‘Red’ invasion: House simulates Chinese storming of Taiwan in war game exercise
Jerry Dunleavy
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Members of Congress are slated to hold a war game on a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, highlighting that “the enemy gets a vote” and providing a warning sign about the consequences of U.S. deterrence potentially failing in the Pacific.
Beijing and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have long declared their desire to bring the democratic island nation of Taiwan under their control, and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told the Washington Examiner that his committee “will host a table-top exercise this week to explore the military and economic ramifications of a deterrence failure, and, thus, conflict in the Taiwan Strait.” The war game will be held Wednesday evening.
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Gallagher pointed out that the choices made by foreign adversaries such as China inevitably affect even the most carefully laid plans by U.S. military strategists, and said a goal of the war game will be to answer, “How do our policies do after they make contact with our competitor’s strategies?” He added, “Tabletops aren’t just for military planners — they can be used to game out trade policy, cyber defense, and many other issues in Congress’s remit. Too often, Congress only considers first-order consequences of its policies.”
A source close to the House CCP committee told the Washington Examiner that “it’s sort of like Mike Tyson’s ‘everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’ And then we want to simulate a scenario where we get punched in the mouth and we experience what it looks like when our strategy collides with our competitor’s strategy.”
The Wisconsin Republican got the top U.S. general in Europe to admit in April 2022 that Western efforts to deter Russian leader Vladimir Putin failed, culminating in the Kremlin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.
Gen. Tod Wolters of U.S. European Command told Gallagher during House testimony last year that he considered it part of his mission to deter Putin from invading and that he considered himself part of an interagency effort to “deter and dissuade” Russia. Gallagher asked if the general agreed that deterrence had failed, and Wolters replied, “I can’t argue with your conclusion.”
Gallagher’s war game will explore what will happen if deterrence similarly fails with China and if Beijing decides to try to take Taiwan by force.
Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, was asked by Gallagher about Taiwan war games during House testimony on Tuesday.
“You know how war games work. You can pick the time — what does today look like, what does two years from now or what does four years from now look like,” Aquilino said. “So we look at all of those to ensure that we’ve got a broad view and we leave no holes in our understanding and analysis.”
The admiral added, “War-gaming is a learning objective. So when people talk about ‘hey, who won, who lost?’ — war-gaming is not about that. It’s about learning and understanding vulnerabilities, strengths, and helps you go forward and figure out how to adjust.”
Gallagher told the admiral that “usually when we run these war games, one thing quickly becomes apparent: We go Winchester on critical weapons systems,” meaning that the U.S. quickly runs out of key munitions, with Gallagher noting that “we run out of long-range fires” in these scenarios. The Republican asked the admiral, “What worries you about the stock of long-range fires that we have west of the international dateline, and what do you think is our best way to replenish our stockpiles and make sure you have what you need in theater prior to the start of shooting?”
Aquilino replied that “I’m not too worried as it applies to our ability to deter and then deliver effective contingency operations if required,” and, when pressed by Gallagher again, he repeated that “I’m not worried.”
A source close to the House CCP committee told the Washington Examiner that the Wednesday war game will be run by the think tank Center for a New American Security, with roughly 18 committee members playing national security advisers for the United States as “Blue” and CNAS playing China as “Red.” The source said that “we think that depending on how many steps they get through it will probably amount to about a month of fighting, which is very significant in a military and naval context.”
Becca Wasser, Andrew Metrick, and others from CNAS will play the role of Chinese invaders. Wasser is the head of The Gaming Lab at CNAS and also teaches a course on war-gaming at Georgetown University. Metrick was previously a wargamer at Northrop Grumman.
Gallagher previously held a Taiwan-focused war game in March with House Republicans at a retreat in Florida.
“The war game at the GOP Leadership Conference showed my colleagues and me that America and our allies are not currently up to the task of defending these ideals through military strength,” Gallagher told the Washington Post at the time. “We need to learn the hard lessons of failed deterrence in Ukraine and arm our friends in danger before the shooting starts.”
CNAS has itself hosted numerous China-Taiwan war games, including one for Meet the Press in May 2022.
“The wargame indicated there is no quick victory for either side if China decides to invade Taiwan,” CNAS wrote of that war game in June 2022.
CNAS also held an August 2022 war game around the time that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited Taiwan.
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“In the first three weeks after invading Taiwan, China sank two multibillion-dollar U.S. aircraft carriers, attacked American bases across Japan and on Guam, and destroyed hundreds of advanced U.S. jet fighters,” the Wall Street Journal wrote when recounting the tabletop exercise’s results. “China’s situation was, if anything, worse. It landed troops on Taiwan and seized the island’s southern third, but its amphibious fleet was decimated by relentless U.S. and Japanese missile and submarine attacks and it couldn’t resupply its own forces.”
President Joe Biden has repeatedly vowed that the United States would respond militarily to defend Taiwan if China attacked Taiwan, and each time, the White House has subsequently insisted America’s decadeslong policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan was not shifting.