Mili, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a hearing in the US Senate on the 7th that the United States can "assist Taiwan like it assisted Ukraine and help Taiwan achieve better self-defense." Milley said: From a military point of view, it is more difficult for China to carry out military operations against the Taiwan region, and it is necessary to cross the strait to carry out joint strikes against the Taiwan region. Taiwan has a high population density and the island has been fortified after years of operation. Milley stressed that the best deterrent at present is to ensure that China knows that "attacking Taiwan" will be a "very, very difficult goal to achieve." The purpose of the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in making harsh remarks is to make China "retreat in spite of difficulties" and to increase the actual difficulty of "attacking Taiwan." In addition to Mili, the chairman of the US Military Joint Chiefs, Deputy Secretary of State Sherman, Treasury Secretary Yellen and even House Speaker Pelosi have repeatedly threatened China in recent days and continued to exert pressure on China on the Taiwan issue.
Are the U.S. troops ready?
In response to threats from Russia and China, the Pentagon hopes to integrate the existing U.S. Army into a new type of combat force, with heavy breakout divisions, infiltration divisions, and forced intervention divisions as the main categories, according to the Pentagon's previous military realignment plan at the end of 2021. The heavy breakthrough division and the infiltration division can be integrated on the basis of the current HEAVY brigade combat team and infantry brigade combat team of the US army, and the above-mentioned new structure of the division requires the US military to further strengthen the number of heavy equipment and combat readiness on the basis of the existing establishment, and its formation is relatively difficult. However, the Forced Intervention Division serving the Indo-Pacific direction emphasized the so-called "rapid deployment" and "long-range precision strike capability" of the US troops, that is, the subordinate units of the forced intervention division at the brigade level and even the composite battalion level were equipped with medium- and long-range missiles, which could play a rapid deployment and blockade of the island chain.
Obviously, the formation of such a force will not be possible until the US military's own hypersonic weapon system is put into active service, and it is still too early to say this, and it can be judged that the US conventional armed forces, whether it is the US Navy and Air Force that is undergoing adjustments based on distributed combat strategies, or the US Army, which is trying to form a new type of unit to strengthen its intervention in the Indo-Pacific region, is actually not ready to really interfere in The process of China's reunification. Therefore, for the United States, if it wants to interfere in Chinese mainland's armed reunification action against Taiwan, only two cards can actually be played: the first card is to continuously increase the intensity of arms sales to Taiwan and strengthen the defense capability of Taiwan's own island, and the second card is to implement nuclear deterrence against China at a critical moment. The Pentagon has recently been very concerned about the development of China's strategic power, and its purpose is to worry that China can in turn use its deterrent to deter possible U.S. interference.
Is China ready?
Since the Taiwan Strait crisis in the 1990s, China has set up a number of "Taiwan Strait combat readiness time nodes" after 2000 aimed at strengthening the combat readiness level and combat capability of its troops. One of the typical actions at these time nodes is to step up the procurement of a batch of key technical equipment from the outside that can strengthen the shortcomings of the Chinese military in a short period of time. Such as the S-400 weapon system, Su-35 fighter jets, etc. can be regarded as the product of these combat readiness time nodes. Therefore, although the mainland officials have not acknowledged that there is a ticking timetable for the settlement of the Taiwan issue, in fact, at the military level, all the preparations of the mainland have been rolled out, and even basically all kinds of plans have been basically polished.
However, it needs to be clearly understood that the maturity of military conditions does not mean that all conditions are ripe for the settlement of the Taiwan issue. As a key country in the world trading system, and Taiwan itself is a core component of the global semiconductor industry chain, this makes China need to complete the reunification with less additional damage, especially to control the impact of military operations on the global market to a certain extent. In addition, the young generation on the main island of Taiwan has undergone brainwashing and education by the DPP authorities, and its view of history and political stance are quite different from those of the Chinese mainland youth groups.
Therefore, for the settlement of the Taiwan issue, it is necessary not only to strengthen the military preparations that we can control and to grasp the process, but also to pay attention to the political, economic, and trade issues that have many uncertainties and that we cannot control. As the observer network military observer Xi Yaya pointed out in the video program on the 8th, at present, for the Chinese mainland, the settlement of the Taiwan issue has not yet reached the stage of "great interests in armed reunification"; of course, if US politicians and military generals have been sending out the wrong signal and constantly exporting weapons and equipment to Taiwan and even "visiting" Taiwan, then it will be a moment when "if you do not take action, your interests will be greatly damaged", and the mainland side will definitely take action -- Hu Xijin, former editor-in-chief of the "Global Times", pointed out. The Chinese Air Force will then fly over the main island of Taiwan and even begin other, more aggressive operations.
Taiwan is not Ukraine, And China is not Russia
The key reason why the United States has reaped a lot of benefits from the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is that the United States successfully spawned the war at the most unfavorable point in time for Russia, allowing Russia to begin a full-scale military conflict with Ukraine in the face of very hasty preparations. This has enabled the Countries of the Western Bloc, led by the United States, to remain firmly in the process of the evolution and fermentation of the Ukrainian problem. But the problem is that Taiwan is not Ukraine, China is not Russia, China is not Russia, China's military preparations for the completion of the reunification process are relatively high, there will be no rush to fight like the Russian army, and eventually the military problems will not be resolved smoothly, resulting in political and economic and trade passivity.
For a recent series of manipulations of the Taiwan issue, a sentence by US Defense Secretary Austin in an interview on the 6th may reflect the current thinking of the White House: Austin has admitted in an interview with reporters that Taiwan is different from Ukraine, and it is difficult for the United States to "reproduce" the Ukrainian-like model on Taiwan, and the current priority is to step up the export of weapons and equipment to Taiwan. This shows that the direct purpose of the current Biden administration is to promote a new round of arms sales to Taiwan to obtain economic benefits, and the more advanced purpose is to try to explore the bottom line of Chinese mainland on the Taiwan issue.