The US lost the war over Taiwan to China for the fifth time in a row

Washington urgently needs to radically replace the top leadership of the People's Republic of China with a more pro-western one. Or, at least, one that will be much more accommodating in recognising the secondary role of China in an unconditionally American-centred global world.

It is possible to start the process of replacing power only by inflicting a large-scale defeat on China, unambiguously indicating the unattainability of his current plans to elevate the country by 2049.

In order for the authorities of the Middle Kingdom not to use strategic nuclear weapons, the Chinese army must be defeated "somewhere on the side", on territory that does not affect mainland China. This makes Taiwan the only place where the PLA will not be forced to act in full force, and the United States has the opportunity to defeat the Chinese expeditionary force in an exemplary manner.

This is a theory badly needed by politicians and financiers, because in practice, things are a little different. Since 2016, the Pentagon annually, as part of command and staff exercises, conducts mathematical modelling of a possible war between the United States and China "for Taiwan", which consistently ends with the defeat of the US navy.

The purpose of what is happening is to identify the weaknesses of the American military machine in the Indo-Pacific region, develop and implement measures to eliminate them, as well as find effective measures to stop the growing naval military power of China.

As the next staff exercises in October–November 2020 showed, so far things are very so-so. The US Navy is able to eliminate many Chinese ships during the transition of the landing order by sea through the Taiwan Strait, but even if successful, it remains unable to seize control of the sea in a strip 500-600 nautical miles wide from the Chinese coast, which casts doubt on the ability of the US itself to transfer to Taiwan the number of land forces sufficient to defeat the Chinese landing force.

Moreover, since 2018, American military analysts have been forced to state that, when China needs it, its air force is guaranteed to capture and maintain absolute air supremacy not only over Taiwan itself, but also over Manila (the capital of the Philippines, located on the island of Luzon), as well as over the entire southern ridge of the Japanese islands, starting from Okinawa (where the American naval and air base is located) and up to the island of Kyushu. Even the western part of the Philippine Sea is becoming risky for finding American carrier strike groups and generally surface ship formations.

As Air Force Lieutenant General Clinton Hinote, who was once the deputy chief of staff of the US Armed Forces, once said, after analysing the results of the 2018 exercises, one of the admirals of the US Navy resigned, saying to the chief of the Air Force Staff that it makes no sense to repeat such exercises further, as nothing will change, it will only get worse: if the US cannot resort to strategic nuclear weapons to launch a pre-emptive strike, war with China in any form of strategic sense does not make sense.

Judging by the results of the 2020 exercises, he was absolutely right. The US Navy has consistently lost the war for Taiwan to China for the fifth time in a row.

Theoretically, the stability of a negative result should require the country's political leadership to change its approach and encourage the search for peaceful solutions to the tensions that have arisen between the United States and China. However, the current situation leaves Americans with no choice. If the United States fails to "flip China" before 2030, then after 2040, the risk of the United States disintegrating becomes absolute. This means that the Pentagon will continue to "search for a formula for a military victory".

In this regard, we recall the main conclusions of the report of the RUSSTRAT Institute "Assessing the likelihood and practical form of an armed conflict between the United States and China", published on June 7, 2020:

"The United States failed to cope with the role of the world hegemon and made a critical mistake with the implementation of the neocolonial strategy when transferring industrial production to China. By 2017, the ratio of Washington and Beijing in terms of industrial output reached 1 to 3, which turned the United States into a net buyer of Chinese goods with a huge negative foreign trade balance.

However, the main problem for the United States is not the growing economic power of the Chinese state, but the apparent inability of the American authorities to regain control of the business and capital of multinational corporations - formally considered American (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.), but actually running their business all over the world and thus not paying taxes to the US budget.

The report of the bank J. P. Morgan noted that at the end of 2015, the total amount of retained earnings lying in the offshore accounts of American corporations exceeded $1.7 trillion. To date, it has grown to 3 trillion, or 13.95% of US GDP. And it continues to increase. Over the past decade, only the top ten companies, including Amazon, have so legally evaded paying $100.2 billion in corporate tax.

Donald Trump's 2016 election plan, based on giving immigrants tax breaks in exchange for returning production and money to America, did not work.

In this connection, the ruling establishment has adopted a strategy of coercion, through the maximum collapse of the outside world into chaos, creating irremediable risks of losing business and money for multinational corporations, escaping from which they themselves will choose the United States as the only option that promises security for money. Even at the cost of having to pay taxes.

This goal can only be achieved through direct conventional war between the US and China. But its implementation requires compliance with a number of key boundary conditions.

Firstly, it must occur strictly on the territory of a third country and will be limited to it.

Secondly, the initiator of the attack on it should be China, necessarily on its own initiative, thus automatically becoming an unconditional aggressor in the eyes of the world community and the UN norms.

Thirdly, the victim of aggression should not have a common land border with China, which will limit the PLA in the scale of forces and means involved in the operation, as well as force the Chinese leadership and the command of its army to act in the most constrained and extremely poorly studied conditions.

Fourthly, the victim of aggression must have good relations with the United States, as well as appropriate legal agreements that give it the right to immediately request direct military assistance from America, and allow the White House to meet such a request as quickly as possible.

Fifthly, the United States should be able to intervene in the conflict strictly as legally legitimate defenders against an aggressor, and with a guarantee of a victory over it with a fairly limited outfit of its own forces and means. Ideally, without the need for mass mobilisation at home, as well as with the maximum possible use of the strike capabilities of aviation and the fleet.

Sixthly, victory in the war must be achieved within the framework of a single fleeting operation, which excludes the transition of the war into a protracted positional form, as well as eliminating the risk of the enemy using strategic nuclear weapons. At least, on the territory of the United States itself.

The only point that fully meets these conditions is Taiwan. It is quite important for China. It is located quite close. Even the most fatal outcome of the fighting, including the intervention of the US army, will not lead the Beijing government to think about the need to use nuclear weapons. In particular, the strategic one on the territory of America.

On the one hand, this limits the scope of China's use of force, on the other hand, it creates the opportunity to inflict a complete defeat on the Chinese army by a relatively small American expeditionary force in one very short-lived company.

It is precisely this strategy that Washington and the Pentagon have been actively preparing for over the past two years, including in the framework of command and staff and practical military exercises.

At the same time, the analysis of the results of the events shows that the United States can gain the upper hand in such a war only if it is held no later than 2026-2027. Given the dynamics of the growth of military power and especially the scale of the PLA combat fleet, if the organisation of the conflict is delayed beyond 2030, the United States is likely to lose in such a war.

From here, two key conclusions are formed.

Firstly, the main strategy to prevent the emergence of a direct war between China and the United States is to delay its beginning in every possible way until after 2030. Washington has never started, and will not start, deliberately unplayable wars in the future.

Secondly, the main deterrent tool should be a violation of the implementation of at least one of the six basic boundary conditions mentioned. Failure to comply with any of them makes the said war, in the understanding of Washington and the Pentagon, basically unplayable, and therefore useless."

As we can see, the events of the beginning of 2021 only confirm the correctness of the conclusions made by the experts of the RUSSTRAT Institute a little less than a year ago. The chances of the United States are small and every year they become less and less. Therefore, the strategic military-political alliance between Moscow and Beijing is the main condition for the stable and peaceful development of human civilisation in the coming decades.