Thread by @tshugart3

A few thoughts about Michael Anton's recent @FDRLST article, in which he essentially recommends standing aside in the case that China decides to act militarily against Taiwan.

thefederalist.com/2021/12/20/why…

I won't address the geopolitical - or domestic political - angles to what he has to say. Reasonable people can and do disagree on these topics, and there are plenty of folks out there with opinions on all sides of the arguments about restraint, wokeism, etc.

What I DO want to address are some of the specific military- and naval-related facts he presents to underpin his arguments, as a number of them are misleading, show a lack of familiarity with key military questions that underpin his larger argument, or are factually incorrect.

First up: an opening to the military analysis that goes straight to Sun Tzu & winning without fighting, said to sum up "Chinese strategy on Hong Kong and, as we shall see, Taiwan." To cast it so is a red flag to me that we're about to see analysis from a...visitor to the topic.

BTW, I found this article on the famous passage to be quite interesting. Of course, I'm not a Sinologist so I'd be happy to hear any thoughts folks might have on this interpretation. thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/202…

In his analysis of what would happen in a war over Taiwan, a good chunk of his argument is: our ability to win it would depend on our aircraft carriers, that those carriers are vulnerable and too dear to lose, and thus that if we lost one we would have to go nuclear. 🤔

He does know enough to recognize that our strategy, with Taiwan, is largely one of denial - to prevent the PLA from getting across the Taiwan Strait and invading. But then he states that the primary means of doing so is via carrier battle groups.

While carrier battle groups would be a part of any major US-PRC conflict in the region, analysts who have looked at this problem closely in recent years (we're right here...just ask!) understand that it's not our carriers that would be the primary means of stopping an invasion...

...but rather a mini-A2/AD gauntlet of coastal anti-ship missiles, smart mines, subs, and other anti-ship missiles delivered from outside the Strait (maybe from carriers, also bombers & other aircraft). This is certainly Taiwan's intended strategy: warontherocks.com/2018/10/hope-o…

...though there are concerns out there about how the effort is going: warontherocks.com/2021/11/taiwan…

In his skepticism that U.S. carriers could be successful today in a major power conflict, he points to a contrast with the late Cold War, when U.S. carriers were apparently untouchable. This is, again, not somnething I'd expect to hear from someone well-couched on the topic.

Vice Admiral Mustin, who was tasked with leading those carriers against the Soviets, certainly wasn't so blasé. Here he is in Naval War College Review in 1986, calling the Soviets formidable foes, and pointing out that in war ships get sunk and people get killed.

He then makes a straight misstatement of fact - that the last U.S. fleet carrier sunk was USS Yorktown at Midway. This should jump out immediately to anyone with a decent knowledge of the war in the Pacific, as Wasp and Hornet were lost well after Midway. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s…

He also says China does not-at present-have fleet carriers "with 6,000 souls on board". This smells to me of bad-faith argument to not also mention that China does have two smaller carriers and is well-along the way in construction of its first fleet carrier with more to follow.

He finishes his carrier discussion by asking what we'd do if one of our carriers were to end up "at the bottom of the Taiwan Strait". One hopes he's saying this for mass audience effect, because if he really thinks U.S. carriers would be operating in the Strait itself, well...😕

He makes the leap that if the U.S. were to lose a carrier, the obvious next step would be nuclear retaliation, causing Chinese attacks on "undefended" U.S. cities (and here BMD isn't great, but they aren't *entirely* undefended). That next step is far from obvious to me, but ok.

The leads a charge to declare the U.S. military to be "woke and incompetent".
Again, one can disagree about prioritization, or how things went or could have gone in Afghanistan.

But focuses the charge specifically at the Navy, and uses an odd characterization of facts to do so.

First in an effort to show how different things are than they were Back in the Day, he recalls how a U.S. carrier ran aground when he was in high school, and that the CO was fired "on the spot".

I don't know what his definition of "on the spot" is, but the carrier in question, USS Enterprise, ran aground on November 2nd, 1985. The CO was relieved of command more than two months later, in late January of 1986.

In his attempt to demonstrate how far the Navy has fallen, he points out that there were 5 collisions and groundings in 2017, and that Bonhomme Richard burned in 2020. Fair enough, as there are plenty of us who have been concerned about a number of those incidents.

But he then blames these incidents (most of them in the 1st year of the Trump administration, mind) on wokeness and improper prioritization, and says that no one has paid a price "for any of this".

This'd be news, I think, to the COs of 2 destroyers & a cruiser, all relieved of command, as well as to the Task Force, DDG squadron, and ultimately 3-star fleet commander who were all fired (and most in less time than it took to fire USS Enterprise's). reuters.com/article/us-usa…

And also to the USS Bonhomme Richard sailor who is facing charges that could result in life in prison. sandiegouniontribune.com/news/military/…

Those who follow me know I am, shall we say, well aware of the threat by China to Taiwan (and beyond). It also won't surprise folks that I disagree with abandoning the free Taiwanese people to the "whole process democracy" of the CCP, especially given how they've treated HK.

For my thoughts on how best to maintain cross-Strait deterrence against China’s military threat, see here: cnas.org/publications/c…