The United States isn’t conceding the field of competition in the First Island Chain; it’s expanding it.
Denial does not equate to dominance. In Brandon Weichert’s recent article in this publication, he argues that the United States has potentially “already lost the First Island Chain” due to China’s growing anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities. He follows that up with the argument that U.S. actions in the Second Island Chain are essentially a tacit acknowledgement of Chinese control of the Taiwan Strait. While the challenges he identified in his piece are very real, his conclusion represents a logical leap that misses the mark.
If we had the unfortunate opportunity to see a cross-strait war, what we would see would be more akin to a bloody game of hide-and-seek as commanders take advantage of localized dominance and openings.
There are three primary issues with these arguments. First, the sheer size of the potential conflict area precludes complete dominance. Second, the development of Second Island Chain basing enables improved distributed lethality and survivability. Third, by decreasing the efficacy of a Chinese surprise attack, the likelihood of deterrence holding increases.
Even if combat was limited to the area immediately around Taiwan, the sheer scope of ocean and airspace that would need to be monitored is immense, not to mention the need to monitor Taiwan itself. While improving, the Chinese ability to collect weapons guidance quality data wouldn’t cover the entire battle space at all times.
Even assuming perfect coverage, there’s still the question of personnel training and their ability to track multiple contacts across the region in a high-stress and fast-tempo environment. Given these constraints, Chinese A2/AD efforts would enable localized control for short periods of time. Still, they would leave gaps for U.S. and allied forces to maneuver and engage or support ground operations on Taiwan itself.
By developing military bases and staging throughout the Second Island Chain, the United States capitalizes on two distinct benefits: distributed lethality and increasing the number of threat axes. This compounds the difficulty of monitoring and engaging any military response taken by the U.S. and allied forces. The Chinese are still assessed to have only modest capabilities to operate outside of the First Island Chain, meaning they would be reliant on longer range missiles to engage.
With the ability to send bombers from multiple directions, the Chinese intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance efforts will be spread across the entire Pacific, as opposed to being able to focus on a few U.S. bases. Therefore, responses to individual sorties or airfields would have a smaller impact on the overall balance of forces. This does mean that it would take longer to bring force to bear in a cross-strait conflict and complicate allied responses. There are some other confounding factors at play.
Varied threat axes would also force the Chinese forces to distribute defenses more broadly if they were to adequately protect their high value units, such as amphibious assault ships or carriers. This opens the door to tactical surprise, where allied forces suddenly converge on weaker points in the Chinese defenses. This is not to say that the U.S. and allied forces would be able to have their way with hostile forces. There are opportunities and vulnerabilities at each point of conflict. Still, by being able to choose more readily where, when, and how to engage, the U.S. and allied forces would gain some tactical advantage.
Finally, by distributing forces and having the option to surge units throughout the region, the effectiveness of a surprise first strike by the Chinese is limited. Any engagement they embark upon has a greater risk of becoming a protracted, attritional conflict, which in turn would increase the risk of the conflict expanding in scope. This in turn increases the likelihood of deterrence holding as articulated by Professor John Mearsheimer.
While Weichert is correct in asserting the Chinese could attempt to impose a blockade right now with the military assets available to them, a blockade is far from a swift surgical strike, which complicates the risk calculus for the Chinese military and CCP immensely. This would also give Taiwan and the rest of the world plenty of advanced notice as it would require mobilizing across all of China prior to commencing.
It would also be remiss not to bring up the fact that the people of Taiwan have a voice in all of this. If fighting were to break out, the Taiwanese military would play a pivotal role in the conflict. Taiwan has been focusing on building its resilience and the geography of the island is a nightmare for attacking forces. Aside from the need to conduct highly complex amphibious assaults, Taiwan is incredibly mountainous with shallow waters extending far off their Western coasts. A determined resistance by the Taiwanese will make all the difference.
Arguing that Taiwan and, by extension, the First Island Chain is lost due to robust Chinese A2/AD capabilities mischaracterizes the situation on the ground. What’s worse, is that it confuses the ability to make operations difficult with the ability to preclude operations entirely.
What we’re seeing is a reversion back to what warfare traditionally looked like, where localized and temporary periods of battlespace dominance were the best a commander could hope for. The United States expanding its Second Island Chain operations isn’t conceding the field, it’s complicating and expanding the field.
Eric Lies is an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Washington, D.C. office, specializing in security strategy and military affairs. He previously served in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer. He holds a bachelor’s of science with a major in international affairs from the U.S. Naval Academy and a master’s in international service from American University.
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