With the U.S. distracted (and depleted) by the Iran War, should China seize this opportunity to invade Taiwan?
While it appears the stars are aligning for China to make its move on Taiwan, there’s one big issue: energy. Sure, the U.S. military is stretched thin, munitions stocks are running low, and power projection in Asia is weakened, but China still needs the oil to make it all happen. Since China imports most of its oil, primarily from the Gulf, the U.S. could cut off energy imports at any time.
While China may have a short-term military advantage, the strategic vulnerability and risk of losing imported energy just isn’t worth it.
Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado, where the snow is back. Today we’re taking a question from the Patreon crowd specifically. Do I think now would be a great time for China to attack Taiwan? What would the United States distracted in Iran? On the surface, it sounds like it would be a great time, doesn’t it? The United States is basically completely all in in the Iran war and is not doing well.
The strait has been closed for weeks, and we’re now starting to see these cavitation and cumulative failures in global energy markets, which as we get into June and especially July, are just going to be catastrophic for any number of countries. And at some level, the United States is going to have to address that without solving the military question in the Persian Gulf.
In addition, the United States, for safety reasons, chose to fight this war not in the Persian Gulf. most of the sea craft that were involved were either over in the Red sea or deep in the Arabian, firing things that are on from beyond any theoretical retaliation. And in doing so, the United States used up half roughly of its deployable long range munitions.
It’s going to take 5 to 10 years reset those stocks, even assuming we don’t launch any attacks during the entire time. So the United States is really out of the game when it comes to the type of long range strike capability that would be necessary to deal with China in a way that wouldn’t have horrendous casualties in a lot of ship failures.
So on the surface, seems like, yeah, now’s the time. But the United States has the greatest concentration of naval forces. It has had in Middle Eastern region right now, just off the Persian Gulf, and with a few ships now going in and out as part of convoy efforts, which aren’t working very well, but that’s a different topic.
In addition, the United States has kind of riled up and has more ships coming to and from the region. And guess where China gets most of its crude oil? China imports about 80% of the crude that it uses, and about 75% of that comes from the Persian Gulf. And now the US Navy is right there. So if we got into a scenario where the Chinese decided to make a move on Taiwan, maybe from a tactical local military point of view, the Chinese would find it a lot easier to do.
The US is out of position, and a lot of the preferred weapons that we have designed specifically for that scenario just aren’t available in the numbers they would need to be, then the United States would shut off energy flows to China, and within a year, China would fall into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, complete with famine that kills half of their population. So on the surface, short term, yeah. Now’s a good time. But none of this has changed anything about China’s overall vulnerabilities. And actually, the United States is standing on the energy flow right now in a way that would guarantee the end of the People’s Republic, should there be a war.
The only scenario where it might work is if the United States decides, you know what, we didn’t really need Taiwan anyway and decides to not get involved at all. That would be strategically idiotic for the United States, but it wouldn’t be the first time this year that we’ve done something like that, so I can’t rule it out.
