries with nuclear weapons arekind of getting in each others' grills.
Now, having said that, what'sthe best way to do that, right?
And there does have to bea division of labor, right?
We have to kind of do what we're bestat, and working at a place like the
(22:30):
Naval War College, where I work withserving military officers, but I'm a
political scientist, we see when wework with military officers, even very
senior military officers, it's very hardto get them to move up from tactical
to operational to strategic, right?
And really one of the things Ithink political science should do
(22:51):
is actually start with the strategicand maybe go down to the operational.
And that's for two reasons.
First of all, inside the military,you're just not going to see
a lot of strategic analysis.
And that's for both kind of bureaucraticreasons, right— we're trying to
justify what kind of ship we'regonna buy, generals and combatant
commanders have to decide how toactually fight the war, right— and
(23:12):
it's also civil military, right?
It is not the military's place toreally talk at the strategic level
and start making value judgements.
And so that's the division oflabor that academics have to have.
And that's the realm of theory, right?
And that's the realm of simplificationas I was talking before.
And so when I encourage my colleagues todive into the operational, get familiar
(23:37):
the operational aspects of our business,I think we have to avoid the temptation
that we have, in contemporary politicalscience especially, of what Mearsheimer
and Walt famously called hypothesistesting— where you actually, let's just
take the cliche of a data set, right,you have a data set of militarized
disputes, and then you find a new factor,let's call it in my first book, capital
(24:01):
labor ratio of the military —and thenyou say, well, capital labor ratio
correlates to the following things in war.
And therefore you write a wholebook based on that little finding.
That's not our strength, right?
Getting at the particular, getting atthat little independent variable is not
something we have, as academics, havean advantage over, over at the military.
(24:22):
And so I actually think instead ofgetting down into the weeds of one
little model about, you know, underwatersound propagation, or how does a radar,
a certain type of radar wavelengthbounce against the ionosphere— that's
important details, that's importantanecdotes to support your case— but
you really have to talk about thebig picture, the big moving parts.
And that's kind of where I seeacademic approaches to operations
(24:45):
and modeling really taking place.
And my inspiration is the big debateduring the Cold War in the pages of
International Security between peoplelike John Mearsheimer and Barry Posen
and, uh, people like Cohen, who ismuch more in tune with what the United
States military was thinking at thetime about the battle over Fulda Gap.
So if you look at the debates over that,which I encourage all our listeners
(25:05):
to do, you'll learn a lot about kindof what the division of labor should
be between academics and policy.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (25:11):
There's this common quote that a nation that has too
big a gap between its soldiers and itsscholars will have its thinking done by
cowards and its fighting done by fools.
And so one of the things we want isnot for the discipline of security
studies to all turn into members ofthe military, but to have an informed
dialogue where each side understandsthe perspectives of the other, and
(25:34):
you can have a constructive exchange.
So that's part of what we're tryingto do, but I think also speaks more
broadly to the role of security studiesin the US civil military arrangement.
Jonathan Caverley (25:45):
Oh, Sheena, you're absolutely right.
And I think that's actually somethingthat I try to do at the Review and
you're doing relatively successfullyat TNSR is, it's not that we want
academics and military officers toresemble themselves or do the same thing.
It is more what is the familiarizationwith both cultures; how can we learn to
(26:09):
leverage the strengths of both professionsin order to make better policy?
I think that quote is perfect.
Jon, I'd like
Ryan Vest (26:16):
to follow that thought up a little bit more.
Something you make very clear in thearticle and that we probably would be
remiss if we didn't hit on a littlebit more as we discuss this: you talk
about how your article doesn't assessTaiwan's broader strategic value, its
economy, its democracy, the symbolicimportance, but given your findings
that Taiwan's operational value tothe military is relatively modest, how
(26:40):
should that recalibrate the way that USofficials talk about Taiwan's importance
and shape decisions about how far theUS should be willing to go to defend it?
Jonathan Caverley (26:48):
Okay, that's key question.
Again, I really try to focuson the strategic effects
of operational art, right?
How do I help my bosses provide the bestmilitary advice to political leadership?
And so let's imagine, and I thinkI'm right, let's imagine I'm correct
that Taiwan actually doesn't have anoperational impact either way for the
(27:10):
balance of military power in the theater.
And then the question is, I'm notrecommending how one should feel
about whether the United Statesshould defend Taiwan against military
coercion, but knowing that operationalkind of insignificance, I do think,
if you decide to defend Taiwan, howthe defendant is impacted, right?
(27:34):
And so I'd go at that ata couple different ways.
One thing I have experienced over the pastfew years working on this topic is, you
know, when you look at the day to day, youdon't feel like we're learning much and,
you can get frustrated with the speed ofpolicy, but over time you do see learning.
And it seems like a much clearer casethat any conflict with China— any military
(27:59):
conflict, whether it's over Taiwanor South China Sea or something else,
right— it's not gonna be short and sharp.
Right?
When it comes to sort of large scalewars between great powers, these
things tend to develop over time andthey tend to become wars of attrition.
And there's some really good workdone by people like Josh Rovner and
then the people at CSIS and cSPA—the think-tank world — on what does
(28:22):
a prolonged conflict actually entail?
And so one way I try to think aboutit is, you don't wanna destroy
the operational balance betweenthe United States and China.
I try to think about theoperational balance, right?
And so, if the United States doesn'tdefend Taiwan, then our allies around
(28:42):
the region are going to start thinkingour reassurance is not credible.
Now, that can be disputed, butthat's not the point of this article.
Right?
But if you think about credibility,like the ability to actually
execute your military operationsalso matters for credibility.
And so if you have a Taiwan that'sautonomous after you defend it, but
(29:03):
the entire seventh fleet is at thebottom of the ocean, and you have a
Chinese maritime industrial base thathas, it's something like 200, 250
times larger than the United States is,that is not going to be reassuring to
places like Japan and the Philippines.
So then the trick is if you wannadefend Taiwan, you can't do it at a
way that makes the United States lessable to compete with China in a longer,
(29:29):
more prolonged conflict or a widerconflict— what we call in the Cold
War, the horizontal escalation problem.
And so one of the cases I try to makeis, rather than optimizing the United
States for one military scenario,especially when it comes to the
Navy, because the Navy is sort ofyour Swiss Army knife of day-to-day
(29:52):
political military operations, you canactually do your best to help Taiwan
defend itself with American support.
And there's lots of work being doneon this from INDOPACOM, to people
like Steve Biddle and Eugene Goltzand Ben Friedman, this idea of
creating a porcupine of Taiwan.
This is a very famous article producedby my colleague in the Naval War
(30:14):
College, Bill Murray, a long time ago.
You can do that and make the invasionof Taiwan as hard a problem as
possible for the People's Republicof China, right, while giving more
operating space and more missionspace for the United States military
for this longer wider competition.
So, there's a logic often used todescribe the importance of Taiwan.
(30:39):
It's called the cork in the bottletheory: this idea that once the PRC has
possession of Taiwan, it breaks up thisthing called the first island chain,
and all of a sudden all these powerof objection forces can swarm out into
the Pacific and start wreaking havoc.
I talk about that in the article, butthere's actually what some people call
the psychological cork in the bottletheory, which is the idea that if
(30:59):
China is obsessively optimizing thePeople's Liberation Army for this very
specific task, which is a cross straitinvasion or an airborne invasion of
Taiwan, right, it can't be focused onthe other things, which we would care
about for a wider or longer conflict.
And so the way I would put it is, wecould build a military and a concept
(31:22):
of operations that makes the invasionof Taiwan the pacing threat for China,
which is very much in the UnitedStates' interest, but not making
it the pacing threat for the UnitedStates and its allies— allowing the
United States and allies to focuson that broader, wider conflict.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (31:38):
I have a couple of questions that come out of that.
I did want to loop back because I wasgoing to ask you about this idea, this
logic of Taiwan as the cork in the bottle,because you say pretty explicitly in the
article as you've just covered that youthink that's not the right way to think
about Taiwan's role in the Indo-Pacific.
But there's a second logic, a submarinetender logic that you talk about,
(31:59):
that you also say isn't quite right.
And so can you tell us a littlebit about what's wrong with those
mental models of Taiwan's value?
And then I have another question about thepacing scenario that I'll loop back to.
Jonathan Caverley (32:10):
Terrific.
Well, there's a coupleways to come at that.
I will start with two concepts that arereally important and then I'll give you a
one word answer to your question, Sheena.
If you can think of two big missionsfor any military in this theater,
one is called denial, right?
And one is called powerprojection, or we would lump in
sea control in with denial as well.
(32:30):
So the ability to deny the UnitedStates carrier strike group to
operate in a operationally relevantspace for a Taiwan or for a theater
wide conflict, that's denial.
So some people would argue that Taiwanactually helps extend the People's
(32:50):
Republic of China's ability to denyspace, air, and sea to the United States.
And then the other one, which is thecork in the bottle argument, is this
idea that Taiwan enables the flowingof forces for China to project power,
the amphibious, strategic bombing,aircraft carriers to actually create
(33:11):
military diplomatic effects outsideof the first island chain, right?
And so, you know, it's important tounderstand these are two different
missions and they're subtly different.
But to answer your question (33:20):
what is it about this logic that has changed?
It's missiles, right?
So almost all the discourse aboutthe importance of Taiwan is actually
dates from the 1940s and 1950s, right?
The last time the Pacific wastruly relevant militarily.
The last time the defense of Formosa—now Taiwan — was really important.
(33:42):
And you have these three distinct logics.
These are the cork in the bottle,which is Admiral Ernie King's phrase.
And that's the abilityfor power projection.
And then the other two are more focusedon the ability of China to deny—
in World War II it's Japan —to denythe operation of American forces far
from the continental United States.
And this is from MacArthur's veryfamous phrase, which is repeated over
(34:05):
and over again— he was great for theone-liners — this idea of Taiwan as the
unsinkable aircraft carrier and submarinetender: so the idea that you could
locate both air assets on the island andthen undersea assets from the island.
And what matters is when your ability todeny or project power was based on the
(34:27):
range of an un-refueled aircraft, whichwas the case in the 1940s and 1950s,
then this island really matters, right?
What has changed since then is thisadvent of long range missiles and
sensing, which once you are no longerworried about kind of the radius of an
un-refuelable aircraft as your primarymeans of projecting military effects or
(34:51):
denying operation to your enemy, right,then one particular geographic point like
an island doesn't matter as much, right?
So the idea that the extra range thisprovides your aircraft is pretty minimal.
And also the extra range it provides foryour submarines is also pretty modest.
And I spent a lot of time talking aboutthe undersea aspect of Taiwan in the
(35:15):
possession of the People's Republic ofChina because ultimately the undersea
campaign for the larger competitionfor the Pacific is going to be the
most important aspect in terms ofmilitary competition, at least for the
next, I'd say generational weapons.
Right now, the United States hasan enormous undersea advantage.
(35:37):
If you go to my colleagues at theChina Maritime Studies Institute at
the Naval War College, my colleagueRyan Martinson just published an
excellent analysis of some translatedwork that looked at the Chinese own
assessments of its undersea disadvantage.
And so this idea that Taiwan isactually quite well located because
it's on the continental shelf, right?
(35:59):
So it looks out at deep water fromits east coast and there are some
things you can locate on the eastcoast if you could actually militarize
it and build ports there that aremuch bigger than what exists now.
You can actually create some militaryeffects in the larger Pacific.
And what I did was I actually just lookedat the numbers based on open source
(36:20):
modeling that previous scholars have used.
And while it is true that Chinacould locate submarines on its east
coast, it's still not that difficultto detect them and then to prosecute
them to make the number of missilesor torpedoes that can be thrown into
(36:42):
the fight militarily significantcompared to kind of the other modes of
attack that are available to the PRC.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (36:48):
So you mentioned a few minutes ago this idea that the
United States should consider tryingto make Taiwan the pacing scenario
for China, but not necessarily be thepacing scenario for the United States.
And you know, I've read for several yearsnow across successive administrations,
the idea of China as the pacingchallenge, Taiwan is the pacing scenario.
(37:11):
And then even more recently, somereporting from the Washington Post on
some interim national defense strategicguidance from the administration that
talks about a faits accomplis attackon Taiwan as the pacing scenario.
So sort of one subset of scenarios thatwe could have with respect to Taiwan.
So not to take that necessarily at facevalue or to ask you to comment on that,
(37:33):
but I've written in Lawfare and a coupleother places about the concern that in
a security environment as complex asthe Indo-Pacific, overly narrowing the
pacing scenario— Yeah, policymakers haveto prioritize; we have to prioritize
how we think about defense, investments,planning, et cetera— but there is a
concern that historically great powershave often ended up fighting wars
(37:56):
other than the one they planned for.
And so there's this concern aboutoverly narrowing pacing scenarios.
And I think your piece, it sounded likefrom what you said earlier, that you
had some thoughts about how to approachjust in general from this analysis.
Like you've learned some things thattell us a little bit about how we might
(38:16):
wanna approach this question of theDOD's pacing scenario and how we think
about the Taiwan problem in that context.
Do you have any thoughts or any insightsthat this article brought to you that you
think would be helpful for policymakersto know or to have in their back
pocket as they're making these plansand thinking through these problems?
Jonathan Caverley (38:33):
When I started talking about the pacing scenario,
that was actually driven, notreally by current administrative
policy— whether it's Biden or Trump
— but it's this idea of, what is the thingthat you base your military around?
And in the article I quote a formersecretary of defense for INDOPACOM in the
first Trump administration who basicallysays, Taiwan's the Fulda Gap, right?
(38:57):
And for those of you who remember the ColdWar, the Fulda Gap was this point in the
middle of Germany that was kind of thepivot around which we thought the entire
ground campaign between the Warsaw Pactand NATO was going to revolve around.
And it focused planningon solving that problem.
And that's the classicexample of the pacing threat.
Another classic example of a pacingthreat would be kind of France's
(39:19):
response to the potential invasion fromGermany, which is the Maginot Line,
and as Sheena, you just noted thatthat didn't work out so well either.
So there's risk in choosing your pacingthreat, but I also wanna say I'm very
sympathetic to the need for a pacingscenario and a pacing threat, because
the Department of Defense has tofocus a very complicated enterprise of
(39:43):
combatant commands services, who allhave their own independent analytical
capability, all independent bureaucraticincentives, and you have to create
something that everyone agrees on.
So you can decide whether to buystealth bombers or aircraft carriers
or a certain type of missile ora certain type of satellite, and
we all have to agree on that.
And so the pacing threat is veryconsequential, very important.
(40:06):
And if I am, let's just say that tacticsfrom the previous administration and
the Navy starts saying, you know what?
I don't think Taiwan should be thepacing scenario because, you know, we
have to do all these other missions,I think you know what, the Navy just
wants to keep its carriers and so nowit's changing rules of the game, right?
So I want to point out to listenersthat like pacings scenarios
(40:29):
are really important, right?
But you have to really thinkthrough the consequences and then
how much of the effort you wantto focus on that pacing scenario.
And so what I argue in this article is,if you look at the range of conflict
between the pacing threat, which isChina, and the possible missions that
(40:50):
the United States military would haveto conduct in a military conflict
against China— which is of course whatwe have to do if we wanna deter China
from doing certain things— the invasionof Taiwan is really important, right?
But it's also very specific, right?
And so the more you focus on thatone pacing scenario, the less you're
going to work on the other, whichI think are much more plausible and
(41:10):
much more important set of scenariosthat you have to prepare against.
And so I think there's two ways to thinkabout a pacing scenario as I talked to
you, Sheena, and your question reallymade me think a little harder about this.
One is, what is thepacing scenario, right?
And then the second one is, howimportant is the pacing scenario, right?
Is it a hundred percent of your effort?
(41:31):
Is it 80% of your effort?
That's probably just as importanta decision as identifying
what the actual scenario is.
Sheena Chestnut Greitens (41:38):
Thanks.
I think that's a really helpful wayto think about it, and it gets back
to this idea that these are decisionsultimately that rest with the president
and with their national security team.
And so the role of scholarship inthat case is to try to give them
as informed sense of the risks andtrade-offs of the different options
in front of them as we possibly can.
These are questions we think a lot anddiscuss a lot amongst ourselves at TNSR.
(42:02):
So it's great to hear yourperspective informed by the
varied experience you've had.
Thanks for sharing that with us.
Ryan Vest (42:08):
Thanks for joining us on "Horns of a Dilemma" from the
Texas National Security Review.
Our
guest today has beenJon Caverley, author of
the article, "So What? Reassessing the Military Implications
of Chinese Control of Taiwan," which asalways can be accessed for free on our
website, TNSR.org.
Jon, thank you very much
for joining us today.
If you enjoyed this episode,be sure to subscribe and leave
(42:28):
a review wherever you listen.
We love hearing from you.
You can find more of our work at TNSR.org.
Today's episode was produced byTNSR Digital and Technical Manager,
Jordan Morning, and made possibleby the University of Texas.
This is Ryan Vest andSheena Chestnut Greitens.
Thank you for listening
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