Sakhalin-Singapore-Guam Triangle
When China Attacks - Colonel Grant Newsham
Before delving into Grant Newsham’s book, it is necessary to look at his amazing career and why his opinion on China and Taiwan military issues are based on three important factors: an analytical mind; boots-on-the-ground, and a no-none-sense approach to problems.
If you choose to go forward and simply read the book without my review, please purchase via Amazon.
Newsham is a writer and foreign affairs analyst covering Asia/Pacific defense and political and economic matters – to include 40+ years following the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as it has developed into an existential threat to the United States. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies (Tokyo) and the Center for Security Policy (Washington, D.C.).
Newsham is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel. He served as the reserve head of intelligence for U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Pacific (MARFORPAC), as well as the head of Plans and Policy for MARFORPAC. He was the U.S. Marine attaché in Tokyo on two occasions and also the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF). In the latter role he helped create Japan’s ‘Marine Corps’. This was done without Pentagon or U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) approval and intended to give the Japanese (and the Americans) better odds against the oncoming – and mostly ignored – Chinese threat.
Newsham has lived in Tokyo for over twenty years and worked also as a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer – with work covering a number of regions – including East and South Asia, and specializing in insurgency and counter-insurgency matters. He had a small role in what is known as Charlie Wilson’s War.
He lived in Taiwan for 2019 as a MOFA-sponsored Taiwan Fellow – while researching and drafting a proposal for improving Taiwan’s defense capabilities. He earlier had some involvement with the Taiwan Marine Corps.
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26 March 2023 (Sunday)
Sakhalin-Singapore-Guam Triangle
When China Attacks - Colonel Grant Newsham
By Wendell Minnick (Whiskey Mike) 顏文德
TAIPEI - Most books on Taiwan these days are by D.C. think tankers who have no experience in amphibious warfare and have never been based in Asia.
For those in Washington, hiding behind their computer screens with bookshelves covering their walls, each book a brick sealing them out of the real world, I say fuck’em.
I have had the honor of getting to know Newsham during his research visits to Taiwan, his interaction with the Ministry of National Defense both as a scholar and as a quiet influencer shaping Taiwan military preparedness for what will be a war like no other.
Despite the wide variety of topics discussed (economic, cyber, propaganda, cyber, etc.), this review will focus mostly on China’s threat to Taiwan; namely the kinetic attack to capture the island.
Of particular interest to me are China’s plans after the capture of Taiwan and how this will impact regional security and impede U.S. military assistance to allies and friends in East Asia.
In other words, America’s strategic worldview is shrinking.
Newsham destroys the Washington narrative that China simply does not have the lift capability to move an amphibious assault force across the Taiwan Strait. Going so far as arguing that in 2015 the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s intelligence chief, Captain James Fanell, was fired upon request by the Obama White House for countering this narrative.
“But in the Chinese amphibious assault plan, the large conventional amphibious force is just the reserve that rapidly transports reinforcements to the areas where they are required.”
The main amphibious landings will be provided by China’s vast maritime militia: fishing vessels, cargo container vessels and dual-purpose civilian craft adapted for deployment of amphibious vehicles. This explains why the Chinese have built civilian ferries with rounded bottoms like World War II Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs). The design is perfect during beaching operations.
The PLA can move from an almost standing start and be on Taiwan beaches before anyone can react. China can dispatch forces from its long coast that can converge to arrive simultaneously with little advance warning.
“The element of surprise turns out to be a massive force multiplier — even though there have been plenty of photos over the years of amphibious tanks driving down the ramps of civilian roll-on/roll-off ships at sea or off cross-channel ferries. Too many experts didn’t want to realize what they were seeing.”
It is this reviewer’s opinion, those who rebuke Newsham’s view that a maritime militia: fishing vessels, cargo container ships, and LST designs from World War II could not provide heavy lift capabilities are ignoring history: in 1949 the KMT’s evacuation of China under Communist bombardment was conducted under worse conditions.
As the reviewer, I also challenge naysayers in D.C. to look closely at the Dunkirk evacuation of 340,000 troops, the 1980 Cuban boat lift that saw 150,000 Cubans and Haitians hitting the beaches in Florida wrecking havoc, and the current deluge of illegal aliens from North Africa streaming into the European continent unchallenged. Sure these are small boats that cannot carry tanks, but they are transporting men, hundreds of thousands.
The Americans figured they’d have plenty of notice as the Chinese collected their amphibious ships and barges and brought forces together. But in the Chinese amphibious assault plan, the large conventional amphibious force is just the reserve that rapidly transports reinforcements to the areas where they are required.
How would Taiwan round up 150,000 - 250,000 armed Chinese soldiers at unprotected beaches along the West Coast? Even if they could capture them, where would they imprison them? And imagine the mayhem of armed young soldiers between the ages of 18-24 looking for fun?
Chaos would reign on an island of only 23 million people accustomed to low crime rates and safe streets. Gun laws prevent the average citizen from protecting themselves from even their local criminal syndicates, like the Bamboo Union and Four Seas, many of whom support Chinese unification.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has reduced the Military Police Command from 20,000 to just 3,000 men. These men served as the Praetorian Guard of the gates of the city.
Fifth-columnists and special forces infiltrated by smugglers’ fast boats and ordinary fishing boats would also go to work: shooting up police stations, bus stops, and schools throughout Taiwan causing chaos and confusion.
The jewel in the crown for China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), the major port of Kaohsiung, opens its doors to the Chinese on day one, without a shot fired. The port authorities even have a welcome banner flying. Kaohsiung is run by organized crime and has been for years. That means China’s MSS [Ministry of State Security], the Godfather of Chinese organized crime, effectively controls it. So now, the PLA invasion force has Taiwan’s biggest port at its service. With its warehouses ready, stocked with supplies.
If you doubt Newsham’s argument of local mafia influence in Taiwan note the White Wolf and the 2003 book by CHIN Ko-lin: Heijin: Organized Crime, Business, and Politics in Taiwan. Taiwan’s mafia is pro-unification and be considered a de facto political power in and of itself within Taiwan.
Mafia concerns do not register inside the think tank and intelligence community in Washington because they are considered passé; a movie trope, cliché.
In Taiwan they run free as rats in a night market involved in everything from construction to local brothels.
Newsham’s critics in Washington circles must consider these disturbing facts.
What Newsham hands us is a book that challenges the idea that conventional warfare and even the so-called asymmetrical porcupine strategy will not address the dark side of the Chinese coup de grâce mindset.
This is more than just taking Taiwan for the sake of old Cold War grudges, but as a jumping off point for the control the Sakhalin-Singapore-Guam Triangle. An area that would shutter U.S. Navy influence; the first to do so since Japan’s Imperial Naval attack on Pearl Harbor and the seizure of the Alaskan Aleutian Islands, the Philippines, Singapore, and Korea.
It would be a seismic strategic shift in geopolitics in Asia (Click to Enlarge):
ABOVE: Newsham’s map certainly indicates a problem for Australia and Singapore, not to mention oil/gas shipments from the Middle East to economic powerhouses in Japan and South Korea. For Taiwan, it is even more dire as the Democratic Progressive Party has been busy shutting down nuclear power plants to save the Polar Bear (no joking).
The U.S. might have a fantasy worldview, but let us take a hard look at China’s point-of-view (Click to Enlarge):
Taiwan is literally in China’s backyard, just as Cuba and Haiti are. Except for Okinawa, there are no close combat forces in the area. Guam is three aerial refueling trips for fighter aircraft to reach Taiwan.
Chinese fighter aircraft can reach Taiwan in seven minutes. Helicopters carrying special operations forces would pour across the Strait like locusts. Even without Chinese warships, land-based anti-ship missiles can destroy Taiwan warships with ease. Even land-based air defense systems can target Taiwan fighter aircraft over most of the island.
Those in DC who suggest there will be plenty of “warning signs” of an impending attack have not looked at the swelling military presence across from Taiwan.
But what is the U.S. Navy facing? A race to save Taiwan will run directly into a massive Chinese behemoth of tactical and strategic nightmares (Click to Enlarge):
Another problem with America’s fantasy worldview are further blindspots. The U.S. has long watched the “string of pearls” of Chinese bases and ports between the Middle East and China; providing logistic hubs for fuel, food, ammunition, equipment, etc.
But the U.S. appears completely asleep at the wheel when it comes to Latin America:
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