In Defense of Taiwan: Attrition or Annihilation?

Stockpiles, Industry, and Battle and the Danger of Overcorrecting

Ammunition consumption has been a major constraint for both sides in the Russia-Ukraine War and Western difficulties in scaling production have been widespread. As well, discussions of a war over Taiwan have brought the questions of stockpiles and industry to the fore. Prominent voices have argued that the United States should engage in industrial policy and boost its manufacturing output specifically for the purpose of preparing for a war with China.

In light of this, I’d like to take a look at the arguments for the importance of stockpiles and strength of industry in deciding the outcome of a war through the lens of a variety of historical cases (and of course, the writings of the regrettably-deceased Carl von Clausewitz). In my analysis, I arrive at the conclusion that while these factors have been neglected, there is a great danger in overcorrection. That is to say: preparing for protracted war is important, but overemphasizing the importance of stockpiles and industry in deciding a conflict comes at the expense of neglecting the transformative power of battle.

Moral Courage and A Note on the Schlieffen Plan

If you are ill-prepared for a lengthy war or know yourself to be inferior in the things that count for one, it is strategically sound to focus your preparations towards forcing and winning a decisive battle at the outset. If that strategy fails, you will be less prepared for an attritional war than you might have been, but taking your best shot at victory is the most justifiable of risks, regardless of the outcome. This is what Clausewitz refers to as “moral courage,” the resolve to take the hazardous road that offers the best chance at success and assume responsibility for failure rather than to take the momentarily safer course of inaction. When the strategic picture is unfavorable, nothing except a bold gamble can remedy the situation.

The Schlieffen Plan justified itself in these terms, as a massive gamble on Germany’s best card. The Germans did not consider a long war impossible, but believed that one would be disastrous considering the naval and economic advantage of the Entente. As such, German preparations were directed towards winning quickly, so that Entente superiority in those areas could not be brought to bear, in the same way that French naval superiority had been irrelevant in the Franco-Prussian war.

The main problem was that this gamble was based on the unexamined assumption that Germany required a total victory over the Entente. The war plan was developed with no specific political aims in mind and sought total victory axiomatically, assuming the enormous risk involved without political justification. The logic was that of military necessity, dominating any political considerations as a result of Germany’s particularly dysfunctional system of civil-military relations. I do not intend to discuss alternatives to the Schlieffen Plan here in depth, (that will be its own post) but considering my harsh assessments of this famous attempt to seek a decision, I felt it necessary to briefly note why it was only superficially suited to the strategic situation.

Generalizing From Ukraine?

Intense operations will naturally consume large quantities of munitions, and the war in Ukraine is a stark reminder of this fact. However, it would be a mistake to view the character of the war in Ukraine as the inevitable shape of modern war. Wars can also be won or lost rapidly, and there are reasons to believe such a rapid decision is likely in a war over Taiwan.

The character that the war exhibits is a product of the societies that wage it, including their limitations, and so the character of the war in Ukraine cannot be generalized to potential wars between countries without those conditions and limitations. Stockpiles and industrial capacity are particularly relevant in a situation like the war in Ukraine, in which neither side has the mix of systems and expertise needed to achieve a breakthrough. The armed forces of both Ukraine and Russia have faced corruption, economic weakness, and haphazard procurement and so have been forced to wage war with the attendant limitations.

A war between the US and Russia, for example, would be radically different in shape. US doctrine and force structure are designed towards securing air dominance and using airpower to support maneuver warfare so as to force the rapid collapse of the enemy. In this vision of war, munition use is high, but not protracted in a manner analogous to the war in Ukraine. How long you can supply your artillery at a certain rate of ammo consumption becomes irrelevant if your front line collapses because a corps sized element was encircled and overrun on day three. Certainly, it would be disastrous to run out of weapons, but unless this occurs, depth of ammunition stockpiles is unlikely to be decisive; the measure will be in the ability to actually destroy enemy forces. This form of war may well be outdated, but this point cannot be asserted by deriving the character of modern war directly from the Russo-Ukrainian War as neither state possesses comparable capabilities to the United States for enabling a rapid decision (despite a Russian attempt in 2022).

From US Field Manual 3-0 “Operations”

It bears repeating that there is not a strict dichotomy between trying to win rapidly and preparing for a protracted war, but scarce resources mean there is a trade-off. Time and money devoted to preparing for attritional war cannot be put towards winning the initial phase. This is not a case for an absolutist preference for quality over quantity—that’s a recipe for an undersized and brittle force. The tyranny of the operational level of war is something that has been increasingly noted as a hazard (and something I’ve frequently written on), but there is a danger of overcorrection in reducing war to a comparison of overall strength.

Questions of supply chains and relative strengths of industry are important, but battle remains the core of war through which dramatic transformations in circumstances are possible, even when not actively sought. There is a temptation to view battles as the mere realization of existing power relations, itself an overcorrection from the pop-history designation of every notable battle as a “turning point.” The former characterization is more often accurate, but fails to give proper weight to the role of chance, creating a false sense of inevitability. This touches on Clausewitz’s views on the importance of battle which will be elaborated on in the following section.

Clausewitz on Battle

A lesson Clausewitz drew from the Napoleonic Wars was the ability of a battle to cause a radical transformation in the scene. This principle (like many in On War) seems obvious, but is, in fact, in tension with the idea of war as a test of overall state strength. That both things are true but in conflict is itself the point. Circumstances and strategy will determine towards which tendency a conflict leans.

Clausewitz is often associated with the idea of decisive battle because his writing focused on the Napoleonic Wars. These upended Europe in virtually every sense and so Clausewitz viewed the understanding of them—particularly in comparison to historical practice—as key to understanding war in essence, not merely war as it was in his own time (I wrote about this more extensively in the post, “The Spirit of the Age: Clausewitz on Limited and Absolute War”). The emphasis on decisive battle in his writing is therefore both an artifact of his time (contemporary methods take disproportionate space given that it was the clearest example of practice available) and because of the main case used to derive and test principles.

Before the Napoleonic Wars, decisive battles were rare because the difficulty and expense involved in raising armies disincentivized them. Even the famous victories of Frederick the Great still did not involve the destruction of the defeated army. European states had geared themselves for waging these “cabinet wars” and so were unprepared for a Revolutionary France willing and able to risk so much to seek victory in a decisive battle. Systems of magazines and fortifications, so critical to the waging of cabinet wars, can contribute little if your army has been annihilated, as Prussia learned in 1806. Clausewitz therefore was looking directly at why the military thinkers of Europe had not anticipated this development in warfare and pointing out the mistaken theories underpinning it. That is to say, he sought to determine why decisive battle had returned despite the previous canon of military literature dismissing it.

The answer he found was the conflation of the character of war with its nature. The former being a product of the times and the latter being common throughout all time. Clausewitz argued that previous thinkers had elevated traits of contemporary war to universal principles without first testing them against the historical record. These thinkers (influenced by enlightenment concepts) viewed the practice of war as something akin to a science—forward moving and perfectible. By contrast, while there are better and worse ways to fight a war, Clausewitz viewed the optimal methods as contingent on the context. The methods of Napoleon and the Revolutionary armies did not reveal an advance in ways of war per se (though they made use of many). Rather, they recognized that changed circumstances enabled a type of war that was not previously possible and successfully exploited this change to bring superior force to bear.

Clausewitz, therefore, did not suggest that battle is intrinsically decisive (as he is often stereotyped). In fact, much of his strategic thought was developed around an examination of Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia, in which the Russian strategy was explicitly to avoid such a battle. Clausewitz distinguished himself from his contemporaries by recognizing the equivalent validity of a strategy of exhaustion. This view of the changing character of war, as “more than a true chameleon”, is key to Clausewitz’s enduring applicability.

War’s variation in shape is not merely a product of advances in practice and technology, but more dramatically altered by both the shape of society and the immediate political situation. How a war can be fought is contingent on these circumstances, and so it would be a mistake to look at even a very recent conflict in an attempt to predict the character of a future conflict under markedly different circumstances.

The Fall of France: Mass and Defeat in Detail

A reason to be cautious about anticipating attrition as the shape of future war is the danger of a “defeat in detail.” By failing to match mass against mass, your enemy has the chance to utterly destroy a part of your force. This offers the chance not only to shift the balance of force, but to subsequently overwhelm other elements caught off-guard by the initial defeat. In this way, one force may defeat another of comparable or even superior strength without the bloody cost typical of the clash of mass meeting mass. Prioritizing preparations for attritional struggle may allow your enemy to gain the seemingly small advantages that cascade into a defeat in detail.

As mentioned, for Clausewitz, the defeat of Prussia in the war of the Fourth Coalition was the template, but the more contemporary archetype is the Fall of France in WW2. French command and control was oriented towards a lengthy war of attrition and proved unable to react quickly enough to the German breakthrough at Sedan. Counterattacks were therefore only undertaken on the local level and without coordination. Despite German vulnerability, they were able to defeat the piecemeal commitment of superior forces and ultimately collapse Allied defenses.

The initial German breakthrough was made possible by local air superiority, enabled by the same principle. This was achieved despite an overall superiority by the Allies in aircraft (even when counting only modern planes) because the Allies kept many planes in reserve, anticipating a long war. By the time they realized the significance of the German concentration, the Germans had been able to move forward anti-aircraft guns and it was too late to destroy the bridgeheads over the Meuse (despite the desperate kamikaze-like efforts of a stricken bomber).

Germans crossing a pontoon bridge over the Meuse River

The case of France in 1940 gives a clear example of why a defeat in detail has been so feared. French strategy was premised on winning a lengthy war—the initial battle was assumed to be no more conclusive than the Battle of Frontiers had been in 1914. The exact error of the French is unlikely to be replicated, but the nature of the mistake remains a universal peril. Dismissing the likelihood of an early decision and preparing for a “later” that never comes is the reciprocal mistake of assuming an early decision is inevitable (which can be identified with the “Cult of the Offensive” that preceded WWI).

The Pacific: Tyranny of Geography

Imperial Japanese Carrier Hiryū

The frequent point of comparison for a war over Taiwan is the Pacific theater of the Second World War. Imperial Japan won early victories, but was unable to match American industrial might, and so found the balance of power swing inexorably against it. Japan fell into the (Mahan-ian) trap of preparing for a decisive battle that never came. Superior American industry meant the losses of Pearl Harbor were replaced relatively quickly, whereas Japanese capital ships were practically irreplaceable. The argument for preparing for a war of attrition over Taiwan is that any war between China and the US would place the US in the position of the Imperial Japanese by virtue of its inferior manufacturing base. For a number of reasons, I believe this comparison is inapt.

CSIS Graphic on Missile Ranges

The first difference is the compression of space by technology. A hundred miles is still a hundred miles, but the speed and range of modern aviation means that the distance doesn’t mean quite what it did in 1942. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had a major advantage, but could not seriously consider striking the American homeland. However, in a 21st century Pacific war, geography provides far less room to recover. Strategic depth has become harder to come by as the range of weapons increases. This is particularly the case for the Chinese. If the opening phase of the war delivers a sharp check, there will be no opportunity for industry to weigh in. Shipbuilding capacity and industrial might can only weigh in if there is room to regenerate. Geography favors the Americans in this regard as the theater of war is sufficiently far from the West Coast as to allow this space (and shipbuilding on the East Coast is practically untouchable).

Chinese shipbuilding—however strong it may be—will therefore be unable to replicate the strategic effect of American industry in WW2 for the simple reason that it will be subject to attack. Modern anti-shipping strikes are a far cry from the torpedo bombers of the Second World War. The area from which these attacks can be launched has been greatly increased, eliminating the need for air superiority over the target. Now, an aircraft must merely get a missile within range. Even the most sophisticated missile defenses would be unable to reliably protect vessels under construction.

In order for China to make use of its shipyards in a war, it would have to push American forces so far back that the question of Taiwan would by then be settled. In such a case, even if American shipbuilding capacity was superior to China’s, it is deeply doubtful whether the political will would exist to undertake a campaign to liberate Taiwan in the way the United States was committed to the liberation of the Philippines in 1941. Attitudes around war have changed radically since, especially since such a war would carry with it the risk of nuclear escalation. At the very least, the uncertainty involved means it would be unwise to plan on the assumption that there will be room to regenerate from defeat. Indeed, were the US so committed to sovereignty of Taiwan that it was willing to conduct an island-hopping campaign in order to achieve it, the comparative strength of industry at the start of the war would have limited relevance. As mentioned, the United States still enjoys the benefits of distance from China, and so would be able to expand its industrial capacity during wartime, almost regardless of the results of the initial battle.

Further, the changing nature of economic strength makes the comparison with Imperial Japan questionable. Japan’s economy was weaker than the United States by every metric. When comparing the United States to China, the US is inferior in manufacturing output, but overall a larger economy (or at least similarly sized when accounting for PPP). The ability of a service economy to pivot in wartime remains untested, but it remains a markedly different situation than the simple (and dramatic) inferiority of the Japanese economy.

Sheer manufacturing output also cannot tell the whole story. Part of the popular perception of factory output in WW2 is tied up with the myth of the “elite” German panzers that the Allies simply smothered the Germans in a wave of cheap steel. While it is true that “quantity has a quality all of its own,” this implies a trade-off when there was none. Nazi production methods were simply inferior to those of the Allies. Thus, it would be a mistake to draw parallels with the artisan production of systems like the F-35 and German artisan production. The former produces an unparalleled platform in the quantities needed for peacetime, whereas the latter was simply slower.

The famous case exhibiting the importance of technological superiority is the First Gulf War. Anticipated to be a bloody clash against Saddam Hussein’s battle-hardened and fairly modern forces, the technological superiority of the coalition produced a rout. This is, of course, an extreme case of disparity, (though it must be noted that it was not considered as such at the time), but nevertheless illustrates that comparing tonnage has sharp limitations and that manufacturing output is not in-itself a sufficient measure. Overemphasis on strength of industry risks obscuring the potentially decisive nature of qualitative differences.

Political Objects and the Character of War

The political circumstances of a war with China increase the likelihood of an early decision. China’s aim in such a war would be to invade and annex Taiwan. To do so, China must establish air and sea superiority, and must do so with sufficient naval assets available to cross the strait and sustain a ground campaign. It must further be capable of protecting the shipping needed for the duration of this campaign and, further still, to sustain an occupation force. The course of the opening days (or hours) of a war may thus be decisive, even if deficiencies in American stockpile depth give the Chinese the advantage after that period.

If the Chinese can only overcome the Americans by exhaustion, this will be a Pyrrhic victory, as it will be insufficient to enable an invasion of Taiwan. To illustrate, in this scenario, let’s say you’re China and your superiority in stockpiles and manufacturing have allowed you to suppress Taiwanese air defense and push American forces out of range. Great, now you can cross the strait and start the ground phase of the campaign. Not so fast—even though the Americans were eventually forced to withdraw as munitions ran scarce, in the opening phase of the war they were able to sink or damage much of your shipping. Even if you gave as good as you got, you’re the one that has to pull off an amphibious invasion. Even with your strong ship-building industry, it will be at least some months before enough shipping can be repaired and replaced to support an invasion.

On its face, that’s not all too bad. A delay will give you more time to conduct an air offensive over Taiwan to ease the ground campaign. Your superior industry means you’ll be ready sooner than the Americans can recover. However, that also gives the Taiwanese the opportunity to take basic steps that would prevent a short war, such as mobilization, training, and fortifying landing points. There are limits to how much airpower can interdict these things, particularly while conserving munitions for other phases.

The delay also prevents the exploitation of any political chaos that the sudden onset of war might have engendered in Taiwan. Worse still, while the Americans cannot regenerate as fast as you can, they have the easier task of merely interdicting the crossing of the strait, which you must now seek to accomplish without strategic surprise. Even if the United States cannot match Chinese industry over the course of the war, it has sufficient strategic depth so as to maintain a reserve to contest an attempted amphibious landing.

This scenario—even if it ends with ultimate victory—is not a good one for China. A lengthy war brings with it massive economic consequences and an inestimable political price. Russia’s fate after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine is a cautionary tale. Years of attritional war and indefinite economic isolation are a steep penalty, not merely from the perspective of power politics, but from the standpoint of regime survival. A long war, by its nature, means more uncertainty, and therefore greater chance for catastrophe. For this reason, a strategy of exhaustion is unlikely to be appealing to Chinese planners.

These considerations suggest that a war over Taiwan will tend towards an initial decisive battle in which China will seek to destroy enough American forces to gain space for an invasion of Taiwan, while the US seeks to destroy enough Chinese shipping to preclude an invasion. Crucially, neither can refuse battle without conceding the issue of Taiwan. For China, the Americans must be too weak to interdict an amphibious attack on Taiwan and so must be attacked. For the Americans, the Chinese cannot be allowed to gain sufficient security to cross the Strait and so must be attacked. Neither power can afford to hold back in the initial confrontation and rely upon superior strength of industry to gain the advantage. For the Chinese, the danger is too great that the Americans may inflict losses that prevent a landing on Taiwan; for the Americans the risk is too great that an initial Chinese advantage will provide enough space to make such a landing. The outcome of the war hinges on China’s ability to gain the security needed to conduct an amphibious invasion, a task which becomes harder as the war lengthens (even with superior industry).

Practical Implications

So far, we have acknowledged the contradictions that the nature of war gives rise to, and examined towards which tendency a future war might lean, but theory must ultimately have some concrete implications for practice to justify itself. The likelihood of decisive battle comes with many direct implications. In the case of a war over Taiwan, investments in networking, training, and avionics will prove more important than comparative strength of industry. If America gains the edge in the air, it will have the opportunity to destroy the Chinese capabilities needed for an invasion of Taiwan.

Stockpiles and regeneration can only prove telling if the victor of the initial battle cannot capitalize on that victory. The character of modern war makes recovery from failure difficult. Systems are interdependent, which means that victories and defeats are likely to compound. The range of modern weapons and the complexity in manufacturing reduce the relative importance of strategic depth and raw manufacturing capacity. Fifth (or sixth) generation aircraft cannot simply be regenerated once air superiority is lost.

Preparation should therefore be oriented towards gaining an advantage and pressing it home rather than for an attritional war. Superiority in technology, systems, and training is the correct priority over depth of stockpiles or manufacturing output. In the event that the initial battle is truly indecisive, deficiencies in the defense industrial base are far more easily overcome than the consequences of a decisive defeat. It is far preferable to have empty stockpiles at the end of the first week of war but with China’s amphibious capabilities a smoking ruin than to be provisioned for a long war with PLANMC troops ashore in Taiwan.

Eschewing a strategy of attrition is not an excuse to neglect stockpiles. Ammo consumption in a war that is quickly decided will be nevertheless extremely high and current stockpiles are almost certainly insufficient. Even after a decisive victory, hostilities can be expected to continue for some time. Even if the ultimate outcome of the conflict is no longer in question, and munition shortages will have a cost that can be measured in lives.

Reorienting the American economy towards manufacturing in order to compete with China to prepare for a war of attrition resembles “suicide for fear of death.” The kind of top-down economic central-planning required to reshape the American economy would come with an enormous cost in terms of prosperity. This would require massive spending (to be financed by taxes or further borrowing) for the purpose of transferring capital away from America’s areas of competitive advantage. Before we can even consider whether the costs involved are in themselves worse than anything the United States might suffer from failing to defend Taiwan, its political feasibility must be considered. The chaos of the “liberation day” tariffs gives a preview for how this kind of intervention is likely to be received and provides compelling evidence that such a reorientation is not politically possible, even were it desirable.

Industry and particularly shipbuilding are nevertheless areas that are relevant no matter the character of war. While an early decision might prevent China from leveraging its superior strength of industry to out-regenerate its way to victory, superior industry makes it easier for China to outgun the Americans in that initial fight. A short-war strategy is a poor remedy to losing an arms race. As such, more moderate investments in capacity (particularly in shipbuilding) can be justified even if a total reorientation is out of the question. Of particular utility are low-cost methods such as “friend-shoring” (utilizing the industrial capacity of allied nations) and repealing the Jones Act to make domestic shipbuilding more appealing. Recognizing the tendency of a war over Taiwan towards an early decision thus does not mean neglecting questions of industry and especially procurement.

War, as Clausewitz tells us, involves the interplay of national strength and chance. Industry thus does not itself win battles, but is far from irrelevant in determining their outcome. The contradictions of war mean that overemphasizing one part of its nature is a continuous hazard to those who study it. The only protection is a careful consideration of the interaction of the factors that lend war its character in each specific case and to resist the temptation to generalize from recent experience.