China’s situation was, if anything, worse. It landed troops on Taiwan and seized the island’s southern third, but its amphibious fleet was decimated by relentless U.S. and Japanese missile and submarine attacks and it couldn’t resupply its own forces. The capital, Taipei, was secure in Taiwanese hands, and Beijing was low on long-range ballistic missiles to counter America’s still-potent air and maritime power.
This complex daylong war game, played out late last week at a Washington think tank, demonstrated how destructive any attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan could be across the Indo-Pacific—and what a forbidding challenge the island would be for Beijing’s military forces.