Active Defense

Active Defense is defined as tactical offense and strategic defense.

For several years, through its anti-access, area-denial approach in the South China Sea, China has been engaged in Active Defense with the intent to deter, delay and ultimately defeat any opposing military force. It could be argued that China now has the capability to keep the American and allied navies, including their aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and logistic vessels (tankers and store ships) far from the First Island Chain by utilizing anti-ship and air defense cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles fired from surface ships, submarines (including torpedoes), minefields, manned and unmanned aircraft, shore based and inland mobile rocket batteries, electronic warfare and cyberattacks. 

In fact today it is very possible that China can do what it wants in this littoral sea-space of the Western Pacific. If the Chinese prove that they can control the South China Sea it would be much harder to displace them from this region that includes various sovereign island nation-states. America and its allies learned this lesson during the Second World War in the Pacific when many long and costly battles were fought to take back numerous contested islands from the Imperial Japanese. 

China’s potential control over the region also means that America and its allies need to find a way to protect Taiwan if and when China attacks. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made the reunification of Taiwan a centerpiece of his presidency and we may have already lost the initiative because of the lack of foresight and preparation over the past U.S. government administrations. However, the democratic world has a moral and ethical obligation to prevent China’s use of Active Defense to crush a sovereign democratic nation of 23 million people currently living under freedom. 

We must also consider the strategic importance of Taiwan to the world. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the world’s largest producer of microchips controlling 51% of the global market. Its next largest competitor accounts for less than 19%. Microchips are used in almost every piece of modern technology and TSMC is also only one of two companies capable of producing the most cutting edge microchips which are a key component in the latest computer processors, graphics cards and smartphones. Therefore, if China were able to take control of Taiwan, it would also gain control of TSMC and effectively gain control of the 21st century’s most important commodity of technology. The significance of this is best summed up by Stanford University historian Niall Ferguson who, when analyzing the importance of Taiwan to the United States and China, stated: “He who rules Taiwan rules the world.”