My understanding of the present state of Taiwan is that they are unprepared for war in any real sense. Sure, they’ve bought a decent amount of American military technology, but that seems to be it.
Total war requires the preparation of the entire populace. Taiwan has not done this, and I doubt the present government intends to do so. Not only do you basically have to train your populace in terrorism, you also need to equip them with caches of a variety of weapons, entirely outside of government control.
Azerbaijan and Armenia’s recent war shows just how the game has changed. Armenia had a much more capable and better-trained infantry. Azerbaijan had the latest in drone technology. “Guerrillas hiding in the mountains” don’t fare well against combined-arms forces with FLIR-equipped drones.
The defensive proposition of total war is that you force any would-be invader to kill most, if not all, of the local population to achieve victory. Both during the initial invasion, as well as during at least a full generation of occupation.
In essence, you leave only two options on the table: “Leave us in peace” or “In exchange for us inflicting massive casualties upon your forces, you will receive what remans of a barren rock full of refugees, along with at least one full generation of terrorism levied against your people by ours. As a bonus, we are both native speakers of the same language and lack any visual ethnic distinction. Isn’t that fun?”
My understanding of the present state of Taiwan is that they are unprepared for war in any real sense. Sure, they’ve bought a decent amount of American military technology, but that seems to be it.
Total war requires the preparation of the entire populace. Taiwan has not done this, and I doubt the present government intends to do so. Not only do you basically have to train your populace in terrorism, you also need to equip them with caches of a variety of weapons, entirely outside of government control.
Azerbaijan and Armenia’s recent war shows just how the game has changed. Armenia had a much more capable and better-trained infantry. Azerbaijan had the latest in drone technology. “Guerrillas hiding in the mountains” don’t fare well against combined-arms forces with FLIR-equipped drones.
The defensive proposition of total war is that you force any would-be invader to kill most, if not all, of the local population to achieve victory. Both during the initial invasion, as well as during at least a full generation of occupation.
In essence, you leave only two options on the table: “Leave us in peace” or “In exchange for us inflicting massive casualties upon your forces, you will receive what remans of a barren rock full of refugees, along with at least one full generation of terrorism levied against your people by ours. As a bonus, we are both native speakers of the same language and lack any visual ethnic distinction. Isn’t that fun?”