The cost of a Taiwan war

As China holds extensive and increasingly aggressive military exercises off of Taiwan, a group of American defense experts in Washington are focused on a simulation of a hypothetical war between the US and China over the island democracy. A US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, would come at a huge cost, they’ve found. “Under most—though not all—scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.” In 18 of the 22 rounds of the exercise so far, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US surface fleet. The group has yet to project the number of dead in such a non-nuclear conflict, or the economic shock waves that would almost certainly result. —David E. Rovella

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