I spent an enjoyable day at King's College, London, recently, as part of a large group of undegraduates, postgraduates and external parties, gaming out a potential Taiwan crisis situation. This was part of a PhD candidate's thesis. As he stressed in his presentation on the day, it was not intended as a professional-grade, serious analysis of such a crisis. That said, it was a very useful illustration of some of the dynamics and potential outcomes.
The mega-game functioned on both the military level and the diplomatic level, with teams representing China, the US, Taiwan, Australia, the Philippines, Japan, UK, France, Canada and the ever-present international media. I was the vice-president of Taiwan, part of a Taiwan team of around 10 people.
This was a bigger team than is usual in mega-games, although I noticed some teams were smaller - e.g. Canada. For Taiwan we needed to cover a lot of roles, from the president through the cabinet level positions like the ministers of the interior and foreign affairs, and military positions like air force, navy and intelligence. Taiwan also had a considerable number of diplomatic players, including players responsible for North American relations, East Asia relations and the UN (which met in a separate room every 30 minutes).
As vice president I was meant to deputise for the president of Taiwan, which was a big job, especially as he was frequently needed to attend 'summits' with other heads of state. Hence another senior decision maker was needed to make policy decisions when he was away from our table. It was important however to establish policy with the entire team at the start of every turn in a five minute briefing, so that we all knew what we were doing (following briefings from our military).
I find in mega-games there is often a tendency for enthusiastic players to all vanish in multiple directions on their assignments, but it is always useful to have someone still at the table who can be approached by other teams or indeed the press.
Media played a bigger role in this game, with a blog being regularly updated throughout the day and countries making their own statements during the military phase. We also needed to be constantly aware of the local Taiwan press, as this was the best avenue for communication of presidential instructions to the population, and national morale was an important barometer. I was very concerned that poor morale could lead to the removal of the government in favour of a peace/pro-China party if we were not careful.
My perspective is obviously that of the Taiwan government in the game and it is always impossible with megagames to get a complete picture, even for the press team. The game started with China having already seized islands north and south of Taiwan - including one owned by Japan. Beijing had declared Taiwan to now be part of its customs zone and was effectively blockading the island.
The international community was quite sluggish in its response, trying to talk China down, with Australia and the UN seeking to assist with an evacuation convoy to retrieve the small number of inhabitants from one of the occupied islands. Japan seemed to be seeking an intermediary role while quietly evacuating its own nationals from Taiwan by air. The government in Taipei was keeping our military on a tight leash while preparing for escalation - a difficult balancing act.
China played a cunning diplomatic game. They seemed to have persuaded the Philippines to take a back seat and indeed were stringing Tokyo along as well. The US remained uncertain as to China's true intentions, as was I. Taiwan had a number of back channels to China - e.g. through the coastguard and indeed a high level intelligence asset in Beijing - but most of the signals we were getting were confusing. When the situation started to escalate, it did so rapidly. My impression was that China planned to invade all along, but was just seeking a means to delay international intervention as long as possible.
The real spark came when the Taiwan air force shot down a Chinese jet in the straits, albeit one we felt was firmly inside our own air space. This led to further air action and then Chinese air strikes on the main island. After that things really began to get out of hand. China sought to isolate Taiwan through denial attacks on satellites and stepped up cyber warfare. The international response was to beef up naval assets in the South China Sea.
The crisis heats up
Things began to go really wrong in the afternoon. Chinese marines landed in southern Taiwan (Tainan) while an airborne brigade dropped into Yilan to seize that city. This latter unit was swiftly beseiged. That said, lack of air superiority quickly became an issue for Taiwan's land forces. We had managed to disperse our anti-air assets but these on their own were not sufficient to defend the island from Chinese incursions.
The US eventually lost patience and decided to declare war on China, as did the UK. Australia was probably the country with the most robust response initially, with active deployment of submarines to the theatre which were the first to really effectively engage Chinese naval assets. The US was always one step behind, it seemed, in its response. By the time the Americans became fully focused on the military situation, their ability to influence the campaign in Taiwan itself was limited. China was able to attack US carrier battle groups well in advance of them having any impact on the situation in Taiwan, and this did not materially divert Chinese military resources away from our theatre.
China managed to score three key victories in quick succession later in the game. One was a successful pre-emptive attack on the Japanese navy which, while it brought Japan fully into the conflict, removed Tokyo's ability to have any immediate influence on the situation. The second was the sinking of a US aircraft carrier - the Nimitz. The third was the successful reinforcement of the PLA's existing bridgehead in the Tainan area. We had tried to stop the latter with strikes against Chinese ports like Chaozhou with ballistic missiles, but these were literally Taiwan's last missiles, and we were quickly running out of any assets that could influence the military situation (we were down to one diesel-powered submarine operating in the straits).
China did make one error, which was bombing the bridges across the Zhuoshui River in Taiwan early on. The logic for this was to make it hard for Taiwan to reinforce against the PLA landings at Tainan. In this, they were successful. However, when the marines broke out of Tainan and moved north up the coast, the Zhuoshui quickly became a useful defensive line where we were able to hold the PLA. They had failed to cross this when the game ended and still lacked the bridging equipment they would require.
A couple of observations on the later stages of the game. Taiwan's generals continued to provide the government with over-optimistic assessments of their ability to cope with the Chinese military threat. We were led to believe that the bridgehead at Tainan was contained, when it simply was not. We were also told it would be very difficult for China to reinforce Tainan, when there was little to stop them. The military even told us that the PLA airborne brigade at Yilan was cut off and could be overrun, when that was not the case. This fed into our political assessments and led the Taipei government to provide the US team with unrealistic expectations.
Secondly the US team seemed to be vastly over-confident in terms of what they thought they could achieve. Once fighting started, US promises of what could be delivered were progessively scaled down, to the point it seemed to us there was pretty much nothing they could do to influence the situation in Taiwan, and they were asking Taipei to deliver some form of tactical win against Chinese forces on the island they could use in ceasefire talks with China. By that stage, I think this was beyond our capabilities. Again, the US steer influenced our thinking as a government when it had no basis in reality.
In terms of the end game and the ceasefire talks, Taiwan steadfastly avoided direct talks with China, letting the US take the lead on this. Our thinking was that we would undermine any deal Washington could deliver if we started bilateral discussions ourselves. We became very much hostages to Washington and Beijing, with little influence on talks, including Chinese demands that Taiwan demilitarise and cede the port of Kaohsiung to China.
In conclusion...
I really enjoyed this game. A lot of hard work went into producing it, and the control team was very knowledgeable. It was personally very useful to game a potential future crisis which could occupy our headlines one day and examine some of the options facing the key players. Previously many of the megagames I've participated in have dealt with historic crises (e.g. the Yom Kippur War of 1973).
In conclusion, readers should also be reminded that any China-Taiwai conflict would have an immediate and very significant impact on the global economy, given Taiwan and China's importance to international trade and the critical semi-conductor market. This was not a part of this game, but any such crisis as that portrayed above would seriously impact every country on the planet, as it would lead to massive disruption of critical global supply chains.
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