Under its longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity,” the United States has never pledged to come to the defense of Taiwan if China attacks it. President Biden has repeatedly said he would send U.S. troops to defend Taiwan, but in a recent interview with Time magazine, he added a new disclaimer: “It depends on the situation.” During his presidency, President Donald Trump told Republican senators that “there’s nothing we can do” if China attacks, making him unlikely to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.
It would be an incredibly difficult decision for any U.S. president to send American men and women to defend a small democracy halfway around the world, which is why Plan A is to prevent Xi Jinping from attempting an invasion by making sure he never looks across the Taiwan Strait and sees an easy victory, Adm. Samuel Paparo, the new commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in an interview.
“They want to bring a short, intense war to the world so that it becomes a fait accompli before the world can act,” Paparo told me on the sidelines of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “My job is to ensure that U.S. forces and our allies have the ability to win from now through 2027 and beyond.”
Paparo said China’s strategy is to overwhelm Taiwan with a massive attack with little warning. Xi does not want to repeat the mistakes made by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine in 2022, when Russia failed in an initial all-out invasion and retreated into a drawn-out war of attrition.
The key to thwarting Xi Jinping’s envisioned strategy, Paparo told me, is the U.S. “Hellscape” strategy: The idea is that as soon as a Chinese invasion fleet begins to cross the 100-mile waterway that separates China and Taiwan, the U.S. military would deploy thousands of unmanned submarines, surface ships, and aerial drones to flood the area, giving Taiwanese, U.S., and partner forces enough time to mount a response.
“I want to use a number of covert capabilities to turn the Taiwan Strait into an uninhabited hell,” Paparo said, “so I can make their lives extremely miserable for a month, and then buy myself time to do everything else.”
“I can’t tell you what’s in it,” he said when pressed for details, “but it’s real and it’s achievable.”
There are some public signs that Hellscape is moving forward: In March, the Pentagon announced it would spend $1 billion on a program called “Replicator” to build a swarm of unmanned surface ships and aerial drones for just this mission. Paparo said the Replicator program shows the U.S. is also learning lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, where Ukraine innovated with drone technology.
It’s unclear when these systems will be deployed. Most military exercises conducted by U.S. think tanks have shown that if the drone swarms are not ready in the event of an attack, it could lead to a protracted conflict that would result in heavy losses to U.S. Navy and Air Force assets and could escalate to allies such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines.
Even if Hellscape were to materialize in time, drone swarms alone would not be able to counter Beijing’s massive military buildup on the Chinese side of the strait. The People’s Liberation Army is expanding its nuclear, naval, air, cyber, intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities at record speed. China’s military budget is three times what Beijing has publicly stated, at about $700 billion a year, Paparo said. Meanwhile, Indo-Pacific Command’s budget is $11 billion short of its needs this year alone, according to a letter Paparo’s predecessor sent to Congress in March.
Funding for defense programs is not the only problem. The U.S. military currently has no reliable means to stop Chinese hypersonic “carrier killer” cruise missiles. U.S. space assets are also vulnerable to Chinese attack. The deployment of U.S. forces to Taiwan is long overdue. Japanese government officials told me the Biden administration has been reluctant to comply with Japan’s requests to establish a new joint task force to prepare for conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea, where China has been stepping up its aggression.
Further complicating the plan is that a full-scale invasion is not Xi Jinping’s only option. China could back off the attack and blockade Taiwan, as it did last month when Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te (also known as William Lai) was inaugurated. Beijing also seeks to confuse the Taiwanese people and pressure them into unification using economic pressure, political interference and disinformation. Countering such threats is outside the purview of Indo-Pacific Command.
Although Paparo is a military man with no official role in international diplomacy, he has strong opinions about China’s “revenge-driven, revisionist and expansionist” government. He believes four decades of Western attempts to persuade China to liberalize have failed, ushering in a new, more dangerous era for Asia.
“There are two options in this region: either comply and, as a result, give up some of our freedoms, or take up arms,” he told me. “Either option directly affects the safety, liberty, and happiness of the citizens of the United States.”
Paparo is right. No one thinks an arms race in Asia is an ideal outcome. But if Beijing persists in it, the United States and its partners cannot afford to lose. As George Washington said, “preparing for war is one of the most effective means of maintaining the peace.” If Washington does not take further action, Xi Jinping may soon decide that Taiwan is his.
