Member-only story

Analysis Of Chinese Strategy For Invasion Of Taiwan

How Putin’s inept invasion of Ukraine has provided valuable lessons for China’s Emperor-for-Life

Allan Milne Lees
9 min readJul 9, 2022
Image credit: TFI Post

According to conventional Western military analysts, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine holds few if any lessons when it comes to predicting how China might seek to invade Taiwan. According to most experts, China lacks the capacity to mount an invasion and the 160-kilometer-wide stretch of ocean between the Chinese mainland and the island of Taiwan represents a far greater barrier than the forests and marshes of eastern Ukraine. And in a sense, this position is correct.

It is also naïve.

Russia’s invasion failed in its initial phases for a wide variety of reasons. Firstly, the Russian military has never had any doctrine regarding rapid invasion and so it’s hardly surprising that the first few weeks resulted in a very high level of destruction by Ukrainian forces of Russian materiel and personnel.

Secondly, endemic corruption from top to bottom meant that at least 30% of the Russian military budget was lost (some estimates run higher, with up to 38% disappearing into various pockets along the way). As a consequence, much Russian equipment was made inoperative due to utilization of counterfeit parts. Much equipment simply didn’t…

--

--

Allan Milne Lees
Allan Milne Lees

Written by Allan Milne Lees

Anyone who enjoys my articles here on Medium may be interested in my books Why Democracy Failed and The Praying Ape, both available from Amazon.

Responses (1)