The latest contribution to the imagining-future-war-with-China oeuvre is 'White Sun War: The Campaign for Taiwan', the first work of fiction by the prolific military thinker Mick Ryan, a retired major general in the Australian Army.
There are several thought-provoking books that imagine how a future war between the United States and China might go. Among the recent ones are The Kill Chain, a nonfiction book by Christian Brose, former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, a fictional work co-authored by Elliot Ackerman and retired Adm. James Stavridis, former NATO supreme commander.
Washington Examiner: You’ve written that the structure of your book is inspired in part by the Civil War novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara about the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, a book I believe is still required reading at the U.S. Army War College. Washington Examiner: Your fictional conflict between the U.S. and China takes place in 2028, right about the time in real life Chinese President Xi Jinping has told his military to be ready to seize Taiwan by force. What advances in warfare and tactics do you envision being in place by then, just five years from now?
Ryan: That's actually the story of all wars. And the greatest surprise of mine in the last year is the degree to which we've forgotten that. Every war takes on — I wouldn't say a mind of its own — but the emotions of people, of soldiers, of politicians who get involved, and it escalates, it broadens in ways that we don't anticipate. Hitler certainly didn't anticipate the Second World War turning out like it did.
So the Chinese are capable of terrible miscalculation just as we are in the West, and that's why these current initiatives from the United States to set up clearer lines of communication between senior U.S. and Chinese military and political leaders in the event of crises are really important. The Chinese don't appear to want to do that at the moment, but I think we're going to have to keep working to ensure that they do that.
Ryan: One of the really important ones is that allies help those who help themselves first. This is a really important lesson from Ukraine. The Ukrainians, not just their military but their people, stood up. They didn't just ask to; they went out and helped the military. I think the Taiwanese have looked at that and gone, “Well, that's one of the reasons why a lot of people were inspired to help Ukraine.
But whilst Ukraine's enemy is very close, so are its supporters. Poland is right there. Taiwan doesn't have that. Its closest ally or partner is Japan, and its next one is the United States. It's a long way away, and assistance will take a very long time to kick in.
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