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China's increased military assertion across Taiwan Strait will challenge US strategic interest in the Indo-Pacific, including presenting its Suez Canal moment.
According to the Asia Times, China has started to rapidly modernize the world's largest armed forces amid decades of sustained economic growth. If anything, Beijing is enhancing both its asymmetric and conventional military capabilities at once. Earlier, Historian Niall Ferguson and former US deputy national security adviser Mathew Pottinger have warned that the US may face a "Suez Moment" over Taiwan, referring to how the 1956 Suez crisis ended the British and French empire. On a similar note, China is also expanding its military and commercial footprint by forming a string of strategic bases and port facilities in the Indo-Pacific as a part of its Island Chain Strategy. Taiwan strait and the control of it presents Beijing its first ambition to control the First Island Chain. Meanwhile, China is also rapidly enhancing its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities which it hopes to develop firmly across the Taiwan Strait which will be countered by the US' Air-Sea Operational Concept in wake of a conflict. Further, its development of hypersonic missile capability has further enhanced the sharp edge of China's asymmetric as well as nuclear capabilities, according to the Asia Times. China's rapid enhancement of its conventional and asymmetric capabilities is most relevant for a cross-strait invasion across Taiwan. According to Asia Times, the military element is particularly important in the context of the cross-strait tensions since it was precisely America's naval interventions that proved repeatedly decisive in the preservation of Taiwanese de facto independence since the end of World War II. Earlier, China has developed fifth-generation Warfare capabilities by consolidating its overall Command Control Communication Computer and Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance, or C4ISR. According to the Asia Times, the Asian powerhouse's actual defence spending at above USD 500 billion annually, which is only second to, and not far behind, the US. Further, China has also reportedly built fighter jets modelling the US fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets, is to deter any potential joint US-Japanese intervention in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China is also expanding its military and commercial footprint across a string of strategic bases and port facilities in the Indo-Pacific (ANI)
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