Beware the Allure of Blockade: There Won’t Be Any Silver Bullets in a War Against China
The MOC
By
Samuel Byers
September 5, 2024
Introduction
War between the United States and People’s Republic of China (PRC) over Taiwan—or another dispute between Beijing and one of its neighbors—remains a front-of-mind concern for Washington. Many wargames have simulated what such a war might look like from the American perspective, but by-and-large, these have focused on the early days of a conflict and direct defense of Taiwan by means of operations within the first island chain. What is certain is that direct defense against a Chinese invasion will be costly and not without significant risks. These difficulties have sparked a search for non-conventional, asymmetric alternatives to support Taiwan in a crisis, such as the Department of Defense’s plan to turn the Taiwan Strait into a “hellscape” of autonomous weapons that will sink any Chinese invasion force without risking American lives.
Another attractive asymmetric stratagem that resurfaces from time to time is to blockade the PRC in the event of war. The pasttwo years, Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX)—a retired Navy physician—has pushed for a Pentagon study on the feasibility of blockading China. Outside of government, the idea of a blockade gets favorable treatment in the national security press. While there is much to merit a wartime blockade of China, strategists beware: a blockade would be no silver bullet in a Taiwan crisis.
Strategy and Blockading
Two pieces of strategic theory should inform our thinking about the practicability of blockade as a tool against China.
The first comes from Sir Julian Corbett’s seminal volume, Principles of Maritime Strategy. Throughout his work, Corbett stresses the centrality of commerce and its control to maritime strategy. Late in the volume, he addresses the issue of vulnerability to attacks on a country’s overseas trade. Referring to the explosion of British overseas trade during the nineteenth century, especially in foodstuffs and other staples, Corbett argues that it is wrong to assume that Britain is more vulnerable to war against its trade than it was before. Rather, “the broad indications are the other way—that the greater the volume of our trade, the less was the effective impression which an enemy could make upon it, even when he devoted his whole naval energies to that end.” This stands to reason on two levels. First, the larger a country’s merchant fleet, the smaller the impact from each individual vessel captured, sunk, diverted, or stopped by the enemy. Second, the greater a country’s reliance on overseas trade, the more fat exists to be cut in times of scarcity while keeping essential wartime systems running.
Both dynamics mitigate against a successful blockade of China by the United States. The PRC has over 5500 ships in overseas service (compared to 80 American vessels). If the People’s Liberation Army’s anti-access/area denial system is effective enough to keep the U.S. Navy at arm’s length from Taiwan, then it will also be sufficient to thwart a close blockade of the China coast. An open blockade conducted outside of the First Island Chain would be a trickier puzzle to solve, geographically speaking, and the Navy would be hard-pressed to cover every approach avenue given the meagre size of its fleet and operational needs elsewhere. Some Chinese ships would no doubt get through, and each vessel stopped or sunk accounts for only one-fifty-fifth of one percent of the PRC’s merchant capacity. China’s reliance on overseas trade for energy and food is a common talking point in favor of blockade; however, the size of the Chinese economy means there are many places to cut or conserve in wartime. Beijing has also been taking steps to stockpile resources and establish overland trade routes to mitigate risk and reduce its vulnerability to a maritime blockade.
The Problems Time and Political Cost
J.C. Wylie—a Cold War-era U.S. Navy Rear Admiral—provides a second lens through which to consider blockade as a tool against China. Wylie’s 1967 book, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, examines why the different services approach strategic problems in unique ways and the differences between various branches of strategic theory. He draws the clear distinction between traditional sequential strategies (such as a campaign leading to the defeat of an army, then the capture of a city) and cumulative strategies, which are “the less perceptible minute accumulation of little items piling one on top of the other until at some unknown point the mass […] may be large enough to be critical”. Wylie’s choice example for this latter form of strategy is the U.S. Navy’s three-and-a-half-year-long submarine campaign against Japan’s merchant shipping during the Pacific War, which caused the collapse of Japanese maritime logistics…at first slowly, then all at once. By their nature, cumulative strategies do not produce quick results.
If the PRC invades (or itself blockades) Taiwan, blockade could be a potent element of a larger U.S. response, however, it cannot function as a substitute for direct intervention. As Wylie observes: “there is no major instance in which a cumulative strategy, operating by itself, has been successful”. This raises thorny questions of political will. If Washington is unwilling to commit forces to the direct defense of Taiwan from the outset, how likely is it that U.S. policy makers will instead elect to pursue an open-ended conflict that will still require direct intervention at some point in future? Blockades are definitionally acts of war and as such invite retaliation—and escalation. Washington cannot avoid war by choosing blockade over intervention.
Moreover, a blockade would be politically and diplomatically difficult to sustain, especially over a long period of time. Can the United States count on allies to help enforce a blockade when they are most likely not at war with China themselves? When sinking and impounding Chinese-flagged vessels proves insufficient to force Beijing to back down, will Washington target the shipping of neutral states as well to more thoroughly cut off China from the global economy? Policy makers would do well to recall the reaction of a nascent American Republic when Britain began seizing U.S. merchantmen on the high seas in the years prior to 1812….
None of these problems is insurmountable, but it is hard to imagine a president unwilling to directly intervene to save Taiwan but at the same time willing to pursue an open-ended military conflict with China. A standalone blockade would simultaneously be a less potent and more complicated tool than direct intervention. As such, it fails to measure up as an alternative stratagem.
Conclusion
Strategic theory militates against the idea that blockading China is a viable substitute for direct assistance to help Taiwan defend its shores in the event of a PRC invasion. Blockade can be a potent tool in warfare, but by its nature its most powerful consequences are slow to manifest on the adversary and it must be combined with other sequential, direct operations to conjure its full effect.
Policy makers should not ignore blockade as a potential tool in a Taiwan crisis, but they cannot afford to be lured into thinking of it as a lower cost, lower risk alternative to direct military-to-military confrontation within the First Island Chain.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Samuel Byers
Introduction
War between the United States and People’s Republic of China (PRC) over Taiwan—or another dispute between Beijing and one of its neighbors—remains a front-of-mind concern for Washington. Many wargames have simulated what such a war might look like from the American perspective, but by-and-large, these have focused on the early days of a conflict and direct defense of Taiwan by means of operations within the first island chain. What is certain is that direct defense against a Chinese invasion will be costly and not without significant risks. These difficulties have sparked a search for non-conventional, asymmetric alternatives to support Taiwan in a crisis, such as the Department of Defense’s plan to turn the Taiwan Strait into a “hellscape” of autonomous weapons that will sink any Chinese invasion force without risking American lives.
Another attractive asymmetric stratagem that resurfaces from time to time is to blockade the PRC in the event of war. The past two years, Representative Ronny Jackson (R-TX)—a retired Navy physician—has pushed for a Pentagon study on the feasibility of blockading China. Outside of government, the idea of a blockade gets favorable treatment in the national security press. While there is much to merit a wartime blockade of China, strategists beware: a blockade would be no silver bullet in a Taiwan crisis.
Strategy and Blockading
Two pieces of strategic theory should inform our thinking about the practicability of blockade as a tool against China.
The first comes from Sir Julian Corbett’s seminal volume, Principles of Maritime Strategy. Throughout his work, Corbett stresses the centrality of commerce and its control to maritime strategy. Late in the volume, he addresses the issue of vulnerability to attacks on a country’s overseas trade. Referring to the explosion of British overseas trade during the nineteenth century, especially in foodstuffs and other staples, Corbett argues that it is wrong to assume that Britain is more vulnerable to war against its trade than it was before. Rather, “the broad indications are the other way—that the greater the volume of our trade, the less was the effective impression which an enemy could make upon it, even when he devoted his whole naval energies to that end.” This stands to reason on two levels. First, the larger a country’s merchant fleet, the smaller the impact from each individual vessel captured, sunk, diverted, or stopped by the enemy. Second, the greater a country’s reliance on overseas trade, the more fat exists to be cut in times of scarcity while keeping essential wartime systems running.
Both dynamics mitigate against a successful blockade of China by the United States. The PRC has over 5500 ships in overseas service (compared to 80 American vessels). If the People’s Liberation Army’s anti-access/area denial system is effective enough to keep the U.S. Navy at arm’s length from Taiwan, then it will also be sufficient to thwart a close blockade of the China coast. An open blockade conducted outside of the First Island Chain would be a trickier puzzle to solve, geographically speaking, and the Navy would be hard-pressed to cover every approach avenue given the meagre size of its fleet and operational needs elsewhere. Some Chinese ships would no doubt get through, and each vessel stopped or sunk accounts for only one-fifty-fifth of one percent of the PRC’s merchant capacity. China’s reliance on overseas trade for energy and food is a common talking point in favor of blockade; however, the size of the Chinese economy means there are many places to cut or conserve in wartime. Beijing has also been taking steps to stockpile resources and establish overland trade routes to mitigate risk and reduce its vulnerability to a maritime blockade.
The Problems Time and Political Cost
J.C. Wylie—a Cold War-era U.S. Navy Rear Admiral—provides a second lens through which to consider blockade as a tool against China. Wylie’s 1967 book, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, examines why the different services approach strategic problems in unique ways and the differences between various branches of strategic theory. He draws the clear distinction between traditional sequential strategies (such as a campaign leading to the defeat of an army, then the capture of a city) and cumulative strategies, which are “the less perceptible minute accumulation of little items piling one on top of the other until at some unknown point the mass […] may be large enough to be critical”. Wylie’s choice example for this latter form of strategy is the U.S. Navy’s three-and-a-half-year-long submarine campaign against Japan’s merchant shipping during the Pacific War, which caused the collapse of Japanese maritime logistics…at first slowly, then all at once. By their nature, cumulative strategies do not produce quick results.
If the PRC invades (or itself blockades) Taiwan, blockade could be a potent element of a larger U.S. response, however, it cannot function as a substitute for direct intervention. As Wylie observes: “there is no major instance in which a cumulative strategy, operating by itself, has been successful”. This raises thorny questions of political will. If Washington is unwilling to commit forces to the direct defense of Taiwan from the outset, how likely is it that U.S. policy makers will instead elect to pursue an open-ended conflict that will still require direct intervention at some point in future? Blockades are definitionally acts of war and as such invite retaliation—and escalation. Washington cannot avoid war by choosing blockade over intervention.
Moreover, a blockade would be politically and diplomatically difficult to sustain, especially over a long period of time. Can the United States count on allies to help enforce a blockade when they are most likely not at war with China themselves? When sinking and impounding Chinese-flagged vessels proves insufficient to force Beijing to back down, will Washington target the shipping of neutral states as well to more thoroughly cut off China from the global economy? Policy makers would do well to recall the reaction of a nascent American Republic when Britain began seizing U.S. merchantmen on the high seas in the years prior to 1812….
None of these problems is insurmountable, but it is hard to imagine a president unwilling to directly intervene to save Taiwan but at the same time willing to pursue an open-ended military conflict with China. A standalone blockade would simultaneously be a less potent and more complicated tool than direct intervention. As such, it fails to measure up as an alternative stratagem.
Conclusion
Strategic theory militates against the idea that blockading China is a viable substitute for direct assistance to help Taiwan defend its shores in the event of a PRC invasion. Blockade can be a potent tool in warfare, but by its nature its most powerful consequences are slow to manifest on the adversary and it must be combined with other sequential, direct operations to conjure its full effect.
Policy makers should not ignore blockade as a potential tool in a Taiwan crisis, but they cannot afford to be lured into thinking of it as a lower cost, lower risk alternative to direct military-to-military confrontation within the First Island Chain.