China's psychological war for Taiwan

Paul Szoldra

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Taiwanese military radar operators deserve a raise following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) trip to Taipei in early August. More foreign delegations are coming, and the radar screen may be busy for a while.

China, which has long vowed to “unify” the tiny island democracy situated about 100 miles from its shores, has been conducting regular flights into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) throughout the month. According to Radio Free Asia, two of those sorties featured strategic bombers with nuclear strike capability. And dozens of Chinese aircraft and several ships were seen operating around Taiwan this past weekend, its defense ministry said.

SO TODAY, I’m unpacking China’s saber-rattling toward Taiwan and its meaning. The good news is that these sorts of moves are mostly bluster from China, and an invasion isn’t likely to happen soon. It’s psychological warfare meant to intimidate the U.S. and Taiwan—and those radar operators are certainly feeling the strain.

The fallout continues for former President Donald Trump following an FBI search warrant execution at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida residence. Country clubs are not the most secure facilities for highly-classified, top secret documents involving human intelligence sources. Yet Trump had plenty in his office despite claiming a “diligent search” found everything. The former president and his supporters have claimed the docs were declassified, but clearly, the National Archives and other federal agencies did not get that message, and a stunning photo filed in the case shows some of them with classification markings such as “TOP SECRET/SCI” as clear as day.

Ukraine launched a counteroffensive against Russia in the country’s south on Aug. 29, hoping to turn the tide of the six-month-old war. Ukrainian officials say they broke through Russian defenses in Kherson, though “the information space will likely become confused for a time,” according to the Institute for the Study of War. One thing we do know…

The war in Ukraine is putting a strain on American stockpiles. The Pentagon has sent some 806,000 of 155mm artillery rounds to Kyiv so far, “depleting stockpiles intended for unexpected threats,” defense officials told The Wall Street Journal.

NOW, TO UNDERSTAND what’s happening in the Taiwan Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, I’m turning to a new paper by Lt. Col. Brian E. Campbell in the U.S. Air Force Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs that sheds interesting light on the situation.

Campbell argues that Chinese incursions near Taiwan should be viewed through the lens of psychological operations—steps to influence opinions, emotions, behavior, etc.—and he points to a four-day period nearly a year ago as “a case study.” It certainly generated headlines around the world, that’s for sure.

Back then, from Oct. 1 to Oct. 4, 2021, China’s Air Force flew a “record-setting 149 sorties” near Taiwan, one sortie of which included 52 aircraft that was “clearly designed to deliver a message,” wrote Campbell.

“Through a lens of psychological operations, the target, sorties, and aircraft types take on important meaning for U.S. military planners and foreign policy experts.” What meaning?

“Through airpower, [Chinese] psychological operations communicate the ability to bring dominant military power to bear in and around Taiwan, countering the undercurrent of US strength,” Campbell says. “The message [Chinese Air Force] incursions communicate is clear. Gone are the days of asymmetric airpower advantages that allowed US political leaders to defend Taiwan at a relatively low cost. Instead, the [Chinese Air Force] poses a credible threat to US air superiority and will impose great costs on defenders of the island.”

As Michele Flournoy, a top Pentagon official during the Obama administration, recently told NBC News: “It’s a very different situation now. It’s a much more contested and much more lethal environment for our forces.”

The incursions highlight growing Chinese military capabilities and serve to undermine U.S. advantages, says Campbell, claiming that “modern weapon systems and capabilities” were on full display during the days-long October sprint to around 150 sorties with fighters, bombers, patrol, and command-and-control aircraft all taking part.

Meanwhile, Taiwan has tracked about 100 or so Chinese aircraft entering its airspace in recent days. On Sunday, the U.S. Navy sent two warships sailing through the Taiwan Strait—the Yokosuka, Japan-based USS Antietam and the USS Chancellorsville—and both were observed and unbothered by China during the transit.

That’s not likely to hold true forever. As U.S. Navy Adm. Phil Davidson testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee last year, China is “accelerating their ambitions” to supplant the U.S. role as a global leader by 2050, and Taiwan stands right in the middle.

“I’m worried about them moving that target closer,” said Davidson, then-commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before then. And I think the threat manifests during this decade, in the next six years.”

At stake on that hypothetical invasion date of March 9, 2027, is a young democracy of 23 million citizens on an island that produces most of the advanced chips the world needs for everything from smartphones to smart bombs. But, according to Pew Research, “tensions between China and Taiwan typically have been among the least pressing in the minds of American adults.”

That poses a challenge for U.S. leaders, who have long counted on Beijing backing down to U.S. military might. As China’s military capabilities have markedly improved over the past quarter-century, so too has its inclination to push the envelope.

“Ultimately, [Chinese Air Force] incursions provide useful evidence of…efforts to threaten the status quo without fighting,” wrote Campbell. “The incursions illustrate that psychological warfare is not just conceptual; they include tangible operations executed by the PLA to achieve strategic objectives,” such as:

eliciting feelings about China’s growing national power

sowing doubt in U.S. military capabilities and political commitment to Taiwan

fomenting political division

So these types of actions are likely to continue, which stress test Taiwan’s defenses and Washington’s policy of “strategic ambiguity” over whether the U.S. will defend the island from attack. Though lately, President Joe Biden has been rather unambiguous about that.

It may be worth taking Campbell up on his suggestion for U.S. military and foreign policy experts to study and become aware of such operations, “not just of military capabilities and China’s growing power, but also of [Chinese military] psychological operations and their underlying intent.”

I’M CONSTANTLY talking to people, scouring the web, and checking my phone and email for the latest insight, quotes, links, docs, reports, and other all-source intel from the national security world. A huge amount hits my radar screen. Here’s what I think is worth putting on yours:

The Defense Policy Board meets next week for classified briefings and discussions on China and Russia’s potential development of “fractional orbital bombardment systems and space-to-ground weapons” and their potential impact on U.S. deterrence and strategic stability, according to a notice in the Federal Register. Top Pentagon officials will outline both countries’ space doctrine and capabilities, among other agenda items, and the board will “provide advice and recommendations on a classified Pacific-theater based tabletop exercise.”

After a long delay, the Navy published its 2020 Annual Crime Report. Among findings that caught my eye: “Suicides have increased for both branches: 12% for USN and 39% for USMC” on page 11 and “LSD/use possession and/or distribution increased significantly” in both branches on page 24. The latter prompted the Pentagon to test service members for LSD again.

The U.S. State Department has established an “ambassador-at-large for the Arctic Region.”

The Congressional Research Service has a new report on the U.S. Navy’s force structure and shipbuilding plans, featuring several paths to a larger service that’ll patrolling the world’s waterways with hundreds of manned and unmanned vessels. Recently, Iran nearly stole one of the latter ships, a Saildrone Explorer.

The Navy SEALs and the rest of the Naval Special Warfare Command have a new boss: On Aug. 19, Navy Rear Adm. Keith B. Davids took over for Rear Adm. H.W. Howard as the unit’s top leader in Coronado, California. Davids got this unpleasant headline surprise in The New York Times a few weeks later: Death in Navy SEAL Training Exposes a Culture of Brutality, Cheating and Drugs

The Basilone Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit named in honor of John Basilone—a Marine whose legendary heroics in 1942 on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands earned the Medal of Honor—recently unveiled the contents of a time capsule placed in 1959 by Basilone’s father and sister Mary. Among the items inside: An American flag, gloves, and newspapers.

A post shared by Basilone Memorial Foundation (@basilone_foundation)

The Government Accountability Office says the Pentagon is upgrading critical navigation systems “but is not measuring overall progress.” The military relies on the global positioning system for damn near everything, but a new GAO report chided officials for not keeping score of efforts to add a stronger encrypted signal, M-code, to GPS that would help counter Chinese and Russian spoofs, jams, hacks, and other terms that sound bad and indeed are.

The Solomon Islands refused to allow the U.S. Coast Guard into port on a routine visit this month. The country later notified the U.S. it would be placing an indefinite moratorium on foreign military ship visits. (The Solomon Islands signed a secret security pact with China in March.)

IN THIS PHOTO taken on Sept. 15, 1944, Marine Pfc. Douglas Lightheart (right) cradles a 30-caliber machine gun in his lap during a smoke break with Pfc. Gerald Thursby during the Battle of Peleliu. The mission to capture the island from the Japanese lasted from Sept. 15, 1944, to Nov. 27, 1944, resulting in a U.S. victory. Nearly 10,000 Americans and more than 14,000 Japanese were killed.