Military Policy Expert Explains US Options Should China Invade Taiwan

Dakota Wood, Military and Senior Policy Analyst with the Heritage Foundation joined us to explain the increased aggression of China amd what options exist for the USA should Taiwan come under attack. A great, informative visit.

Episode Transcript

(00:14):
Five minutes after the hour. Itis the third hour of three here on
the Morning Show with Preston Skyck ofMorning wherever however you are listening. Thanks
a lot. We greatly appreciate sharingtime with you each and every morning,
as we have for twenty one plusyears. Grant Allen over there running the
radio program in Studio one A.I am here in Studio one B,

(00:36):
and I am joined by Dakota Wood. I warned him, I told him
he did such a good job thelast time he was on the show.
I threatened that I was going tohave him back, and here we are
making good on it. How areyou you know? I think doing great.
I think this test phase of yourstwenty one years, just stick with
it. It might be a careertrack for you. Just speculation of my

(00:58):
third brother. I don't know ifyou know much about the community of Tallahassee,
but I will. I will simplytell you that a conservative Christian for
twenty one years holding down Morning Driveis evidence there is a god. Amen.
Dakota served the United States for twodecades in the US Marine corpsies the

(01:19):
Senior Research Fellow for Defense Programs.First, as always, I thank you
so much for your service to ourcountry. Dakota, how are you,
Todank you doing well? It's abeautiful day. I mean I'm in DC,
so I can't get too good,but I think we're doing good work
here. And you know, Ilove it shows like yours and your audience
that are really plugged into the issuesof the day. And it's just it's

(01:42):
heartening to be able to engage inthese kind of conversations when they're really needed.
Here's what I need you to firsthelp us wade through. And I'm
not going to promise that this isgoing to be easy for you to do,
but I'm going to challenge you todo it. We have more and
more people that are growing concern thatwith our current commander in chief, the

(02:04):
current makeup of our military. ThoughI think we'd all admit there are great
men and women serving, the factof the matter is we are, I
think a rudderless ship with our leadershiplacking explain the potential of us going to
war over Taiwan. Is that somethingwe could potentially have to do? Is
that a must? Well, Ithink yes to both of those. It's

(02:30):
potential. I mean, it's notdeterminant, it's not inevitable, but there
is certainly the potential. And ifChina tried to take Taiwan by force,
then yes, I think we wouldhave to respond in defense of Taiwan because
the consequences would be monumental. Imean, it would tell the rest of

(02:51):
the world that China is certainly willingto use military force, just like we're
seeing Russia used in Ukraine and thedamage it's causing to Europe. In a
much larger way Iran. If youcould imagine some kind of a strike and
nuclear strike from Iran into Israel,or Israel having to use nuclear weapons to
prevent itself from being destroyed by Iran. You know, this is the enormity

(03:14):
of the magnitude we're talking about.So you know, it's an island,
Taiwan, not too far off thecoast of mainland China, but it represents
a huge economic part of that world. It would extend China's reach further out
into the ocean spaces, posting adirect threat to Japan and the Philippines and

(03:35):
Indonesian, Malaysia and just all theseother areas. So it's something that could
not go without being answered. Andto the point that you made up front,
Are we rudderless? Are we adrift, you know, militarily speaking,
Are we in a position to respondwith forests? And I think all of
those are very much in doubt.We've been tracking the decline of the size,

(04:00):
readiness, and aging or modernity ofour forces for a decade now,
and our index of US military strength, and we think that if you globally
sourced American military power being pulling itfrom all the different places of the world,
you might have enough to win onemajor fight like something like Taiwan.
But it would take everything we've got, which leads all of our other interests

(04:24):
in other parts of the world,and all of our treaty obligations uncovered and
given to distances, you know,from the US to Taiwan, You're talking
let's say six thousand miles, whereChina is operating one hundred miles from home.
So how do you logistically sustain that? How do you replace combat losses?
The time? The distance involved veryfew basing options for US forces in

(04:47):
that part of the world where Chinahas its entire homeland. So those are
the stakes that are involved, andyet the priorities have been placed for the
Pentagon are diversity, the equity andinclusion, identity politics, critical race theory,
drag shows which were just canceled acouple of days ago. You d

(05:09):
duy, but set a combating climatechange, electrifying the US military fleet of
equipment. I mean that those arethe priorities of the White House, not
expanding the military, ensuring that flighthours and ship driving time is up,
or even replenishing munitions that we've beengiving to Ukraine for very good reasons.

(05:30):
So I think we're in a veryrisky period of time and it will take
years to build out, which isn'tgoing to happen because of this debt ceiling
bill that's just been agreed to thatkeeps the defense spending from increasing in any
meaningful way. The new Mayor ofRealville dispensing information at the speed of sound.
It's The Morning Show with Preston Scott. Served our country in the US

(05:59):
Marine Corps a couple of decades,that's all, and now as senior research
fellow for the Defense Programs at aHeritage Foundation, and our guests here this
morning, as we talk about China, Taiwan, and the United States,
the recent encounters with our navy afew hundred yards between our destroyer and there's

(06:19):
airplane brushbacks with their jets. Isthis saber rattling or is this testing?
It's both. I mean, Iapologize to the extended answer I gave to
your just profoundly important question, Butit all relates to this. In the
Cold War, the Soviet Union andUS NATO had all kinds of encounters like

(06:41):
these ship things and you know,cutting each other's planes off, the interdictions
and those sorts of things. Butwe've seen a real uptick because of China's
aggressiveness. So crossing the path ofa jet with another jet turbulence, you
know, you can create some instabilityand potentially down an aircraft. The ships
when you're dealing with the forty orfifty thousand ton ship, even if you're

(07:02):
moving twenty miles an hour, youknow, fifteen knots or so through the
water, crossing within a football fieldsomething like that, there is real danger
in people being injured, certainly equipmentbeing damaged, and then creating an international
incident. So it shows you howaggressive China is behaving in international waters and

(07:23):
international airspace. And it tells youthen the importance that they place on having
control of Taiwan and being the dominantpower in the Indo Pacific region. What
about our allies in the area Dakota. I see Australia trying to make nice
with China, suddenly engaging in prettyhigh level talks and almost playing footsie with

(07:46):
them. That seems to say tome that we might not have the support
that we would need should should somekind of war breakout. The Australians are
great, they are very wrong alliesto the US, but they're also on
the other side of the planet.Yep. So every country has to figure
out how to best survive to youknow, have a viable economy. Big

(08:11):
trading partners of theirs is China.And we're talking, I mean from Australia
to the US. It takes likeseven days to fly there. I mean,
it's just you know, it's eightthousand and nine thousand miles away.
And so they're out there and theyhave to deal with China as a neighbor.
But you know, we don't havethat many people with credible military power.

(08:31):
You know, Japan denuded itself eversince World War Two. They only
spend about one percent of GDP,although they're changing that. The Russian Australian
military is very very small, verycapable professionally, but it's very small.
And the Philippines doesn't have anything,Malaysia, Vietnam, there just isn't much

(08:52):
capability and capacity in that part ofthe world to stand up against China.
So if you're going to do anything, it's got a fall to the US.
When I hear you talk about ourability to maybe fight one front at
a time, this goes back tothe Obama administration's decision to basically state just
that that we're going to be asmall, agile military power that can fight

(09:18):
one front. But they intentionally brokethe ability of our country to fight on
multiple fronts at once as a matterof policy, didn't they They absolutely did.
I mean, you're absolutely right.We had a holiday than the nineteen
nineties, and the new Obama administrationdisworshened everything we say that we want from
rely on our allies to step intothe breach. But they've made even worse

(09:41):
decisions. I mean a Great Britainhas the smallest army has had since seventeen
fourteen. Okay, it only hasseventeen surface ships in its navy. Germany
of the vaunted tanksill epport twos.We talked about they have maybe three hundred
of it ventry, and only ahundred of those are actually available for use.

(10:05):
A lot of equipment that they've beengiving Ukraine just does not work.
So when we look around the globe, nobody except our enemies has any level
of meaningful, credible combat power.Our pilots used to fly two hundred hours
a year. Today they're averaging somethinglike eighty. You know, you can't
fly less than half of what youdid previously and be competence performing your task

(10:30):
right, So we could go throughall kinds of numbers that the picture is
fairly dire, and as I said, this budget deal is going to keep
spending next year to three percent growthon a six percent inflationary growth, So
you're actually going to be able topass for the money that you spend a

(10:52):
few minutes left with Dakota Wood fromthe Heritage Foundation. And we're talking about
China, the saber rattling, thetesting, where we are with our diminished
military capabilities, not just hardware andnot funding the mechanism, but personnel.

(11:13):
They're not hitting recruiting goals. Youmight argue that there are some great men
and women that are still willing toserve this country. But the type of
people that are willing to put upwith the political correct woke nonsense, they're
not showing up to the recruiting calls, and so Dakota with money not being

(11:33):
spent at the levels that it needsto be spent. With our limited ability
to engage beyond one front, andeven if that we're talking thousands and thousands
of miles away, how would theUnited States engage with Taiwan and defending that
that island. Well, we've gotterrific naval power and when we talked about
a little bit about how limited itis, but our submarine fleet is world

(11:56):
class awesome, So that would beone thing. Pushing forward as many missile
shooters as we could, and you'dbe very selective in your targeting. You
know, if there are any crossstraight movements of troop ships from China to
Taiwan, could those be taken outwith an air launched anti ship cruise missile
or a ship launched cruise missile orby a submarine. You could play in

(12:20):
the cyber realm, you know,can you make it more difficult for China
to coordinate their activities and to dothe things that they wanted to do.
But they're going to be doing thatto us as well, right, So
our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan wereagainst enemies that had no real capabilities,
you know, no air power,no navy, no cyber stuff, and
so we've gotten used to doing whateverwe wanted to do with very little interdiction

(12:45):
or frustration. You know, roadsidebomb is bad for the vehicle that it
hits, but it doesn't stop thewar. It's just going to be a
different a different game if you goup against some place like China. Is
North Korea a player in this inany way, shape or form, I
don't think so. I mean,they're fixated Kim Jones six saded on the
Korean peninsula. They don't have anypower projection capabilities other than their missiles.

(13:11):
We don't want to dismiss them,but the nature of those missiles really aren't
tactical. So I think that theyare constrained to the Korean peninsula. If
the US is engaged in the warwith China, he might see an opportunity
to push into South Korea, andthen the US would have two problems on
its hands of just one. Ifyou're President g is this a fight,

(13:35):
you really can afford. You've gotan aging population, your population controls it
backfired. Your economy is not reallyswimming along because you are a production economy,
you are not a consumption economy.Can they really afford to do this
or is this going to be let'sjust talk big and let's just keep live
and let live type thing. Well, you look at windows of opportunity,

(13:58):
and for the very reasons you said, if a population is aging, if
my workforce is declining relative to theolder people, you need to support environmental
concerns, arable land is decreasing,etc. The statistics don't get better over
time, so it's almost like youhave to move sooner because if you don't

(14:20):
act soon, then you lose theability to act later on. And this
reclaiming control of Taiwan is probably themost important issue other than the Communist Party
regimes survival that faces the political powerbrokersin Beijing today. So they're just not
going to give up on that andthink that they have a better opportunity of

(14:43):
fifteen years from now. So Ithink that there is a window of danger
here in the next several years wherethey have to move before they can't and
they'll be looking at the US politicalsituation. You know who is going to
be the president after the next electioncycle, and are always go involved in
Europe, in the Middle East andthose sorts of things. But we're in
a risky period of time. Fifteensecond answer on this when you add it

(15:07):
all up, is this a potentialconflict that we can afford to get involved
in even if it means losing it. I think you have to because if
you don't, then you have seededthat part of the world to China.
Not a good day for the USto access to markets and stuff. You
have to do something with Ukraine becausewe can't afford a win for Russia in

(15:31):
Europe. And you have to dosomething to continue to support Israel because a
war between Iran and Saudi Arabia wouldbe disastrous for a global energy which affects
everything else. Or just some thingsyou just have to do. Dakota,
I always appreciate your time. We'llhave you back. Thanks again. It's
great, God blessing. Thank you. Sarah Dakota Wood with us this morning
from the Heritage Foundation. Our guestson the Morning Show with Preston Scott