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Wargaming the war over Taiwan, with Mick Ryan
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Mick Ryan is a retired Major-General in the Australian Army. His decorated 35 year military career included deployments to East Timor, Iraq, and southern Afghanistan, as well as a stint as a strategist on the United States Joint Staff in the Pentagon. This experience, in conjunction with an impressive academic resume, has earnt him a reputation as one of Australia’s finest military minds.
His new book, ‘White Sun War’, is an engrossing imagining of a future conflict between China and the US over Taiwan. In this conversation with host Will Kingston, Mick discusses what that conflict may look like.
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Transcript
Prospects of US-China Armed Conflict over Taiwan
00:00:00
Speaker
Today we will be examining the very real possibility of an armed conflict between China and the USA over Taiwan this decade. It's one of those difficult, thorny conversations that for many in the media is easier left unsaid. At The Spectator Australia, we believe in having the difficult conversations. We seek solace in the thorny issues.
00:00:22
Speaker
If you're like us, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. A digital subscription is $16.99 a month with one month free when you sign up.
Introduction to Australiana Podcast Series
00:00:46
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia, a series of conversations on Australian politics and life. I'm Will Kingston.
Interview with Mick Ryan, Retired Major General
00:00:55
Speaker
My guest today is Mick Ryan AM. Mick is a retired Major General in the Australian Army. His decorated 35-year military career included deployments to East Timor, Iraq and Southern Afghanistan, as well as a stint as a Strategist on the United States Joint Staff in the Pentagon.
00:01:13
Speaker
This experience, in conjunction with an impressive academic resume, has earned him a reputation as one of Australia's finest military minds.
Exploration of 'White Sun War' Book
00:01:21
Speaker
He's contributed to and written several books, the most recent of which is Hot Off The Presses, titled White Sun War. It's an engrossing imagining of what a future conflict between China and the US over Taiwan could look like. Having just finished it, I can say few books have made me think quite so deeply and perhaps left me quite so unnerved. Mick Ryan, welcome to Australiana.
00:01:43
Speaker
Thanks Will, it's great to be with you. So perhaps this is an unfair generalisation. I don't associate military men with literary flair, which is why I was pleasantly surprised reading your book. You know, it's a very detailed insight into what modern warfare looks like, but it's a cracking story in its own right. Why did you choose to examine a potential conflict between China and the US through the lens of fiction?
Why Fiction for Future Conflict Scenarios?
00:02:11
Speaker
Well, there's a couple of reasons. I've been writing a lot of nonfiction in the last 25 years, but my most recent book, War Transformed, really delved into the future of war, particularly when it comes to technology, ideas and people.
00:02:29
Speaker
And I wanted to use some of the trends of that book to explore what a potential future will might actually look like, to actually make it a living, breathing thing. You can't do that in nonfiction, but you can do it through narratives. And people, I think, respond better to stories than they do to nonfiction, dry, footnoted works. So I thought I'd try my hand at writing a future conflict novel.
00:02:57
Speaker
I thought it was really interesting. And what it does as well is it gives an insight into the human dimension of warfare, which I think fiction is uniquely capable of doing. And this is something I'm really interested in. And I'd date most of our listeners, thankfully, have never gone to war. If you reflect... Yeah, that's right. If you reflect back on those moments where you'll found out you were heading off to war, what were you thinking? How were you feeling?
00:03:25
Speaker
First time would have been 1999 before East Timor. And to be quite honest, I was thinking finally, I'd been in the military 20 years, just about, or not quite 20 years.
00:03:37
Speaker
about 13, 14 years and the army of the 80s and 90s was a pretty quiet place to be. So if you imagine a footballer who gets to run onto the field after training for a decade, there's a certain amount of excitement. But there's a lot of trepidation. Will my training prepare me for this?
00:04:01
Speaker
I'll be able to do the right thing by my soldiers at all times. What will my family be thinking? I was married and had one child at the time. So all these things run through, but at the end of the day, your training kicks in. You do all your mission rehearsals and everything else, and then you crack on with the mission at hand.
00:04:21
Speaker
And that aspect of the training that goes into these sorts of scenarios that you find yourself in warfare came out very strongly in the book.
Is US-China Tension a Second Cold War?
00:04:31
Speaker
Let's go to the conversation on China and the US and Taiwan to set the scene. Some people have suggested we are in a second Cold War.
00:04:44
Speaker
I take the term Cold War to mean the conflict will last two to three generations, we'll be living under nuclear threat again, and indeed the very existence of our civilisation is at stake. On that definition, do you think we are in a second Cold War? I think we are. We have been for probably a decade before we realised it. Chinese knew they were in one because they're the ones who've looked at the West the way they have for a long time now.
00:05:13
Speaker
success of US and European administrations since the 1990s have welcomed China into the World Trade Organization, given the most favored trading nation, nation status, and hope that through economic development, there would be liberalization. And, you know, that theory kind of was perpetuated for a couple of decades. And, you know, it's only in the last decade, we've had to reassess that and go on China does not want to join
00:05:41
Speaker
the community of nations, as we hope they might, they want to set their own rules and their rules aren't very attractive to people who are used to living in democratic free societies. So how likely is an armed conflict between the US and China within the decade?
00:05:58
Speaker
I think there is a strong chance, you know, it's impossible to put a percentage on it. I mean, that's just not possible to do. But, you know, there's a strong chance because you have one nation, the United States, that has been the preeminent nation in the world since the end of the first Cold War. You have another nation that thinks its time has come. And as President Xi has said multiple times, you know, the East is rising.
00:06:29
Speaker
agree with that characterization, but his notion of the China dream is one where China is not co-equal with anybody. That sets us up for a lot of disagreements, but at the same time, you see China having engaged in the largest peacetime military buildup in recorded history. None of that bodes well
00:06:53
Speaker
for peaceful coexistence in the Western Pacific. And it bodes ill for miscalculation at some point down the track. I get the sense, despite everything you've just said, that a lot of the media, a lot of our politicians, probably most of the public, have their head in the sand about the threat from China.
Societal Complacency and China's Threat
00:07:16
Speaker
And it's something which I'm personally very worried about. Why do you think that's the case?
00:07:20
Speaker
I think you're right. There's a huge degree of complacency in many societies, including Australian society. And that's for a few reasons. Firstly, you know, we've had some pretty good decades in this country. Up till the COVID pandemic, you know, we saw a couple of decades of continuous economic growth. We saw the most peaceful
00:07:47
Speaker
period in the world for a couple of decades. It wasn't totally a piece. There were lots of things going on. But for most Australians, it was a pretty peaceful period and it was a pretty prosperous one. If you add to that geographic location where a lot of people still seem to think that geography ensures
00:08:07
Speaker
your security, it no longer does to be quite frank. There is room for complacency there. The reality is the influence operations the Chinese have been conducting here for many years, the attempted influence of Australian politicians, the co-ertion that's been going on through diplomacy, information operations and economics. Give me an example of an influence operation.
China's Influence Operations in Australia
00:08:34
Speaker
Well, an influence operation would be one where they turn up as the guest of a wealthy Australian or a politician and get to talk about Chinese narratives about how the United States cannot be relied upon. It's a consistent Chinese narrative in many of its operations in Australia and beyond.
00:09:01
Speaker
a bit deeper on to the psychology of the, I guess, potential combatants. We'll start with China. The foundational question to this whole issue, why is Taiwan so important to China? Well, it's important to the CCP. I'm not convinced it's important to the Chinese people. At the end of the day, most Chinese
00:09:26
Speaker
Taiwan a second thought. They probably don't give the rest of China outside their province a second thought. This is a Chinese Communist Party aspiration. They call it reuniting with Taiwan. That is not a correct characterization. Taiwan has never been part of the People's Republic of China. It's never been part of the PRC.
00:09:50
Speaker
So that's an incorrect characterization. So to just have people say reunite Taiwan with China is an information operation success for the Chinese because it doesn't characterize the situation properly.
00:10:04
Speaker
I think that's a very good nuance to add because I think one of the problems we have in this debate is people are afraid to call out the brutality of the CCP. They're afraid to call out a lot of the awful things that that political regime does because they assume that they're fearful that they could be perceived to be directing that attack at the Chinese people. And I think you're right. You need to separate those two things out, the regime and the populace.
00:10:31
Speaker
On the US, they've operated under a policy of strategic ambiguity with regard to Taiwan, which basically means creating a sense of uncertainty as to whether the US would intervene if a war was to come to the Taiwan Strait.
US Strategic Ambiguity on Taiwan
00:10:47
Speaker
If Bush comes to shove, do you think the US will put boots on the ground? I don't think it can afford not to. I mean, strategic ambiguity was developed in the days when it was mainly focused on deterring Taiwan.
00:11:01
Speaker
from doing something, including declaring independence. In the 70s and 80s, there was no real thought that China might become a superpower like it has. I mean, clearly the situation's changed. I know there are a lot of people who think strategic ambiguity has passed its time, and it may well be. All I would caution is, what are you going to replace it with? I'm not suggesting there isn't a replacement policy out there, but you better have one before you get rid of strategic ambiguity.
00:11:31
Speaker
I think that the United States would not have any choice, nor would Japan. Losing Taiwan would mean that China can dominate the entirety of the Western Pacific. And that is not something that militarily or economically the United States could tolerate. And quite frankly, neither could Australia, Japan and many other countries in the region.
00:11:54
Speaker
A lot of people may not appreciate why that is potentially a risk. What is a problem with the Chinese having that sense of control over the Western Pacific region?
00:12:04
Speaker
Well, the first thing would mean they've extinguished a vibrant, high-tech manufacturing democracy. And that is the most profound impact. It sets another precedent that large, techno-authoritarian regimes can extinguish their democratic neighbours at will. That's not good for any of us. I mean, there's two islands of 25 million people that are vibrant democracies.
00:12:27
Speaker
in the Pacific. Both of them are equally worth defending. One's Australia and one's Taiwan. So that would be the biggest impact, but you know, a significant proportion.
00:12:38
Speaker
of the world's trade passes to the left and right of Taiwan on a daily basis. That would be a threat. But, you know, Taiwan's status as the manufacturer of the most sophisticated silicon chips on Earth would disappear. And, you know, the fabs it's built in China are two generations behind by policy.
00:13:00
Speaker
The ones in America will be one generation behind by policy. The best chips in the world are still going to be built in Taiwan for the foreseeable future, and we can't afford for that to be interfered with.
00:13:11
Speaker
The Taiwanese sometimes actually get forgotten in this great power conversation. My understanding is that there is a strong sense of Taiwanese nationalism. Most of them see themselves as Taiwanese as opposed to Chinese. Do you think you would see, if there was to be an invasion of Taiwan, do you think you would see a strong resistance from the citizenry in the same way that we've seen that in Ukraine? I think so. And I say this because I've been to both Ukraine and Taiwan in the last three months.
00:13:39
Speaker
In Ukraine I spoke to very senior government people up to the minister level and even they were surprised to the degree that the Ukrainian people stood up on February
00:13:51
Speaker
in February 2022. I mean, there were still people who, a lot of people who spoke Russian and there was still a sense of uncertainty about how the Ukrainians would resist the Russians. You see that now in Taiwan. But, you know, every year the surveys that are done by various institutions in Taiwan about how people see themselves as citizens, more and more are seeing themselves as citizens of
00:14:22
Speaker
Taiwan and less and less the citizens of the PRC.
Taiwanese Identity and Resistance Potential
00:14:26
Speaker
I expect the Taiwanese people will have a look at what's happened to Hong Kong, have a look at what's happened to Xinjiang and what's happened to Chinese people more generally since 1949 and decide we don't want that. You mentioned that you'd been to Ukraine recently without getting into the nitty gritty details of that conflict.
00:14:47
Speaker
Do you think that the Ukraine conflict has changed the calculus for either China in terms of making it more or less likely for them to invade, as well as the calculus for the US in terms of making them more or less likely to respond? It's changed the calculus for everyone. Everyone we spoke to in Taiwan has said the world changed in February 2022. China is looking at the conflict for all kinds of reasons, whether it's how the West is unified or how the US makes decisions.
00:15:15
Speaker
or more operational concerns about precision weaponry or munitions. The Taiwanese have done the same. They've certainly changed their military posture and their deterrence posture and their reserve service time since then. And there'll be more changes around national resilience, I expect. So Ukraine has been a shock to the global system in strategic and military and economic and manufacturing and information terms that we have not seen for a very long time.
00:15:45
Speaker
You mentioned, I guess, operational readiness there. How ready is the Chinese military to launch what would be one of the most difficult military operations, arguably in human history? Well, that's the real question, isn't it? Saying you're ready and being ready are two entirely different things. We've seen throughout history where militaries have been very good at parades and very good
00:16:13
Speaker
at propaganda but haven't delivered on the battlefield. The Russians are only the latest example of that. We saw it in the Second World War, particularly with Italy, but we've seen it with other countries since then as well, the Argentinians and the Falklands and other places like this. So, you know, the ultimate measure of a military's effectiveness is in close combat when it comes to the point where you have to fight.
00:16:38
Speaker
And until then, it can be very difficult to judge just how good they're going to be or how bad they're going to be. Do you have an instinct, though? Do you have an instinct in terms of what their capabilities may be like today and where they need to close particular gaps in order to do something of this nature? Well, they certainly have a technologically sophisticated military, or at least we think that they certainly portray it as such. It's a large one.
00:17:04
Speaker
They've reorganized around large joint theater commands in the last decade. That shows a level of nous in modern war fighting. However, you know, it takes a long time to develop that kind of high level skill set in a military institution. We've been doing it in Australia and the United States for 70 years and it's still hard to get right. So the Chinese aren't going to develop these kind of high level military integrated operations with air, land, sea, cyberspace,
00:17:35
Speaker
and everything else quickly. That said, we would be foolish to underestimate them and military prudence dictates that they're at least as good as we are. Everyone's aware of the might of the US armed forces, but at the same time something which was interesting in the book was you mentioned they'd been fighting a very particular type of warfare for a long period of time in the Middle East and this would be a very different type of conflict
00:18:00
Speaker
What does that transition look like for the way the US thinks about warfare and what do they need to do
Shift in US Military Focus to Pacific
00:18:06
Speaker
to adjust their thinking from the Middle East to the Pacific theater? Well, it looks like what we've been doing for the last 10 years. I mean, we didn't come home from Iraq and Afghanistan and go, well, let's take a break. Pretty much straight away, even before we left, well before we left with starting to think about what comes next. So you've seen the step up in these large scale joint
00:18:29
Speaker
training activities like talisman, sabre, you know, the next one's about to kick off. I mean, they're just getting bigger and more complicated every year. You're seeing different capabilities being deployed into the region, particularly with longer range strike, these kind of capabilities. You're seeing development of new war fighting concepts and the experimentation and war gaming around them.
00:18:53
Speaker
So, you know, for about a decade now, we've been thinking pretty hard about this problem, but it's not a simple problem to solve geography, technology, politics, all kind of get in the way of quick, easy solutions with these kinds of operational and strategic challenges. You mentioned those sorts of joint military exercises, the military's equivalent of training before a sporting match. I think a lot of people have heard about them. Not a lot of people would actually know what's involved or how they are, or how they run.
00:19:23
Speaker
Could you paint a picture in broad brush strokes?
00:19:26
Speaker
I like to help design and run several of them. I mean, it starts about a year beforehand and you start with, well, what are the kind of training outcomes, integration outcomes that we want to get out of it? And then what are the forces we'll use? What countries? And then you start designing scenarios with that. And then once you've done that, all the logistic planning kicks in, which is probably the larger part of it, you know, moving troops, ships, planes, munitions,
00:19:54
Speaker
Setting up all the communications in a secure way, making sure satellites are available, bases, airfields, ports. And then you do it for a very short time, for a couple of weeks, and everyone goes home. And there's a really significant and complicated level of analysis that goes into what we learn from that.
00:20:15
Speaker
And how do we need to change how we think, how we do things, how we train people, how we equip ourselves. And then it starts all over again. And that's just for one. And there's multiple of these that occur at different levels and in different services and in different countries every year throughout the Pacific. So that training exercise. The other one, which I thought was interesting was simulations that you can do. A lot of this is now done, you know, it's computerized, which predicts the likelihood of success or failure. And I recall.
00:20:44
Speaker
You look at this, particularly on the Chinese side, when they are considering how likely it is they would be successful and the timing they should choose. What do those simulations look like and then how do they inform decision making? Well, there's different kinds of simulation, of course. I mean, there's individual simulations for training.
00:21:00
Speaker
There's larger scale simulation we use to look at different options when we're developing force structures or looking at new equipment. And then there's the simulations you do when you are doing live planning.
Role of Simulations in Military Strategy
00:21:14
Speaker
If you have three options you want to look at, you might simulate each one, war game one, each out. But there's also a simulation we do that accompanies live training.
00:21:24
Speaker
And often what we might do is if you want to have a large organization and not all of it's available, half of it will be live, the other half might be simulated. So you get the full experience of working in a much larger organization, having staffs and commanders trained in dealing with much more complicated and more complex organizations and you might be able to deploy live in the field.
00:21:51
Speaker
Hmm. That word complexity is a good one. I was blown away by the portrayal of modern warfare in the book. The days of trench warfare are a long, long time ago. Unless you're in Ukraine right now. Good point. Yeah. We'll probably see it in Taiwan as well, I would suggest.
00:22:11
Speaker
Well, that's a really interesting point because parts of the book felt like science fiction and then there's this fusion of almost space age technology with, you're right, kind of on the ground, close combat. Paint a picture of what modern warfare looks like, what the interaction, I guess, between those two styles are and the capabilities that you need to be able to wage modern warfare effectively.
00:22:35
Speaker
Well, the reality is that every war throughout history has been an aggregation of everything that's come before, plus a few new things. So if you have a look at Ukraine, armoured warfare not new, we've done that a fair bit in the last 120 years, aerial warfare not new, we've done a fair bit of that, trench warfare, close combat battle, none of that's new. But if you inject a few new technologies, like some of the longer range
00:23:00
Speaker
loitering munitions, UAVs, and then you connect them up into older processes and older technologies, you can have a really transformative effect. The same will happen in Taiwan. There'll be a lot of old things, and if you were to get out of Microsoft,
00:23:17
Speaker
of a couple hundred years of industrial scale warfare, but there'll be a few new things with newer, longer range technologies, algorithmic support to decision making, AI that's used down to soldier level for decision support or battle tracking. So, you know, every war is kind of an aggregation of everything that's gone before with a couple of new things.
00:23:42
Speaker
I think something that surprised people who aren't close to military affairs in Ukraine, we are aware that military technology has improved out of sight over the last 20 years. It's improved out of sight ever more since the end of World War II. I think some people maybe made the assumption that in an age where US military can put a missile up the backside of a camel from 200 miles away,
00:24:05
Speaker
Close combat fighting is now relevant. And obviously that's not the case in Ukraine. And you've said it won't be the case in Taiwan. But people who don't fully understand this, why is it still necessary to have boots on the ground when we have such incredible technological capabilities?
Importance of Ground Forces in Modern Warfare
00:24:20
Speaker
Well, every generation flirts with this idea, right? You know, at the end of the First World War, people thought exactly the same about air power. They thought, you know, bombers were the way that you would win wars in future. And they proved to be extraordinarily vulnerable.
00:24:35
Speaker
and only a very small part of what was going on. At the end of the day, war is not a military activity. It's a societal activity. It involves humans and it involves influencing and changing the will, the perceptions of your adversary. And you don't do that from a thousand kilometres away. You have to do it up close. You have to do it where the people actually live.
00:25:01
Speaker
And you have to do it where the politicians exist. They don't exist in the air. They don't exist at sea. They don't exist in cyberspace. So if you want to win wars, you actually have to do it on the ground. And there's just no changing that, unfortunately. The final thing is, at the end of the day, all these technologies are not cheap. There are always ways to counter them. And in most countries, humans are cheap.
00:25:30
Speaker
And it's probably going to be the case for anyone else we're up against in the near future. The fact of the matter is the, a totalitarian regime, we've seen this in Russia, we would say with China, they don't value life as dearly as, as a democracy does for obvious reasons. How does that enter your thinking as a military leader of a Western army?
00:25:53
Speaker
Well, values-based leadership is a core part of how we prepare our people. I mean, I know I oversaw the rewriting of the ADF leadership doctrine in the last couple of years. Australia's always valued its soldiers. We've never had an approach where they're disposable or anything like this.
00:26:11
Speaker
If you read Bean's histories of the First World War, he talks about this, how Australian soldiers were different. They demanded more of their leaders. They wanted to know why. And that's always been the case. And I think that's a great thing, that our soldiers are that demanding of their leaders about purpose, that they don't want to be arbitrarily wasted, like the Russians are doing and like the Chinese might do. Now, one of the really interesting things, and I don't know.
00:26:37
Speaker
put it in the book. But if you have a look at the People's Liberation Army at the moment, it's the first military in the history of humankind that's been comprised solely of only children. And that's, you know, an outcome of the one child policy that's been around for quite some time. There's no historical precedent for that. We don't know how
00:27:01
Speaker
a military of soldiers, sailors, men and women that come from one child families. We don't know how they will fight. We don't know how society will accept casualties in those kinds of circumstances. So when the PI goes to war again, we're kind of in new ground. Now it could well be it means nothing and the CCP don't give a rat's
00:27:29
Speaker
startling and interesting behaviors as a result. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting that I hadn't considered. You also mentioned, goes back to the winning the hearts and minds piece about the role of information and influence. And you go through this in the book as the role of information and influence teams. Talk through kind of how they would operate in a modern conflict and the types of things they would be doing.
00:27:55
Speaker
You'll have teams who are doing it, but ultimately this is a responsibility for commanders. Influence and violence are two sides of the same coin in warfare. They always have been. What's changed now is that we have the ability to access lots of different
00:28:14
Speaker
with lots of data points on them, and then to develop more precise information and messaging for them and then assess the impact. I mean, it's unprecedented in human history, to be quite frank. But it's still just part of the overall construct when it comes to wars and national security affairs. And it's not more important than any other part. It's just an integral part of everything else that happens.
00:28:42
Speaker
So you lay out several scenarios at the start of the book for how the Chinese may choose to conduct an operation to retake, well, I shouldn't say retake, given your earlier comment, to take Taiwan. What do you think is the most likely strategy that they would adopt if they chose to proceed? Well, that whole section was written not to...
00:29:08
Speaker
military planes and thinks about operations. And it does it by doing an appreciation of how the enemy thinks, how it might conduct operations, and then how do we interfere with their plan. It's always better to destroy an enemy's plane rather than having to destroy them first. So that was the whole aim of that section where the Marines are talking about what are the Chinese options. At the end of the day, there's a few macro options, the Chinese
00:29:40
Speaker
take Taiwan without fighting, they would do that. I mean, it's cheaper. And if they can use economic coercion more broadly, that would be their preferred option. But if they want to then get into military strategies for that, you know, blockade is an option. It's not a very tidy one. And then, well, it has to be successful. And, you know, even though the Chinese Navy is large,
00:30:07
Speaker
It doesn't have the same number of large war fighting ships that the US Navy has. It has lots of smaller ships, which gives it its mass. But at the end of the day, if you want to sustain a blockade several hundred kilometres off your shore, you're going to probably need a different Navy to what the Chinese have got. And I think it would be very difficult for them to sustain that if the US Navy decides that they're not going to put up with it or the Japanese Navy is not going to put up with it. So I think it's actually a higher risk option for them.
00:30:36
Speaker
And then, if you have a look at an invasion, that's also really high risk. The US study in 1943 that looked at this problem, which was based on an assessment of less than 90,000 Japanese on Formosa with only 32,000 ground troops, looked at an invasion force of quarter of a million and thousands of ships. It just demonstrate this is a mega mathematics problem, but I'm not sure the Chinese are yet ready to solve.
00:31:04
Speaker
Again, I'm not a military man, but I understand invasions are hard. Seaborn invasions are bloody hard. Why? Well, invasions are hard just because of the logistic preparations that you need to undertake. They're enormous and they're expensive and they're very difficult to hide. And yes, it would be very difficult to get the required numbers of troops across that sea gap of about 180 kilometres. And most of the year it's not very good seagoing.
00:31:33
Speaker
But remember, it's not just about getting them across by ships. There's planes, there'll be missiles, there'll be space operations, there'll be cyber operations, a whole range of things that'll be going on concurrently. And if you can get across the strait, Taiwan doesn't have a neighbor close by that's going to be helping them quickly, like in Ukraine, with Poland next door and NATO right next door. So even though China has a big problem, those who come to Taiwan's aid potentially have a far larger problem
00:32:02
Speaker
They're thousands of kilometers away. So these are the kind of elements that the PLA would be looking at in its calculus about whether to invade or not.
US Response Timeline to Taiwan Invasion
00:32:12
Speaker
So on that specifically, let's say China does choose to pull the trigger on a full scale air, a full scale invasion. How long would it take a Western alliance led by the US to mobilize and respond to that?
00:32:27
Speaker
Once again, I hate to give you a figure, a response like it depends, but it depends what China does in the first 48 hours. If it decides to have a fairly significant strike campaign which destroys ports and ships and airbases in Japan and Guam and places like that, it will be weeks before the US could respond. If the Chinese decide not to do that, it might be a much shorter response time.
00:32:53
Speaker
That will also depend on where the US has its forces based. It's forward basing more in Guam. It's putting the Marine Littoral Regiment there. It has a lot of logistics pre-positioned in Japan and Guam and other places, including Northern Australia. So that will shortcut the response time.
00:33:13
Speaker
But at the end of the day, the Taiwanese and the Americans and Japanese will want to buy as much time as possible by killing as much of the invasion fleet and the missiles that are being thrown at Taiwan by the People's Liberation Army. And the other side of this coin when it comes to mobilization, this would have to be again, if the Chinese were to go with a full scale invasion force, the mobilization would be significant.
00:33:40
Speaker
How do they do that in a way which doesn't then provoke the US and allies into basically readying the response before it happens? Well, you know, I think we're already seeing that each year their exercises get larger, their responses, their temper tantrums after various visits get larger. And I think we'll see that continue so that they will get to a point where these exercises are large enough to provide a cover for some kind of
00:34:09
Speaker
real-world military activity. They're not there yet. I mean, they're just not. But conceivably, they could be. I mean, if you have a look at the Southern and Eastern Theater commands, these have very, very significant numbers of ground troops, of ships, of aircraft, of strategic rocket forces that can come into action pretty quickly. And having a really good surveillance network that's tracking logistics
00:34:39
Speaker
and pre-positioning of munitions and these kind of things will be really important in an alliance deterrence framework to hopefully prevent the Chinese from doing something catastrophic and hopefully ensuring that every day Chinese leaders wake up and think, not today. You mentioned Chinese leaders there. There's several ways of dealing with leaders of rogue nations, of dictatorial countries.
00:35:08
Speaker
One of them is political coercion. The extreme end of the spectrum is assassination. It's a question I've often pondered in my mind. Why isn't assassination of leaders of rogue states or leaders of nations that are dangerous and more commonly used military tactic?
00:35:25
Speaker
Well, you saw it attempted a few times in the last 25 years, certainly in Afghanistan. The US went after Mullah Omar in Iraq. It certainly went after Saddam Hussein, never got him until about eight months after the invasion. You've got to be careful with this. You can invest a huge amount of intelligence and other efforts in attempting something that may not work and may actually backfire on you. I mean, if you have a look at
00:35:55
Speaker
efforts that the CIA allegedly made to kill Fidel Castro over many decades. None of them worked. And it just seemed to make his regime even stronger and give him
00:36:07
Speaker
you know, the justification to cracking down and keeping power. So the return on investment of decapitation activities can be difficult to assess in advance and can be difficult to assess once it's happened if you're able to successfully pull it off.
00:36:27
Speaker
I mean, I personally am not in favour or against it either way, but you know, I think the return on investment needs to be pretty high for a country to engage in this kind of activity. It gets me thinking if, and whether it's through assassination, which is unlikely, but if it's through, you know, if Xi Jinping was to drop dead tomorrow for any reason,
00:36:53
Speaker
Does that change this in any way? Or is this now, is this such an embedded part of the Chinese state's ambition that someone else will just carry on the fight? Well, I think you'd have to assume that just, you know, if you're going to be prudent. And, you know, these people who fantasize about the leader of Russia falling off the perch, thinking that will end the war in Ukraine tomorrow, I'm not convinced that's the case.
00:37:21
Speaker
You know, there is a strong tradition in China in the last few years about this theme of the East of rising. And I think prudence alone dictates that if there was to be a new Chinese president, we should assume that they would be at least as belligerent. Now, that doesn't mean we wouldn't be doing things to try and not have that happen through diplomacy, economics and a range of different things.
00:37:49
Speaker
But at the moment, you know, you have a Chinese system that won't even answer the red lines that have been established to manage crises. And that's unprecedented because all throughout the Cold War, the Soviets and the Americans always spoke to each other through red lines, through summits and these kind of things. And the Chinese have been very reticent to engage in that behavior. So Xi is a large part of that, but there's a strategic culture there that's developed around how they behave.
00:38:18
Speaker
vis-a-vis the United States and other countries.
Australia's Readiness in Pacific Conflict
00:38:23
Speaker
I want to turn to the role of Australia in any potential conflict in the Pacific. Before I do, a reminder to all of our listeners that these are obviously perilous times that we live in and that we will increasingly be finding. You need to be well informed.
00:38:38
Speaker
The Spectator Australia is one media institution that has been unafraid to talk about the rise of China and we will continue to do so. Pick up a digital subscription for $16.99 a month with one month free to boot. Go to spectator.com.au forward slash join.
00:38:55
Speaker
Mick, you nod to Australian readers in the book when an American character summarises the Australian forces. I could almost see Major General Ryan having a little wink to his Australian readers. I'm paraphrasing slightly, but it's along the lines of, well, they've been messing around with different submarine programs, it's led to nothing but old boats, a lot of money wasted.
00:39:21
Speaker
lack of investment in other capabilities and upset allies, it's unlikely they will be of much use if anything happens. How ready are we for a conflict in the Pacific? I wrote those words over a year ago when not much has happened since then to change my assessment. I mean, even up to the release of the Defence Strategic Review, it was hyped as the most fundamental review since the Second World War. It clearly isn't.
00:39:47
Speaker
You don't get transformation with no investment and the government really hasn't added any substantial amount of new money. It's actually taken money off war fighting capabilities and thinks everything can be done at long range. Well, there's absolutely no evidence that's the case. You need long, you need short, you need medium range, you need rare capabilities all at once and investing in one over the other doesn't help you. So I hope Australian readers might read that and ponder
00:40:16
Speaker
the state of the Australian Defence Force. What we have is good, but what we have is small. It's not sustainable over time just because we don't have the mass or the munitions that we need to do that.
00:40:28
Speaker
And, you know, sometimes I do wonder about the political will of Australian leaders to assist other democracies in need. We've seen in the last, you know, in 2023, the Australian government has stepped away from Ukraine support. It's issued lots of press releases and selfies of politicians, but I can assure you that selfies
00:40:54
Speaker
from Ukraine, ammunition and armored vehicles do. So, you know, the Australian government is engaging in bystander behaviour in Ukraine at the moment. And it kind of worries me that what would we do with another small democracy next to a large, aggressive authoritarian power in our region? Taking a step back, what is the role of a middle power like Australia with a relatively small population?
00:41:21
Speaker
in a global conflict if it was to eventuate. How should Australia position itself? Well, firstly, we're not a middle power. That's for countries that are kind of 30 to 60 on the ranking of GDP. We're 12 to 14. So we're more than a middle power. We're a fairly consequential nation. We're one of the world's oldest democracies that's continued without interruption. We're a player in every multilateral institution.
00:41:50
Speaker
We do have a capable military, capable diplomatic corps and a very substantial economy. So we can play a larger role internationally. We just got to want to do it. I don't see Australian strategic culture embracing that role, but we're a country that's reliant on an external nervous system of foreign investment and these kind of things. So if there was some kind of global conflagration, we cannot avoid it.
00:42:19
Speaker
We have a role to play in defending democracy and our values, and we have a role in defending the prosperity of our people, which largely comes from foreign income and foreign sources, particularly foreign investment from countries like the United States, Britain and Netherlands, who invest far more in our country than we earn from trade from countries like China.
00:42:43
Speaker
So playing that out, let's hope it never happens. If it does, and there is an armed conflict on the ground in Taiwan with Taiwanese, American, and a range of other different countries involved, what is the role of the Australian armed forces in that conflict? What are the actual things they're doing? Well, you'd expect the Navy is probably doing some things, may not be proximate to Taiwan, but maybe taking on some of the US Navy's roles.
00:43:09
Speaker
in the Indian Ocean to prevent the PLA Navy doing stuff out there, whether at surface or submarine fleets. I think our surveillance network would be of some assistance to them, you know, whether it's over the horizon radar or something like that. Our air force, I think, would play a role in surveillance, whether it's proximate to Thailand or in other areas. And ultimately, we may well be called upon to provide ground troops and other
00:43:39
Speaker
autonomous systems and the ASEAN land that are proximate to Taiwan. I mean, once these things start, it's very hard to predict how they're going to play out. And if you think back to the DIB review in the late 1980s, it predicted a whole lot of things, none of which happened. But there are a whole lot of other things that did happen in the 90s and 2000s. And, you know, a war over Taiwan could be the same. There'll be a whole lot of things we can't predict. And having an adaptable balance ADF is the best way.
00:44:08
Speaker
to be able to adapt more quickly to surprise. You mentioned the recent defence review. What did you make of its findings? Well, like every government document, there's some good and there's some bad, right? I certainly think the settings around having a better deterrent capability is good. Deterrent has always been kind of an outcome of force planning, not a force planning principle. So I think that's good. I think having long range strike
00:44:36
Speaker
is good, but it's not either either. You need that as well as close and medium range combat. I think the emphasis on building an Indigenous capability is warranted and past time Australian industry will welcome that, but we need to get on the things. We don't need any more reviews. We've had enough reviews. And I guess that's one of the weaknesses of the review is it leads to more reviews, which
00:45:02
Speaker
means everything's slowing down again. It means decisions aren't being made. It means money isn't being spent. And it means we're not able to respond as quickly to changes in the strategic environment as we should be.
Misconceptions about Large-Scale Warfare
00:45:17
Speaker
goes to just kicking the can down the road and I guess that complacency that you mentioned earlier goes to my final question because there's a poignant moment in the prologue and you say we repeatedly have made the mistake of assuming that large-scale warfare was a thing of the past. We did so before World War One, some people thought so before Ukraine and indeed now some people assume that a war in the Pacific is impossible
00:45:45
Speaker
Why do we keep making that mistake? And then secondly, how can we jolt our collective conscience out of that complacency? I think most humans are ultimately optimists and want to see the best in other people. It's warranted a lot of the time, but not in every case. Also, I think we've come
00:46:11
Speaker
in the Middle East and there's a certain war weariness there, even though I'm not sure what most Western populations have to be weary about, only a very small proportion of us actually fought there. But it still appears to be something that politicians latch on to.
00:46:29
Speaker
So that's part of it. But also, you know, I think it's not something that we're taught in schools. It's not something that most universities have departments that study. I mean, if you don't study war, you can't avoid it. And even in Department of Defence at times, using the W word has not been encouraged. So we need to move beyond this trepidation of talking about it because
00:46:55
Speaker
It's very hard to deter or avoid something that you refuse to talk about. And that's often been the case in Australia and other Western holidays. Well, Nick, fascinating combination.
Recommendation for 'White Sun War'
00:47:07
Speaker
And moreover, I can't recommend White Sun War strongly enough to our listeners. It's a guide to modern warfare, as well as being a compelling thriller in its own right. You can order a copy via the link in the show notes. Mick Ryan, thank you very much for coming on, Australiana. Thanks, Will. It's been a pleasure to talk with you.
00:47:25
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.