Chinese President Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to conquer Taiwan by the year 2027. Most U.S. military and intelligence analysts believe Xi will attempt such an invasion before this decade is out. Xi views Taiwan’s subjugation under the Chinese Communist Party flag as a requirement of his personal destiny and the party’s political destiny.
The stakes are significant. Taiwan’s fall would make China the unquestionably dominant force in the Pacific. China’s victory would also cause major damage to the security and prosperity of American allies such as South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. It would upend the Pacific-global trade system and gravely damage the crucial global semiconductor industry. These factors make it possible, if not probable, that the United States would help defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. President Joe Biden has said as much four times now (even if his staff has walked back his comments each time).
But what if China made the decision over whether to intervene for America? Put simply, what if China launched a preemptive surprise attack on the U.S. military before the PLA attack on Taiwan had either begun or before the U.S. had decided to contest that attack?
This conjecture gains additional credibility in light of recently released satellite images. Those images show the PLA is practicing ground strikes against the most advanced U.S. fighter jets. Taken in a remote desert area of China’s northwestern Xinjiang province, the images from April or May show mockups of F-35 and F-22 fighter jets and what look like P-3 and P-8 submarine-hunting aircraft. Some of the mockups are burnt out, indicating they have been struck. The images also show impact craters on a nearby runway, indicating that the PLA has also been training in airfield destruction operations.
The fact that China is training to destroy U.S. aircraft is not particularly surprising. China anticipates that the U.S. may assist Taiwan in any war. The PLA thus has good reason to train to fight the U.S. military. Indeed, mockups of U.S. warships, including aircraft carriers, have also been used for PLA training exercises in the same area where these images were taken.
Instead, what matters here is that the PLA is clearly training for first (or preemptive) strike operations.
We can say that with confidence because in the event or imminent event of a U.S. war with China, the U.S. military would disperse its most valuable air assets to hardened hangars. The military would also take an array of other defensive steps, such as flooding air bases with air defense systems. The Air Force certainly wouldn’t have its F-22s and F-35s sitting out next to a runway just asking for the PLA to smash salvos of intermediate- or long-range ballistic missiles into them. The PLA knows this. But considering that the F-22 fleet consists of barely more than 100 jets, the destruction of any of these fighters would translate into a significant strategic loss of capability for the U.S. military.
After all, in war, the U.S. would employ F-22s to penetrate inner PLA air defenses in escort of U.S. B-2 and B-1B bombers as they struck highest-value Chinese targets. That means that the more of these jets that China can take out before they get into the fight, the better chance China has of protecting its most critical command, strike, and logistics assets. The same principle applies in a lesser but still significant fashion for the F-35s and the P-3/P-8 fleets. The PLA knows it would have a vast force scale advantage on its side in any war. Again, the more U.S. assets China could eliminate more quickly, the more likely the U.S. war effort would grind to a halt.
All of this means that China has at least some strategic rationale to consider a preemptive strike on U.S. forces as they were positioned in at least a somewhat more vulnerable posture in Guam, Okinawa, Hawaii, and Alaska. While such an attack would likely force the U.S. into war, if China assessed that outcome was likely regardless of a preemptive attack, it might perceive having little to lose by striking first. As the Biden administration has failed to provide adequate air defense capabilities to Guam, China might consider that surprise action sooner rather than later is its best option.
Yes, the U.S. would use any preemptive strike to call its NATO allies to arms. But it is highly questionable that more than a few of these allies, if any, would actually answer the call. Beijing certainly thinks that the Europeans’ obsession with China-related trade will deter them from crossing Beijing’s red lines.
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That’s why multilateral statements, such as the one at the recent NATO leaders summit that condemns Chinese aggression, are so important (and why China places such value on France and Hungary’s efforts to undermine these statements). And as Beijing frequently reminds us, Taiwan is the red line of all Chinese red lines.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean that a Chinese preemptive strike is imminent or even likely in a condition of escalated tensions. Nevertheless, it bears U.S. awareness that China is clearly preparing for the ability to fight forward, early and aggressively.
